Development and Taxation. 83 



Office, should be to take the commercial law at all events out of the region 

 of nebular hypothesis. 



I personally trust the larger hope that we shall codify what we 

 require and abandon the rest of our present colonial law. We are now on 

 the eve of the third reading of a Company and Insolvency Law, and a Sale 

 of Goods Bill, Bills of Sale Bill and other useful Bills on English lines 

 (where possible identical with the English legislation) have been already 

 drafted. I hope married persons will also get the rights in intestacy of 

 which they have been deprived and which they have suffered for some 

 3 T ears in patience or in ignorance of their fate. The only place where they 

 are treated as badly by the law is Quebec and even there a movement for 

 reform has arisen. If an English girl arrives in the colony and marries 

 and has the misfortune to lose her husband she will probably not be 

 consoled for his loss by finding that she may be entirely a stranger to 

 his estate and be penniless even if he were that rarissima avis a 

 British Guiana millionaire. 



As regards the process of ascertaining what the law is and the pro- 

 cedure for giving effect to it there is also some room for reform and 

 economy. 



In keeping up the distinction of the two branches of the legal 

 profession — Barristers and Solicitors — we are indulging in a luxury, 

 which some of the largest colonies have not been able to afford. It is a 

 well-known fact that our Barristers are compelled by local conditions 

 to do Solicitor's work and that it has been found impossible to compel 

 the strict observance of the etiquette prescribed at Home. This practice 

 received some recognition in the Legal Practitioners Ordinance of 1897, 

 which provided that a Barrister acting as a Solicitor shall, in so far as he 

 practises, be deemed to be a Solicitor within the meaning of the section 

 and consequently an officer of the Court. Any question as to what 

 constitutes practising as a Solicitor is to be decided by rules of Court 

 to be made for determining what constitutes such practice. Such rules 

 were made in 1908 and everybody has forgotten ali about them. 



It would be much more satisfactory to have the position of legal 

 practitioners as constituted by local practice frankly and openly recog- 

 nized and one general body of advocates formed as in some other British 

 possessions with all the rights of general practitioners. It would lead 

 to a considerable reduction of the cost of legal proceedings, although no 

 doubt a division of Court and office work would be inevitable in important 

 matters. One member of the firm would do the office or purely Solicitor's 

 work and the other would do the Court work either alone or assisted by 

 his partner or by some other member of the united profession. 



In the Leeward Islands by an Act of 1880 the right of Barristers to 

 practise as Solicitors is expressly authorised but they are thereupon 

 subject to all the liabilities which attach by law to a Solicitor. I see no 

 difficulty in the way of the adoption of the Leeward Islands Act in this 



