COSTS BETWEEN SOLICITOR AND CLIENT.-Re Solicitors1 is a very interesting judgment, written by Mr. Justice Grant on the point as to how far details are necessary in a bill of costs rendered by solicitors to a client. The accounts in question related to matters of very considerable substance, and were of such a nature as to make the question at issue one of very real importance.

The bills had been rendered with very exhaustive particulars of the different services rendered by the solicitors, but they did not show a separate amount charged for each item of service, the amount of each being in bulk. Under the authority of an amendment made to The Ontario Solicitors Act in 1920, and providing for the furnishing of further details of services rendered upon taxation, the Taxing. Officer ordered an amount to be allocated to each individual item, considering that this would constitute the furnishing of "further details of the services rendered."

Reviewing the previous authorities, Mr. Justice Grant reaches the conclusion that the Taxing Officer was wrong, inasmuch as the bills did show exhaustively and particularly the nature of the services rendered by the solicitors. A distinction is made between services rendered in the conduct of actions or proceedings in courts, ast to which the party and party tariff should serve as a guide in the preparation of bills between solicitor and client, and services rendered generally where there is no such guide.

G. F. H.

Liability of OWNER OF MOTOR CAR IN DAMAGES FOR Accident. -Driscoll v. Colletti1 deals with the question of the position of a person who merely happens to be in a motor car on the invitation. of the owner or driver when a collision occurs, and who suffers injury as a result of the negligence of one driver or the other, or perhaps of both. There had previously been some difficulty in reconciling some of the former judgments, and a review of the authorities by Mr. Justice Riddell, writing the judgment of the Appellate Division, is therefore of very practical interest.

In the case in question, the party injured was in a car borrowed from its owner by his brother, who was driving it and who had the permission of the owner to take a friend with him. A collision which caused injury to the plaintiff was, according to the finding of the jury, caused by the negligence of the brother. The plaintiff being in the car by the implied permission of the owner and therefore not

158 O.L.R. 389.

158 O.L.R. 444; (1926) 2 D.L.R. 428.

being a trespasser, and the 25th section of The Ontario Highway Traffic Act making the owner of the car liable to a person upon the highway injured by reason of negligence of the driver, the Court reached the conclusion that the owner was responsible to the plaintiff. G. F. H.

*

CHANGING STANDARDS.-When Vera, Countess of Cathcart, was denied admission to the United States on account of her "moral turpitude," a delegation of strong-minded women waited upon Secretary of Labour, Davis, to protest against the injustice of excluding the Countess while Earl Craven, the co-partner of her guilt, was allowed to move freely about the country. Such a step would not have occurred to the mothers of those ladies and might have shocked their grandmothers. However, we have travelled far from the prudery of Victorian days,-how far, Beck, J.A., has described in graphic phrase in G. v. B and B.1

This was an action for breach of promise of marriage, in which the chastity of the plaintiff came in question. It was urged on behalf of the defence that there is an implied condition of chastity on the part of the woman, breach of which justifies the man in breaking his promise. Upon this point Beck, J.A., said:

"I think the learned judge correctly stated the law; namely, in effect, that there is no universal rule of law imposing such an absolute implied condition and that what is to be implied in any particular case depends upon the circumstances of the state of society, its standard of morals, its customs, habits and modes of life, looked at generally and also looked at particularly with regard to locality and to class and to the individuals. Taking all these and such like circumstances as we find them here and now, it must be acknowledged that they represent an entirely different atmosphere from that which existed when, generations ago, some English judges, in passing observations, expressed the opinion that absolute bodily chastity at all previous times in the past of the woman was an implied condition of a man's promise to marry. In those days and in that state of society the women ordinarily lived a sheltered and retired life. It was an age and a state of society in which "respectability" was much more highly esteemed and in which a woman's fall from virtue, even though repented of, seemed to be the one unforgivable sin. To-day we have co-education commencing with an 1(1926) I W.W.R. 324, at p. 330.

early age and life in the business world side by side with men and a general liberty and freedom of conduct on the part of women which leaves them open to many temptations and dangers then wholly unknown. And a woman's fall, repented of, is looked at with much more humaneness and Christian charity: indeed, there is a strong tendency to accord to women an equal right to immorality!"

Autres temps, autres moeurs!

R. W. S.

421

EDITOR'S NOTE-BOOK

THE HIGHER The mob of gentlemen who write with ease in the JOURNALISM. great British periodicals on art, literature and public affairs have an enormous clientèle throughout the English-speaking world, and justly so, because their knowledge of the subjects they discuss is not only sound and intimate but is communicated in language that never fails to charm. Their manner is not Jovian. Rarely are they arrogant in their opinions-a habit so marked in their cis-atlantic contemporaries. Indeed their modesty leads them upon occasion to deprecate the value of their work considered as a feature peculiar to the activities of the age. And this brings me to the point. Some months ago one of the best-known literary men in London, who long had delighted the readers of a leading weekly with the outpourings of his versatile mind, announced that he had decided to forsake journalism, i.e., journalism on its highest plane, for literature thus giving rise to the irresistible inference that he differentiated the two and disparaged the former employment of his pen. More recently another member of the same fraternity declared in the columns of a department which he conducts with rare distinction: "Woke early to my dismal situation; I am sick of filling this page week after week. My readers can skip it whenever they like." And he proceeded to compare his life unfavourably with that of Robinson Crusoe on his desert island. Still another of the craft confesses that the Great Strike relieved him for nine days of the job of "recording, commenting, explaining and generally assaulting the weak mind of this long-suffering nation." On the surface all this looks uncommonly like affectation, but it isn't. The higher journalism in England doesn't breed poseurs. These purveyors of the most attractive food for the mind produced in our age honestly doubt that what they are doing deserves to be classed as literature.' Well, then, if it isn't literature my notion. of what constitutes the genuine article must be revised. I cannot forget Charles Lamb's disdain of biblia a-biblia, "books which are no books, things in books' clothing." To bind up printed matter in buckram or leather doesn't make it literature if it lacks the Voltarian test of being infinitely agreeable.' And to that test the writings I am discussing respond in a very handsome degree. In sum, the regular contributors to the periodical British press belong to the tribe of Montaigne, the creator of the Essay-and the Essay stands in much

27-C.B.R.-VOL. IV.a

the same relation to prose as the Sonnet does to poetry. Nor should they despair because of the fugitive nature of the medium through which they reach their readers. No maker of books has so constant, or so eager a multitude of admirers as theirs. What they write, is always read. For them each week is a new adventure upon the lively interest of their constituency. Let them take heart of courage in what has just now been said of some of the writings of Thomas Love Peacock:-"They are excellent journalism, and they show that excellent journalism can be well worth reprinting a hundred years after it was written."

SOME RECENT I have three books1 before me at the moment written Books. by men sworn of the altar of Astraea. Of their authors two are native Canadians in active practice of their profession, the third is an Englishman who forsook the law early in life to become a Journalist. As such he has won very high renown. I regret that my brief mention of these books here must take the place of an extended notice of them in the proper department of the REVIEW, but owing to pressure on our space this must suffice if any attention is to be given to them before the Long Vacation.

In The Bench and Bar of Lower Canada Mr. Buchanan has furnished the profession with a series of interesting notes illustrating events of more or less importance in the lives of outstanding members of the Quebec Bench and Bar when the juridical history of the Province was young-and it goes without the saying that there is no field of history that Quebec touches that it does not ornament in a way peculiar to itself. The quality of native attractiveness in the subject-matter extenuates certain defects of form and method apparent in the book. It chiefly offends the reader by its lack of coōrdination of content; and a division of the content into chapters furnished with appropriate headings would also improve it. For instance, the author makes no technical pause between the conclusion at p. 29 of his excellent sketch of the Courts since the Conquest and the beginning of his biographical notes.

1

The Bench and Bar of Lower Canada Down to 1850. By A. W. Patrick Buchanan, K.C., Montreal: Burton's Limited, 1825. Pioneer Sketches in the District of Bathurst. By the Honourable Andrew Haydon, M.A. Volume 1. Toronto: The Ryerson Press. The Madonna of the Barricades. Being the Memoirs of George, Lord Chertsey, 1847-1848-1849. By J. St. Loe Strachey. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company.