in its original application to a member of the Bar with reference to the House of Com mons: "Will any lady (spinster or widow preferred) assist a gentleman of the long robe in contesting a Parliamentary constitu ency in the coming 'big fight'? Reward to be arranged.—Address Advocate, &c." "Gentlemen of the long robe" wps the method in former times of reference to members of the Bar, in debate in the House of Commons, having seats in that assembly, from the fact that it was not unusual for such gentlemen to hurry from the courts in Westminster Hall to the chamber of the House of Commons in Bar costume. The term "gentlemen of the long robe," as applied to barristers who are members of the House of Commons, is, though no longer heard in debate, retained in the phraseology of the forms and proceed ings of the House. Thus in 1857 a Commit tee of Privileges was appointed to consider the oaths of members, consisting of twentyfive members nominated by the House of Commons and all "gentlemen of the long robe"—a term which, Sir Erskine May ob-. serves, is "understood to comprise all mem bers of the House of Commons who at the time would be' qualified to practise as counsel according to the rules and usages of the Pro fession, whether actually practising or not." (May's Parliamentary Practice, p. 101.)—The Law Times. IN the current number of The Journal of the Society of Comparative Legislation, Profes sor F. W. Maitland writes concerning the recently discovered Laws of Hammurabi: This may be "The Oldest Code of Laws in the World"; it is very far from being the most archaic. It may come to us from "the third millennium B. C.," but we find our selves doubting whether our own English an cestors at the end of the first millennium A. D. were not in many important respects be hind the subjects of Plammurabi and the worshippers of the Sun-God. It is true that we see a great deal more than we like of that "crude retaliation" which our ancestors, most unfortunately for them, saw in the Bible. There is a great deal of
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eye for eye and tooth for tooth. "If a man has made the tooth of a man that is his equal to fall out, one shall make his tooth fall out," so it is written. We do not remember to have seen this principle carried to the length that it goes in the second of the following sentences, in which the Sun-God deals with the builders, the jerry-builders, of Babylon: §229. If a builder has built a house for a man and has not made strong his work, and the house he built has fallen, and he has caused the death of the owner of the house, that builder shall be put to death. §230. If he has caused the son of the owner of the house to die, one shall put to death the son of that builder. On the other hand, some concept corresponding roughly to the Roman citlpa or our own "negligence" seems to play a decidedly larger part than is assigned to it in bodies of law which are much younger than Hammurabi's. For example, the bor rower of an ox which dies a natural death goes quit. "If the ox has pushed a man, by pushing has made known his vice, and he has not blunted his horn, has not shut up his ox, and that ox has gored a man of gentle birth and caused him to die, he shall pay half a mina of silver. If a gentleman's servant, he shall pay one-third of a mina of silver." You must, as our phrase goes, prove the scicntcr against the owner of the ox; it is en titled to its first push. On the other hand, if a man has a wild bull in his charge, and it gores another man, "that case," we are told, has no remedy." We very much wish for a little explanation at this point: our guess would be that the liability for the bull's act is absolute. A surgeon seems to be an insurer, and an insurer under a hea-vy penalty. If his operation upon an eve leads to the loss of an eye, you cut off his hands. But surgery is "extra-hazardous" work. Formal exculpatory oaths are known. So is the water ordeal in the holy river. The ! holy river seems to express its indignation, not by rejecting the culprit, as did the water in our ordeal pits, but by overwhelming him. However, we see a few passages which seem to point to a rational estimate of contradic
