work will in no way be guided by the mere notoriety attaching to a particular measure is shewn, if it were necessary for such well-tried Editors to shew it, by the second Act in their series being the Sale of Goods Act, 1893, a measure which, though valuable, as Messrs. Lely and Craies point out, from the point of view of Codification, cannot be said to have excited any general stir such as that which from first to last surrounded the Legislation on Local Government.

What should be the true principles for such a Revolution as will, ex hypothesi, be effected by the Local Government Act, is a point which it would be interesting to discuss as a problem in Administrative Law, but such a question scarcely fell within the purview of the annotations supplied by the scheme of Messrs. Lely and Craies. They have only to deal with the Law as they find it, and to state, in the necessary absence as yet of cases on its interpretation, what view they may take of any points that strike them as likely to give rise to doubt.

We feel more free to discuss the general question from the point of view of a Review of Jurisprudence, and we shall probably recur to it from time to time, as cases may arise which throw a light upon the working of the new Legislation, but in any such criticism we shall be very glad of the assistance which we are sure to derive from the work of Messrs. Lely and Craies. We are, of course, aware that it is claimed for the new system that it presents us with an entire scheme of National Local Government, such as was called for by the well-known characteristic of the AngloSaxon race, the love of self-government.

By means of a graduated scale of County Councils, District Councils, and Parish Councils, it is claimed that the race whose aptitude for self-government is so marked will now, at last, have a chance to shew that exceeding aptitude to its full.

As far as the action of County Councils enables us to take the measure of the wisdom displayed in these wheels within wheels of self-government, we are not profoundly impressed with a sense of the value of the new creation, and we are doubtful whether the additional bodies now coming into being will greatly modify our present views. What we do know is, that all these new bodies quickly become borrowing and spending bodies, and that the general indebtedness must be increased by each separate creation. Whether this is a benefit or not, may be a question.

Whereas it had at first been urged that Party politics would be absent from the new forms of Local Government, it is now conceded on both sides that Political partisanship must and will enter into them. Regarding this as in itself an evil, we are not thereby prepossessed in favour of the new system, and on the whole, whether we take the area of operations of the late Metropolitan Board of Works, or of the existing Vestries, occupied or overlapped by the new creations, we do not see much difference importing any gain to the nation at large in the possible slight difference between the mumpsimus of the old bodies and the sumpsimus of the new bodies so loudly vaunted as our perfected system of Local Government.

The subject of which Messrs. Lely and Craies treat in their opening part of Annotated Acts, has also attracted the notice of the learned Professor of Law in one of our modern University Colleges, that of Liverpool (An Outline of English Local Government. By Edward Jenks, M.A., Fellow of King's College, Cambridge, Barrister-at-Law, Professor of Law, University College, Liverpool. Methuen & Co.), which in its earlier days had the advantage of another able Teacher of Law in the person of our old contributor, Professor Maitland. The present incumbent of the Law Chair at Liverpool has done well in drawing the attention of his readers, who will mainly, perhaps, be the

general public, to the perplexing way in which it has pleased our Legislators to give the same name to extremely different Institutions, or at least to very varied developments of the same Institution or group of Institutions. This, as Professor Jenks plainly points out, is a "horrible " practice, which leads with "almost deadly certainty to the confusion of the institutions thus similarly named." Parish, County, Hundred, salient features to this day of English Local Government, survivals as they are of days when the Folk moot met on a hill-side or under a tree, are even from the very fact of being such survivals pitfalls for the average Englishman of the Nineteenth Century, in his study of the new system by which he is to be helped, it is supposed, to tread the well-worn paths of Self-Government. It is impossible for us, at this moment, to do more than draw the attention of our readers to the handy little volume by Professor Jenks, to the subject of which we shall hope to devote space on future occasions, as the working of the new system shall be gradually developed in our midst.

International Arbitration.

This subject, which is much to the fore in the present day, has lately attracted the attention of the able Professor of International Law in the Royal University of Pisa, Marchese Alessandro Corsi, who has devoted to it a Treatise of upwards of three hundred pages (Arbitrati Internazionali. Note di Critica Dottrinale. Pisa. Enrico Spoerri, Libraio. 1894), upon which he has invited the judgment alike of the Institute of International Law and of the Association for the Reform and Codification of the Law of Nations. Whether the Institute has as yet taken any action in the matter, we do not know, but the last Conference of the Association, held at the Guildhall of the City of London,

in 1893, on submission to it of advanced sheets of Professor Corsi's volume, appointed an International Committee, which has held several sittings in London, and has also placed itself in communication with its Foreign members. The result, down to our latest information, has been the preparation of a Draft Outline Treaty of Arbitration, by Mr. M. H. Box,-whose practical acquaintance with the details requisite for such an instrument is closely bound up with the latest instance, and that not one of the least famous, in which International Arbitration has been brought into request, and of a translation of Professor Corsi's suggested Rules for the constitution of an International Court of Arbitration, which have been proposed for the consideration of the Institute and Association, and of the Jurists and Statesmen who are required to deal with the subject-matter of International Arbitration. The draft Rules for the constitution of the proposed Court are eleven in number, and they are substantially the concentrated essence of the first fifty pages of the volume which Professor Corsi has had the courtesy to send us. When the translation of these Rules shall have been circulated by the Committee of the Association for the Reform and Codification of the Law of Nations, we shall hope to print it in the pages of this Review, in which we also hope that we may be able to give our readers the opportunity of more fully acquainting themselves with the views advanced by Professor Corsi, which, on some important points, differ not inconsiderably from those ordinarily received. Space and time will not admit of our doing more at the present moment than may be sufficient to draw the attention of our readers to the interesting work in which the learned countryman of Gentili and Mancini formulates his conclusions on a question which he insists upon treating as at once a practical question of the day, and a difficult problem in the scientific development of the Law of Nations, but

one which, whether as a scientific or as a practical question, urgently calls for the best solution which can be given to it by the united efforts of Jurists in all lands, as men of good will towards Peace.

Reviews.

Chapters on the Principles of International Law. By JOHN WESTLAKE, LL.D., Q.C., Whewell Professor of International Law in the University of Cambridge. Cambridge University Press. 1894.

Whatever Statesmen of a somewhat satirical turn of mind may say to the contrary, either there is such a thing as International Law, or something is in existence bearing such a strong likeness to it that the ancient English Universities are fairly justified in numbering among their Professors the incumbents of their respective Chairs of International Law.

Professor Westlake, it was evident from the publication of his standard Treatise on Private International Law, had no doubts upon the existence of the subject of his work, and the fact is even more patent, if it were necessary, from his present volume. That the late Right Hon. Mountague Bernard had no doubt as to the existence of a Law of Nations, none of those who had the privilege of hearing his prelections could possibly have failed to realise, and it always appeared to us a very significant fact that it should have been the Chichele Professor of International Law and Diplomacy to whom the University of Oxford was indebted for initiating the public scientific teaching of General Jurisprudence, in a course of Lectures spontaneously offered to Graduate and Undergraduate members by Mr. Bernard, entirely outside the technical requirements of his Chair. It must have been evident to the entire University that the then Professor of International Law considered his subject to be a branch of General Jurisprudence, and we believe that by this his action he did more than even by his strictly Professorial Lectures to bring home to the minds alike of the Masters and