The Editor's Bag of our best families, do not seem to have been pointed out, however, by any of the speakers. In the end, after Mr. Wilks had been in jail several weeks, such an uproar was created that the Government receded from its. position, and the prisoner was released. The London Times, commenting edi torially on the affair, declared that the Government had blundered in sending Wilks to prison, pointed out that this was "admitted by his release," and added : Mr. YYilks's case is also worth noting be cause it illustrates the anomalies of the law of husband and wife, most of them very much to the disadvantage of the former. From one ex treme the law has gone to another. The hus band is liable for the wrongs committed by his wife, though he has no power to prevent her from committing them. She for many kinds of con tracts is his agent, and can bind him practically to almost any amount. He may be compelled to find her in funds wherewith to carry on pro ceedings in the Divorce Court. Liabilities founded upon the identity of husband and wife are continued when, by reason of the Married Woman's Property Acts, it no longer exists. Of these anomalies we rarely hear, though, as any one conversant with proceedings in Courts of Law is aware, they lead to cases quite as hard as that of Mr. Wilks. Somehow, then, is kept well in the background the fact that, in a Par liament elected by men, laws placing them in a position of inferiority and disadvantage are passed. As usual the Times extracted the large fact of sober significance from an affair that was in most of its phases a comedy. Barely half a century ago, so far as property rights were concerned, the English law regarded the husband and wife as one person, and the husband as that one. Today she not only has her own property, but he may be imprisoned for her delinquency in paying her taxes. And yet there are those who say that the legal world does not move.
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THE ADELPHOMACHOUS CAT HERE is a story that illustrates some fine points of law and equity that arose in the carrying out of an amicable contract, and if it is not a new one it is no fault ot ours. The editor would be pleased to have readers send him any facts of its pedigree. There were four brothers who had inherited a storage warehouse from their father. He had divided the prop erty equally among them. Among the appurtenances was a cat — a fine animal, excellent for mousing. This, too, was divided, the eldest brother owning the right front quarter, the second brother the left front quarter, and the younger brothers the two hind quarters. Now, unfortunately, the cat, in one of its nocturnal prowls, injured the right front paw, and the eldest brother attended to that portion of his property by binding the injured member with a greased rag. The car, thankful for this relief to its sufferings, went to sleep contentedly before the fire; but in the midst of its slumbers a falling coal ignited the rag, and the animal, howling with agony, dashed through the warehouse, and com ing in contact with some combustibles, set the building on fire. When the loss came to be figured out, the three younger brothers wished to throw it all upon the eldest, on the ground that had he not tied up his part of the cat with the inflammable rag, the building would not have been destroyed. He, on the contrary, contended that had the cat only been possessed of the front right paw, his property, it would have stood still and burned to death. It was the three other paws that caused the damage. The brothers argued the case until they died, but they never reached an agreement.
