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other things I presume it is the same. With regard to personalty, I do not know whether it has been decided in what way it would go.

The President: No; it has not been decided.

Mr. Adye Douglas: In the case of Brook v. Brook, a very old case, what took place was only incidental to it.

The President: But there have been cases since the case of Brook v. Brook.[1]

Mr. Adye Douglas: There can be no doubt that such a law if passed in Australia would be recognised as one of very strong union and feeling; and I am quite sure that the feeling will grow and grow so long as these laws are not identical.

Sir F. Dillon Bell[2]:The argument is not concealed

  1. Since the decision of Brook and Brook there have been two important cases, neither of which, however, settles the present question, but makes it still more confused and perplexing, the judges in both being equally divided in favour of contradictory principles of law. The reader is referred to the comments of The Times, August 6th, 1879, on Sottomayor v. De Barros, and to an article in the same newspaper, April 15th, I881, in re Goodman’s Trusts. From the latter we extract the following:—“To Lords Justices James and Cotton (differing from Lord Justice Lush and the Master of the Rolls) legitimacy or illegitimacy is not an incident which can be separated from a person according to the law of the Court in which he is suing. Hannah Pieret’s legitimacy by Scotch law they consider an inherent quality of Hannah Pieret; she necessarily brings it with her into the English Court which had to allot her aunt’s goods. An apparent objection to this view is the admitted refusal of English Courts to accept a foreign certificate of legitimacy in favour of a claimant to English land. Lord Justice James concedes the inconsistency. He is satisfied to pass it by as an English eccentricity which he would range under other ‘barbarous irregularities’ and narrownesses of local law. In truth, when the rule began to operate, aliens could not have inherited English land. … The wisdom of the Law Lords, though it may settle the law as it shall be, can hardly clear it as it is.”
  2. It is violating no confidence to state that Sir F. Dillon Bell is entirely agreed as to the propriety of permitting marriage with a deceased wife’s sister in general.