trial. This will give the juniors who really in America, considering the hostile feeling need employment work to do and afford in many parts of the United States toward others opportunities which at present are foreigners which has led to the enactment of laws preventing aliens from holding real denied to them. Lawyers in America, where the practice estate. The " Law Journal " in a recent num of payment by results, or " contingent fees," ber has carefully discussed the subject and is so common, may be surprised to know cited a number of interesting precedents. that such a form of compensation is still It is admitted that the inhabitants of a con regarded as champerty and illegal in this quered territory become subjects of the country, and that a solicitor or barrister State to which it is ceded; but treaties of detected in making an arrangement of this peace commonly give them a right to retain their former allegiance, though seldom un kind with his client would not only be re garded as acting unprofessionally, but would conditionally. When Alsace and Lorraine be severely dealt with. The increase of were ceded to Germany, the inhabitants who actions for libel has caused the leading wished to remain French subjects were newspaper proprietors to form a union for obliged to leave, although they were al self-protection, and the Newspaper Defence lowed to retain their real property. When Combination, as it is called, has issued a California was ceded by Mexico to the report in which it is stated that in the course United States, even more liberal and the of an investigation it was proved to the inhabitants were given a year in which they might elect to remain Mexican citizens and satisfaction of the combination that a solici tor whose conduct was impugned, had no restrictions were put on their right to entered into a written agreement with his reside in the ceded territory or to retain their property. As regards obligations it is client by which he was to receive in satisfac tion of his services one-third of any damages commonly agreed that no portion of the which might be recovered. The case was general public debt is transferred with the reported to the Incorporated Law Society, territory. It has usually been the policy of which, after a full and exhaustive inquiry, England to allow a newly acquired colony found that this agreement was champerty to retain its laws. Thus the Roman-Dutch and illegal and ought not to have been law is the law of Cape Colony, Ceylon and British Guiana. The costume of Paris was entered into. How the solicitor was discip lined, has not been made public, but the retained in Lower Canada and St. Lucia and fact of the inquiry and the report of the the French Codes promulgated in Mauritius society will doubtless result in a diminution remained as the law of the island after its of the number of libel actions. conquest by England in 1810. If these The legal consequences of the acquisition precedents are followed, the study of the old by the United States of Porto Rico and such civil law and of the more modern Spanish other territory as may be awarded to it by law which has been evolved from it will the terms of the treaty of peace, are not doubtless be added to the curriculum of American law schools. only of great technical interest now to law yers generally, but are of especial importance Stuff Gown.
