Fashions in the Law. you are going to be non-suited." The ad vocate, who stood much in awe of his op ponent's legal skill and knowledge spoke to his client. The result was that the case was settled for a moderate sum, and Mr. Byles caught his train. Mr. Justice Byles was a strong Tory, and he had a horror of judicature acts, the fusion of law and equity, and other modern innovations which were floating in the air in 1873. He declared that he would not re main on the bench an hour longer than his fifteen years. On the first day of Hilary term, 1858, he took his seat on the bench of the court of common pleas, and the first day of Hilary, 1873, his resignation arrived. The moment was inconvenient for the appointment of a new judge, but the judge could not resign before, and he would not wait a moment. Of his career on the bench it is enough to say that he was acute, cour teous, and upright, as he was kindly in pri vate life. His name is not connected with many great decisions, but he took part in the case of Chorlton v. Lings, 38 Law J. Rep., C. P. 25, in which it was decided that
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women did not obtain Parliamentary votes by the representation of the People Act, 1867, in virtue of the new franchise con ferred on " every man." His judgment is an example of his rather quaint and oldfashioned judicial style. " No doubt," he says, " the word ' man ' in a scientific treatise on zoology or fossil organic remains would include men, women, and children as con stituting the highest order of vertebrate ani mals. It is also used in an abstract and general sense in philosophical or religious disquisitions. But in almost every other connection the word " man " is used in con tradistinction to " woman "... Women for centuries have always been considered legally incapable of voting for members of Parliament, as much so as of being them selves elected to serve as members. In ad dition to all which, we have the unanimous decision of the Scotch judges. And I trust their unanimous decision and our unanimous decision will forever exorcise and lay this ghost of a doubt, which ought never to have made its appearance!
FASHIONS IN THE LAW. By Seymour D. Thompson. WHAT is roughly termed " the law" is a matter of fashion almost as much as a man's hat or a woman's bonnet. Fashions change in law, as in every other human thing. Legal ideas, like other ideas, are discarded by common consent, often to be revived according to the exigencies of jus tice. It may happen that some powerful, ingenious, or learned lawyer of large repu tation finds it necessary to revive, for the purpose of justice in a particular case, a discarded legal idea; and then it blossoms out and has a new run of popularity, so to speak.
The same human tendency develops fashions or " rages " in particular kinds of medicine, just as in particular kinds of legal doctrine. If medicine is a science, considered as a body or collection of learning, its prac tice does not appear to be much of a science to the druggist who, behind his glass case, compounds the prescriptions. Go and sit down on his stool some evening when no body is in his shop, and get him to talking to you confidentially, and note the revela tions which he will make. Some doctor from the country writes to a medical jour nal, " I had such and such a case [describ
