police are statutory or defined by common law and not by the municipal corporation, so that in the performance of such duties the police are not in that sense servants or agents of the corporation.

The case, as pointed out in the judgment is a novel one, no parallel case having been cited. Apart from the principle established, as above noted, it is of interest from the stand-point that it also holds that the statute validating the tax sale "only validates the sale to the purchaser and affords a defence to an attack upon the sale, but it does not operate as a defence by the municipality for any actionable wrong on the part of any of its officers in connection with the sale." B. B. J.

SUMMARY CONVICTION-PLEA OF GUILTY-MISTAKE-APPEAL TO COUNTY COURT JUDGE.-The recent British Columbia case of R. v. Olney,1 enunciates some startling propositions. While their foundation was already laid in the Alberta cases of R. v. Richmond and R. v. Long Wing, therein cited, we venture to think that most of the profession do not look on these with favour, and will regret to see their principles extended one iota.

The point actually decided in R. v. Olney was that the County Court Judge, hearing an appeal from a Magistrate's conviction, was wrong in refusing to go behind the plea of guilty, on which the Magistrate convicted. The ground set out in the notice of appeal for going behind this plea was that appellant pleaded guilty through mistake, not knowing what the charge meant.

The first point dealt with on appeal from the Judge was whether the plea before the Magistrate could be considered by the Judge at all. And besides the two Alberta cases, several English cases were cited to show that it could be examined. However not one of these English cases turned on facts like those in R. v. Olney. In all but one, the English Court of Criminal Appeal is dealing with an ambiguous plea said not to amount to a plea of guilt but so entered by the Court below. It is quite obvious that the appellate Court could properly correct the error in law into which the lower court fell in making such an entry. One case cited, R. v. Rhodes, goes a little further and at first sight suggests the higher court may inquire if the accused pleaded guilty by mistake. But the facts there show what the Court of Criminal Appeal meant was the lower Court's mistake and not the prisoner's. Moreover the whole passage in R. v. Rhodes is

obiter for the appellate court held the plea of guilty had been made and properly acted on.

Although appeal from a summary conviction is anomalous in that it is a trial de novo, still it is a trial of only what is left to try, and if a plea of guilt is made, nothing remains to try, except the jurisdiction of the Magistrate or error in the sentence he imposed. He can be guilty of no error by convicting if the plea in fact is made, indeed he has but one course open. And the convicted person is in no way legally "aggrieved" if he is convicted after such a plea, and unless aggrieved he cannot appeal.

In R. v. Olney this obstacle was overcome by deciding, not in bald words, but in effect, that a plea of guilty made by mistake was not a plea at all. This reasoning was then employed: the Magistrate without a plea had no jurisdiction to adjudicate. Therefore his conviction of the defendant who had pleaded guilty by mistake was an excess of jurisdiction, which the defendants could set up on appeal.

When one considers the principles laid down in the Nat. Bell case3 and R. v. Bolton, there seems the strongest reason to believe the jurisdiction of a magistrate accrues with the laying of the information, or at the latest when the accused appears before him, and that the pleading to the charge is not a factor which in any way affects his power. If it were, how could any court have jurisdiction over a person of unsound mind? But assuming the plea to be an ingredient of jurisdiction, how can one defend the theory that when a plea is to a charge not understood, there is no plea at all? What legal principle can be invoked supporting this? Can anyone look back in legal history and find the law has ever recognized the prisoner's right to have the charge made clear to him, even with his life at stake? As J. W. Smith satirically puts it:

"But still that he might understand

The nature of the charge,
The same was in the Latin tongue

Read out to him at large."

Even after indictments were in English, they were made up of abstruse formulas. Did any layman ever fully understand one? Yet we knew that until recent times the prisoner was not allowed to have a copy, and in some circumstances not even counsel to explain it. How many convictions for treason or murder were made without jurisdiction if the principle of R. v. Olney were applied?

3 [1922] 2 A.C. 128.

(1841) 1 Q.B. 66.

Apart from history, is it common sense that a court's judicial powers should depend on the state of mind of those it tries? It is intolerable that the accused should have the power to make his judge usurper by later swearing to a secret locked within his own breast. How can such evidence be met? Must a magistrate or judge add mind-reading to his qualifications, or take the consequences?

No one will deny that a magistrate who learns he has taken a plea of guilty from a prisoner who did not grasp the charge, would în certain cases do well to re-open the matter and allow another plea, assuming that he has the power. But how can this be looked on as other than an indulgence? The prisoner has only himself to blame if he hastily selects a path when he cannot see his way. To allow him to avoid the penalty of his rashness is surely a matter of grace. Were it not for R. v. Olney and the Alberta cases mentioned, we could feel no doubt that any exercise of this discretion could not amount

to even error.

D. M. G.

721

EDITOR'S NOTE-BOOK

Qui, gravis es nimium, potes hinc jam lector abire.

Mart. Epig. 11, 17.

CONCERNING Simonides of Ceos is said to have created that subtle EPIGRAMS. form of literary art known as the Epigram. In strict conformity with its etymology he used it as an inscription to commemorate the dead, and the finest example of his employment of it for that purpose is his tribute to the three hundred Spartan martyrs at the pass of Thermopylae. The Roman writers seized upon the epigram as an apt medium of satire. What it became in the hands of Martial is known to all students of the classics. times the epigram exhibits itself chiefly in the shape of a single stanza, generally from two to eight lines in length, closely packed with wit. The French excel in it; but there are some very happy specimens in English. Rochester's well-known stanza, said to have been affixed to the bed-room door of Charles II, comes naturally to mind:

In our

The poet Rogers, who once remarked that if he did not say illnatured things no one would hear what he said, was responsible for the following:

Ward has no heart, they say, but I deny it;
He has a heart, and gets his speeches by it."

Walter Savage Landor wrote surprisingly good epigrams in Latin.

Below are two striking examples from the French. In 1763, when a bronze statue of Louis XV on horseback, surrounded by figures of Prudence, Justice, Force and Peace, was set up in what is now the Place de la Concorde, some wit described the memorial in this wise:

"O la belle statue, O le beau piédestal!
Les Vertus sont à pied, le Vice est à cheval."

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

Then we have this cruel impromptu by Lebrun at the expense of Mme. Fanny de Beauharnais, a literary lady of the First Empire:

"Eglé, belle et poète, a deux petits travers.

Elle fait son visage, et ne fait pas ses vers."

But we learn that the lady revenged herself on her candid friend by inviting him to dinner and there exhibiting the couplet to her guests with the following addition in her own hand: "Vers faits contre moi par M. Lebrun, qui dîne aujourd'hui chez moi!"

That a discussion of epigrams is not so foreign to the métier of the REVIEW as it might appear on the surface is established by the fact that many of our greatest judges and advocates have practised the art. Indeed the lawyers have made the epigram a literary flower of their own. After a reading of Lord Justice Knight-Bruce's racy judgment in Barrow v. Barrow, beginning in this wise: "These and two other suits are the fruit of an alliance between a solicitor and a widow, who, for the first sixty days of their married life, namely, from the 30th of July to the 28th of September, 1850, lived as well as quarrelled together, but at the end of that period parted, exchanging a state of conflict which, though continual, was merely domestic, for the more conspicuous, more disciplined, and more effectual warfare of Lincoln's Inn and Doctor's Commons," one need not be surprised to learn that he struck off at a dinner party one of the best epigrams ever written in English. It seems that some of the ladies, who were guests at the dinner declared themselves tremendously impressed by the handsome face of a young curate recently appointed to the parish church-more particularly did they go into raptures over his wonderful eyes. This served as an invocation to KnightBruce's muse, and the following was promptly handed round the table:

"The curate's eyes our ladies praise.

I never see their light divine;
He always shuts them when he prays,
And when he preaches closes mine."

ALL

THE WORST OF Such was the conclusion I arrived at concerning "The World of William Clissold," after pursuing POSSIBLE WORLDS. my weary way through that portentous threedecker. There Mr. H. G. Wells with extensive

view surveys mankind from China to Peru, and, more suo, makes an end of all the surmise and questioning of lesser minds concerning

15 DeG. M. & G 785.