NOTES. 281 fitness for this additional task. The advantages of codification are de- batable ; but once the poHcy is adopted, no one can question that the preparation of a code should be intrusted, as a prerequisite for its satis- factory accomplishment, to those who hae a thorough familiarity with the principles and theory of the particular branch of the common law to be codified, and a specialist's knowledge of its details. Incidentally, but not so imperatively, an acquaintance with the defects and merits of existing codes is desirable. In the present case, to throw the burden of drafting a revised code of procedure on the shoulders of the commis- sioners — confessedly not specialists in the law of civil procedure, and already behindhand in their work of revising the statutes — is probably to repeat the history of 1877, when a similar commission of statutory re- vision was required to revise the procedure code. The result was that the revisioi of the statutes was never completed ; while the procedure code is so defective and ill drawn that, rather than practise longer under it, the bar of the State now welcome the uncertainties of a new revision. It is only fair to add that the report, which the commissioners must sub- mit December next, of the results of their examination of other codes and rules of procedure may reveal unexpected and unhoped for qualifications for the task assigned them. The Rule in Dearle v. Hall. — An assignee of a cestui' s interest in a trust fund, will, if the trustee have no notice of the assigment, be postponed to a subsequent assignee who gives notice. This, it will be remembered, is, in a word, the doctrine known to English lawyers as the rule in Dearie v. Hall (3 Russ. i). The confusion which it has worked and is continuing to work in the English law of trusts is well pointed out by Mr. E. C. C. Firth in an article in the October number of the Law Quarterly Review. That the rule is devoid of principle in all cases where the second assignee makes no inquiries of the trustee, and so is not mislead by the first assignee's neglect, has often been said and seems clear enough. Whether it is consonant to principle where the second assignee does make inquiries, and takes his assign- ment in reliance on the trustee's ignorance of the prior assignment, is a question on which there is likely to be a difference of opinion. Mr. Firth denies the right of the second assignee even in this case, on the ground that the first owes him no duty and so is not guilty of negligence in omitting to give notice. Accordingly there can be no estoppel by negligence. It would seem, however, that a duty to give notice mighl very well be contended for, where a probable consequence of taking the assignment without notice is that some one will be defrauded. The question is, of course, no longer an open one in England, where, by a series of decisions, the rule has been " improved " until now it has nothing to do with the merits of the successive assignees. JFoster v. Cockerell ( ^ CI. & F. 456) decided that it was immaterial that the second assignee made no inquiries of the trustee; Lo-juv. Bouverie (1891,3 Ch. 82) that the trustees were not bound to answer inquiries if they were made ; Lloyd v. Banks (3 Ch. 488) that the first assignee should be preferred although he neglected to give notice, if the trustees happened by accident to hear of the assignment. Thus, in all cases where the second assignee gives notice, it has come to be essential for the trustee 37
