which was actually put on the paper by the examiners : — "Q. A., owner in fee simple of land in Middlesex, agrees to sell it to B. A.'s grandfather purchased the land sixty years ago and gave it specifically by will to A.'s father, who died in 1854 intestate, leaving A. his only son. IS. brings you the abstract of title showing the conveyance to A.'s grandfather, and the probate of his will, etc., and instruc tion to act on his behalf. State the requisition, which would appear necessary on the title as shown by the ab stract. "Ans. The following would be necessary: 1. Proof of the seisin of A.'s grandfather at the date of will and death, if made before 1838, but if made after, only at the time of his decease, and productive of probate. 2. Death of his widow, if any, unless dower barred. 3. Death of A.'s father intestate, also death of his widow, if any, unless dower barred. 4. Heirship of A. 5. Registration of all documents affecting the title. 6. Proof of payment of succession duty on A.'s succession. And as to proof of death of A.'s father intestate, and A.'s heirship, proof should be required of the marriage of A.'s parents, by marriage certificate; the birth of A. by baptismal certificate or cer tified extract from the register of births; the death of A.'s father by burial certificate, or certified extract from the registry of deaths; the intestacy by evidence that no will was ever proved or heard of, and finally, a statutory dec laration would also be required from some person ac quainted with the family, identifying the father and stating that A. was the eldest son of his father." Who can say, after this, that the Lnglish solicitor, in op posing a system of compulsory registration of land titles, is not without a sense of humor? A further topic upon which Mr. Budd dwelt with much emphasis was that of legal procedure, and, to the keen in terest of both branches of the profession, he considered the reasons why for many years litigants have become more and more shy of resorting to the tribunal of the court for settling their disputes. His answer is that the present system of procedure does not satisfy the requirements of business men — it is far too complex, too dilatory and un certain as to time, and too expensive for the requirements of business men in ordinary transactions at the end of the nineteenth century. As Mr. liudd is a commercial lawyer in the busiest part of the busy city of London, such an arraignment should have practical weight; and as a mat ter of fact it did have, for upon the very first opportunity the Lord Chief Justice took occasion to repel the charge that the courts are dilatory. In addressing the new Lord Mayor of London, the Chief Justice, in commenting upon the relation between the mercantile interests of the city and the law, said with respect to this complaint against litigation: "In recent experience it has occurred to one or other of my brothers to have set before them, for trial and to dispose of, cases which had only been instituted
a week before, in some cases a month before, and in some cases even a shorter period than that. It is no longer also possible for a debtor who has got no answer to his creditor to keep a creditor at arm's length by resort to tedious and dilatory pleas. It is now within the power of the court, if it is satisfied that there is no real defence, to give to a creditor a judgment to which he is honestly entitled, and if there be any doubt about the question of a defence to re quire that security shall be given for the debt before the defence is entered upon." It was intimated in this address of Mr. Budd's that of all the expenses to which litigants are put, that of counsel's fees are most onerous, and that while solicitors' charges are regulated by a fixed scale, established generations ago, barristers' fees have been constantly increased, until now they are out of all proportion to the other expenditures. He stated that while in theory the services of counsel are gra tuitous and their fees are honoraria, theory has been left in the lurch by practice, and that in reality counsels' fees are bargained for by the clerks. Worst of all, the big men at the top of the profession take big fees and then either do not appear at the trial, or, if they do, they hurry into court, address a few remarks to the judge, or ask a few questions of witnesses, and then hurry out again, leaving the burden of the case to the juniors. This complaint of Mr. Budd's was backed up a few' days after by a letter from an indig nant solicitor, in which he told the story in " The Times " of his having marked a certain counsel's brief one hundred guineas, and the counsel did not appear at all. As a sequel to this appeal to the newspapers the counsel in question sent the fee back to the solicitor, although more than six months had elapsed since it had been given to
him. The other most important contribution to the thoughtful matters of the law was the formal address on the subject of legal education, delivered by the Lord Chief Justice to an audience of barristers, solicitors and law students, in Lin coln's Inn Hall at the beginning of the term. He, too, argued a higher qualification for the Bar, and advocated the estab lishment of a school of law which should be open not only to students for both branches of the profession, but to the public at large. His remark that he attributes to the lack of any comprehensive and scientific teaching of law the fact that our leading text-books and the decisions of the most distinguished Lnglish judges are unknown except in America, provoked a good deal of newspaper controversy, and elicited from Sir Frederick Pollock a very hearty tribute in " The Times " to the excellent work done by the Harvard Law School. Stuff Gown.
