Proceedings of the Society. 355 



did not see that the Roman-Dutch law need for five minutes stand in the 

 way of an Appeal Court if formed for the West Indies. They found the 

 same thing in England. The House of Lords was the Supreme Court of 

 appeal for England, Scotland and Ireland, but they found lawyers brought 

 up in the traditions of the English Bench and Bar deciding questions of 

 Scots Law, which after all was not very different from their own Roman- 

 Dutch law, and if English Law Lords were able without having spent 

 their lives in the study of Scots law to deal satisfactorily on appeal with 

 questions coming from Scotland, he did not see why Judges of the other 

 parts of the West Indies should not be able to deal as well with questions 

 of Roman-Dutch law which came from this Colony. The number of 

 appeal cases which involved questions of Roman-Dutch law were not 

 very many. There was another very striking instance — the Privy 

 Council. There they found a body consisting of Judges of eminence from 

 various parts of the Empire dealing with all sorts of law. They dealt 

 with Roman-Dutch law from this colony, South Africa and Ceylon, also 

 with Hindoo and Mohammedan law and customary law from West Africa, 

 where most of the property was held under the native customary law. 

 And if, for instance, they yot there an Indian Judge dealing with Roman- 

 Dutch law, or a South African Judge dealing with Mohammedan law, 

 which was actually being done, and as that tribunal was admitted by every 

 one to be a most excellent and satisfactory Court of Appeal he did not 

 think there could be any great difficulty in creating a Court of Appeal for 

 this part of the Empire. 



Appeal Anomalies. 



The creation of the Court of Appeal was manifestly desirable if only 

 to prevent the anomaly of a Judge sitting on appeal from himself. In 

 nearly all the colonies if there was an appeal the Judge who tried the 

 case in the first instance had to sit on the hearing of the appeal, 

 and as he had taken the trouble to carefully consider the case and 

 devote his whole mind and ability and learning to it it was very 

 difficult to convince him afterwards that he was wrong, and the number 

 of times when he agreed to reverse his judgment were very small indeed. 

 He had done it himself, but it was only when some question was 

 argued before the Court of Appeal which was not argued in the first 

 instance. If only from the point of view of getting fresh minds to 

 bear upon it a Court of this sort was desirable. That was one of 

 the first steps they might t'ke towards federation. If they could bring 

 that about, and he did not think that there was anything in the 

 constitution of the various colonies which would prevent it, the schemt- 

 could be brought in in a very short time. He commended these subjects 

 to them as questions which the Society might take up and discuss, as they 

 were practical questions which were being mooted now for the benefit of 

 the colony. 



Mr. F. V. McConnell's Death. 



He must remind them of a very sad loss to the colony in the death of 

 Mr. Fred V. McConnell, who was for many years a member and sup- 

 porter of the Society, and he proposed that they should pass this 



