the influence of subsequent correspondence on contracts formed by letters was discussed (Bellamy v. Debenham, 45 Ch. D. 481, and Bristol &c. Bread Co. v. Maggs, 44 Ch. D. 616), deserve special attention, and it is to be hoped that the proposition that if the letters of proposal and acceptance in fact contain all the terms agreed on at the time and were written with the intent of binding the writers, this complete contract could not be affected by subsequent negotiations not resulting in a new contract,' will not in future be questioned.

The additional note on Bolton Partners v. Lambert (41 Ch. D. 295) points out the difficulties, both practical and legal, which result from the decision in that case.

The historical survey on pp. 8-15 is a valuable addition. The readers of this REVIEW will already know from Lord Justice Fry's article on 'Specific Performance and Laesio Fidei' (L. Q. R., v. p. 235), that he traces the origin of the equitable jurisdiction relating to specific performance to the ecclesiastical courts and their endeavours to give relief against 'laesio fidei.' An additional note (on p. 716) collects the cases illustrating the adoption of this jurisdiction by the Chancellors.

As regards the statements on foreign law on p. 4, and in the additional note on p. 715, we are compelled to differ from the opinion that the specific enforcement of contracts has a more extensive application in England than on the continent. If we had to express the difference between English and continental law in this respect in a few words, we should say that in England specific performance is granted where damages are not an adequate remedy, whilst on the Continent damages are awarded when specific performance is impossible, and also that the means of enforcement are more varied on the Continent than in England.

As regards French law, our opinion is supported by the following extract from Mr. Demolombe's Traité des Contrats (2nd ed. vol. i. p. 486): 'Il est vrai qu'à Rome toutes les sentences du juge aboutissaient à une condamnation pécuniaire . . . mais jamais nous n'avons admis en France ces formes de procédé toutes romaines; il faut tenir au contraire chez nous pour règle que le créancier est fondé à obtenir l'exécution même de l'obligation toutes les fois qu'il est possible de la lui procurer.' The well-known § 1142 of the French Civil Code does not in effect prevent any contracts from being specifically enforced except positive and negative contracts relating to personal services. It is true that contracts of the latter kind are in this country enforced by injunction, but this is done in consequence of a decision which, as mentioned above, must be looked upon as an anomaly. Apart from this one exception we are in our opinion safe in asserting that any contract, the specific performance of which can be obtained in England, can also be specifically enforced in France. The French Courts do not threaten the defendant with imprisonment in case of disobedience, but wherever it is possible to do so they authorise the plaintiff by his own act to bring about the result which would have been obtained if the defendant had performed his obligation. Even the obligation de faire ou de ne pas faire' may in many instances be enforced in this manner (Code Civil, §§ 1143 and 1144), but most of the cases in which specific performance is ordered in England would be classed under the head of the obligation de donner' (to which as mentioned in the note-Sir Frederick Pollock has called attention). As provided by § 1136 'l'obligation de donner emporte celle de livrer la chose.' In case the defendant neglects this duty the plaintiff may be authorised to take possession 'manu militari' (see Demolombe, 1. c., p. 380). It is true that in the case of sales, specific performance is unnecessary as the contract

operates as a conveyance, but the 'obligation de donner' may arise in other ways, e.g. in the case of a contract of letting (see Code Civil, § 1719).

In Germany specific performance may be obtained in a much more extensive manner than in France or in England, and it is not probable that the rule of Roman Law, which converted all claims arising from obligations into money claims, was at any time acted upon in the first-named country. On the other hand, there is evidence dating back to the thirteenth century of the opposite rule having been applied (see Stobbe, Deutsches Privatrecht, first edition, vol. iii. p. 228; Planck, das deutsche Gerichtsverfahren im Mittelalter, vol. ii. p. 264). Instances of actions, in which the delivery of land or chattels was claimed on the ground of contracts for sale, are mentioned in the Sachsenspiegel, I. 9. § 1 (about 1230) and Richtsteig Landrechts, 19. § 3 (about 1330), and the nature of such actions as actions for the specific performance of contracts is clearly pointed out by Heusler (Institutionen des deutschen Privatrechts, vol. i. pp. 390-394). The plaintiff in earlier times was authorised to take the defendant into his personal custody until he had complied with the order; but in later times a disobedient defendant was confined in the public prison (Planck, l. c., p. 260). As regards the modern German Law, Professor Dernburg in his well-known book on Prussian Private Law (third edition, vol. i. p. 276), states that Roman law in its classical epoch assumed that every judgment must be for damages in money and the older conception has still a material influence on the law of Justinian. According to modern law the claim and the judgment must be for specific performance (specifische Erfüllung) as long as specific performance is possible' (see also Forster-Eccius, Preussisches Privatrecht, fourth edition, vol. i. pp. 551, 899). The German Code of Civil Procedure (which since 1879 is in force throughout the German Empire) provides for the enforcement of judgments for the performance of contracts (1) by direct interference with the subject-matter, e. g. by authorising the plaintiff to take forcible possession (§§ 769-771), by allowing the promised act to be performed by a third party at defendant's expense (§ 773), by directing the judgment of the Court to have the same effect as if the defendant had executed an instrument, the execution of which was contracted for (§ 779); (2) by punishing the defendant by fine or imprisonment in case of disobedience (§§ 774-775). In some German States orders may be made for the specific performance of a promise to marry, but such orders cannot under any circumstances be enforced by compulsion, and would in case of disobedience create a claim for damages; orders for the restitution of conjugal rights cannot be enforced by fine or imprisonment unless the local law allows it. Subject to these exceptions any order of a German Court directing a defendant to do or abstain from any act may be enforced as mentioned, and the specific performance of contracts therefore covers a much wider ground in Germany than it does in this country. E. S.

The Law and Custom of the Constitution. Part II. The Crown. By Sir WILLIAM R. ANSON, Bart., D.C.L. Oxford: Clarendon Press. 8vo. xxiv and 494 pp. (148.)

SIR WILLIAM ANSON'S Law and Custom of the Constitution is the most valuable treatise which has appeared for years on the English Constitution as it actually exists. The merit of the work as a mine of information cannot escape even the most careless of readers; there is however a possibility that the details with which the book is filled may

conceal, even from intelligent critics, the special gifts of the author as an expounder of the working of the Constitution. It is on these special characteristics that it is worth while therefore in this brief notice to insist.

Sir William Anson displays, in the first place, an extraordinary capacity for research.

No doubt some of our readers will be startled by this assertion. Our author does not pretend to be an antiquarian, and a most unfortunate idea prevails that research, by which is really meant the investigation into, and discovery of, facts not easily ascertainable, means the enquiry into the origin of institutions, and, speaking generally, into the obscure and uncertain. phenomena of early history. But if the term be used in its true and rational sense, it will be hard to point to any writer who has shown greater capacity for the carrying out of profitable research than Sir William Anson. His object has been to ascertain not only from books, but, what is often far more difficult, from official records, from the practice of men concerned in carrying on the government of the country, from the careful examination of official forms and the like, how the administration of public affairs in England is actually carried on. No one who has not occasionally attempted a task of somewhat the same kind can tell how difficult is its successful achievement. Officers in the public departments are, it is true, usually gentlemen of far more than average intelligence, and are very ready to communicate their knowledge of official routine and habits to any one who is enquiring with a sincere desire to learn. But persons versed in the practice of affairs rarely have time to explore the principles of the business in which they are engaged. Moreover, the things which to officials are a matter of course are the proceedings, which it naturally does not occur to them to explain, and which yet to an intelligent enquirer most need explanation. There is hardly a page in the Law and Custom of the Constitution which does not make clear some matter of detail which the reader feels he has never before completely understood, and each detail of this kind has, we may be sure, been ascertained by our author through a process of laborious, intelligent, and assiduous research.

The Warden of All Souls, in the second place, possesses the gift of summarising the general effect of lengthy investigation in a few clear expressions.

Writers on the Constitution tend for the most part towards diffuseness. You hardly ever find a constitutionalist who can compress the resultsoften, we may add, very small results-to which his enquiries have led him. Rare, for example, is the writer who can tell us what he means by an established Church. Our author, on the other hand, knows precisely what he means, and can express his meaning briefly. The Church of England,' he writes, like the established Presbyterian Church of Scotland, differs from other religious societies in this, that the conditions of membership are endorsed by the Legislature, and cannot be altered without legislative enactment. In this sense the law of the Church is the law of the land. It cannot be altered at the pleasure of the members of the Church. Convocation could not, even with the most ample license from the Crown, alter or repeal any one of the Articles, or vary the rubric settled in the Prayerbook. To do this recourse must be had to the Crown in Parliament.' This single paragraph sums up nearly all that a lawyer need say on a subject which has perplexed lawyers no less than divines.

But the rarest of Sir William Anson's gifts is his capacity for the historical elucidation of Constitutional Custom.

He does not pretend to be an historian: he does not try to do badly and inadequately the work which Hallam and Stubbs have done excellently and fully. On the other hand, he does not try to treat institutions which are the fruit of long historical development as though they had been created yesterday under the direction of modern statesmen and jurists. He neither writes history nor overlooks history. What he does do is to use historical knowledge so far as it elucidates our modern institutions, and so far only. It is this mode of treatment which gives immense importance and extreme interest to the admirable chapter on the Councils of the Crown. It is (if we except Bagehot's account of the Cabinet) quite the most original and best account of Cabinet Government in England which has ever been presented to the public. The intellectual feat performed by Mr. Bagehot of, for the first time, explaining what Cabinet Government really is, cannot from its nature be repeated. But Sir William Anson has certainly explained, as no one before him has ever explained, the steps by which the Cabinet has been developed and the very singular change which has come over the nature of the Cabinet within little more than a century. To most readers, at any rate, the distinction between the outer Cabinet and the inner Cabinet, between the position of a statesman who is a member of a Cabinet, but not one of the efficient Cabinet ministers, and the position of a statesman who, like Lord Mansfield, was a member of the outer Cabinet, but was not a member of the Cabinet Council with communication of papers, will come as a surprise. But the new idea when once grasped solves many problems in the constitutional history of the last century which puzzle students, and also suggests many possibilities as to the constitutional history of the future. One thing at least our author has made perfectly clear. The Cabinet, as it is the most important and original, so it is also the most flexible part of the English Constitution; it lends itself to adaptation: it never remains long in the same state. We may doubt whether the Cabinet presided over by Lord Salisbury is quite the same sort of body as the Cabinets presided over by Lord Palmerston; it certainly differs essentially from the Cabinets of Pitt or of Walpole. It is at least conceivable that within the next twenty years the distinction between the outer and the inner Cabinet may again make its appearance. But our space forbids the following out of these speculations. This notice will have attained its object if it convinces those who read it that the Law and Custom of the Constitution, though an admirable law book, is not a book merely for lawyers, but a treatise full of interest for every one interested in political speculation. A. V. D.

La Condition de la Propriété dans le Nord de la France. Le Droit de Marché. Par J. LEFORT. Paris: E. Thorin. 1892. vii and 223 PP.

MONSIEUR LEFORT's treatise on the Droit de Marché has at the present day a special interest for Englishmen. The Droit de Marché is, in fact, nothing else than French tenant right. In a particular part of France, and mainly in Picardy, tenants have for two or three centuries at least, and it may be for a much longer period, claimed rights over their land exactly equivalent to the rights claimed by Irish tenants. The French tenant claims not to be evicted whilst he pays his rent; he considers his rent on the strict view of his rights as incapable of being raised; he claims the right to dispose of the goodwill or tenant right in the land, which often

amounts to more than the value of the nominal rights of the legal owner. These claims on the part of certain French tenants have no acknowledged legal basis; they are entirely opposed to the whole spirit of French law; yet they are claims which landowners find it best to treat as rights, for they are enforced by popular opinion, by conspiracy, by boycotting, by maiming of animals, by the burning of homesteads, by the murder of land-grabbers, and by the murder of the friends of land-grabbers. From the time of Louis XIV downwards, the French Executive and the French Courts have opposed with the utmost rigour a system of tenure inconsistent with the fundamental principles of French jurisprudence; yet in the contest with a limited number of peasants the French Government has entirely failed. The Droit de Marché still exists. If it is dying out at all, which is not quite certain, it is perishing under the influence, not of hostile legislation, but of changing social conditions. All these facts were known to those who have studied Mr. R. E. Prothero's writings. But Mons. Lefort gives an exhaustive description of the whole system of the Droit de Marché, whilst Mr. Prothero naturally refers to it only incidentally. The essential fact, however, which both writers bring out is that all the most characteristic phenomena of the agricultural conflict in Ireland have been known for generations in France. From this two inferences at least, which are of considerable importance, may be drawn.

The first and most obvious is that no conflict is so hard to bring to an end as a conflict between a Government and its subjects as to the tenure of land. The French tenant is not divided from his landlord by race or by religion. The tenants who uphold the Droit de Marché have never regarded the Government at Paris as an alien power; yet for all this, French tenants have resisted the claims of their landlords, though backed by a despotic Government, at least as vigorously and, we may add, as savagely as Irish tenants have resisted the rights or exactions of landlords who belonged to, or were supported by, the English garrison.

The second and more general inference is that enthusiasts for the historical method are perhaps too apt to assume that similarity in the institutions of two peoples are signs of a common origin. Enquirers sometimes forget that similar circumstances of themselves produce similar institutions. The comparative method is at least as important as the historical method of investigation. A. V. D.

Constitutional Legislation in the United States: its origin, and application to the relative powers of Congress and of State Legislatures. BY JOHN ORDRONAUX, LL.D. Philadelphia; T. & J. W. Johnson & Co. 1891. 8vo. vi and 696 pp.

THIS work of Mr. Ordronaux purports to present in a concrete form' a part of the Constitution of the United States, the part selected being 'the entire system of Federal and State Legislation.' To work out his scheme he gives us a good deal of history and a good deal of political theory, and perhaps these are not kept apart with sufficient distinctness from the main purpose of the work; but the scheme is nevertheless clear and intelligible. The first chapter, on the sources of representative government, states the general theory of popular institutions; the next, on the organization of representative government, gives us the disposition of political power in the United States. The third chapter contains an interesting account of the relations of the States to the Federal govern