coronation of William Rufus, being allowed to resume the office of Chief Justiciar for a while. Rebelling against the King in 1088, he was captured after a siege of seven weeks in a castle which he had taken possession of, and finally deported to Normandy. In the reign of Stephen, Prince Henry, afterwards Henry II., held the office for a year. The celebrated Ranulphus de Glanville was Chief Justiciar to Henry II.; and during his tenure of the office he succeeded in making the decrees of the Aula Regis acceptable to the middle classes of the realm. His book on the "Laws and Customs of the Kingdom of England" was written during his incumbency of the office of Chief Justiciar, and it stands as the earliest complete embodiment of English law. The last of the great statesmen and soldiers to hold the office was Hubert de Burgh in the reigns of John and Henry III. De Burgh achieved undying fame by preventing a second French conquest of England under Prince Louis in 1216, restoring the prestige of England abroad, which had fallen low at the hands of King John. When the Aula Regis fell into obsolescence on the reconstruction of the courts of justice in the reign of Edward I., the office of Chief Justiciar fell with it, the Chancellor succeeding to some of his duties and privileges.

THE ESSENCE OF HISTORY.-How hard it is to down fallacies when people who ought to recognize their responsibilities as teachers and guides do their worst to perpetuate them. In reviewing Professor Pasquale Villari's recently published "Studies: Historical and Critical," a writer in a recent number of the Athenaeum delivers himself of this choice bit of didacticism: We will add, in order to tame the pride of the scientific historians, who look down upon the looser school, as they consider it, that history as an art has a far greater and more lasting effect upon men than history as a science. It is probable that Froude will outlive both Freeman and Stubbs. Probably Shakespeare has taught the English people more history than all our historians put together." This is almost too fatuous for confutation, but as it finds expression in a dignified publication of quondam authority, it claims some notice. Dealing first with the observation as to the historical quality in Shakespeare, we would simply refer to the misrepresentation that Hubert de Burgh, one of the Chief Justiciars of the thirteenth century, suffers at his hands in the

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tragedy of The Life and Death of King John: Hubert was castellan of Falaise at the time that Prince Arthur was entrusted to his custody, and instead of making a base compact with John to put the young Prince out of the way, as Shakespeare would have us believe, Holinshed's testimony is that Hubert was not only unaware of the King's intention until the assassins sent by him arrived at Falaise, but actually prevented the murder from being perpetrated so long as Arthur remained in his custody. As to Froude outliving Freeman and Stubbs, he undoubtedly will as a rhetorician, but we do not recall that any of the German students of English history rely on Froude as an authority for anything; while Stubbs is cited by them passim. Freeman and Stubbs speak from the record, Froude speaks what his prejudice and prepossessions lead him to say. No one has placed and ticketed Froude more correctly than Justin McCarthy:-"Mr. Froude wants the one indispensable quality of the true historian, accuracy. He wants altogether the cold, patient, stern quality which clings to facts; the scientific quality. Mr. Froude's finest artistic gift becomes his greatest defect for the special work he undertakes to do." History an art, forsooth; is there an art of Truth?

Ottawa.

CHARLES MORSE.

Having been engaged as counsel in some election trials in 1874-5, in which evidence of the witnesses had been taken down by a shorthand reporter, I realized the great advantages, expedition, and accuracy of such a record of the evidence and proceedings at such trials; and being then a Bencher of the Law Society, and also a member of the Legislature of Ontario, I decided to bring the question before both bodies, and to urge its introduction into the Court procedure.

At that time the evidence of witnesses was taken down by the Judge presiding at nisi prius in long-hand, and the only available record of it for use in further proceedings in Court was a copy of the "Judge's notes of evidence" taken from his note book. In Chancery, the evidence was also taken down in long-hand by the presiding Judge, and at the close of his evidence the long-hand record was read over to, and signed by, the witness. Neither mode insured complete accuracy, and both modes often occasioned delay in trials.

Accordingly at a meeting of the Benchers of the Bar Society held on the 3rd December, 1875, at which were present the Hon. J. H. Cameron, Q.C., Treasurer, J. D. Armour, K.C., J. Crickmore, Thomas Hodgins, Q.C., D'Alton McCarthy, Q.C., K. MacKenzie, Q.C., Thomas Robertson, Q.C.. J. S. Sinclair, Hon. L. Wallbridge, Q.C., D. B. Read, Q.C., W. R. Meredith, T. M. Benson, Hon. S. Richards, Q.C., Emilius Irving, Q.C., Edward Martin and the Hon. M. C. Cameron, Q.C., I moved "that a Special Committee consisting of Messrs. Armour, McCarthy and Hodgins be appointed to consider the question of short-hand reporting in Court proceedings, and that the report agreed upon by such com

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mittee be taken into consideration at the meeting of the Benchers on the last Tuesday in December, and that copies of such report be sent to each Bencher."

The motion was agreed to unanimously, and thereupon at the request of my fellow-members of the committee, I drafted the report-having received much assistance from Mr. A. J. Henderson, one of the present staff of Court Stenographers.

The Report was as follows:

To the Benchers of the Law Society, in Convocation assembled:

The undersigned committee, to whom was referred the question of short-hand reporting in connection with the Courts, have to report as follows:

1. That in 1860 a system of short-hand reporting was adopted by the Courts in the State of New York, under which stenographers were appointed to each of the Courts at a per diem allowance, which subsequently was altered for an annual allowance on a very liberal scale.

2. That subsequently a similar system was adopted in the States of Illinois and Maine, and it has been found to work so satisfactorily that the system is now being introduced into the Courts of other States in the American Union.

3. That in 1871 an Act was passed by the Legislature of Quebec (35 Vict. cap. 6, s. 10) authorizing the appointment of short-hand reporters in the Courts of that province. The stenographer there is engaged by the Prothonotary in any case desired by the litigants, and the costs of the short-hand reporter's notes of the evidence are paid in law stamps, and go into the public treasury, the short-hand reporter receiving his fees from the Prothonotary according to the number of folios. Your committee are informed that as the merits of the system have become known, and as a great saving of time. to the Courts has been effected by it, stenography is now being used in nearly every case of importance in that province.

4. In the Dominion Cont roverted Elections Act of 1874, authority is given to the Judge presiding at any election trial to employ a short-hand writer to take down the oral evidence given by witnesses at the trial, and the expense of such short

hand writer is made costs in the cause. A similar practice, your committee believe, has been adopted in election trials in England.

5. In many of the election trials held during this year, affecting the elections to the Legislative Assembly, short-hand reporters have been employed, and the Courts have been enabled to get through the trial more rapidly than in the cases where the evidence has been taken in long-hand by the Judge.

6. Your committee find that where the system of shorthand reporting in the Courts has been adopted, the advantages of the system may be thus classified:

(1) It largely promotes the despatch of business, by lessening the time occupied in the trial of causes. The Judge is not called upon to take more than a mere summary of the evidence for the purposes of his charge to the jury, or his own finding, and he is enabled to give greater attention to the demeanour of the witnesses, and the substance of their evidence. The witness can tell his story or answer questions more promptly, and is not interrupted while important parts of his evidence are being written down in the Judge's notes; and he is not, in the Chancery cases, compelled to wait and hear his evidence read over-sometimes questioned as to its accuracy before being signed by him. The experience of learned Judges and counsel in cases where short-hand reporters have been employed shows that fully one-third of the time usually devoted to the trial of a cause is saved by the employment of a short-hand reporter.

(2) It ensures an accurate record of the evidence and proceedings at the trial. In many cases, owing to the rapidity of human utterance, and the inability to write down. rapidly the evidence in long-hand, or because the learned Judge may not consider some facts material, an accurate record of the evidence is not preserved; and counsel at the trial have no means of knowing what the Judge's notes of evidence contain until moving in Term, after the opportunity of rectifying imperfections has passed away.

(3) It avoids disputes as to the statements of witnesses, and enables a witness to make a consecutive statement of what he knows, without the danger of losing the thread of his