clusive cognizance" of the respective Courts now consolidated, if the Act had not passed.

The jurisdiction of the Court of Appeal embraces, generally, the several jurisdictions heretofore vested in the Lord Chancellor and Court of Appeal in Chancery, the Court of Appeal in Chancery in Lancaster, the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, the Court of the Lord Warden of the Stannaries, the Court of Exchequer Chamber, and (in Admiralty and Lunacy cases) in Her Majesty and the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council.

With reference to this important change in the legal forms and procedure of the kingdom, not only important in itself but interesting from an historical point of view, we extract some remarks from a contemporary journal :

"Under the Judicature Act the several Courts which since the time of Henry III. have divided the functions of the ancient King's Court will cease to have a separate existence, and are resolved, after the lapse of six centuries, into their original elements. But, perhaps, when we look a little closer, it is more correct to say that the unity of the ancient King's Court, dissolved during six centuries, and now well-nigh forgotten, has at length been restored. From the depths of the Middle Ages we have held tenaciously to one judiciary system. Yet the whole face of business, public as well as private, has changed since an independent scope and authority was first conferred upon the several branches of the King's Court. The Monarch once administered justice, even as he administered the other internal and external affairs of his people, in his own person. Down to the days of King John this was not infrequent, and Henry II. stands recorded as one who paid a high degree of attention to the discharge of his judiciary duties. This personal jurisdiction had grown up with that growth of reasonable custom, advanced and regulated by a habit of sound analogy, which placed English Common Law at an early period on a sound and intelligible basis. As law became a science, and the cares of empire were multiplied, the same custom and the same analogy fixed the duty of administering justice in its several forms upon a certain number of men who were qualified for its exercise by a certain special training. The transition from a magistracy which is a personal appendage to one which is exercised as a separate and responsible function was the transition from barbarism to science. The transition from the confusion and barbarism which still beset a system which has so long remained unadapted to new wants, to a state of order and consolidation, has something of the same character. We lose something of historical and sentimental interest, but our loss is compensated by a substantial gain.

"The special traditions of the Queen's Bench and of other Courts of Justice will in a few years be at an end, and all matters of fresh historical interest connected with one of them more than with another may be expected in time to cease entirely.

"The name of the Queen's Bench' will, nevertheless, not pass utterly away. There will be a 'Queen's Bench Division' of the Supreme Court, headed, as heretofore, by a Lord Chief Justice of England.' The office of Lord Chief Justice, indeed, would not necessarily be abolished though Parliament should vote away all its rights, emoluments, and duties. It is not, however, a mere titular or heraldic dignity which will be still retained by Sir Alexander Cockburn. The functions of the old Court will be continued for some time, practically subject to but little encroachment, and it is not probable that any material change will be made in the methods or objects of its jurisdiction. Neither the present Lord Chief Justice, we are sure, nor his immediate successors, need anticipate any abatement of the respect in which those who occupy this venerable office are held by the people of England. The office of the Chancellor tends more and more to stand connected with duties of a political rather than a judicial nature; and, whatever may be the changes involved in slipping off the fragments of an ancient feudal disguise, the Lord Chief Justice of England will not cease to stand forth in the eye of the nation as the chief visible embodiment of the majesty of the law. The time is far distant when our judges will come to be regarded as merely the heads of a sort of legal department. The Judicature Act, in respect of the changes it involves, is by no means, as some would have us believe, a mere scheme upon paper. Neither, on the other hand, are these changes such as to take the life and the spirit out of one of the most valuable, popular, and characteristic of our national institutions."

The Land Transfer Bill, brought in by the Lord Chancellor, and passed during the Session, was framed as an improvement on Lord Westbury's Registration Act, and on the subsequent Bills advocated by Lord Selborne in 1873 and by Lord Cairns in 1874, but it disappointed many competent judges by the insufficiency of its enactments. The Bills of 1873 and 1874, profiting by the information and experience accumulated by the Royal Commission of 1869, had determined to avoid the error which defeated the working of Lord Westbury's Act. They established the principle that not only absolute titles, but others technically less perfect, could be placed on the register. The Lord Chancellor's present Bill maintains this improvement, and permits the registration of "qualified" and "possessory as well as of "absolute" titles. No man can legally hold land at all upon less than a possessory title, and this being recognised as sufficient for registration, there is no difficulty in insisting that every owner should make a public record of his ownership. Lord Selborne's Bill of 1873 did not, however, go so far as to insist on this; he merely proposed that every transfer of land, after a fixed period of limitation, should entail the registration of the property dealt with. This method of indirect and gradual compulsion was adopted by Lord Cairns in his Bill of 1874. It was omitted, to

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the surprise of most observers, from the measure which passed through the House of Lords in March 1875.

We have next to mention the Agricultural Holdings Act, which was introduced into the House of Lords by the Duke of Richmond on March 12, and carried there without a division. The Duke said that, in calling attention to the law relating to Agricultural Holdings in England, the law and practice on the same subject in Scotland were so different that he found it impossible to deal with both countries in one Bill. It would therefore be necessary to have a separate measure for Scotland, but both Bills would proceed on the same principles. The Bill he now proposed to lay on the table would be confined in its operations to England, and the subject to which it referred had long occupied public attention, for in 1848 it was distinctly brought under the notice of the House of Commons by Mr. Pusey, whose measure was referred to the consideration of a Select Committee. The evidence taken before that Committee went to show that the grievance complained of was the want of security on the part of the tenant for the capital he had invested in the soil. He hoped that the Bill he should now introduce, dealing with yearly tenancies and leases, of the latter of which he was himself an advocate, would provide a remedy for that state of things. He proposed that improvements should be divided into three classes; and he would attach different conditions for compensation to the three different classes, allowing the landlord to claim a set-off on account of rent due, and for various acts of waste. In the event of the tenant and landlord failing to agree as to the amount to be paid for compensation, each party might appoint a referee, and in case the referees disagreed he proposed that the County Court Judge should appoint an umpire; but no appeal would be allowed for any sum less than 1007. The tenant's security would be that the amount of compensation granted him might be made a charge on the holding. The limited owner would also have a right to make a charge on the estate for money well and properly laid out in improvements. In yearly tenancies the usual term for a notice to quit was half a year; he proposed that it should be increased to a year, but he would exclude all existing leases from the operation of the Bill. He would make it applicable to all other cases unless the landlord or tenant expressed a desire within a certain limit of time to be exempt from its operation, for he did not desire to interfere with the freedom of contract.

In the House of Commons, where the Second Reading of the Bill was introduced in a speech by Mr. Disraeli on June 24, Mr. Knatchbull-Hugessen, Mr. Fawcett, Sir W. Harcourt, Mr. Barclay, and other Members repeatedly attempted in vain to make the provisions of the Bill directly or indirectly compulsory. The inherent difficulties of legislation on the subject became more and more visible as the discussion proceeded. The zealous supporters of the Bill were few, and their arguments were met by the obvious

remark that liberty of contract needed no new legal sanction. On the other side, it was clearly shown that compulsion, in addition to the violation of the rights of the owner, would also injure the incoming tenant, and probably cause an increase of rent. The present Act, if not interfered with, applies of itself to all agricultural holdings where the contract is made after the Act has come into operation; but either party to the contract may agree in writing to exclude the provisions of the Act altogether, or to admit only a portion of them. As regards tenancies existing at the commencement of the Act on the 14th of February 1876, it is only tenancies from year to year or at will to which the Act applies, and any of these may be excepted if either party, within two months after the above-mentioned date, serves a written notice on the other that he objects to the Act applying to the particular holding. This avoidance of the operation of the Act at any time before the 14th of April may again be cancelled by a notice at any time subsequently, and the Act will then affect the holding without further hindrance. Thus ample dispensing powers are provided for those who may dislike or suspect the provisions of the new Act, while, on the other hand, by the 47th Section, the parties are invited to select such portions of it as they approve and give them at least a trial apart from the other clauses. To make it clear beyond question that the principle of freedom of contract is respected, the 46th Section declares that nothing in the Act shall prevent landlords and tenants making such agreements as they think fit, or shall interfere with such agreements. Thus every provision is made for maintaining the freedom of all parties to contracts concerning land, whether in the past or the future. All that is required is that as regards existing tenancies the parties to them shall make up their minds between this time and the middle of April next whether they will have the Act or not, and as regards all future tenancies, that this question shall be considered and decided by both parties before the contract is completed.

The first Bill of the Session, in point of time, was that introduced by Mr. Cross, the Home Secretary, on February the 8th, to facilitate the Improvement of Dwellings for the Working Classes in towns. He started from the position that the consideration of the public health should form the exclusive object to be kept in view in any legislation dealing with this question. It was not, he said at the outset of his speech, the business of a Government to provide any class of citizens with any of the necessaries of life, and good and habitable dwellings are one of the chief necessaries of life. Nor was it expedient for a Government to encourage large bodies of persons to provide the working classes with habitations at greatly lower rents than the market value paid elsewhere. But, on the other hand, it is not only wise and expedient, but the imperative duty of a Government, to take care that the houses which this or any class do in fact occupy should not become centres of disease and of the conditions which propagate

disease. He brought forward many facts to prove the urgency of the case. In Liverpool there are courts, containing more than 2,000 people, in which there have been more people sick in five years than the whole population; and there is not one house in which there has not been a death annually. The average deathrate of the whole country is a little over 22 per 1,000; but in Manchester there is a district in which the rate is now 67 per 1,000. The Medical Officer of Health for Paddington has prepared tables in which a comparison is instituted between such districts as Gloucester Square, Hyde Park, and Westbourne Terrace on the one hand, and equal areas occupied by the working classes on the other; and the result is, that the less crowded district, though containing only one-sixth of the population of the poorer, produces twice the number of children who grow up to be healthy adults. In other words, for every 12 children who grow up healthy in the rich district only one child grows up among the poor. Making every allowance for other causes, there can be no doubt the main cause of this frightful waste of life is the close and poisoned air which the children breathe. Experience shows, moreover, that it is not the mere density of the population which causes the evil. In the worst districts in London the density of the population is about 300 per acre; but Sir Sydney Waterlow's Society has built houses providing for no fewer than 1,600 persons on an acre, and yet the death-rate in them is as low as 15 per 1,000. The mischief lies in the vicious construction of dwellings.

Mr. Fawcett opposed the Bill when the House went into Committee, on the ground that it was "class legislation," and that, as we do not frame Acts of Parliament to enable noblemen to obtain suitable dwellings, so we ought not to frame Acts to meet the special case of working men, who are able, or ought to be able, to supply their own wants in this respect, as in all others. The measure, however, passed with little alteration, though some critics objected to the limitation of its provisions to towns of 25,000 inhabitants. Under its provisions corporations may, on the report of their medical officers, acquire buildings by compulsory purchase for the purpose of improvement. They may either build or let the land for building in accordance with schemes which they are to prepare with special regard to the accommodation of the working classes. If the measure is found to be operative and beneficial, its provisions may be easily extended to smaller towns. Mr. Cross was well advised in trying the experiment among large populations, which are most liable to the evils of crowding. If the corporations of great towns prove to be indifferent to the facilities afforded by the Act, it will be useless to appeal to smaller bodies.

On the 10th of June the Home Secretary, brought in two Bills for amending the Labour Laws. Dealing first with the Master and Servant Act, he dwelt on the points in them to which