SUPPLEMENTARY STATEMENT AND TESTIMONIALS OF HENRY DUNNING MACLEOD, Esq., M.A., 29 OF TRINITY COLLÈGE, CAMBRIDGE; AND THE INNER TEMPLE; BARRISTER-AT-LAW ; FORMERLY CHAIRMAN OF THE BOARD OF MANAGEMENT OF THE EASTER ROSS UNION; SELECTED BY THE ROYAL COMMISSIONERS FOR THE DIGEST OF THE LAW TO PREPARE THE DIGEST OF THE LAW OF BILLS OF EXCHANGE, BANK NOTES, &c.; LECTURER ON POLITICAL ECONOMY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE. A CANDIDATE FOR THE CHAIR OF COMMERCIAL AND POLITICAL ECONOMY AND MERCANTILE LAW IN THE UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH. London: PRINTED BY A. P. BLUNDELL & CO., 26, GARLICK HILL, CANNON STREET, E.C. 1880. TO THE PATRONS OF THE CHAIR OF COMMERCIAL & POLITICAL ECONOMY & MERCANTILE LAW IN THE UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH. OXFORD AND CAMBRIDGE CLUB, PALL MALL, LONDON, 10th September, 1880. MY LORDS AND GENTLEMEN, I have the honour to inform you that I am a Candidate for the Chair of Commercial and Political Economy and Mercantile Law in the University of Edinburgh, vacant by the lamented death of DR. HODGSON. On a former occasion when I was a Candidate, I laid before the then Patrons a Statement of my long connection with the subject of Political Economy and Mercantile Law, and a very large body of Testimonials from many distinguished persons in various countries as evidence of my fitness to hold that office. As that Statement and Testimonials still hold good up to the time they were prepared, I beg to submit them to you: and I have further the honour to lay before you the following Supplementary Statement and Testimonials in continuation of the former ones, bringing the subject up to the present time. In my previous Statement I mentioned that after an open competition among the Members of the English Bar, I was selected by the Royal Commissioners for the Digest of the Law to prepare the great Digest of the Law of Bills of Exchange, Bank Notes, &c., for the guidance of the Courts of Law in England, in contemplation of the fusion of Law and Equity which has since been effected by the Supreme Court of Judicature Act, which came into operation the 1st November, 1875. In preparing my Paper for this Competition I became satisfied that certain doctrines which had been held to be fundamental principles of the Common Law of England with regard to Credit, by all the Judges for 200 years, and which had been asserted by Lord Chancellor CRANWORTH, the Chairman of the Law Digest Commissioners, in an appeal case from the Court of Session, in the House of Lords, were erroneous and a considerable portion of my Competition Paper was an argument to prove them to be so. Upon examining my arguments, the Law Digest Commissioners, who included Lord CRANWORTH, Lord WESTBURY, Lord CAIRNS, Lord HATHERLEY, Lord PENZANCE, and Lord SELBORNE-to mention only those of judicial rank-approved of them, and unanimously selected me to prepare the Digest of the Law of Instruments of Credit, and I was invested with the duty of examining and approving, confirming and modifying, and reversing the judgments of all the Courts of Law and Equity in England, and officially declaring the Law of England on all points in this immense and important subject. The magnitude of the work to be done may be estimated by the fact that there are upwards of 5,000 cases on the subject, and that the quantity of matter to be digested was equivalent to about 100 volumes of the ordinary Law Reports of about 1,000 pages each. After I had proceeded some way in the work, and had reduced and condensed about 20,000 pages of Law Reports into 32 pages folio, the Commissioners discontinued the work, and recommended that it should be undertaken in another form this, however, has never been done, and consequently my Digest was never published. But I received testimonials from several of the Commissioners, as well as from several of the Judges of England and Scotland, of the merits of the work done, which I have appended to this Statement. The sanction of the Commissioners to the view of the Law which I held was equivalent to a judgment of the House of Lords in my favour; because the Commissioners included all the Law Lords except one: and if the Law Lords, in their capacity as Commissioners, approved of my doctrines in preference to those which had been previously held by the Judges for the preceding 200 years, they must equally have approved of them if they had been brought before them in their capacity as Law Lords. Accordingly in a new and very much enlarged and extended edition of my Elements of Political Economy which I published in 1872 under the name of the Principles of Economical Philosophy, I incorporated the new doctrines of Credit which had received the approval of the Commissioners, as well as a considerable portion of interesting historical matter which I had discovered in the research for the preparation of my Competition Paper. I have the great satisfaction of saying that in 1875 the very same question on which I had obtained the favourable judgment of the Commissioners came before the Courts of Common Law in the great mercantile case of GOODWIN v. ROBARTS, in which the Court of Exchequer decided in accordance with the doctrine of my Digest: the case was then taken by appeal into the Court of Exchequer Chamber, and in the course of the argument the Lord Chief Justice of England condemned in the strongest language possible, the whole series of cases on which the modern opinion of the Judges was founded, and said that they were a blot on our Judicial history. In delivering the unanimous judgment of the Court, the Lord Chief Justice did me the very high honour of saying:-"We find it stated in a Law Tract by Mr. MACLEOD, entitled: Specimen of a Digest of the Law of Bills of Exchange, prepared, we believe, as a Report to the Government, but which, from its research and ability, deserves to be produced in a form calculated to insure a wider circulation, &c." He then proceeded to annul and reverse the whole series of cases; exactly as I had done five years before when I formally excluded them from my Digest as not being Law. This judgment was affirmed by the House of Lords on June 1, 1876. [ 3 ] I thus succeeded in satisfying the whole of the Law Lords and Judges of England that the doctrine which had been held by all the Judges for 200 years was erroneous: and I had already anticipated the suggestion of the Lord Chief Justice, because I had published in 1872, in my Principles of Economical Philosophy, such parts of my Digest as were applicable to that subject. In 1874, M. MICHEL CHEVALIER, in the opening Lecture of his Course, at the Collége de France, published in the Journal des Debats, referred to me as follows: "Un des hommes les plus érudits parmi ceux qui se consacrent à la science économique, un Anglais qui aime ses compatriotes, mais qui aime encore plus la vérité, et que j'aurai occasion de vous citer fréquemment dans le cours de cette année, à cause des perfectionnements que son esprit philosophique a introduits dans la definition des principaux termes de l'économie politique-Mr. H. D. MACLEOD―n'hésite pas à signaler les écrits et les entretiens de Quesnay et des physiocrates groupés autour de lui comme une source ou Adam Smith, a beaucoup puisé. Il admit sans ambages qu'à l'ecole française revient l'honneur d'avoir, constitué l'economie politique à l'état de science. Et comment expliquer autrement l' intention qu'avait ou Adam Smith de dédier sa Richesse des nations à Quesnay?" In that year he proposed me to fill a vacancy among the Foreign Correspondents of the Academy of Moral and Political Sciences of the Institute of France. In 1875, upon sending him the second volume of my Principles of Economical Philosophy, he wrote to me: "It is your book which serves me as the guide for all the Philosophy of my teaching at the Collège de France." I then requested him to give me a testimonial to that effect, which he did, as follows: PARIS, le 22 fevrier, 1875. MY DEAR M. MACLEOD, J'ai reçu par la post vôtre second volume des Principles of Economical Philosophy. Je me suis mis aussitôt, à le lire avec l'attention que j'apporte à vos œuvres, et avec le vif interêt qui résultait de l'impression profonde qu'avait faite sur moi le premier. Je vous félicite sincérement de ce bel ouvrage. De tous les livres d'économie politique imprimés depuis cinquante ans, aucun ne surpasse celui-ci en importance. Vous avez fait avancer la science plus que personne, dans le dernier demi-siècle, par l'analyse sevère et judicieuse à laquelle vous avez soumis toutes les notions fondamentales et les définitions. Vous avez relevé un bon nombre d'incorrections, de bévues même, qui avaient échappé aux Physiocrates, à Adam Smith, à J. B. Say, à Mill, à Macculloch, &c., &c. Vous avez ainsi dégagé le champ de la science d'une grande quantité de brousailles qui l'encombraient. Vous avez simplifié la science tout en l'énlargissant. C'était un travail de la plus grande difficultè. Comme mesure de la conviction que j'ai au sujet de l'etendue des services que vous avez rendus à l'Economie politique, j'ajoute que c'est le livre des Principles of Economical Philosophy qui désormais me servira de guide dans mon enseignement au Collège de France, pour la Philosophie de la Science. Pas un autre livre ne peut être comparé au vôtre pour les corrections philosophiques. 27, Avenue de l'Impératrice. Yours truly, MICHEL CHEVALIER. In 1875-6, I published a third edition of my Theory and Practice of Banking, completely re-written and re-cast, in accordance with the new state of the Law, and I incorporated in it large portions of my Digest which were useful to Bankers in their daily business. In 1876 I published a small manual called the Elements of Banking, con |