All these and the like accidents are preventable. That they would also to a great extent be prevented if that were made the interest of those who alone can prevent them, viz., the shipowners, is manifest by comparing the per centage of casualties falling on the mercantile navy with the per centage falling on the Royal navy, or on those large self-insured companies, as the Cunard line, or the Peninsular and Oriental Company. While the losses in the former have gone on increasing, in the latter they have been decreasing.*

The bearing of all this on the interests of shippers of goods is very direct and manifest. Their cargoes are at present exposed to many dangers, additional to the natural "perils of the sea; and against all these dangers they have to protect themselves by large insurances. Decrease the risks, and the premiums will be proportionally reduced. One. fourth at least of all the casualties which occur are preventable, because they are occasioned by default which might be avoided. The only way of accomplishing this is by placing the liability for these casualties on those who alone can prevent them. If by any means the shipowners can be made to feel that it is for their interest that these avoidable accidents cease, they will prevent them; and then the merchant will have to insure himself not against one hundred casualties as at present, but only against seventy-five.

T. F.

This phase of the subject was brought by Mr. Chadwick under the attention of the Social Science Association at its meeting in October last at Sheffield. A resumé of his address will be found in the November number of this journal, p. 372. After pointing out the injurious consequences of shipowners' irresponsibility, he expresses the hope that Chambers of Commerce and the general public may join in an application "to Her Majesty's Government for a commission of inquiry to revise the past course of legislation, and to prepare efficient measures of prevention as well as of repression." This expression of hope finds an odd comment in Mr. Warrack's pamphlet, wherein the chairman of the Leith Chamber of Commerce exhorts the same parties to petition Her Majesty's Government to extend this irresponsibility of shipowners to its utmost limit.

New Books.

Notes on Scotch Bankruptcy Law and Practice, with reference to the Proposed Amendment of the Bankruptcy Law of England. By GEORGE A. ESSON, Accountant in Bankruptcy in Scotland. Edinburgh Edmonston & Douglas.

1866.

THIS pamphlet, from the pen of the accountant in bankruptcy, is intended as a contribution to an object which has always been strenuously advocated in this journal,-an assimilation of the Bankruptcy Laws of the United Kingdom. The Select Committee of the House of Commons having, after an anxious inquiry into the working of the Bankruptcy Laws, both in England and Scotland, reported in favour of the introduction into England of a modification of the Scotch system of bankruptcy, Mr Esson, in the pamphlet before us, has explained, for the benefit of the legal and commercial community in England, the nature and working of that system. Nor are we aware of any treatise in which our system is so shortly, and at the same time so clearly stated, and its operation so distinctly brought out. The work is divested as much as possible of all Scotch technicalities, and when the introduction of these was inevitable, they are explained by their English synonymes or analogues. The result of the working of the Scotch Bankruptcy Act of 1856 has, according to Mr Esson (than whom no man is better entitled to speak with authority), been upon the whole most satisfactory. A few imperfections in details are pointed out; in particular, it appears that some additional powers might now with advantage be bestowed upon the accountant in bankruptcy in controlling the accounts of trustees. Mr Esson is also of opinion, that the commissioners (or "inspectors," as the Select Committee propose they shall be called in England) should receive remuneration according to a rate to be fixed by the accountant in bankruptcy, with reference to the circumstances of each case. The giving of remuneration is supported, on the ground that it is usually done in all cases where the time of business men is occupied; we believe Mr Esson might have added, that it ought to be given, in order to secure more attention by commissioners to the affairs of the bankruptcy, and make them more efficient aids to, as well as checks on, the trustee. Upon the modifications which the Select Committee propose to introduce into the Scotch system, while transplanting

it into England, Mr Esson makes some valuable remarks. The most sweeping change which is proposed by the Committee is the entire abolition of imprisonment for debt. In discussing this subject in January 1865, we stated our opinion that the public were not yet ripe for such a revolution, and the facts brought forward by Mr Esson confirm us in that opinion. We observe that at a meeting of representatives of the various chambers of commerce of the United Kingdom, which was held on 27th February, the following resolution was adopted :-"That this meeting does not approve of the abolition of imprisonment for debt under any judgment, decree, or order of any Court." The Appendix to the pamphlet contains a table of the number of civil prisoners in Scotland from 1840 to 1863, from which it appears that the daily average in the whole prisons of Scotland is only 72. This shews that the engine of imprisonment in Scotland is not used oppressively; but that the power of adopting this ultima ratio is a powerful instrument for the recovery of just debt can scarcely be doubted, and is amply established by the evidence which Mr Esson adduces. The introduction into England of something analogous to the Scotch process of cessio bonorum, to be administered by the same courts as are in future to exercise bankruptcy jurisdiction, is recommended by Mr Esson, as enabling the law of imprisonment of debt to be maintained, while its rigour is tempered, without applying "the great engine of adjudication of bankruptcy to the very small, but very necessary, purpose of releasing from prison insolvent debtors who have no estates."

Another modification of the Scotch law which the Select Committee suggest, and which also meets with disapproval from Mr Esson, is the proposal to establish a distinct Supreme Court of Bankruptcy in London. His suggestion is "to combine the benefits of the two systems, by appointing a chief judge for the ordinary jurisdiction of the Court, and uniting with him certain judges of the superior courts for the appellate jurisdiction." The feasibility of this suggestion, borrowed to some extent apparently from the constitution of the Divorce Court, depends so much upon the amount of work at present performed by the English judges, that we are unable to express an opinion, whether it would be found in practice that sufficient time was available for the discharge of the new duties to be imposed on them. more in accordance with the English system to subdivide jurisdiction, and limit the labours of the judge to a special department. We confess to a prejudice in favour of our system of

It is

having the whole law administered by every judge; and if we lose something in uniformity, we cannot but think that the law gains at last by the evolving of sound principles out of the conflict of views occasionally manifested. The vice-Chancellors, with the existing right of appeal, seem to supply all that is wanted when taken in connexion with the Committee's recommendation of the entire abolition of the district Bankruptcy Courts, and the transfer of their jurisdiction to the County Courts,-a course amply justified by the successful working of the bankruptcy jurisdiction of the Sheriff Courts, conferred on them in 1856.

Various other of the recommendations of the Select Committee are examined by Mr Esson; and in the Appendix will be found some valuable tables shewing the practical working of the Scotch Act of 1856. On one point, upon which great difficulty has been felt in England, we are glad to have some information, namely, prosecutions for fraudulent bankruptcy; even in the imperfect state of our law, it seems two or three such prosecutions take place annually, in circumstances which result either in the conviction of the bankrupt, or in his absconding from justice. This shows our law to be no dead letter, and that probably but slight alteration is required to make it fully meet the wants of the case. The great difficulty is to give a definition of what is fraudulent bankruptcy, and for the solution of this difficulty Mr. Esson offers some contributions in his chapter on the subject.

THE MONTH,

Court of Session.-The last month has been distinguished by the magnitude and importance of some of the cases decided in the Court of Session. There was, in the first place, the Cluny case, in which the Court, by a majority of their number-the case having been argued before the whole Court-repeated the judgment in the Dalswinton case, that a destination to an individual, and his heirs whatsoever,' cannot be made the foundation of a good entail. But the importance of the decision lies in the summary fashion in which the Court set aside the directions of the trust-deed, on the ground that these were not framed in accordance with the provisions of entail law, and were therefore inoperative. Colonel Gordon, it will be remembered, left a trust-deed, in which he directed his trustees to invest the residue

of his estate, amounting to upwards of £200,000, in the purchase of lands, to be entailed upon his son, according to the destination above mentioned. Mr Gordon raised an action against his father's trustees, in which he concluded that they should be made to pay to him the residue in their hands, seeing that they could not execute a valid entail. The Court have given decree to that effect. But five of the Judges were of opinion that such interference with the expressed wishes of a truster was unwarrantable.

A case of perhaps greater magnitude, as regards the stake involved, and one raising points of considerable difficulty and delicacy, was the Duntocher Succession case. Last summer, the Court, in a question between the heir-at-law and the beneficiaries under the testament, decided that a declaration, by which certain parties were called as substitutes to the heir instituted, truly formed part of, and was a continuation of the dispositive clause of the deed, although locally disconnected from it; and the view then taken was made the foundation of the judgment to which we are at present referring. It has now been decided that one of the parties called as substitutes in the declaratory clause is an heir of provision entitled to challenge a deed to his prejudice, executed upon deathbed by the heir instituted, and that an heir who is only invested by the deed under which he takes, with the ordinary rights which the law attaches to the fee of property, cannot upon deathbed alter to the prejudice of an heir of pro

vision.

In Clements v. Macaulay, the Court pronounced a judgment of considerable interest and importance in itself, and the grounds upon which it was rested indicate that the future discussions in the case will be of the same nature. In the year 1862, in the middle of the civil controversy in America, certain parties entered into a joint adventure in the Southern state of Texas, the object of which was to export cotton from the South to the West Indies, and by running the blockade to import a cargo of munitions of war for the service of the Confederate Government. A steamer was chartered for that purpose, but was destroyed by the Federal cruisers upon her second voyage. The partners afterwards disagreed as to the proceeds of the adventure, and an action was instituted in the Court of Session at the instance of one partner against another, who was the manager of the undertaking, and the holder of the funds. Jurisdiction was founded by the arrestment of the defender's property in this country. There was,