to be good than to be clever?" Mr. Buchan concludes his essays with the reflection that the greatest judge is one who might have been great in politics, in administration, in business, or in war. But this opens a wide field for speculation.

LEGAL TEXT-BOOKS.-An American writer has recently been discussing the comparative merit of English and American legal text-books, considerably to the advantage of the former. To some extent this is due to the very different conditions that obtain in the two countries. "In America," as he points out, “our judicial output is so prodigious that a treatise which makes any pretence to completeness is enormously bulky. Moreover, the author of a legal text-book must design it for use in forty-nine jurisdictions at the least, so that brevity at the outset is beyond hope. Our law books are almost all digests for the practitioner," whereas, he goes on, several of the English books-he cites those of Anson, Salmond, Dicey, Stephen, and Kennycan be read, if not with actual pleasure, at all events without a sense of weariness, and they are at the same time accurate in their analyses and classifications of leading cases. This testimony to the works of the writers named is certainly deserved; they have made the path of the law student much less laborious than once it was; for it is worth remembering that students' text-books on law are a comparative modern innovation. Frederick Pollock has told us that when he was beginning the study of law, his grandfather, who had then lately resigned the office of Chief Baron of the Court of Exchequer, wrote to him as follows: "I myself read no treatises; I referred to them as collecting the authorities. I learned law by reading the reports and attending the courts, and thinking and talking of what I read and heard." Upon this Sir Frederick adds that in the early part of the nineteenth century very few text-books aimed. at either systematic arrangement or independent criticism of cases. Text-books, of course will never supersede the necessity of studying the actual reports of decisions; but they may, and do, make that study easier for the average learner.

Sir

MISTAKE AS GROUND FOR ANNULMENT OF MARRIAGE.—An interesting and unusual reason for annulling a marriage arose in the recent case of Neuman v. Neuman (otherwise Greenberg). The facts in that case were briefly as follows: The petitioner was a Cohen, or member of the race of priests descended from Aaron, the High Priest. Being a Cohen, he was debarred by Jewish law from marrying a divorced woman. The respondent, who was also a member of the Jewish persuasion, was a divorced woman. Both the parties were orthodox Jews, and they intended to marry at a Jewish synagogue in accordance with Jewish law. They had been told, and believed, that the ceremony could be expedited so as to be celebrated before the first day of Passover if they went to the register office to carry out some formality as a preliminary to their intended marriage. But they But they had no intention of marrying at the register office at all. The petitioner could speak no English, and the respondent only knew a little of the language. The parties went to the register office where the ceremony of marriage was performed. The petitioner stated that he did not understand that the proceedings at the register office constituted a legal marriage as no ring was used, and the questions asked at a Jewish ceremony were not put. The respondent said that she went to the register office to get a special license, but had no idea that she was going through a ceremony of marriage there. Afterwards, when the parties went to the Beth Din (the Jewish 'Ecclesiastical Court) to arrange for the Jewish ceremony, the petitioner then learnt that

the respondent was a divorced woman, and the latter learnt that the petitioner was a Cohen, which facts put the marriage out of the question. The parties had never lived and cohabited together, and the learned president granted a decree of nullity.

THE PASSING OF FORENSIC ORATORY.-At the annual dinner of the Hardwicke Society recently the Lord Chancellor called attention once again to what we may call the somewhat colourless style of advocacy that has grown up during the last generation. What is aimed at nowadays is a clear but quiet presentation of the facts in a strictly logical sequence, with little, if any, striving after oratorical effect, whereas, formerly, no address, especially one to a jury, was considered to have any weight or likelihood of success unless it was garnished with some of the flowers of rhetoric. But it would appear that this change has been in progress for a long time. Erskine is reported to have said in addressing a jury that "the reputation of a cheesemonger in the City of London is like the bloom upon a peach. Breathe on it, and it is gone for ever!" After his day few advocates would have ventured upon language of a type so exuberant and so ridiculous, although, of course, they still employed tropes and figures which their successors of the present day would be shy about employing. Touching on this subject in his delightful book "Pie-Powder," the late Mr. J. A. Foote tells how he once overheard at lunch a time-worn Boanerges of the junior bar confiding his sorrows to the ears of a kindred spirit, his life-long opponent. "George, my boy," he said plaintively, "our day is over. Go into the Cormercial Court, or into Appeal No. 1, and hear Smithson and Heavifee whispering to 'em!" George, it is added, nodded in silent sympathy, and they sought elsewhere for consolation, which was fortunately at hand. Certainly the intelligent visitor to the law courts, anxious to hear a favourable specimen of forensic oratory, would be likely to go away disappointed by what he would hear in the Commercial Court: but to be sure it is not easy to become rhetorical over the small-type clauses of a charter-party or bill of lading, or the memorandum clause of a policy of marine insurance

DEPRECIATION OF LAW LIBRARIES AND THE INCOME TAX.-That members of the Legal Profession are not entitled in their assessment of income tax to an allowance for wear and tear during the year of part of their law libraries and for obsolescence of certain books forming part of those libraries, has now been decided by Mr. Justice Rowlatt in the recent case of Daphne v. Shaw (post, p. 389). If that decision is right it would certainly seem that sect. 16 of the Finance Act 1925 is of very small value so far as professions are concerned. The marginal note to that section provides "allowance for deduction for wear and tear in the case of profits of professions, &c.," and although we are quite aware that marginal notes in no way govern the construction of a section, if the contention of the Crown is correct those words are misleading. Under the section, rules 6 and 7 of cases I. and II. of Sched. D (which provide, in connection with the charge to income tax under that schedule of the profits or gains of a trade, for the allowance of deductions in respect of the wear and tear of machinery and plant and in respect of expenses incurred in replacing all obsolete machinery or plant) are to apply as if the references in those rules to the profits and gains of a trade included references to the profits or gains, whether assessable under Sched. D or otherwise, of a profession, employment, vocation, or office. The learned judge was of the opinion that the books of a solicitor or a barrister were not "plant." It is true that the word is

used to denote "the fixed implements, machinery and apparatus used in carrying on any industrial process," and it is so defined in the Oxford Dictionary, but it has also the meaning, according to the same authority, of "the instrumentalities employed in carrying on spiritual or intellectual work, and this clearly would cover the law libraries in question. The learned judge stated that there were many professions or vocations where plant and machinery were used which were covered by the use of the words as ordinarily understood, but if his decision is correct it is dif ficult to see where the line is logically to be drawn. It is quite impossible to apply to a profession the same considerations that apply to a trade. We presume that the learned judge would have held that the pens and paper of the lawyer, the knife of the surgeon, and the forceps of the dentist were plant, while the drilling machine of the latter would be classed as machinery; but the equally essential literature for the practice of these professions is not to be within the allowances permitted.

THE SCOTS LAW OF MARRIAGE has always formed an interesting study for the lawyer, and its peculiarities, particularly those connected with what are known as irregular marriages, have been time out of mind a valuable asset to the writer of fiction. A good deal of the romance associated with these irregularly constituted marriages was taken out of them by the passing of Lord Brougham's Act 1856, which provided that "no irregular marriage contracted in Scotland by declaration, acknowledgment, or ceremony [after the 31st Dec. 1856] shall be valid unle-s one of the parties had, at the date thereof, his or her usual place of residence there, or had lived in Scotland for twentyone days next preceding such marriage." This enactment, of course, did not put an end to irregular marriages, but it had the effect of stopping, or at least minimising the number of, the runaway matches from England at one time so common. After Lord Brougham's Act the next step in the direction of discountenancing irregular marriages was taken by the passing of the Marriage Notice (Scotland) Act 1878, which provided that a registrar's certificate of notice of marriage should be equivalent to a certificate of the proclamation of banns, and, further, that "any person otherwise entitled to celebrate a marriage who shall celebrate a marriage in Scotland with a religious ceremony without having produced or exhibited to him a certificate or certificates of the due proclamation of banns or a registrar's certificate or registrars' certificates applicable to both parties, or a certificate of due proclamation of banns in the case of one of the parties and a registrar's certificate in the case of the other, shall be guilty of an offence under this act, and shall on conviction thereof be liable to a penalty not exceeding £50. Quite recently a prosecution of a minister of the Church of Scotland under this section was instituted and came by way of case stated before the High Court of Justiciary. There the minister informed the parties who had come to his house to be married that he could not, and would not, celebrate a marriage between them, as there had been no proclamation of banns or a notice to the registrar; but he was present when they accepted each other as husband and wife, and one of the signatories to the document recording their exchange of consents, and then offered up prayer. On these facts it was held that this was not a marriage celebrated by a clergyman with a religious service, and accordingly that there had been no contravention of the section. Probably if in Scotland registrars were empowered, as are the same officials in England, to celebrate marriages, much of the scandal attaching to Scottish irregular marriages would be obvi

ated. There is much to be said in favour of such a reform, and probably it will come some day.

CONSTRUCTION OF "VOLUNTARILY" IN WILL.-It is perhaps singular that so simple a word as "voluntarily," or "voluntary," should from time to time come before the court for construction. Among laymen the words usually mean of one's own free will, or choice, but in law the more usual meaning is without consideration (see Attorney-General v. Ellis, 73 L. T. Rep. 190; (1895) 2 Q. B. 470-a revenue case). The question came before Mr. Justice Tomlin in the recent case of Re Wilkinson; Page v. Public Trustee (1926) 1 Ch. 842. There a testatrix, who died in 1914, gave the dwelling-house in which she was residing in North Walsham, Norfolk, with the furniture and effects in and about the same, to her niece absolutely; and she gave the residue of her estate to trustees upon trust for sale and conversion, and out of the moneys arising therefrom upon trust (inter alia) to set apart and invest the sum of £5000, and to pay the income arising therefrom to her said niece (in order to enable her to reside in the said dwellinghouse), "for and during the term of her natural life, or until she shall voluntarily cease to make the said dwelling-house her permanent home without power of anticipation," and after her death she directed her trustees to hold the £5000 and the investments representing the same in trust for such persons for such purposes and in such manner as her said niece should by deed or will appoint, and in default the same was to fall into the testatrix's residuary estate: "Provided, however, that in the event of my said niece voluntarily ceasing to make the dwelling house her permanent home as aforesaid, I direct that the said sum of £7000 and the investments representing the same shall fall into and form part of my residuary estate." In due course after the death of the testatrix the niece went to reside permanently in the aforesaid dwelling-house. In 1923 she married, and her husband, who had a house in a healthier part of North Walsham, pressed her to go and live with him at that house. Thereupon the question arose whether if she did so it would cause a forfeiture of her life interest in and power of appointment over the £7000. Mr. Justice Tomlin considered that the first question which he had to determine was whether on the true construction of the gift it was made to her by way of limitation, until the happening of certain events, or was made to her for her life, but subject to a condition subsequent determining it on the happening of the same events; and he decided that the gift was to the niece for her life, or until she voluntarily ceased to make the dwelling-house her permanent home (which ever first happened) and that it was not a case of condition subsequent. Further that the gift was not bad, either as being against public policy, or as too uncertain; and that if the niece, being married, ceased to make the house her permanent home in pursuance to her husband's direction, the legacy would not determine. In that case she would not cease to use the house as her permanent home "voluntarily." The case differs from Re Moore; Trafford v. Maconochie (59 L. T. Rep. 681; 39 Ch. Div. 116; C. A.). There a testator, who died in 1885, by his will directed his trustees to pay to his sister M. "during such time as she may live apart from her husband before my son attains the age of twenty-one years the sum of £2 10s. per week for her maintenance while so living apart from her husband." M. and her husband did not live apart until some time after the death of the testator. The son was still an infant. It was held by the Court of Appeal, affirming the decision of Mr. Justice Kay (as he then was), that the gift to M. was not to be construed as a bequest to her during the joint lives of herself and her husband, until the son attained twenty-one, upon a condition which might

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