which he has always relieved his legal work, is a leading authority on British mosses. Sir Howard W. Elphinstone, the well-known conveyancing counsel, died last month aged 86. He was one of the Conveyancing Counsel to the Court, joint author of Key and Elphinstone's Precedents in Conveyancing, and for some years a reader in the Law of Real Property to the Inns of Court. He remained in active practice until he was well over 80 years of age. An article by the deceased appears in the new (January) number of the Law Quarterly Review. Mr. Reginald John Smith, K.C., the principal of the well-known publishing firm of Smith, Elder & Co., has died at the age of 59. On entering the firm in 1894 he retired from the Bar. As editor of "The Cornhill Magazine" from 1897 he became well-known in literary circles. Amongst the names of those in the Roll of Honour is that of Major Lord Gorell, D.S.O., R.F.A., who was killed in action on the 16th January, after a year and ten months' service abroad. Henry Gorell Barnes was the elder son of the former President of the Probate, Divorce and Admiralty Division, who was raised to the peerage as Baron Gorell in 1909. He was born in 1882 and educated at Winchester, Oxford and Harvard. He was called to the Bar by the Inner Temple in 1906, and acted as secretary to his father when he was on the Bench, and also to the Royal Commission on Divorce. On succeeding to his father's title in 1913 he left the practice of law. In the House of Lords his speeches were much commended, and he proved a very effective member of Parliamentary Committees. He was mentioned in despatches for war services and awarded the D. S. O. last November. The January number of that excellent publication, the Journal of the Society of Comparative Legislation, contains an interesting sketch of the career of Professor A. V. Dicey, K.C., accompanied by an excellent portrait. W. E. WILKINSON. CODES AND CODIFICATION. The term "Code" has various significations even in jurisprudence. In Roman Law it is used more particularly with reference to the great works of Theodosius and Justinian. It was Justinian's ambition to make unnecessary any reference, elsewhere than to to his own work, to ascertain the law. But the books of the Roman Emperors were not codes in the sense in which the term has been used since the Napoleonic Code was promulgated in 1804. This definition of the word is given in the new Oxford Dictionary. "A systematic collection or digest of the laws of a country or of those relating to a particular subject." This definition is wide enough to include a consolidation or revision of statutory laws. Yet the term is used, generally, I think, in late years to indicate not only a systematic but exhaustive collection of laws and involves the ideas of conciseness and simplicity. It is in this sense and with these modifications, justified by usage, that I employ the term. Mere revisions or consolidations of statutes are not codes or intended to be such. Our Criminal Code, though called such in the act, is not a code but a compilation or consolidation. In common law countries when codes have been framed the compilers have had the advantage of examining and weighing numerous decisions of courts of authority, upon questions arising out of the subjects before them for consideration. This feature was present to a much less extent when the earlier codes were framed. Where a statute is declared to be a code we are to consider it in its natural meaning uninfluenced by any considerations derived from the previous state of the law, except in cases where terms used are of doubtful import or have acquired a technical signification: per Lord Herschell in Bank of England v. Vagliano.1 1 [1891] A. C. 144. The advantages of a code have been frequently urged by writers of repute. In their view a codification means not only a systematic and complete statement of the whole law or of a part of it relating to some distinct subject, but also a reduction of the law or some division of it from a condition of confusion and inaccessibility to a state of certainty, uniformity, intelligibility and accessibility. Early legislative efforts did not aim at obtaining social reforms or economic changes by force of enactments. They aimed at setting forth in writing and authoritatively the unwritten law as it had been already declared by the proper tribunals. This was the object of the Roman Laws of the XII Tables and so largely throughout the Republic and the Empire. But alongside the written laws there arose the prætorian law enumerated in a table published by the prætor on taking office and thereby adopting previous tables and modifying them according to changing conditions which so qualified the rigidity of the ancient law that it was finally swept away. Hence arose the jus civile; and it was the prætorian law also that gave rise to the jus gentium placing aliens on a general equality with Roman citizens in matters of private law. The Roman jurists had their origin during the Republic in the Colleges of Pontiffs who gave opinions in matters of private law referred to them. Augustus authorized certain persons to give opinions on such matters, and throughout the earlier Empire it was the practice of the Emperor to confer the "jus respondendi" the privilege of delivering opinions binding on the judge or magistrate, on certain distinguished jurists. It soon became the practice to refer to former responsa in similar cases, and these opinions became a source of law. The best known names amongst the Roman jurists are those of Labeo, Celsus, Julian, Scaevola, Papinian and Ulpian of whom Papinian is declared to be the greatest. The work of the Roman jurists has received the highest tributes. They dealt little with the abstract, but in dealing with the concrete transactions brought before them, they decided with unerring instinct upon the requirements of bona fides. I quote the following from "Institutes of Roman Law" by Rudolph Sohm, translated by James Crawford Ledlie (Clarendon Press, 1907), p. 102. "In such transactions, for instance as sales, or hirings, or agencies, they seemed to know at once, and instinctively, what it was that the nature of the circumstances themselves required, in all cases and in each separate case, quite apart from any explicit declaration of intention on the part of the persons concerned." "The peculiar genius of the Roman jurists found its fullest scope in the law of obligations, the law of debtor and creditor-the law, that is, which is most properly concerned with the material dealings between man and man-and, more particularly in the law relating to those contracts in which not merely the expressed, but also the unexpressed intention of the parties has to be taken into account, the so-called bonae fidei negotia. And as regards this unexpressed intention, which is not, for the greater part, present to the mind of the party himself at the moment of concluding the contract, it was the Roman jurists who discovered it, and discovered it for all time to time, and enunciated the laws that result from its existence. This is a task that will never have to be done again." In so far as the Roman law thus arose from the treatment of concrete cases we cannot fail to be struck with its similarity, in growth and evolution, to the law as it has arisen and been declared in England. During the Empire the Emperors administered the law by decisions in particular cases (decreta), opinions in particular cases (rescripta), instructions to officials (mandata) and public laws (edicta). Collectively these were called "constitutiones." The object of Theodosius in his code (A.D. 438) was to collect the Imperial Constitutiones. Justinian promulgated his Codex Constitutionum in 529, and in 533 his Digest or Pandects, a condensed digest of the opinions of the authoritative jurists of the republic and the Empire, made by a commission under the Emperor's authority. The Institutes constitute an introduction to both the code and the Pandects, a statement of principles on which they are to be administered. The work of Justinian has been lauded as the greatest law book ever published by reason of its merits and its widespread influence. Some authorities, however, confine their praise to the Pandects, which represented the collected wisdom of the jurists. With reference thereto it was enacted that all laws of the jurists other than those contained in the digest should be repealed, and directed that the treatises of the jurists should not be cited even by way of illustration. To prevent controversies the writing of commentaries was forbidden and all doubtful points were referred to the Emperor for decision. All former statutes from the Twelve Tables downwards were abrogated. It will be observed that neither the Code of Justinian nor the Pandects actually presented a complete, exhaustive and exclusive system of the law in the meaning we are now giving to the term "Code." The former was a consolidation and revision of imperial decrees relating to government, the latter a digest of the opinions of jurists authorized to declare the law. The former consolidated the statutes or decrees relating to public matters and public law, and is now of little but historical interest; the latter dealt with private law and transactions between individuals and is still of living interest. The first Code of modern times which has the character of a systematic exposition of the law in the sense in which the term is now used was the Code Civil des Francais or the Code Napoleon promulgated in 1804. It was the outcome of the vast number of different systems of laws existing in France prior to |