STATEMENT OF THE PAID-UP CAPITAL AND RESERVE OF THE JOINT STOCK BANKS OF ENGLAND AND WALES FOR THE YEARS 1877 AND

STATEMENT OF THE PAID-UP CAPITAL AND RESERVE OF THE JOINT STOCK BANKS OF ENGLAND AND WALES FOR THE YEARS 1877 AND

STATEMENT OF THE PAID-UP CAPITAL AND RESERVE OF THE JOINT STOCK BANKS OF ENGLAND AND WALES FOR THE YEARS 1877 AND

STATEMENT OF THE PAID-UP CAPITAL AND RESERVE OF THE JOINT STOCK BANKS OF ENGLAND AND WALES FOR THE YEARS 1877 AND

THE BILLS OF EXCHANGE ACT.*

MR. GLADSTONE's description of the past session as one of "ruin and discomfiture" so far as the work of legislation is concerned, is hardly accurate. It is quite true that the great majority of the measures promis.d by the Government or promoted by private members have come to grief, and that much business of the most urgent importance-such, for instance, as the reform of our bankruptcy law-has again had to be postponed. For all that, however, the session has been very far from one of complete barrenness, even if we exclude the Irish legislation, which is exceptional in its character, and, it is to be hoped, only temporary in its operation. It has for instance given us several purely administrative measures, such as the Parcel Post Bill, the Government Annuities and Insurance Bill, and the Electric Lighting Bill, all of which may have very far-reaching effects. And of new legislation also it has yielded valuable fruit. Lord Cairns' Settled Land Bill, although it may not realise all that is expected of it, is yet a measure of first-class importance; so, also, although in a somewhat minor degree, is the Scotch Entail Bill; and scarcely, if at all, less important in their respective spheres are the Married Women's Property and Bills of Exchange Acts.

For the last-mentioned of these-the Bills of Exchange Act -the public is mainly indebted to the well-directed efforts of the banking profession, and as finally passed the measure is remarkable for two things. To begin with, it is the first codifying Act that has yet obtained the sanction of Parliament, and its operation therefore will be watched with much interest as an experiment in a direction where much yet remains to be accomplished. The prevailing ignorance of mercantile law amongst those who are most concerned in its operation is more than anything due to the chaotic state into which it has been thrown by the multiplication of statutes and legal decisions. It may be true that the man who is his own lawyer has a fool for a client. But if so, it is mainly because the condition of the law is so confused that no one can hope without the aid of an expert to thread his way through its mazes. To evolve order out of this confusion, to piece together the scattered fragments of statute and case law, so as to mould them into a compact and well-ordered scheme, is the work which the codifier has to do, and in the case of the Bills of Exchange Act this

This Act, with comments and explanatory notes by M. D. Chalmers, Esq., M.A. (draftsman of the Bill), is now being published by Waterlow & Sons Limited. See Notices of New Books at page 774.