Vol. 1.

In beginning the publication of The Canadian Law Review we wish to draw, the attention of the Legal Profession throughout Canada to the special field in Legal Journalism, which we aim at occupying.

In the different Law Journals in the Press and in the many Magazines published throughout English-speaking countries, appear from time to time numerous legal articles of deepest interest to lawyers, few of whom have time or opportunity to peruse or can afford to purchase such a variety of publications. All this we will obviate by selecting from these sources and republishing such articles and communications as we consider valu

able and interesting to Canadian lawyers.

The leading Law Journals, law books, as well as other books of interest to lawyers, will be reviewed and the latest English, Canadian and

No. 1.

American cases of general and practical interest will be discussed.

Interesting Legal topics will be discussed by leading Canadian Jurists and Lawyers.

As the scope of the Review is national rather than provincial it will be a medium for the discussion of all questions appertaining to Canadian Law and Lawyers.

Current legal news and gossip from the various provinces, legal oddities, and the latest legal anecdotes with other attractive features, we trust will make the Review bright, entertaining and instructive.

We invite the discussion of legal questions of general interest and hope that all interested in legal matters will assist us in making the Review indispensable to lawyers by sending or referring us to any articles, communications, topics, news items, etc., considered desirable for insertion in this Journal. The Publishers.

to be made effective, constitute the specialty of our profession, and no man can claim to have discharged his full duty as a member of that profession who has not, according to the measure of his ability and opportunity endeavored to make those formal statements and methods of procedure more clear and simple than he found them.

I know nothing that would entitle me to speak of the conditions prevailing in the Province of Quebec. Our constitutional act bears witness to the tenacity with which the people of that province adhere to the principles that underlie the system they inherit, and the procedure to which they have been accustomed. Far be it from me to comment upon this disposition, to deprecate the perpetuation of that system or the constitutional provisions with respect to it, which were a necessary feature of the federal principle upon which our Union was established. But I suppose that the stoutest champion of the peculiar institutions of Quebec will concede that, however admirable and excellent the laws and procedure of that province may be, their excellency is not such as absolutely to preclude the possibility of improvement.

Of the conditions prevailing in the English-speaking provinces I may speak with greater boldness. Our English law has been the subject of much exposition and no little criticism.It has been described as a medley of ancient customs, handed down from the days of the feudal system, of baldly assimilated excerpts from the civil law, borrowed without perfect intelligence, and with no acknowledgment at all, but put forth as the spontaneous and all but inspired wisdom of the Bench, slowly and spasmodically modified from time to time according to the caprice of individual judges, disfigured by the anomalies, and clouded by the uncertainties attendant upon such a course of development, depending in great measure upon the sheer accidents of litigation, and exhibiting only such marks of intelligent design as are apparent, here and there in the haphazard results of desultory and patchwork legislation. "Chaos tempered by Fisher's Digest", is the witty description that has been

applied to our system of common law. But the expression presents a partial and one-sided view of the matter. For, after all, anomalous as is our system in many of its features, defective as it must be conceded to be in many respects in which it might without difficulty be amended, it is nevertheless, but the natural and inevitable expression of what is most characteristic of us as a nation.

Our common law, or to speak more broadly, our whole body of positive law made up of common law principles and the modifications effected by legislation, from time to time, has, no doubt, its many curious and costly anomalies, its unquestionable incongruities and absurdities, but those who would bring a railing accusation against it, should remember that it embodies Magna Charta and Habeas Corpus among its provisions, that the Petition of Right and the Bill of Rights have been wrought into its fabric, that it recognizes Free Thought and guarantees Free Speech, that the independence of the Bench, and the subordination of the army, bear witness to its crowning distinction as the expression of government by law, rather than by force, and finally that in the course of its steady and progressive development, it has become the formal embodiment and expression of a system which amid all the disquietude and uncertainty the shadows and clouds and darkness that gather about the dynasties and governments of the continent of Europe presents to the world the inspiring and assuring spectacle of a throne "broad based upon the people's will and compassed by the inviolate sea."

But while all this is a good enough answer to the cavils of the flippant and superficial detractor, it is no answer at all to the critic who pleads the necessity for reform. The voice that calls for amendment and reform, is as genuine an expression of national character as are the conditions against which that voice is raised, and it is for the purpose of giving direction and effect to the call for improvement that this Association has, among other wise purposes, been established.

We have at this moment no less than seven fully organized legislatures,