Dominion with respect to these contracts. The law under The Bill was partially considered by the House of Com- Bill of mons in 1889, and various suggestions and recommendations 1890. were made during the session, and the following recess by private individuals and commercial bodies. As a result, the Bill was re-introduced in 1890 with a number of modifications. Still further changes were made in both Houses of Parliament, most of these being in the direction of retaining special provisions of the law formerly recognized in Canada. or in some of the provinces, and substituting these in the Bill for certain clauses of the Imperial Act which were embodied in the first draft. The Bills of Exchange Act, 1882, is of special interest Imperial as being the first instance of the codification by the Imperial Act. Parliament of any portion of the civil law. The experiment has been an unqualified success, and no greater tribute could be paid to those who prepared the bill and successfully piloted it through both Houses, than the mere mention of the fact that although it has now been in force for more than twenty-six years, only a single minor amendment has been found to be necessary, 6 Edward VII., c. 17, relating to crossed cheques. The amount of litigation which has arisen over it has been relatively small, and it has been very favor Canadian Act. No uniform rule. ably received by the English Judges, some of whom were not disposed to look with much approval upon the idea of a code. The changes which were made in the Canadian Bill in its passage through Parliament tended not only to lessen its similarity to the Imperial Act as above stated, but some of them also interfered with the uniformity of the law throughout the Dominion, which was stated to be its chief object. Examples of the former are found in the legislation regarding bills payable at sight, and as to the payment by banks of demand drafts on them, when the endorsement is forged; and of the latter, in the special provisions regarding the protest of inland bills in Quebec, and the retention of the provincial tariffs for notarial services. These and other changes of a like nature will be more specially noticed when considering the particular sections affected. But probably the change which would have interfered most seriously with the uniformity of the law, and which would have brought about great diversity in the jurisprudence of the respective provinces, was the omission from the Act of a clause that stood in the original bill as section 97, and which was struck out in the Senate.-Senate Debates, 1890, p. 467. It was a reproduction of section 97, sub-section 2, of the Imperial Act, and read as follows: "The rules of the common law of England, including the law merchant, save in so far as they are inconsistent with the express provisions of this Act, shall continue to apply to bills of exchange, promissory notes and cheques." All the Dominion. Statutes in force at the passing of the Act, as well as all the subsisting provincial Statutes on the subject passed prior to Confederation, with the unimportant exceptions above mentioned, having been repealed by section 95, recourse would have been had in unprovided for cases in the several provinces, to the law as there originally introduced, in so far as it might be applicable, and where this failed, to the law in the respective provinces, which by analogy might serve as a rule in each particular case. The Act is no doubt a comparatively complete code of the law upon the subject, but a number of cases unprovided for will be pointed out in the course of the following notes, and others no doubt will arise. The absence of any uniform rule or standard for the decision of these cases would no doubt have led to considerable diversity in the jurisprudence. In all the provinces except Quebec the English law was that which was originally introduced. It was introduced, however, at different dates, so that English Statutes which were thus in force in some provinces were not in others. The French commercial law in force in Quebec, it is true, had much more in common with that of England than had other branches of the civil law. Both were based on the law merchant, and upon the usages and customs of merchants, who were much more cosmopolitan in their ideas than the legislators or Judges who framed or settled the laws of these countries. The course of provincial legislation also tended to similarity. The provisions of the successive English Statutes on the subject were frequently re-enacted by the provinces, including Lower Canada. Notwithstanding these circumstances a glance at the jurisprudence, as it is recorded in the provincial reports, and as it will be briefly noted in the following pages, will show that there has been a wider divergence in the decisions of the Courts in the different provinces than might have been expected from the similarity of the statute law. The desire to render the law throughout the Dominion. as nearly uniform as possible, which was one of the leading objects of the Act, no doubt influenced the Parliament to restore the clause which had been dropped from the Bill in 1890, and it was made retroactive in its effect, so that even a temporary divergence in jurisprudence from this cause will be avoided. In all cases not specially provided for by the Act, recourse will consequently be had in all the provinces to the common law of England and the law merchant, instead of to the law of France in Quebec or to that of England at varying dates in the other provinces, as would have been the case under the Act of 1890: (54-55 V. c. 17, s. 8; R. S. C. c. 119, s. 10). c. 119. The present Act is a revision or consolidation of the R. S. C., Act of 1890, and the amending Acts of 1891, 1893, 1894, 1897, 1901 and 1902. By the Act of 1903, which provided for the revision, the Commissioners, in consolidating the statutes and incorporating subsequent or amending Acts, 1 were authorized to make such alterations in their language as were requisite in order to preserve a uniform mode of expression, and to make such minor amendments as were necessary to bring out more clearly what they deemed to be the intention of Parliament, or to reconcile seemingly inconsistent enactments, or to correct clerical or typographical errors. Also the Revised Statutes were not to operate as new laws, but to be construed and have effect as a consolidation and as declaratory of the law as contained in the old Statutes, and for which they were to be substituted. But if upon any point they were not the same as the old Acts, then as to all matters subsequent to the time of their coming into force, their provisions were to prevail. By section 21 of the Interpretation Act, R. S. C. c. 1, it is not to be presumed that any construction which has been placed by judicial decision or otherwise, upon the language used in the old Act, has been adopted on account of the use of the same or similar language in the Revised Statute. In revising the Bills of Exchange Act, the revisers have not only consolidated the Act of 1890, and the various amending Acts above noted, but they have largely recast the whole work. The 95 sections of the original Act and section 8 of the amending Act of 1891, which is the only new section introducing a substantive amendment, have been in the revision subdivided into 187 sections, thus practically doubling the number of sections. The order of sequence has also been largely changed. While it may be an open question whether or not the new arrangement is an improvement on the old, there are probably very few who think that under the circumstances the changes were at all expedient. The Imperial Act of 1882 was copied without change by nearly all the British colonies, retaining the same numbering of the sections. In our own Act, although a number of changes were made, as pointed out elsewhere, the numbers of the sections corresponded up to section 60. On account of the omission of that section. from our Act, the numbers of the succeeding sections were each one below that of the corresponding section in the Imperial Act. In reading the reports of English or colonial cases, one could thus at once tell what section of our Act corresponded to the section named in any of these reports. In future it will be impossible in reading any of these reports, or any of our own reports as to transactions between 1890 and 1907, to tell readily what section of our new Act may correspond to any section that may be referred to. In order to assist in minimizing this difficulty, a table has been prepared and appears in the earlier part of this work, showing where the various sections of the old Acts are to be found in the new. Notwithstanding such a table, it will no doubt be a cause of regret to the profession generally, that the revisers. did not retain the numbering contained in the Act of 1890, and insert section 8 of the Act of 1891 in the same place as it appears in the Imperial Act. The substitution of "endorse" for "indorse" in that verb and its derivatives, and some other minor changes, as pointed out elsewhere, were also made, apparently without taking into account the inconvenience that would result from such changes without corresponding advantages. under In the course of the following notes upon the various sec- Cases tions of the Act, a number of cases decided before 1890 will old law. be cited which in whole or in part may be no longer law. This fact will be indicated, and they are cited partly for the purpose of pointing out that they are no longer law, and to prevent them being cited as authorities. In order to facilitate a comparison of this jurisprudence with the course of legislation, the dates of the various decisions will be given. A concise summary of the more salient points in the history of the law in the different provinces is also here given, which, it is hoped, will be found to be sufficiently full and exact for the purpose above stated. Quebec. The French commercial law, introduced with French the Coutume de Paris on the establishment of the Conseil law. Superieur in 1663, as modified by subsequent enactments and decisions, and which was the law merchant, and substantially the same as the commercial law of England of the same period, regulated the bills and notes of the colony, until the |