of exchange and other negotiable instruments, clearing up points which remained doubtful, and enunciating principles derived from the decisions in special cases as general rules of law applicable to groups of cases, which, though not on all fours with the leading ones, still contained the same general principles underlying them.

The Sale of Goods Act, 1893, is a further advance in the same direction. Its object as stated in the memorandum accompanying the original draft of the bill was to "reproduce as exactly as possible the statutory and common law rules relating to the sale of goods."

With the exception of the Statute of Frauds, the legislative enactments relating to the sale of goods are not of much general importance, in most cases dealing only with a few isolated points. Accordingly in such cases only as they deal solely with the law of sale, have they been reproduced in the present Act, such other provisions as deal only incidentally with the law of sale or affect only certain specified classes of goods being covered by saving clauses. Following the same principle, the Act does not attempt to reproduce the effect of cases which, though arising out of sales, merely deal with the principles common to the whole law of simple contract, as for example the law relating to exchanges of goods.

As originally drafted, the Act did not profess to touch the Scotch law of sale, but in the course

of its passage through the House of Commons it was found possible by means of saving clauses to make it a complete code of the law relating to the sale of goods in all parts of the United Kingdom, while allowing the Scotch law to retain all its distinctive peculiarities intact.

The value of such an Act more especially to non-professional persons is obvious, containing as it does within its sixty short and intelligible sections the whole law relating to the sale of goods, previously only to be discovered by searching among some hundreds of decided cases, with no certainty of finding one in which the decision was based upon an absolutely or even approximately identical state of facts to that upon which information was desired.

It follows from what has been said above that the Act is in substance a codification of the case law relating to the sale of goods, and it is from this point of view especially that it merits some introductory notice.

It is not to be supposed that an Act which professes to be framed upon a large number of cases containing the hitherto existing law on the subject is capable of being understood and practically applied without any reference to those

cases, or that all the decisions which have been so carefully considered, and given by the most learned lawyers for generations past, will cease to be of practical importance because their general principles have been extracted and consolidated, so as to have a wider bearing than the cases which contain them. It will still be necessary for the practising lawyer to be well acquainted with the so-called "leading cases," and to refer not less constantly than before to those of minor importance, in order to ascertain the exact bearing of any particular section; and the object of the present work is to enable him by referring to any particular section of the Act to find the cases upon which that section is based, and to see the successive steps by which the particular principle now crystallized in statutory form was gradually built up out of various special sets of circumstances.

Putting aside for the present those cases which deal with points never hitherto satisfactorily settled, it will be found that there are two main classes of cases which contribute to elucidate the hitherto existing law relating to the sale of goods: (1) cases decided on appeal by Courts of Error, together with cases decided by inferior Courts which have either remained absolutely unquestioned, or without appeal, or have followed the

well recognized decisions of the Courts of Error ; and (2) those cases which, though questioned by Courts of Error, have never been actually overruled, but have for years past been habitually acted upon as if they were perfectly sound.

With regard to the second of these classes the mere fact that they have for years remained undisturbed does not in any way bind a Court of Appeal to follow them (Pearson v. Pearson,1 per Baggallay, L.J.). Where, however, there has been a deliberate unappealed decision of a Court with regard to the effect of a condition in a common form of contract which has become known to all persons who have to deal with such matters, and has been acted upon for a number of for a number of years, it has always been the legal practice even of Courts of Error to follow such decisions, even though they would not perhaps have given the same decision had the case come originally before them (Palmer v. Johnson,2 pe Brett, M.R.).

With some noticeable exceptions the relative value of these different classes of cases will not be substantially affected by the present Act, so far as their actual decisions are concerned, but many even of the second class must still continue to be

1 27 Ch. D. 145; 54 L. J. Ch. 32; 51 L. T. 311; 32 W. R. 1006. [1884.]

213 Q. B. D. 355; 53 L. J Q. B. 348; 51 L. T. 211; 33 W. R. 36, [1884.]

of great importance for the careful statements of law which they contain, even where the final conclusions are not in accordance with the decisions of Courts of Error in other cases, and for the valuable dicta which many of them contain on subsidiary points of law, and they must still be useful to elucidate the general principles enunciated by the Act, although those principles are derived mainly from cases in which the law has been declared by Courts of Error and never questioned.

There remain those cases which are conflicting inter se, and which possess an equal amount of authority as being decisions of Courts of coordinate jurisdiction, or for other reasons. It is on points of law where this occurs that a declaratory enactment is most valuable, and it will be found that the present Act deals with such cases, and declares the law to be in accordance with one class or other of such conflicting decisions. Here also it will be useful to be able to refer to the cases themselves for the purpose of understanding the exact application of the section of the Act in question.

As regards the important question of Mercantile Customs and the interpretation of documents in general use in commercial circles the Act follows the ordinary practice of the Courts of law as laid down in several well-known cases. It is in fact