EDITORIAL DEPARTMENT assassinated in the Lobby of the House of Commons in 1812. Mr. Perceval, who, like Mr. Asquith, was a member of Lincoln's Inn, was successively Solicitor-General and AttorneyGeneral in the Addington Administration. He may, indeed, be regarded as the only other practising member of the profession who has risen to be Prime Minister. Grenville was called to the bar at the Inner Temple in 1735, and Pitt at Lincoln's Inn in 1780, but neither made any prolonged attempt to practise, Pitt's only active connection with the bar being a single journey on the Western Circuit. It has apparently become less diffi cult for practising members of the bar to win distinction in the legislature. Mr. Asquith will preside over a cabinet in which the legal element is unprecedentedly large. Lord Loreburn, Mr. Haldane, Mr. Birrell, Mr. McKenna, Sir Henry Fowler, and Mr. Lloyd-George have all been practising lawyers. If the rumour that Mr. Lloyd-George will succeed Mr. Asquith as Chancellor of the Exchequer prove to be well founded, the two chief members of the Cabinet will be lawyers, the one a barris ter and the other a solicitor." TYPEWRITTEN WILLS. The practice of typewriting wills was reeently condemned by the surrogate of King's County, because of the ease of alteration. In the New York Law Journal a corre spondent suggested that the following simple precautions would obviate these objections: "(i) Have the testator sign at bottom of each page. "(2) Have the typewriting free of erasures or interlineations, with 'all blank space ruled off. "(3) Recite in the in testimonium clause the facts: "(a) That the will is contained on so many sheets of paper. "(b) That the testator has subscribed his name at the bottom of each sheet thereof, and ' to this, the last sheet thereof, he has
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hereto subscribed his name and affixed his seal,' etc. "While no seal is necessary, and but two witnesses are required in this state, by adding the seal and a third witness a will thus executed, is probatable in every state of the Union. "It is my uniform custom to have all wills executed in this manner so as to provide against local intestacy consequent upon a testator becoming afterwards seized of real property in a state foreign to his domicile or to the place where the will is executed." , A still simpler precaution, and one which will prove most efficacious, is to make a letter press copy of the original typewritten sheets. After the sheets have once been wet and dried they are at least asxlifficult to alter as handwriting. THE ENGLISH CAUSE LISTS. It is interesting to those of us who are familiar with the crowded dockets of our large cities where a hearing is a matter of years, to read the comments of the London Law Journal upon the state of the Cause List in the land that was once the historic home of the Law's delay. Thus the Law Times of May second complains that on the civil list in the King's Bench division cases are still waiting trial which were entered as far back as last Octo ber. It is interesting to note that this ex treme congestion is attributed to the fact that the workmen's compensation cases are all assigned to this division. The Chancery division seems to have more cases pending than the King's Bench division. There were 326 cases on this list, but it is stated that this is less than half the number pending in 1898. In the Appeal Court a hearing can be had within three months after the appeal is taken. It should be added, however, that the judicial statistics for 1906 just published indicate what the Law Journal describes as a melancholy truth " that the volume of litigation in the High Court is declining. A study of the cause of this should be full of interest.
