REVIEWS. 433 REVIEWS. Tagore Law Lectures, 1894. The Law of Fraud, Misrepresenta- tion, AND Mistake in British India. By Sir Frederick Pollock, Bart. Calcutta : Thacker, Spink, & Co., Publishers to the Univer- sity of Calcutta. London : W. Thacker & Co., 87 Newgate Street. 1894. pp. xii, 160. How can a man do better than his best? What can the distinguished author have to say on the law of fraud that has not already been said com- pendiously and exactly in his admirable works on Torts and Contracts? How can lectures at Calcutta differ from lectures at Oxford? One who, in this sceptical spirit, takes up the Tagore Lectures will meet with an agreeable surprise. Much, very much, in the shape of val- uable suggestion and criticism will be found here that is not stated with equal fulness and distinctness in the writer's earlier books. The expla- nation is not that the law has grown during the last year or two. It is rather that, in preparing these lectures. Sir Frederick Pollock has had the great advantage of contemplating the law from a comparatively new point of view. The principal task of one who prepares a text-book for home practitioners is to state in neat and concise form the resultant force of the home decisions ; and any criticisms ventured upon are only inci- dental. But he who undertakes to state the home law to what may fairly be called a foreign audience, in a foreign country, has another task be- fore him. It is not enough to say. This is the result reached by the English courts. His hearers will demand to know what are the funda- mental reasons, if any, upon which those results have been reached. No one can carry out the theory that judicial authority is the unerring guide to truth when he goes beyond the limits of his own country, even if the country to which he speaks is under the same general dominion. Although Sir Frederick Pollock has always paid great regard to principle, and has in no sense been the slave of authority, yet in none of his text- books has he ever written with so free a hand as in these lectures delivered at the University of Calcutta, The best test of a so-called legal principle is to attempt to explain it to an intelligent foreign community ; and it will be found in relation to some doctrines that " the very act of expounding " them to a stranger will sufificiently condemn them. Undoubtedly, in some respects, India does not stand to England in the relation of a foreign country. Indeed, the author says (p. 12) that the law to be dealt with in this course " will in the main be English law ; " but he adds, "it is not English law pure and simple. It is Anglo-Indian law. . . ." On many subjects the rules of English law prevail, " if found applicable to Indian society and circumstances " (p. 10). But (p. 54) "considerations of local fitness must always have weight when prece- dents are cited from a country remote both in place and manners." It is admitted (p. 52-54) that such a leading English case as Hylands v. Fletcher X-^ds been "materially qualified in its application to British India." And it is rightly said (p. 54) that to follow Filbiirn v. Aquariiun Co. in India "would be both absurd and disastrous." So the rule of evidence admitting dying declarations has been found in India to work badly. " A remark made on the policy of the rule by a native of Madras shows how differently such matters are viewed in different parts of the world. ' Such evidence,' he said, 'ought never to be admitted in any case. What motive for telling the truth can any man possibly have when he is at the
