4. Quadruple Alliance. Intervention of Great Britain and France in Spain and Portugal 1834.

5. Intervention of Great Britain, Russia, Prussia, and Austria in Turkey 1840.

6. Intervention of France and Great Britain in Turkey

1854.

7.

Intervention of the great Powers in Turkey in 1877 with regard to Bosnia, The Herzegovina, etc.

All the cases in this group have one feature in common. The interventions were undertaken on behalf of minor States in different stages of weakness, imbecility, and decay, and in every case it is arguable, that the intervention was in the main for the benefit of the State in the affairs of which it occurred, and was salutary in its effects on that State.

F. W. PAYN.

F Codification as a general principle it is not in

O eady
Ο

tended here to speak; sufficient has already been written on the question, and the arguments for and against have long since been thoroughly threshed out.

It is enough to quote the opinion of one who has studied the subject in its practical aspect, and is well qualified to judge, that "we have learned that the most "familiar argument against codification, namely, that it "checks the natural growth of the law, and hinders its "free development, though it may apply to bad, does not "apply to good codification. No country has studied law, 'both historically and systematically, with more fruitful "results than Germany. In no country has codification "been more successful. Nor is there reason to apprehend "that the German Codes will arrest the progress of "German Law, whether in the form of judicial develop"ment or legislative amendment. On the contrary, the "scientific formulation of existing rules, provided the "mistake is not made of attempting to stereotype details, "illustrates and brings into prominence their defects, and "thus stimulates their judicial development and suggests "and facilitates legislative amendments. The chief "reason why so many statutory amendments of English "Common Law have been unsatisfactory in form and in "effect is, that they necessarily take the form of excep"tions from indefinite or imperfectly formulated rules. "If the rules were formulated, their statutory modifica"tions would fit more easily and more naturally into the general system, instead of being awkward excrescences "which tend to embarrass the Courts in their application "and development of general principles, and are conse

quently regarded with jealousy and suspicion by the 'Judges."

One form of Codification has, it need hardly be mentioned, already been introduced into our law, in the shape of the Bills of Exchange Act 1882, the Partnership Act 1890, and the Sale of Goods Act 1893; possibly there might be added the Merchant Shipping Act 1894, though this is rather a case of Consolidation than Codification in the strict sense of the word. In addition to these, bills have at various times been introduced into Parliament for the Codification of the Criminal law, the Law of Evidence, and the Law of Marine Insurance; but the two first have long since been dropped, and there appears no immediate prospect of the third becoming law.

The form in which the Acts of 1882, 1890, and 1893 have codified the law with which they deal, is to reproduce as exactly as possible the existing law, save in respect of a few matters of an uncontroversial character, in which amendment was feasible without raising opposition, and the success which has attended them has practically disposed of the arguments advanced against the system so far as they are applicable to Codification of this kind, and gives ground for thinking that it might now be advantageously extended to other branches of our system.

There are several which it is pretty generally admitted stand at the present day in urgent need of clear and accurate restatement. Such, for instance, are the Statutes of Limitation, the Law of Copyright, and the law relating to Bills of Sale; but in these cases the matter is complicated by the necessity for amendment as well as re-statement.

2

8

1 See Art. " 'Codification," by Sir C. P. Ilbert, in Encyclopedia of the Laws of England.

2 See Pollock on Torts, 4th ed., 195; L.Q. Rev., vol. xv., 225, * See Scrutton on Copyright, 3rd ed., 2.

There are again other parts of the law, the substance of which is fairly satisfactory and of which it is only the form that needs improvement.

To one of these, the Law of Trusts, a good deal of public attention has been drawn of late years owing to two causes; first, the far too frequent loss of trust funds owing to breaches of trust, sometimes fraudulent, sometimes committed in perfect good faith, but in either case inflicting serious loss and often entailing the ruin of the beneficiaries; and secondly, the difficulty experienced in finding persons willing to undertake the onerous duty of administering a Trust. It should be said that the term Trusts is here used in the sense of private trusts, excluding charitable trusts which stand on a somewhat different footing, and in respect of which these causes of complaint do not exist.

In the year 1895 a select Committee of the House of Commons was appointed to enquire into the matter, and ascertain whether further legislative enactment might be made for securing the adequate administration of private trusts. It was then estimated that no less than a twentieth part of the whole capitalised value of property, real and personal, that comprises the wealth of the United Kingdom, was held upon trust. Taking the capitalised value of that property as estimated by the Treasury to be between nine and ten thousand million pounds, this gives a sum of nearly five hundred millions sterling held upon trust! Whether these figures are accurate or not, there is no doubt that thousands of people in this country are at the present moment trustees, and still larger numbers beneficiaries; almost everyone who has any property at all, is at some time of his or her life concerned in the one capacity or the other, with this branch of the law. Yet how many, unless they be lawyers themselves, can under the existing condition of things have anything more than the most rudimentary notions of their rights and duties?

The latest edition of the leading text book on the subject covers 1,252 closely-printed pages of text, and contains references to over eight thousand cases. Such a book cannot be familiarly known even by a lawyer, while for the layman any dealing with it is a practical impossibility. Even the lawyer not infrequently goes wrong in such a condition of the law. An eminent practitioner at the Chancery Bar, lecturing on the duties and liabilities of trustees some time since, gave an apt illustration of this. "Towards the end of last sittings," he said, "and almost at the close of a case relating to trustees then being tried in the Chancery Division, it became apparent from an observation made from the Bench, that all the four counsel engaged in the case, learned and experienced men as they were, had not considered the provisions of the most recent Trustee Act, that of 1894, though such provisions bore directly upon the subject matter." It is not to be wondered at when the law, to use the lecturer's phrase, "lurks in volumes of reports to be counted by hundreds, or lies buried, but with a hideous power of inopportune resurrection, in some partially repealed statute."

1

The writer once had occasion to enquire into the exact limits of the rule in Howe v. Lord Dartmouth. For this purpose it was necessary to examine over fifty reported. cases, the result of all of which could easily be stated in six or seven lines. It is fortunately not often requisite to do this in practice, but when it is, the burden is so great that it generally is not done at all. Surely it would be a boon to many, both lawyers and laymen, if the general principles of the Law of Trusts were now to be succinctly stated in clear and precise language in the form of a Code of the type of the Bills of Exchange Act, the Partnership Act, or the Sale of Goods Act.

1 Birrell's Lectures on Trustees.