military or civil, in any enemy country, or has been interned in an enemy or neutral country, or has been in public service connected with the War of a character to be approved by the Lord President and the Lord Justice Clerk, may enter into an Indenture of Apprenticeship with a Law Agent without having passed the First Examination in General Knowledge, provided that within one year of the date fixed for the commencement of his apprenticeship he passes the First Examination in General Knowledge on a standard to be fixed by the Examiners of Law Agents, or he produces to the Examiners, when enrolling for said Examination, a Certificate by a Head Master or Clergyman satisfactory to them of his general education, and which Certificate shall exempt him from said Examination; but where a candidate as aforesaid has had less than one year's military or other War service, the Examiners of Law Agents may in their discretion require such candidate to pass the First Examination in General Knowledge on the standard so fixed. The fee to be payable by each candidate shall be £1 1s. for expenses in lieu of the fee payable under section 18 (1) of the Codifying Act of Sederunt, Book A, Chapter VII., along with the fee of £2 2s. payable to the Examiners by applicants under section 9 of the Law Agents (Scotland) Act, 1873.

2. That any candidate described in the preceding section who has not passed the Second Examination in General Knowledge, and is desirous of obtaining exemption from that Examination or part of it in respect of his Military or other War Service, shall present a petition to the Lord President and Lord Justice Clerk under section 5 of the Law Agents and Notaries Public (Scotland) Act, 1891, setting forth the circumstances under which the application is made, and shall produce therewith a statement of his Military or other War Service duly certified. The Petition, which shall be in writing and signed by the applicant, shall in the first instance be lodged with the Clerk to the Examiners of Law Agents, along with any further particulars which the Examiners of Law Agents may require, and each applicant shall pay to the Clerk to the Examiners a fee of £2 12s. 6d., to cover the expenses of the petition and in lieu of the fee payable under section 18 (2) of the Codifying Act of Sederunt, Book A, Chapter VII., along with a modified fee of £1 1s. to the Examiners under section 9 of the Law Agents (Scotland) Act, 1873.

3. That at the end of section 1 of the Codifying Act of Sederunt, Book A, Chapter VII., as amended by Act of Sederunt dated 13th March, 1918, there shall be added the words, "But the said Examiners "may hold such further and additional Examinations either in General "Knowledge or in Law as they may consider necessary.'

And the Lords APPOINT this Act to be inserted in the Books of Sederunt, and to be printed and published in common form.

STRATHCLYDE, I.P.D.

Appointments, Business Changes, &c.

ABERDEEN.-Messrs. Hunter & Gordon, advocates and notaries public, 80 Union street, have assumed as partners Mr. William Mackay, advocate, and Mr. Duncan Macallum, solicitor.

EDINBURGH.-The following have been admitted members of the Society of Writers to the Signet :-Mr. Alexander Dougal, LL.B., Mr. Kenneth Murray, and Mr. William Leach Stuart.

Mr. Kenneth Douglas Cullen, M.A., LL.B., and Mr. John Ballingall Forbes Watson, M.A., LL.B., have been admitted members of the Faculty of Advocates.

Sir Philip J. Hamilton Grierson, B.A.(Oxon.), advocate, has retired from the office of Solicitor for Scotland to the Board of Inland Revenue. Sir Philip has held this office for twenty-seven years, prior to which he was successively Sheriff-Substitute at Banff and at Aberdeen.

Messrs. Paterson & Gardiner, S.S.C., have removed their offices to No. 25 Queen Street, where they will in future practice in combination with the firm of Messrs. Robson & M'Lean under the name of Robson, M'Lean, & Paterson, W.S.

Mr. J. D. Dallas, advocate, has been appointed Interim SheriffSubstitute at Edinburgh during the absence of Mr. Sheriff Guy, who was recently injured in a street accident.

Mr. John Brooks, S.S.C., who has returned from military service, has entered into partnership with Mr. Alexander F. Fraser, solicitor. The business will be carried on under the name of Fraser, Brooks, & Co., S.S.C., at 66 Frederick Street, Edinburgh.

Mr. R. Pairman Miller, S.S.C., and Mr. William Murray, S.S.C., have joined in partnership, and will carry on their business under the name of Pairman, Miller, & Murray, at 50 Queen Street, Edinburgh.

Mr. James F. Whyte, S.S.C., has joined the firm of Messrs. Fraser & Davidson, W.S. The business will be carried on under the name of Fraser, Davidson, & Whyte, W.S., at 11 Albyn Place, Edinburgh.

GLASGOW.-Mr. George Smith, assistant to the town-clerk, has been appointed procurator-fiscal of police, in place of Mr. John J. M'Intyre, who has retired owing to failure of health.

Mr. David K. Beveridge has been assumed as a partner with Messrs. Paterson & Ross, writers, 174 West George Street, Glasgow.

HAMILTON.-Captain J. C. Allan, M.B.E.; Captain J. C. E. Hay, and Lieutenant James C. M'Ilwraith, solicitors, have been assumed as partners with Messrs Hay, Cassels, & Frame, writers.

STRATHAVEN.—Mr. John Torrance has been assumed a partner with the firm of Messrs. J. & J. Barrie, writers.

EXAMINERS OF LAW AGENTS.-Mr. David Macbeth Moir Milligan, advocate, Aberdeen, and Mr. Walter James Lewis, S.S.C., Edinburgh, have been appointed to the Board of Examiners of Law Agents, in room of Mr. James Duguid, deceased, and Mr. James Ayton, resigned.

THOSE who subscribed to the guarantee fund to enable the duplicand case to be taken to the Lords have got little for their money. That fund was designed to be the price of a judgment of the House on the vexed question of the presence of "duplicand" and the absence of "over and above." But that is exactly what the promoters have failed to obtain. The law lords having been equally divided in opinion, the decision stands in favour of the superiors. Technically it is a judgment of the House just as much as if the Lords had been unanimous for refusing the appeal. That no doubt carries important practica! effects. But all the same, from the point of view of the subscribers, there is blank failure, for this is the judgment of the lords simply because it was the judgment of the Court of Session, and that was the very thing sought to be reviewed. Even, however, under these depressing conditions, it is possible to pick up some crumbs.

Any idea of questioning the meaning of the word "duplicand" may be finally dropped. With a £10 feu-duty a duplicand is £20. On this point there was unanimity.

That being so, the contest must always resolve itself into the question whether the duplicand does, or does not, include the feuduty of the year. If it does, then we have a "simple" duplicand; if it does not, we have a duplicand "over and above."

It is not quite correct to say that this becomes a question of construction. No doubt so long as it was not finally determined that, with a £10 feu-duty, duplicand meant £20, it was correct to say that even a stipulation for "a duplicand over and above "the feu-duty of the year" admitted of construction; and that was exactly Zetland's case. But that meaning of duplicand being accepted as the basis of discussion (as now it must be),

M

then such language is not open to construction; for it is exactly the same as stipulating for a perpetual feu-duty of £10 and £20 in the periodical years over and above the feu-duty of the year. That is express and nothing can be plainer. Then to go a step further, no one will question Lord Buckmaster's observation that "over and above" is not a technical phrase. Other words may be at least as express and as little open to construction, for example a feu-duty of £10 and "in addition" a duplicand in the periodical years.

But it does not rest there, for it has been assumed on all hands that, without such express and unambiguous terms, the same result may be reached by construction. Indeed this appears to be where the crux of all these cases must now be found. We accept this as final, but while doing so we venture to note two things which might have led to a different view. One of these is the doctrine of precision in land rights, which we recently illustrated in a series of articles. It is just a little difficult to see why a superior who has chosen to be anything but precise should not find himself excluded by the doctrine in question. Possibly the answer may lie in the element of presumption, of which a good deal was made in the Lords, and to which we refer below. Our second observation is that while all taxing clauses are jealously construed in favour of the superior, we have always understood that the true meaning of that doctrine was limited to the application of the taxing clause, that is to say whether certain casualties-in practice always composition-were taxed at all; and that, if that were answered in the affirmative, the doctrine had no bearing on the totally different matter of the quantum of the taxed casualty.

It is implied in what we have said that, as the law now stands, there may still be a "duplicand" which shall give only the amount of two feu-duties altogether in the duplicand year. To this effect there is a complete chain of judicial authority, from Lord Jeffrey in Zetland, through the Lord President in Adam v. Finlay (where his lordship sketched such a clause in terms) to the judgments of the law lords in the recent appeal. But while that is so, we fear that the result of all that has happened, and especially of the failure of this appeal, will be to make it very difficult for vassals to obtain settlements on the "simple duplicand basis in any case where the word "duplicand" occurs. And as to that we are bound to say, with reference to the imaginary clause figured by Lord Jeffrey and worded by Lord Strathclyde, as one under which the "simple" duplicand only would be due, that we respectfully agree with Lord Atkinson that the difference between the actual clause in the appeal case

and the imaginary clause "is, to my mind at least, in substance so slight as to be almost imperceptible."

We venture to think that far too much was heard of the impropriety of such a tribunal as the House of Lords interfering with the decision of the Scottish Court on a question of Scottish conveyancing law. We are free to confess that in a case of this kind we see absolutely no point or relevancy in Lord Dunedin's remark that "there is no man living who can pretend to the "familiar knowledge of feudal conveyancing possessed by the “judges of an older generation." So far as concerns the disturbing of a Scottish judgment, we repeat what we have said on a previous occasion, that from our knowledge of the detailed facts of actual business experience the recent judgments in Scotland run counter to what has been consistently understood and acted on. There is reason to infer that some of the Scottish judges have begun to think that that may well be so. Thus, in Murray v. Bruce, Lord Skerrrington explained that his concurrence in Adam v. Finlay was given because he was so induced on the representation that the judgment was in accordance with the practice of the profession following on Zetland. Now the fact notoriously is that the awarding of duplicands “over and "above" in Heriot's Trust and Adam v. Finlay, and in the appeal case of Waddell, is in flat disregard and subversal of the teaching and practice of two generations. A reversal by the Lords would have been welcomed by all those who have the best means of knowing all the bearings of the business life out of which those cases spring, and who are animated simply by the conservative and just desire to let things be as they have been, so that contracts may be carried out in the sense in which they were entered into. And as to the judges of an older generation, it is more than probable that some of them would be a good deal surprised by such decisions as Heriot's Trust, Adam, and Waddell. Besides, after all, what is to be interpreted is a clause of covenant or contract on which one legal mind is just as well able to form an opinion as another. There is the further consideration that, for good or ill, Zetland is accepted as binding because, even if illdecided, it is too late to disturb it. That being so, the importation of pre-Zetland learning appears inappropriate and may be hurtful.

We think there is too much in the Lords' judgments about 'presumption." As applied to the word "duplicand" it can only mean that the word imports of itself an amount equal to two feu-duties, but that it may be so qualified, or used in such a context, as to negative its ordinary meaning; and the same may be said of any other word. But presumption is also canvassed