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but in no sense was there any exclusive possession, as I read the facts, and the arbitrator there found there was no exclusive possession calculated to make the possession of the land change so as to put it in him, and dispossess the real owner. But such a piece of land and such a user seems to me to have no relation at all to such a thing as we are now discussing. The true nature of this particular piece of land is that it is inclosed. It cannot be denied that, according to the ordinary course of procedure, the person who now says he owns it could not get to it. I do not deny that he could have crept through the hedge, or, if it had been a brick wall, that he could have climbed over the wall, but that is not the ordinary and usual mode of access. That is the exclusion-the dispossession-which seems to me to be so important in this case. It is true that for a certain number of years say fifteen years which is, I think, the longest period of which there is actual evidence, the owner of the adjoining garden (perhaps the original owner of this piece of land) was in the habit, by his agent, of going into the other garden and clipping the hedge. But the very same witness who proves that, proves that he had at some time deposited the clippings on the midden belonging to the defendant, and that sometimes he left them at other parts of the ground; but, as was very candidly and fairly admitted, he was doing acts which by no possibility could be acts done as of right. Neither, as far as I can see, was there any right to go through the gate. fact that he could have got through the hedge indicates, to my mind, that there could have been no right to go through the gate, which admittedly belongs to the present defendant. Then are we to infer, although it is accompanied by a request to be allowed to go through the gate of the present defendant, accompanied by acts which undoubtedly are done by permission, that there is still a possession in the plaintiff which entitles him to say he has never been dispossessed, because he did clip this hedge? I confess that does not appear to me to be a reasonable inference. When one comes to see what the property of the defendant is that of part this piece of land is covered with cobble stones and made a part of the yard; that over part of it trees have been planted; that over another

80 feet long I do not feel very strongly either one way or the other; but, if I were compelled to give a judgment upon it, I think I should hold that the plaintiff originally possessed it. I am afraid I am more influenced perhaps than I ought to be by the exact coincidence of the measurements. I do not know whether there was or was not originally a drain there, and I place no reliance at all upon any supposed presumption that arises from the position of the hedge and the ditch. I do not know whether it was a ditch or not. Very likely it was a small grip formed by the lie of the land, and the wash of the rain water rushing down gradually enlarged it until it became what people agreed to call a ditch; but the undoubted fact remains that at one period the plaintiff's predecessor in the title did cover it in and did make a drain, although that fact also is qualified by this, that, in making the drain, it was made a drain for both houses, and one perhaps might infer that it was done at the joint instance of both parties, as it undoubtedly did drain both houses. We do not know anything at all about the facts except that it was done by the plaintiff's predecessor in title, and it might possibly have been done by him at the expense, or with the assent, of the defendant's predecessor in title. But, coupling the description on the defendant's conveyance with the undoubted fact that it was the plaintiff that in fact did cover in this thing which has now become a sewer (I hardly know how to describe it), the inclination of my opinion undoubtedly is that it did once belong to the plaintiff. But then the question arises whether, under the Statute of Limitations, the occupation of it since that time has not been such as to exclude the plaintiff and to give it to the defendant. I come to the conclusion that it has. It is impossible, I think, to speak with exact precision about the degree of possession or dispossession that will do unless you have regard, as Cotton. L. J. said in Leigh v. Jack (ubi sup.), to the nature of the property. In that case, which the Vice-Chancellor himself quoted, the person who set up a possession inconsistent with the rights of the person to whom the property originally belonged, had a strip of land on either side of an intended road, and he incumbered that intended road with various articles of his trade,

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The unions are active, and often aggressive, bodies; they control and direct the operations of numerous agents, and support their actions by the aid of the large funds at their disposal; but they have no legal corporate existence, and, consequently, no general legal

part of it a rose garden, or a portion of a rose
garden, has been made; when one considers the
continuity of the pathway which is cindered and
treated as part of the defendant's garden, it
seems to me it is about as strong an aggregate
of acts of ownership as you can well imagine for
the purpose of excluding the possession of any-responsibility. No successful litigant can hold
body else.
I think the letter from the solicitors their funds liable for costs or damages. Thus
in 1893 does possess an importance which I had the union embarks on litigation with a limita-
not at first attached to it, because it is plain that tion upon its risks which no other litigant en-
from whoever the solicitors who wrote that let-joys; it may be guilty of maintenance, as a so-

ter got their information, the belief on the part of the plaintiff and his advisers was, that the hedge was the boundary and that the complaint was of injury done to the hedge. Their belief would not perhaps be in itself very important, but I think their belief reflects light upon what must have been the character of the entering into the defendant's garden from time to time during the fifteen years relied on. If the plaintiff believed the hedge was the boundary he would naturally do what I have a strong suspicion he did do, namely, get permission to go through the gate and also to throw the clippings upon the midden. Under these circumstances I come to the conclusion that, whatever may have been the original state of the title, there has been complete dispossession of the plaintiff here, and that, subject to the right, which is also left in obscurity, for the joint occupation and user of the drain pipes themselves for the purpose of carrying the drainage from both houses, the defendant is now entitled to the possession of this piece of land in dispute.

It will be of interest in this State, as well as in the other parts of the United States to read the article of the Legal Immunities of Trades Unions which recently appeared in the Law Journal, and which discusses the decisions and statutes in England. The article in question is as follows:

ciety, without responsibility, and its officers and servants, acting in the scope of their employment, may commit torts without entailing any liability upon it. Its actual existence as an institution is, of course, perfectly well known, and is, for certain purposes, recognized by law. Its control over its agents, who are often indeed its directors, and its normal acquiescence in or concurrence with their acts, not only in cases where these are legal, but also where they chance to overstep the limit of the law, are notorious. But, unlike every other principal, it is not answerable for the acts of its agents, because it is not a corporation, and has no legal personality.

"The anomalies of this position are not, it appears, the result of accident. They were designed when the unions were formally legalized by the Trade Union Act, 1871, by the promoters of the act on the workmen's behalf, for the protection of the union funds. The act, in providing that the purposes of a trade union shall not be deemed to be unlawful merely because they are in restraint of trade, expressly stipulated that nothing in its provisions should enable any court to entertain legal proceedings to enforce agreements between the members of a union, or certain other specified agreements. It stopped short of the obvious step of incorporating the union, and, while vesting the union's property in trustees for the protection of the members' interests, it constituted payments out of the funds by the trustees for any purposes other than those directed by the union rules a penal offense. It follows that the union cannot, as a principal, be held accountable for the acts of its agents. And there does not appear to be any means whatever by which a collective responsibility can be brought home to its members. (See Temperton v. Russell, 62 Law J.

"Several incidents arising out of recent
strikes and labor troubles have called attention
to the strange and anomalous position in which
trades unions at present stand as regards the
law, and the accession to office of the Duke of
Devonshire, who appended a valuable supple-
ment dealing with the matter to the report of
the royal commission on labor, over which he
presided, gives ground for expectation that it
will soon receive the attention of the govern- | Rep. Q. B. 300.)

"It can hardly be doubted that the facility thus afforded to a trade union to direct or maintain the operations of the active partisans in a trade dispute with immunity is conducive to infractions of the law. Its pickets will care little for the risk of fines when they know the defense will be conducted at the union's cost, and the amount of the fine will usually be measured by the poverty of the prisoner, although it is paid out of the war chest of his backers. Its agitators will be reckless in publishing libels, or in urging workmen to break their contracts, if they also are defended by union funds, and are too poor to fear a judgment for damages or costs. The apparent unfairness of forcing an employer, competent and compellable to pay if he is in the wrong, to proceed against or to answer proceedings by workmen who have nothing to pay with, and behind whom their union stands to provide funds so long as it pleases, and no longer, it is not necessary here to dwell upon. But there are other considerations which suggest that the incorporation of the unions would be for the public benefit. Collective bargaining between the union, representing the workmen of a trade, and an employer or group of employers, is regarded by many observers as the most hopeful

proposal for the determination of industrial

quarrels. The modern trade union has always declared this to be one of its primary objects. But effective bargaining is impracticable, and effective contract is out of the question, unless each party can be made responsible to the other if he attempts to break the agreement. And, further, if the experiment of arbitrationwhether optional or compulsory- is ever to be fairly tried, the incorporation of the unions is an essential condition of the undertaking. To allow the authority of a union to be exerted, and its funds to be employed for the purpose of urging or aiding its members to disregard the award of the referee, would be to strike his jurisdiction with impotence. No employer would continue to submit to the chances of arbitration if, in the event of a determination in his favor, his real opponent were permitted to disobey it with impunity. The obvious inapplicability of this peaceful method of settlement for industrial disputes to the present legal positions of the parties has led Sir John Lubbock in the Arbitration Bill, which he intro

duced into the late Parliament to require the trade union as a term of the submission of any question as to future wages to arbitration to give security for its observance of the award by making a deposit of money. But this device for the partial and indirect solution of the difficulty would rarely commend itself to the offi cials of a union for adoption, even if they happened to have sufficient funds available for the purpose.

"There can be no doubt that, just and expedient as the alteration of the law here suggested appears to be, it would not be agreeable to many of the trade union leaders. 'The bare legalization' (by which, it is presumed, is meant the incorporation of the unions) 'would have brought trade unionists under the general law and subjected them to the constant and harassing interference of courts of justice. spirit of the law and the prejudice of lawyers were and are alien to the purposes and collective action of trade societies,' say Mr. and Mrs. Webb. And in a minority report of Messrs. Abraham, Austin, Mawdsley and Tom Mann, attached to the report of the royal commission on labor, these gentlemen state that, in their opin

The

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This suggestion,' they say, 'is, that it would be

desirable to make trade unions liable to be

If every

sued by any person who had a grievance against the action of their officers or agents. trade union were liable to be perpetually harassed by actions at law on account of the doings of individual members; if trade union funds were to be depleted by lawyer's fees and costs, if not even by damages and fines, it would go far to make trade unionism impossi ble for any but the most prosperous and experienced artisans.'

"No doubt it would be advisable to main

tain the rule of the act of 1871, which denies the court's jurisdiction over agreements be tween the members in regard to membership, or in respect of sick fund and other benefits. Perhaps it would also be necessary to require the sick and insurance funds to be separated from the strike and other funds of the unions, and to protect the former from liability. But the exemption of the union and its funds from liability to the law which its officials have broken on its behalf ought not to commend it

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self to the law-abiding sections of the com-
munity."

In People v. Sheldon, 139 N. Y. 251; 34 N.
E. 785, certain coal dealers organized a com-
pany known as the Lockport Coal Exchange.
The object of the organization was to prevent
competition in the price of coal among the re-
tail dealers in that city, by constituting the ex-
change the sole authority to fix the price which
should be charged by the members for coal sold
by them. Sheldon and others, members of the
exchange, were indicted, charged with the
offense of doing an act injurious to trade or
commerce. The trial judge submitted the case
to the jury upon the theory that, if the defend-
ants entered into the organization for the pur-
pose of controlling the price of coal and man-
aging the business of the sale thereof, so as to
prevent competition in the price between the
members of the exchange, the agreement was
illegal. The jury found the defendants guilty.
It was held that the principle upon which the
case was submitted to the jury was sanctioned
by the authorities.

such an agreement was made to depend upon actual proof of public prejudice or injury, it would be very difficult in any case to establish the invalidity, although the moral evidence might be very convincing,"

Undoubtedly there is a peculiar prejudice on the part of many Americans against individuals who either have titles thrust on them or who earnestly seek them. Their is no particular stigma attached to the numerous military and political titles in this country which many have prefixed to their names. The article on the Anomalies of Law Peerages which appeared in the Law Times was as follows:

The fact that the peerages to be conferred on Sir Henry James and Mr. Matthews are to be granted in special remainder, and will descend respectively to the brother of Sir Henry James and the nephew of Mr. Matthews, may render it of interest to note that in the last and present centuries several peerages granted to legal personages have been in special remainder. Thus, in the last century, the peerages of Lord Mansfield (lord chief justice), of Lord Thurlow (lord chancellor), and of the Earl of Rosslyn, better known as Lord Loughborough, the immediate successor of Lord Thurlow in the lord chancellorship, were all granted in special remainder; while, in the present century, the peerage granted to Lord Brougham on becoming lord chancellor, and to Sir Edmund Beckett, Q. C. (Lord Grimthorpe), were likewise in special. remainder.

In one instance, at least, a peerage granted in special remainder has raised questions of the highest legal and constitutional interest. Thus, in 1800, an Irish peerage was granted to Mr. Blake, limited to him and to his heirs male, and

Andrew, C. J., in delivering the opinion of the court, said: "The question is, was the agreement, in view of what might have been done under it, and the fact that it was an agreement, the effect of which was to prevent competition among the coal dealers, one upon which the law fixes the brand of condemnation? It has hitherto been an accepted maxim in political economy that 'competition is the life of trade.' The courts have acted upon and adopted this maxim in passing upon the validity of agreements, the design of which was to prevent competition in trade, and have held such agreements to be invalid." Again, he says: "Agreements to prevent competition in"in default thereof to the heirs male of his trade are, in contemplation of law, injurious to trade, because they are liable to be injuriously used. The present case may be used as an illustration. The price of coal now fixed by the exchange may be reasonable in view of the interests, both of dealers and consumers, but the organization may not always be guided by the principle of absolute justice. If agreements and combinations to prevent competition in prices are or may be hurtful to trade, the only sure remedy is to prohibit all agreements of that character. If the validity of

* * *

father." Mr. Blake died without male issue, and predeceased his father, to whose heirs the peerage was limited, but Nemo hæres est viventis. The editor of the Cornwallis Correspondence thus wrote, fifty years after this creation: "At Lord Wallscourt's death his father was still alive with an heir apparent only in the person of a grandson. Doubts arose as to whether in law the peerage was not therefore extinet, and, although the young man succeeded to his uncle's title, neither he nor any subsequent Lord Wallscourt has ever brought the question

to issue by claiming to vote for an (Irish) repre- Baron, and Lord Russell, the Lord Chief Jussentative peer." tice of England, would not have, as an ex-Lord of Appeal in Ordinary, a seat in the House of Lords.

Then, too, it has not been unusual to confer a peerage on the wife of a law officer of the Crown whose services in the House of Commons could not be spared to his party. Thus, the wife of John Wolfe (afterwards Viscount Kilmardon and Lord Chief Justice of Ireland) was, during his Attorney-Generalship in 1795, created Baroness Kilmardon; so to the wife of John Toler (Earl of Norbury and Lord Chief Justice of the Common Peas in Ireland) was, while he was Solicitor-General, created Baroness Norwood. In England the wife of Sir John (Lord Campbell) was, in 1836, when her husband was Attorney-General, created Baroness Stratheden. She died a year before her husband, who was also elevated to the peerage, and on her death her son, the present Lord Stratheden and Campbell, in the lifetime of his father, became a peer of the realm.

In line with much that we have said in regard to simplicity in legal procedure and the steps in the right directions is the adoption by the Illinois Legislature of the Torrens act, which this winter became a law. The Chicago Legal News, in speaking of this statute, says:

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"One of the most important acts passed by the Legislature of this State at its session which ended the 14th of June, is the ing Land Titles," commonly called the Torrens law, after Sir Robert Torrens, who first proposed the system for South Australia, where it had been in operation since 1858. Illinois is the first in this country to put that system upon its statute books. It will be found in the Legal News edition of the session laws of 1895, which will appear in a few days. By the terms of the act, however, it is not to take effect in any county until it is adopted in that county by a vote of the people. The friends of the act believe it will be adopted in Cook county by an overwhelming vote at the next November elec

tion.

"Under this act the title is registered in contradistinction to the registration of the evidences of title. The central principle of the act is that every question, whether of form or substance, that may affect the title or interest intended to be conveyed, shall be settled once for all at the

time of the transfer.

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It is, moreover, a curious circumstance that all efforts at the reform or modification of the constitution of the peerage have been made in the cases of peerages conferred on legal personages. Thus, in 1856, when an attempt was made to create life peerages, Sir James Parke, a baron of the Exchequer, was created by letters patent, under the title of Lord Wensleydale, a peer for life only. The House of Lords, at the instance of Lord Lyndhurst, an ex-Lord Chancellor, whose speech, full of quotations from black-letter authorities, repeated from memory, his sight being impaired, was regarded | as one of the greatest of intellectual efforts, refused admission to a life peer. The Crown 'As a consequence there will be no going yielded to their pretensions, and Lord Wensley-back of the certificate of title. The history of dale received a fresh creation by a patent rethe title back of this certificate is rendered of ferring to his heirs male, although he had no as little consequence as the history of the title male issue. Again, when the Lords of Appeal in to a share of stock in a corporation. There Ordinary were first constituted under the pro- will be no occasion to inquire into it. This visions of the Appellate Jurisdiction Act in will, in time, do away with abstracts of title 1876, they were to sit and vote so long only as altogether. The manner of keeping the books they held office, but they were to rank for life in the registrar's office is very simple. It is as Barons, with such titles as the Crown might like keeping a ledger account with each piece appoint. By an amending Act in 1887 Lords of property; but few books will be required. of Appeal in Ordinary, on vacating their By reference to the tract index, one will find on office, still continued to be Lords of Parlia- what page the account with a given piece of ment. Under the provisions of the original property is to be found, and by looking at that Act of 1876 we should have, in the case of page, the condition of the title will be seen at resignation or removal from office of a Lord of a glance. No transfer can be made or lien put Appeals in Ordinary, a non-Parliamentary upon the property except upon the record.

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