Vital Statutes

As the strokes of Big Ben in the clock tower of the Houses of Parliament rang in the New Year, two laws of far reaching import became operative in England:

The Earl of Birkenhead's Law of Property. Admirers of Charles Dickens have often chuckled at his celebrated legal caricature, the suit of Jarndyce v. Jarndyce, which like time itself went on forever to the enrichment of generations of barristers and the utter ruin of their clients.

Unhappily the vast labyrinths of the English system of property tenure have served immemorially to make such suits unavoidable. For 30 years British jurists have been at work on a "simplification" of this system, which has grown into "a bill of 310 printed pages, to comprehend any one of which a layman would require a small law library."

In 1922, the Lord High Chancellor of England, Frederick Edwin Smith, Baron and Earl of Birkenhead, now Secretary of State for India, introduced this bill into Parliament. Both the Lords and Commoners felt obliged to honor the weight of legal prestige behind the measure, and passed it. When British barristers realized its revolutionary import, special lectures bearing upon its interpretation were instituted by legal bodies throughout England.

Innovations in the measure: 1) The State will in future possess the property of an individual who dies without leaving a will and is survived only by relatives more distant than first cousins. This amounts to a reversal of the laws which have forced the State to act as a trustee for intestate estates, in the interests of "lost heirs" who may be starving at Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. 2) The virtual abolition of the law of primogeniture, as part of a general equalization of the rights of younger sons and females on a par with eldest sons. 3) The abrogation of such quaint but archaic legal curiosities as "gavelkind," "Borough English" and "copyhold." "Grand and petty sergeantry," however, has not been tampered with. In consequence, the Dukes of Wellington will continue to hold the estate of Strathfieldsaye from the King in consideration of the presentation to him of a British flag, annually, on the anniversary of the Battle of Waterloo.

The Widows, Orphans and Old Age Contributory Pensions Act. Hereafter, under certain restrictions, widows will receive a pension of 10 shillings ($2.40) a week, and orphans up to the age of 14 will receive 7 shillings ($1.68) a week. These pensions will all be payable on Tuesday, "the most convenient day for the postoffice to make payments."

Further the whole structure of British social insurance and old age pensions is covered by the law, but many clauses affecting this latter phase will not become effective for some years.