duty to refuse to give effect to a private con tract which violates the rule and would, if judicially enforced, prove injurious to the community." Nordenfelt v. Maxim-Nordenfelt, (1894) A. C. 514.
He rendered invaluable service to English law in eliminating the element of motive in civil wrongs. Nothing could be clearer than his exposition of this question : "Any invasion of the civil rights of another person is in itself a legal wrong, carrying with it liability to repair its necessary and natural consequences, in so far as these are injurious to the person whose right is infringed, whether the motive which prompted it be good, bad or indifferent.
But the existence of a bad motive, in the case of an act which is not in itself illegal, will not convert that act into a civil wrong for which reparation is due. A wrongful act done knowingly with a view to its injurious consequences, may, in the sense of,
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LORD WATSON
law, be malicious; but such malice derives its essential character from the circumstance that the act done constitutes a violation of the law. There is a class of cases which have sometimes been referred to as evidencing that a bad motive may be an element in the composition of a civil wrong; but in these cases the wrong must have its root in an act which the law generally regards as illegal, but excuses its perpetration in cer-
