so, to entrust the administration of his bequest to a society which may not exactly answer the true description, but whose constitution enables it to carry his benevolent wishes into execution.

The founder of an hospital in Aberdeen named as patrons the Magistrates, Town Council, and 'four ministers commonly called the Town's four ministers of the Old and New Churches and their successors in their respective offices,'-there being only two collegiate churches and four ministers at the time. The burgh being afterwards divided into six parishes, having each a single clergyman, the Court held that only four ministers could be patrons, two of them always being the ministers of the churches referred to in the deed of mortification, and the others being chosen according to the seniority of their appointment as town's ministers; or if they were coæval in that respect, then by their seniority as licensed clergymen (Governors of Gordon's Hospital v. Ministers of Aberdeen, 8 July 1831, 9 S. 909). Again, by George Heriot's will, the governors of his hospital were the Provost, Magistrates, and ordinary Council of Edinburgh, and the ministers thereof for the time being. At the date of the foundation, certain representatives of the Incorporated Trades were constituent members of the Council, but they lost their rights as such by the Burgh Reform Act. The Court held, that in ceasing to be members of the Council, they had also lost their right as to the governorship of the hospital (Incorporated Trades of Edinburgh v. Governors of Heriot's Hospital, 3d June 1836, 14 S. 873). In delivering his opinion, the Lord President Hope alluded to the circumstance, that since the foundation of the hospital the ministers of Edinburgh had become Presbyterians from being Episcopalians, and had increased in numbers from eight to eighteen, and yet all of them were entitled to act as governors.

A bequest made, prior to the Poor-Law Amendment Act (8 & 9 Vict., c. 83), 'to the Minister and Kirk-session of the Parish of Bathgate for the time being, for the benefit and behoof of the poor in the said parish,' includes both able-bodied and legal poor, and does not fall under the 52d section of the statute (Liddle v. Kirksession of Bathgate, 14 July 1854, 16 D. 1075).

A testator domiciled in Jamaica named as his trustees, to administer a charity in Scotland, five heritors of the parish which was to benefit by the bequest, 'their heirs and assignees,'-the Court held that the trusteeship was hereditary in the family of each heritor, and was not to be restricted to the heir of the last survivor of the

original trustees (Ferguson v. Marjoribank, 1 April 1853, 15 D. 637).

In England, charities are not less favoured objects in the eye of the law than they are with us. Of this no better proof could be adduced than the existence of the well-known doctrine of cy-près (or approximation). In treating of this doctrine, Mr Boyle says (Boyle on Charities, 147, et seq.), 'If charity be the general, substantial intention, though the mode by which it is to be executed fails through accident or other circumstances, the Court will find some means of effectuating that general intention (Attorney-General v. Earl of Winchelsea, 3 B. C. C. 379; Attorney-General v. Minshull, 4 Ves. 14; Moggridge v. Thackwell, 7 Ves. 69-82). In resorting, therefore, to the principle of cy-près, the Courts have been guided by a supposed discovery of intention, on the part of the donor, to devote the subject of his gift, at all events, to charity, and to deprive his representatives of every claim to the property. Upon this supposed indication of the donor's will, such obstructions as may occur in the course which he has himself pointed out, are not allowed to arrest, but merely to turn aside the flow of his bounty; whilst, if no course has been perceptively directed by him, a channel, by which his charity may be rendered both beneficial and useful, will be marked out by the Court. Thus it is well established, that where the donor has left the selection of objects, as in some cases; of the mode, as in others; and of the charities themselves, as in a third class of cases, to individuals who afterwards become incapable of executing the office confided to them, the Court will take upon itself to act in their stead (see 7 Ves. 78). It would indeed be difficult to advance any proposition which is more firmly established in courts of equity, than that a trust shall not be allowed to fail for want of a trustee. And although, in several instances, where a charitable gift has had to be executed cy-près, it has been sought to have limits assigned to that proposition, yet the rule has been invariably acted upon.' It would be in vain to examine, in detail, the various modifications of this doctrine, and the manner in which it has been applied by the English courts. A very large portion of Mr Boyle's Treatise on Charities' is devoted to an examination of these, and to it therefore we must refer (Boyle, 147-280).

[In another article we shall complete the subject by a review of the decisions relating to resulting interests under charitable trusts.]

New Books.

A Compendium of the Law of Insurance, comprising Marine, Fire, and Life Insurance. By THOMAS S. PATON, Esq., Advocate. Edinburgh: T. and T. Clark.

MR PATON is well known to the profession as the editor of a series of reports of appeal cases for the period previous to the issue of Shaw's Reports in 1821; when, for the first time, regular reports of the current decisions were issued, under the authority of the House of Lords. In collecting, arranging, and abridging the unpublished decisions of a century of litigation, Mr Paton rendered an important service to the legal profession,—a service which could only have been efficiently rendered by one possessed of some of the most valuable qualifications of a legal adviser-namely, untiring industry, conscientious devotion to the business in hand, and a competent knowledge of the law which he had undertaken to illustrate. We believe that those who most frequently have occasion to consult the reported decisions will be found most willing to acknowledge the utility of Mr Paton's labours in this useful, though comparatively uninviting field of literature.

Mr Paton's subsequent literary efforts have been of a more fragmentary character. Instead of attempting to identify his name with some one subject sufficiently extensive to afford scope for the display of learning and research, he seems to be satisfied with illustrating special subjects that have not been treated with much fulness by the institutional writers, but which, on the other hand, have scarcely attained such an importance in the law of Scotland as to require that careful and elaborate treatment which can only be given in a special treatise. For example, his Commentary on the Law of Stoppage in Transitu, although useful and accurate enough so far as it went, could only be regarded as a chapter in what is very much wanted at present,-a modern treatise on the Law of Sale, as administered in Scotland. The Law of Insurance, which is the subject of Mr Paton's latest publication—although in itself it perhaps affords a sufficient foundation for a good special treatise-has been treated in the same desultory way. Although it has the merit which the author claims for it, of possessing the requisite degree of condensation which, in combination with care and accuracy, render a legal

work useful for purposes of immediate reference, Mr Paton's work has but slender pretensions to rank as a systematic treatise.

The author is evidently well acquainted with the principles of the Law of Insurance, and has marked out the limits of his subject intelligently and with precision. But, unfortunately, the method of arrangement which he has adopted is not calculated to produce a corresponding clearness of perception in the mind of the reader. Every person acquainted with mercantile transactions is aware that the kind of questions that arise under the different categories of fire, life, and marine insurance, are as different from each other as the risks, the subject of insurance, and the conditions as to validity, are different. It was therefore most desirable, if not absolutely essential, that the arrangement of the subject should have been based upon the natural and obvious principle of a threefold division, treating of these contracts separately in different parts of the work. Mr Paton, however, has adopted a more artificial system of classification; by which he divides the whole subject into seventeen chapters, in the various parts of which he discusses certain relations of the contract, and illustrates them by examples drawn from the three classes of risks in succession, or from such as are applicable. The consequence of this arrangement is, that the reader, desirous, it may be, of ascertaining the construction of a certain condition-in a policy of life assurance, for example—is obliged to pass through a fiery and aqueous ordeal—to investigate the action of the igneous forces, and to brave the perils of the sea-before he comes to the topic of which he is actually in search.

We do not overlook the consideration, that a principle may be best illustrated by bringing into one view the different species of contracts to which it has relation. But this advantage is overbalanced by the inconvenience experienced in consulting a work the arrangement of which is rather conventional than practical.

It was of course inevitable that, in the investigation of a branch of purely commercial law such as insurance, great reliance should be placed upon English decisions. Until our law has been assimilated to that of England to a greater degree than, for the sake of the science, we hope it will be in our time, it is not to be expected that any large proportion of the members of the legal profession in Scotland will possess themselves of the English law reports. It is therefore most desirable, when English decisions are referred to, that the facts of the case should be stated briefly, yet with such distinc

ness as to exhibit the manner in which the question of law was presented for the determination of the court. The notes to the quarto edition of Bell's Commentaries furnish an admirable example of the proper mode of exhibiting the authorities, in the treatment of questions of mixed English and Scotch law. We presume the brevity of the plan of Mr Paton's work was the reason for omitting to state the import of the English cases which he cites very copiously in support of his propositions. The absence of that feature, which gave such a peculiar value to the works of the late Professor Bell, must be regarded as a blemish in any Scotch treatise bearing upon mercantile law.

In other respects, the execution of Mr Paton's volume is pretty satisfactory. Here and there we notice a deficiency of practical information in matters relating to mercantile usage, such as the forms of policies and the mode of carrying through insurance transactions by the intervention of brokers, etc. But the law of insurance, in so far as it is matter of decision, appears to be carefully studied and succinctly stated.

Before concluding, we hope Mr Paton will pardon us for entering an energetic protest against his very disrespectful treatment of Messrs Shaw and Dunlop's Reports. It is scarcely civil to omit the reference to the number of the volume, which Mr Paton has constantly done;1 but to go the length of actually misnaming the series, is very inconsiderate towards the reporters, besides injuring the utility of his book as a work of reference. Mr Paton may have a reason for using the formula S. and D.' to denote indiscriminately both the first and second series of the Court of Session Reports; but the recurrence of this formula, divorced from its natural conjunction with the number of the volume or series of volumes to which it relates, however much it may be supposed to embellish the pages of Mr Paton's treatise, is more likely to mystify than to aid the practitioner in his researches. Mr Paton of course may plead the example of the Institutionalists, who, after quoting from the text of the civil law, never by any chance condescended upon a numerical reference to the texts which they so glibly cited. If they had done so, the reader might have discovered that the text, in nine cases out of ten, did not bear out the doctrine! We hope Mr Paton has a better reason for withholding the needed references; and that when his

1 For instances of this, see the following pages, selected at random from the first four sheets, viz., pp. 3, 4, 8, 11, 12, 13, 32, 34, 36, 41, 46.