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Defence and a Criticism. This is of interest to Canadians in view of various suggestions for amalgamation of the railway systems of the Dominion; and, apart from that, our systems are so closely related to those in the United States and so readily affected by changes in their management, wages and working conditions that any proposal for radical alterations over there must be carefully marked in Canada.

Though the book is described by the Editors as "supplementary material to give concreteness to the principles developed in the [Editors'] more general works on railroad transportation," it is well able to stand on its own feet as an independent production. J. D. S.

The Usages of the American Constitution. By Herbert W. Horwill, Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1925. 251 pp. Price, $3.25.

In his preface the author explains that the late Lord Bryce only assigned a few pages in his American Commonwealth to the subject of constitutional 'usages'; and he further remarks that it is singular that American research which has been so meticulous in examining the details of organic law in the United States should have so largely ignored the part played by usage in the actual working of the Constitution. Until we reach Chapter X (beginning at p. 175) we find little difference in subject-matter between this book and a dozen others that deal with the history and interpretation of the American Constitution. In that chapter, however, the author is able to demonstrate the raison d'être of his undertaking, but just how he justifies the inclusion there of a dissertation on The Integrity of the Supreme Court" is not abundantly apparent. The book is brightly written, and while it will not greatly add to the exegetical literature relating to the American Constitution we already possess, it furnishes some informing criticism of certain matters not hitherto overstressed by commentators. C. M.

PUBLICATIONS RECEIVED.

Handbook on Companies. Second Edition. By William Kaspar Fraser. Toronto: The Carswell Company, Limited, 1926.

The Swiss Civil Code. By Ivy Williams, M.A., D.C.L., Oxon.; LL.D., Lond.
Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1925. Price, $3.00.

An Introduction to Roman-Dutch Law. Second Edition. By R. W. Lee,
D.C.L., M.A. Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1925. Price, $6.00.
A History of English Law. Volumes VII. and VIII. By W. S. Holdsworth,
K.C., D.C.L. London: Methuen & Company, Limited.

Public Health Law. A Manual for Sanitarians. By James A. Tobey, M.S.,
LL.B. Baltimore: The Williams & Wilkins Company, 1926. Price $4.50.
Superstition or Rationality in Action for Peace? A Criticism of Jurispru-

dence. By A. V. Lundstedt, LL.D. Toronto: Longmans, Green and Company. Price $4.50.

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I may tell you at once that I found some difficulty in choosing the title of this address. As long ago as last June, the Secretary of the Association asked me to indicate the subject of it. I delayed as long as I could, but finally I had to yield, and, in a moment of weakness and presumption, I wrote him that my topic would be "The Reciprocal Influences of French and English Laws." When, however, I set to work, I soon realized that the theme was beyond my powers and altogether too vast to permit of even cursory treatment in the time at my disposal. I must therefore crave your permission to limit this paper to an attempt to trace back the sources of some principles of both laws in the provinces of Canada, and in so doing perhaps I may be permitted to traverse ground that has already been covered in the course of previous meetings.

Let me go back to the wonderful receptions of last summer in London and in Paris and the addresses given at the official functions, which have emphasized the debt which the legal institutions of both countries owe to each other. We then met in the ancient and royal hall of William Rufus, Westminster Hall, "the shrine of English law." Later we were gathered on that Ile de la Cité, brimful of historical recollections, the Lutetia of the Romans at the "time during which," in the words of Lord Birkenhead, "the Roman Empire exercised its matchless sway."

There, under the roof of the palace, where the Kings of France had for centuries been the hosts to Justice, a member of the Supreme Court of the United States, Mr. Justice Sanford, paid to French influence this glowing tribute:

1 Address by the Honourable Thibaudeau Rinfret, Judge of the Supreme Court of Canada, before the Canadian Bar Association at its Annual Meeting for 1925.

5-C.B.R.-VOL. IV.

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For it is an historic fact that since the time of the Normans, that valiant and dominant race, the French tongue has set its indelible seal for all times upon the English law, both procedural and substantive. In the countries inheriting the Common Law, almost all the terms that have a definite legal meaning are of French origin, and in using them we render daily, in our procedure and in our thoughts, homage to the indestructibility and authority of the French language."

Immediately afterwards, at the Hotel de Ville, Mr. Wickersham, former Attorney-General of the United States, returned to the same idea. He said:

"The Common Law itself is derived from the Norman laws and customs which were carried from France to England at the time of the conquest by William the Conqueror.

"We should remember that until the sixteenth century French was the judicial language of England and the American Judicial language still retains many French terms-a corrupt French, it is true, but one which attests its Norman origin.

"Every session of the Supreme Court of the United States, even at the present time, is opened by a crier with the words: 'Oyez! Oyez! Oyez!' as in the time of Edward III."

I need not, of course, remind you that our own Courts are also opened with the same words.

Mr. William D. Guthrie, Chairman of the Paris Committee of the American Bar Association, in an address delivered before the Bar of the City of New York, deemed it fitting, in connection with his report of the Paris meeting, to recall "some aspects of the impress made by French thought and genius upon English institutions and jurisprudence." He, in the course of his remarks, mentioned that:

"The records available to us show that for several centuries after the Norman conquest the governance of England was essentially French. The King of England and his entourage spoke French: the laws were enacted in French: the leaders pleaded and argued in French: the Judges rendered their judgments in French: the famous Year Books were long printed in French: the only literature current, whether legal or otherwise, was French, and even the old British language, so far as it survived down to our days, became two-thirds French. But, in truth, neither Saxon nor English nor Norman French survived, for a new language, as well as a new people, were born of the all-permeating

infusion of French blood and culture into Briton and Saxon.

If it be urged that French ideas and language have long since disappeared from the surface of the outward life of Englishmen, the reply must be that not disappearance but absorption is the fact: that French thought and culture have no more vanished than AngloSaxon ideas and language have vanished, and that the British nation and the English language to-day alike are composites of many ancient, excellent and enduring elements."

The Conqueror was endeavouring to bring in the French instead of the Saxon language, and, says Holcot: "ideo ordinavit quod nullus in curia regis placitaret nisi in lingua gallica."

Mr. Guthrie quotes Pollock and Maitland in their History of English Law, showing how deeply the French influence worked: "Every royal court of Justice under the Norman kings was a French-speaking court: the men who sat in the king's court of justice were Frenchmen, few of whom could understand a word of English: in all legal matters the French element, the royal element, was the modern, the enlightened, the improving element."

Pollock and Maitland add:

"It is not to be denied that the few legal ideas and institutions, which we can confidently describe as imported from Normandy, were of decisive importance: it is hardly too much to say that at the present almost all our words that have a definite legal import are in a certain sense French words."

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There is evidently ample authority for the statement made recently at the meeting of the Ontario Bar by the Right Honourable Mr. Justice Duff: "that Norman French was the nursing tongue of the Common Law "-authority which goes back to Blackstone quoting the "ironical observation of the Roman satirist: "Gallia causidicos docuit facunda Britannos," (Eloquent Gaul hath instructed British lawyers), and stating as a fact that "pleadings in the English courts were formerly all written, as indeed all public proceedings were, in Norman or law French, and even the arguments of counsel and decisions of the court were in the same barbarous dialect."

And not the least interesting result of such a situation is the striking circumstance, pointed to by Mr. Guthrie, that Magna Carta was framed at a period dominated by French culture and was wrung from King John by barons who spoke in French.

I am not, however, as you may have noticed, risking any statement of my own; and I say at once: "Honi soit qui mal y pense!" Those of us who might think that this is unduly stressing history, and that it is claiming too comprehensive an influence on behalf of

what Blackstone has called that "barbarous dialect," will find comfort in the following passage from Sir Frederick Pollock: “The founders of the common law worked faithfully for what they could see, and were rewarded beyond all reach of vision. We cannot say that they were altogether of English race: it is at least doubtful whether some of them could speak English, and not doubtful that many of them did not habitually speak it: but they were thoroughly imbued with the national character, and though they might speak French and write Latin, spoke and wrote as Englishmen."

Although "language is no mere instrument which we can control at will:" although the "most momentous and permanent influence of legal import of the Norman conquest may have been its effect on the language of English lawyers," to the point that Maitland was able to declare "in all the world-wide lands where English law prevails, homage is done daily to William of Normandy and Henry of Anjou,"-if it were so for the legal terminology, can that also be said of the basic principles of the law? There are historians to be found who venture to discuss whether the law of England had not crossed over to Normandy before the conquest.

Sir Matthew Hale, in his History of the Common Law of England, explains that "before the Normans coming in, in way of hostility, there was a great intercourse of commerce and trade, and a mutual communication, between these two countries

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might be a means of their mutual understanding of the customs and laws of each other's country: and gave opportunities of incorporating and ingrafting divers of them into each other, as they were found useful or convenient."

His conclusion is that the undoubted similarity of the laws of England and Normandy "does not at all infer a necessity that they should be imposed by the Conqueror and that there were divers other means that caused a similitude of both laws, without any supposition of imposing them by the Conqueror."

Be that as it may, and whether it be that some laws of England had already invaded Normandy through commercial intercourse or that the customary law of Northern France invaded England under the Norman and Angevin kings, the result is the same for the purposes of the particular inquiry into the reciprocal influences of the laws one upon the other. It only shows that a complete and adequate study of the genesis of both systems and their respective influence upon the final conceptions as we find them to-day could not fail to be of the utmost interest and would likewise "show to be kindred much that we might fancy were foreign and of no imme

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