we have sinned, and we glory in our shame, because the Indemnity Act says that no action shall lie for a wrong done by an official during the war in good faith in the exercise of his duties: in short, just because the exaction was illegal at Common Law and contrary to the Bill of Rights, we defy you to get back a penny.' The Court of Appeal has no option but to admit the legal validity of this attractive argument; but not without protest. Lord Justice Scrutton 'expressed regret that the suppliants, who, in his view, had suffered a wrong at law, should be deprived of their remedy by a misunderstanding of the Indemnity Act, 1920, and he might be permitted to regret that the Government in those circumstances should keep money illegally obtained, but he could do no more than regret it.' The epilogue is that while this litigation is going on, the claimants have lost even the right to apply to the War Compensation Court, being barred by the expiry of the time specified by the Indemnity Act for bringing such claims.

Should any reader suppose that too unfavourable a light has been thrown on the above cases, we hope that one final illustration will show that our highest Court of Justice is becoming a little tired of the fantastic lengths to which the Crown will sometimes push its claims. The recent case of Postmaster-General v. Liverpool Corporation [1923] A. C. 587, supplies a kind of legal argument and a degree of cynicism for which it would be hard to find a parallel in our law reports. The facts were simple. The Corporation were the undertakers for the supply of electricity to the City of Liverpool, and owned the electric main which was here in question. The Postmaster-General owned a telephone-pipe which he had taken over, under statutory powers, from the National Telephone Co. An explosion occurred through the escape of electricity from the Corporation's main to the telephone-pipe, and the latter was damaged. It was found as a fact, and was not disputed, that the escape was caused not through any defect in the Corporation's main, but through the negligent and incompetent laying of the telephone-pipe. It is provided by an Act of 1878 that any person who injures or destroys a line belonging to the Postmaster-General must make good the damage to that official. As we have said, the injury was caused

entirely through a defect in the Postmaster-General's own telephone-pipe. He proceeded to sue the Corporation for the damage.

The House of Lords had difficulty in maintaining judicial restraint of language. Those Lords who did not speak in anger spoke in sorrow; for indeed they could not but feel that such litigation brings the whole system of justice into contempt. Lord Carson accurately summarised the Postmaster-General's contention when he said:

'My Lords, it seems to me that the appellant desires to lay down that not only is the Postmaster-General, by which I mean of course his department, incapable of doing wrong, but that if he does commit a wrong, whereby damage occurs, he ought to ask somebody else to pay for it.'

Lord Shaw said that in the ordinary relations of men, the proposal would be monstrous, and if carried into practice would of course plainly be a tyrannical and unjustifiable act.' The Earl of Birkenhead described the whole proceedings as an absolutely hopeless appeal without merit in fact or foundation in law.' The total amount of damage done by the escape of electricity was 401. The proceedings were taken through the whole hierarchy of the Courts, from County Court to House of Lords. Before the final tribunal three King's Counsel and two Juniors appeared. The case, from first to last, cannot have cost less than several thousand pounds. It need hardly be said that ultimately the public pays for the Crown's share of these totally unnecessary costs. The Attorney-General solemnly suggested that if the decision went against the Postmaster-General, it would be necessary to introduce legislation. Undaunted by the veiled threat, the Earl of Birkenhead waxed satirical:

'It is indicated that legislation may become necessary if the view of the Postmaster-General fails of acceptance in this House. I have amused myself by speculating as to its probable ambit. The first section of such a Bill will, I suppose, provide that when the Postmaster-General by his own negligence occasions damage to a telegraphic line other persons (including perhaps the owners) non-contributory to that damage and negligence shall pay for it; and the second,

no doubt, will provide that when the Postmaster-General inherits from a company a laid pipe which neither they nor he could have laid down without the consent of X., the Postmaster-General shall nevertheless be absolved from the condition without which his predecessors in title would never have been allowed by X. to lay the pipe at all. My Lords, I shall watch with interest the Parliamentary progress of such a proposal.'

All the Lords were unanimous that the case, assuming that it should ever have been brought at all, should never have been carried beyond the County Court. For example, Lord Shaw observes:

'I have read with much care the decision of the Court of Appeal; it is one of great analytical accuracy. It emphatically negatived the suggestion that s. 8 of the Telegraph Act of 1868 gave any cover or warrant for conduct of the kind described, or for the claim put forward. I think the Postmaster-General's department might have been well content to stop there and to consider itself relieved from what must have been the odious duty of endeavouring to support by statute what would otherwise be, as I have stated, tyrannical and unjustifiable conduct. They have not chosen that course, my Lords, and they come here because it is a test case. My answer, in full agreement with the County Court judge and the Court of Appeal, is that the claim and all other claims of which this is a test or sample have no support whatever under s. 8 properly construed.'

Lord WRENBURY: 'My Lords, I agree, and I desire to add that I entirely concur in that which has been said by the noble and learned Lord on the Woolsack as to the action of the Postmaster-General in bringing this appeal before your Lordships' House.'

Lord CARSON: 'My Lords, I also concur, and I should like to add that, in my opinion, when once the County Court judge had found the facts, which are not challenged, in these proceedings, I think it is regrettable that the PostmasterGeneral proceeded with the litigation.'

Is it credible, in view of these pronouncements, that the Crown ever believed that it had any real chance of success in its monstrous claim? We venture to think that any lawyer who knew his business would, as soon as the County Court judge's findings were known, have answered the legal question as the House of Lords

answered it. Why, then, is the case litigated with such pertinacity? There can be only one reply. The method is one of terrorisation. The Corporation is being punished for its obduracy in not yielding at once to the Postmaster-General's piratical demand. The choice is as simple as 'your money or your life'-pay us 401. now, or pay your counsel some thousands of pounds after, say, two years of litigation. Invariably these cases, after their first stages, resolve themselves into a fight for costs. Fortunately, the intended victim in this case was a powerful corporation with money as well as spirit; but in the long run, the tax-paying inhabitants both of Liverpool and of England will pay for the production of this tragi-comedy. A private individual, who did not wish to enjoy the luxury of martyrdom, would pay his 407. at once with what fortitude he could muster; and nobody could blame him if he falsified his next incometax return for a like amount.

On a previous occasion, we have attempted to point the moral of cases like these, and will refrain from doing so again—even if it were necessary to do so; for the facts themselves are eloquent enough without comment. Those who wish to study in detail the curious methods and effects of departmental-judicial jurisdiction will find a typical and, many will think, a startling example in the powers exercised by the Minister of Health under the National Insurance Act, 1911, in regard to removing the names of medical practitioners from panels. '* It is gratifying to learn that a Bill is, as we understand, now being drafted to reform the whole question of remedies against the Crown. Until the provisions of this enactment are known, we beg leave to remain respectfully sceptical of the enthusiasm, qualified though it be, with which some of our publicists, such as Sir John Marriott, appear to regard the present glories of our Constitution.

CARLETON KEMP ALLEN.

* See Ministry of Health, Reports of Enquiries and Appeals, etc., Vol. III, H.M. Stationery Office, 1924.

Art. 4.-NATURE'S WARFARE.

1. The Animal and its Environment: a Text-book on the Natural History of Animals. By L. A. Borradaile. Henry Froude and Hodder & Stoughton, 1923.

2. The Factors of Safety in Animal Structure and Animal Economy. By S. J. Meltzer. The Harvey Lectures. New York: Lippincott, 1908.

3. Life. An Introduction to the Study of Biology. By A. E. Shipley. Cambridge University Press, 1923. 4. The Cambridge Natural History. Edited by S. F. Harmer and A. E. Shipley. 10 vols. Macmillan,

1895-1909.

5. The Factor of Safety in Research. By A. Franklin Shull. Science,' vol. LX, no. 1428. 1922. 6. The Botany of the Living Plant. Macmillan, 1923.

7. Animaux Venimeux et Venins. Paris: Masson, 1922.

By F. O. Bower.

By Marie Phisalix.

A RECENT writer on the desert fauna has stated: 'Perhaps there never was a life so nurtured in violence, so tutored in attack and defence as this. Their warfare is continuous from the birth to the death.' But he took too narrow a view of the situation. What he says of the desert is equally true of the depths of the seas, of the surface of the earth, and of the air above the earth. The warfare of animal with animal, of plant with plant, of animal with plant, and vice versa, is incessant and internecine. But, as the history of our Navy shows, every fresh means of attack provokes fresh means of defence, for the devices of living organisms are almost incalculable.

Both plants and animals have a wonderful power of regeneration and of surviving injuries and mutilations. Even if a small cutting be taken from most plants it is capable of reproducing its kind, and in the course of time a fully grown plant of the same sort arises from the slender slip. The cut surface forms a raw spot, a danger spot on the stem, and to save the plant a ring of cells on the circumference of the wound grows rapidly, closing in, until it has completely covered the exposed surface. This ingrowing rim is called a callus, and its growth