Controller had ceased to exist, all his liabilities passing, by an Act of 1921, to the Board of Trade. The Board of Trade refused to give back the money, and the plaintiffs proposed to sue for it. But the question was, whom and how were they to sue? Let us follow the course of the litigation. A writ is issued and served upon the solicitor to the Board of Trade. He refuses to accept service. The writ is then served on Sir Sydney Chapman, Permanent Secretary of the Board of Trade. He enters a conditional appearance on behalf of the Board, and then takes out a summons before a Master of the Supreme Court to set aside the writ on the ground that the Board of Trade as such, and as a Government department, cannot be sued.' The Master sets aside the writ. Appeal to a High Court Judge, who restores the writ and service. Appeal to the Court of Appeal, which holds that the service is bad, and that the only way in which the plaintiff can cure the technical defect is, in the words of Lord Justice Scrutton, 'by going to the several distinguished persons who constitute the committee and astonishing them by serving them with a writ which will probably bring it to their attention for the first time that they are members of a committee called the "Board of Trade." So the plaintiff must begin all over again; and the pitfalls that lie behind him are as nothing to those which lie before. Three highly controversial questions of law still remain to be solved: (1) Can the Board of Trade be sued at all, as such? Has it any legal personality, or is it merely an unincorporated Committee? (2) Should the action be laid in tort or in contract? If in tort (i.e. the wrong of 'extorting money colore officii'), should it lie against the Shipping Controller (who no longer exists) or against an individual, one Sir Joseph Maclay (who is no longer Shipping Controller)? (3) If in contract, should it lie against the Board of Trade as such, or against the Crown? On any one of these technical points, the claimant may well lose his whole case, notwithstanding that he has a clear right of law and justice to have his money back. No wonder Lord Justice Scrutton observed:

'I personally feel that the whole subject of proceedings against Government departments is in a very unsatisfactory

state. I feel that it is of great public importance that there should be prompt and efficient means of calling in question the legality of the action of Government departments which, owing to the great national emergencies arising out of the war, have been inclined to take action that they considered necessary in the interests of the State without any nice consideration of the question whether it was legal or not, and I hope that the committee which is now considering the question of proceedings against the Crown will be able to give the subject more effective remedies against Government departments than he has at present.'

These sentiments of a learned and fearless judgeit is not the first time that Lord Justice Scrutton has so expressed himself-are those of the public. There is at the present time profound and widespread dissatisfaction with the relations between State and subject. This is not merely part of the damnosa hereditas of the war; the bureaucratic tendency was developing long before 1914, but five years of emergency government have brought it to a pitch which is fast becoming intolerable. It is idle to boast of the glories of our constitution when the fountain of justice is polluted by the owner of the soil. The examples I have cited above are but a drop in the ocean of the cases which never come to judgment. Men are well aware by this time that if they have the hardihood or misfortune to engage in litigation with the Crown, they must be prepared for all the chicanery in which the Law Officers make it their business to excel. Obstructive and temporising methods are often successful, like those of the shady solicitor: claimants are 'bluffed' out of court. Money and patience are exhausted by the law's delays, the proud man's contumely,' and men prefer to submit to injustice and cut their losses rather than face the interminable prospect of damages and costs and perpetual postponements.

From no point of view can this pay, not even financially. It is false economy to refuse payment of just claims; the Exchequer may be a few pounds in pocket at the expense of an individual, but all that is saved in this way is poured out again for the litigation in which the Crown recognises no limit, as it recognises no mercy. The Law Officers and their large staff do not work for nothing. Money and time are spent like water

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in resisting just demands, and the whole system is as uneconomic as it is unscrupulous. Interest reipublicæ ut sit finis litium.

From the moral and social point of view, it pays still less. The law-abiding spirit and the respect for justice are among the highest assets of English-speaking peoples. How can the public respect the law when its very guardians are constantly appearing as advocati diaboli, and the judges are daily compelled to dispense what they know, and openly declare, is not justice? Nobody supposes that the Law Officers, as individuals, desire to cheat any particular litigant. They are the slaves of an evil tradition, a tradition extraordinarily at variance with our pious professions of legal virtue. The State is not an honest man. Its dishonesty is the worse because it combines the methods of the bully, who has all the odds in his favour, with those of the casuist, who can make the worse appear the better reason. Wellinjustice will not go unavenged. Tit for tat. The plundered will in their turn plunder the government whenever opportunity offers, and will glory in doing it. What kind of social equilibrium will result from this discord between governor and governed, it is easy to see. Void of Justice,' cries Meredith, 'what a sunless place is any realm! . . . The void of Justice is a godless region.'

This evil tradition in Crown law has been greatly fostered and made the cat's-paw of two prime causes which are at the bottom of the present state of things. First, there is the bureaucratic mind. It has its conspicuous merits in its own proper sphere, but it has gone far beyond that sphere. It has been unduly exalted by legislation: it was given practically carte blanche during the war and it is now revelling in a lust of power. Power is exceedingly bad for it, because it is of its very nature inhuman. Being inhuman, it will, in the assertion of its power, have no scruple whatever in victimising the citizen; and this it will do either by gaining credit for itself by 'smart work,' or-sweetest of all civil service joys!-by 'scoring off' another department. With this latter pastime anybody who has seen the inside of a Government office is familiar. We had supreme examples of it during the war. A few lives more or less were as nothing compared to a 'score' by

the War Office 'off' G.H.Q., or vice versa. To any but those who desire to see a Sidney Webbian England, it is essential that the bureaucratic mind be confined to its proper function, which is that of the lieutenant, not the captain.

Secondly, constitutionally speaking, we are living in an unreal world. We are clinging to old shibboleths about equality before the law when that principle is rapidly evaporating. We are in fact developing a system of administrative law, and we will not admit it in theory; consequently the courts are engaged in the vain and humiliating endeavour to fit the square peg into the round hole. There are some who think that we shall muddle through, that the law will adapt itself to new conditions, as it has always done, and work out a rational system. But this is highly doubtful. The change is too fundamental to admit of mere gradual adaptation. What seems to be needed is that administrative law, if it must exist, should be taken in hand courageously and that the public should know how it stands. No reform is more urgent. Lord Justice Scrutton expresses the representative opinion of the legal profession when he demands revision of the whole system of remedies against the Crown. The committee to which he refers was appointed a long time ago under the presidency of the then Attorney-General, now the Lord Chief Justice. Presumably it is still pursuing its labours, but nothing is heard of them. Its conclusions are awaited with anxiety by the public who suffer from the methods of bureaucrats, and by lawyers who are apprehensive for constitutional principles.

CARLETON KEMP ALLEN.

Art. 3.-THE POEMS OF ANDREW LANG.

The Poetical Works of Andrew Lang. Edited by Mrs Lang. Four vols. Longmans, 1923.

WHEN Mr Lang died, rather more than a decade ago, there was a natural and immediate demand for a complete issue of his work in verse; but some of those who joined in that demand knew the difficulties which would attend its satisfaction. The chiefest of these from the practical side-there were perhaps others which might be called sentimental-were the almost hopeless dispersion of the uncollected pieces in all sorts of places; and the fact-ruefully referred to by Mrs Lang in her preface that the existing collections sometimes overlapped each other, with duplicate but altered texts of the same poems, in a rather maddening way. Then before long came the war, and dealt the business of book-producing and book-selling at least as ugly a blow as any other business. But at last the task has been grappled with, and all those who wished for its execution owe the editor and the publishers much thanks.

Still, Mrs Lang, as she also points out, had a third difficulty, and a pretty stiff one, to face after she had got over those of getting together and settling the text-the difficulty of arrangement. Had it been possible simply to print the various books, as they were published from the fifty-years-old Ballads and Lyrics of Old France' onwards,* just as they appeared but with adjustment of duplicates, it would have been plain sailing enough. But where were the numerous pieces that had never been collected to go? In a mere omnium gatherum at the end of the others? That of course would have been easy enough, but scarcely artistic, or even workmanlike.

She has, therefore, followed the example of the collected editions of Wordsworth and others, and has classified by subjects or forms-'Oxford and St. Andrews,' 'Books,' 'His Friends,' 'Ballades,'' Sonnets,' 'Translations,'

The actual order with dates may be useful: Ballads and Lyrics of Old France,' 1872; 'XXII Ballades in Blue China,' 1880; Helen of Troy,' 1883 (sometimes given as 82); Ballades and Verses Vain' (an American edition or re-edition of earlier things), 1884; Rhymes à la Mode,' 1885; 'Grass of Parnassus,' 1894; 'New Collected Rhymes,' 1905.

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