SIR THOMAS LITTLETON, ENGLAND.

(1402-1481.)

Judge and legal writer. Born at Frankley House, Worcestershire, England, in 1402, and is supposed to have died August 23, 1481, aged seventy-nine. He was the eldest son of Thomas Westcote. His mother was Elizabeth, daughter and sole heir of Thomas de Littleton, whose name he took. He was a member of the Inner Temple, and in practice as a pleader in 1445. He held various minor offices. Was King's Sergeant in 1455, and Justice of the Common Pleas in 1466.

He was more of a counselor than an advocate. His fame rests upon a short treatise upon "Tenures." written late in his life, primarily for the instruction of his son, Richard, but it early became an authority. It was the first attempt at scientific classification. It was original, written in law-French, in an easy, agreeable style, within moderate compass, and gave a full and clear account of the several estates and tenures then known to English law, and their peculiar incidents. Doubtless no legal work ever combined so

much of the substance with so little show of learning,

or so happily avoided pedantry, without forfeiting precision of statement. It was really the foundation of the real estate law from which Coke, Hale and Blackstone took the groundwork of their later commentaries. Coke's exhaustive commentary upon it is conclusive proof as to its position in his day, he designating it as "The most perfect and absolute work that ever was written in any known science." As annotated by Coke, it long remained the authority on real property. Both, now almost obsolete, though still occasionally cited, are chiefly valuable to the historian and antiquary. It was the boast of William Pinkney, that in his time there were but two men at the bar of the United States who had mastered Coke upon Littleton-Chief Justice Parsons and himself. Francis North (Lord Guilford) made it a rule to read Littleton through, without Coke's comment, which he said obscured the text, every Christmas, treating it as a legal classic.

Francis North Read Littleton Every Christmas.

Francis North made it a rule to read Littleton (that is, the pure Littleton, without Coke's comment) through every Christmas during the whole time of his practice. He treated this work as a legal classic,

and as the foundation of conveyancing.

Roger North's Opinion of Coke's Comments.

"Coke's Comment upon Littleton ought not to be read by students, to whom it is, at least, unprofitable; for it is but a commonplace, and much more obscure than the bare text without it."-Roger North, Stephen's Dic. of Nat. Biog., p. 241.

D'ALTON MCCARTHY, CANADA.

(1836

-).

The intellectual leader of the section known as the "Equal Rights" party, and ranks with Blake and Thompson as a leader of the House of Commons from Canada. Queen's Counsel, Toronto, Canada. Member of the Canadian House of Commons for the riding of North Simcoe since 1878. Born, 1836, in Dublin, Ireland. Called to the bar of Upper Canada in 1859; Queen's Counsel, 1872; Bencher of the Law Society of Ontario; President of the Canadian Branch of the Imperial Federation League, 1886-91. He first commenced practice at Barrie, Ontario, but his abilities and gifts were so generally recognized throughout the province that his removal to Toronto, the legal metropolis, became necessary. He is now a member of the firm of McCarthy, Osler, Hoskin and Creelman, which, though in existence comparatively a short time, has risen to a most commanding position.

Eminent both as a lawyer and a statesman, Mr. McCarthy is foremost as counsel in the higher and more intricate forms of litigation, although his wide

legal knowledge and powers of argument make him a master of pleading in every branch of the law. He has appeared in most of the important cases argued in recent years before the Judicial Commission of the English Privy Council, the most celebrated being the Streams Bill Appeal; Maclaren and Canada Central Railway; the Ontario Boundary case, in which he represented the Province of Manitoba; Union Bank v. Tennant. The cases mentioned all involve an im

portant question of constitutional law.

In politics, he is a Conservative. Under Sir John Macdonald's regime, while the demands of his practice prevented him from holding a ministerial portfolio, he was a trusted legal adviser of the late Premier, and is identified with a number of Canada's most important legislative enactments. Latterly, Mr. McCarthy, differing from the policy of his party on the trade question, has become the leader of the movement in favor of tariff reform.