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The Green Bag

have been of great advantage to the United States if there had been such a body as the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, to whose impartial decision various disputes might have been referred." Canada. "The Scope of the Power of the Dominion Government to Disallow Provin cial Statutes." By C B. Labatt. 45 Canada Law Journal 297 (May 1). "The expediency of protecting the general credit of the Dominion constitutes a specific ground of public policy. . . and the course pursued by a Mimster of Justice with respect to petitions for the disallowance of a statute of the type under discussion [one infringing vested rights or impairing the obligation of contracts] should be decided ... in accord with the opinion of Sir John Macdonald, that statutes which 'affect the interest of the Dominion generally' may properly be dis allowed." Another writer, treating a different topic, is evidently of the opinion that English legal institutions are not. entirely applicable to Canada :— "Justice, Precedent and Ultimate Conjec ture." By W. E. Raney. 29 Canadian Law Times 454 (May). "When the English common law is imported over-seas as a fixed and dominating system, and made to do duty where it did not grow, it becomes to a degree a rigid and lifeless thing. 'The letter killeth, but the spirit maketh alive.' The establishment in Canada of ultimate Courts of Appeal would relieve our judiciary from the thraldom of this arti ficiality." China. "The Experiment in Constitutional Government in China." By O. F. Wisner, D.D. 189 North American Review 731 (May). "To prepare the people for a national rep resentative government the experiment in municipal self-government was undertaken at Tientsin. The scheme was carefully wrought out. It is clear that in its elaboration the most approved Western usage was followed. Yet it is not a mere work of imitation. The authors borrowed freely from Western sources but with evident intelligent adaptation to conditions in China. . . . "The Tientsin constitution is a model which is to be copied by other localities. The Throne has ordered the local authorities in Canton and several other important centres to intro duce the same system, following the Tientsin pattern, and preliminary steps have been taken to carry out the order. It is proposed as rapidly as possible to bring whole provinces into fine, granting to each a provincial consti tution, and conducting its affairs through a representative assembly. And it is entirely within the field of reasonable hope that within a very few years the final goal will be reached,—that the entire country will be organized on a constitutional basis, and all public policies determined, public utilities

controlled, and public interests conserved through the deliberations and enactments of a National Popular Assembly." India. "The English in India." ByCharles Johnston. 189 North American Re view 695 (May). This author shows in a historical risumi the indebtedness of India to England. The remedy for India's poverty is to be found in a cessation of child marriage and a higher ideal of chastity, and in a temporary absti nence from gold brocade and a fostering of industrial life. "The English have accom plished marvels in India; but these reforms must be carried out by the Indians them selves." Of the legal system of India he writes:— "The laws of Manu with their developments are administered as the civil law of the Hindus. All personal, domestic and testa mentary disputes of the Mussulmans are settled in accordance with the Koran and its law-books. The same is true for the Jaina, the Buddhist, the Parsee. And with this has gone a conservation and cultivation of the ancient sacred idioms of all these old religions. . . . "Perhaps the best single work in the modern tongues has been the translation into all of them of the Indian Penal Code, and its dis tribution broadcast in cheap editions. No one not familiar with the hazards of humble lives under Oriental despotisms can realize what a boon is conferred on India by a simple, uniform and impartial system of law, the statement of whose obligations and sanctions is within the reach of every one. For, while preserving to each cult and tribe its own civil and religious law, England has given her Indian possessions a single criminal law, simple, impartial, intelligible." Turkey. "The New Turkish Constitution." By Norman Bentwick. Journal of Compara tive Legislation, no. xx, p. 328 (Apr.). "There is set out explicitly a series of first principles touching the rights of the subject which, from their unbroken acceptance here since the time of Magna Charta, seem axio matic. And it is not less remarkable to find provisions which mark an advance upon the public law of many Western states side by side with statements of elementary duties and with the foundation of some dangerous prerogatives. The English Constitution, the mother of parliamentary governments, seems to have been the chief model of the Turkish reformers, but in the relations of the Ministry to the Parliament and in the constitution of the Senate there is imitation rather of Conti nental states." United Kingdom. "The House of Lords: Its History and Constitution—IV, The Lords Spiritual." By Charles R. A. Howden. 21 Juridical Review 75 (Apr.). "The reason why the Lords Spiritual were only Lords of Parliament and not Peers of