A VIEW OF CANADIAN LAW. 
Delivered before the American Bar Association by Mr. Justice Riddell, 
of Toronto, (and so far as known now printed for the first 
time by the favour of a leading Lawyer to the Editor-in-Chief.) 
May I say, before attacking my subject, that I have been very much 
interested indeed in the discussion which has just been going on? It 
illustrates what I have so often said, that the time of, the American 
lawyer is taken up more by constitutional questions in one day than the 
time of an Ontario lawyer is in a year. Because you know, if you use 
the word “ Constitution ” in the sense in which it is used in these United 
States, the Constitution of Canada may be described by a parody upon 
that famous chapter on the Snakes of Ireland. ‘“ There are no snakes 
in Ireland.” (Laughter.) We have no Constitution in Canada in the 
sense in which you use the term. The Parliaments in our Dominion, 
like the Imperial Parliament in England, can within the ambit of their 
jurisdiction do anything which is not naturally impossible ; indeed it is a 
maxim among our Canadian as among English lawyers that Parliament 
can do anything except make a man a woman, or a woman a man. 
(Laughter. ) 
When I read the announcement that I was to read a paper to this 
Association I was struck somewhat with terror—and I made up my 
mind I should at once throw myself upon the mercy of the Court and 
confess immediately that I had no paper. That is due to more than 
one cause, possibly ; in part, perhaps, to the fact that I have my own 
share of judicial temperament, which, of course, you know is defined 
by Mr. Dooley somewhat in these words: He says “ Hinnessy, I would 
like to bea Judge, I have the judicial temperament?” Says Hinnessy, 
“What is the judicial temperament?” Says Dooley, “I don’t like to 
work.” (Laughter.) But in justice to myself, I cannot say that is the 
only reason. (Laughter.) One other reason is that we have still in 
Ontario an absurd superstition that a Justice of His Majesty’s Bench 
ought to do at least some judicial work—occasionally. (Laughter.) I 
know it is suggested that some of my judicial brethren disregard that 
superstition to a very great extent—one of them, indeed, when he 
received Her Majesty’s Warrant appointing him one of Her judges, im- 
mediately proceeded to sell his library and buy a new gun. (Laughter.) 
All of us do not have the courage that gentlemen had, we are not so 
greatly daring, and consequently some of us, at least occasionally, do a 
little judicial work. 
In the short time I was at home since I received the invitation to 
write a paper on this subject, I was exceedingly busy ; and since I left 
home I have been in a continued series of intellectual debauchery in 
which there was no ‘‘morning after the night before” only because the 
