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Excerpt from The Law Quarterly Review, 1894, Vol. 10: With a General Index to Vols. I-X
There seems no reason why the Sale Of Goods Bill should not receive the Royal Assent before the end Of the Session, and a third step thus be taken towards the codification of those portions of the law which most afi'ect commercial dealings. Judge Chalmers and the Lord Chancellor may then be congratulated upon having, the former by his draftsmanship, the latter by his advocacy, added to the statute-book a measure which, if it cannot hope for the ready acceptance which has attended the Bills of Exchange Act, is certain powerfully to in¿uence the development, and greatly to facilitate the study, Of a most important branch of law. It is easy to say that we ought to begin with the general rather than with the particular, with the principles of Contract rather than with Sale or Partnership; and it is easy to criticize details in the treatment of questions upon which the best brains have been at work for centuries. It is not so easy to select a topic of everyday utility to everyone, to reduce its rules to manageable dimensions, and to defend them as re-stated for five years against all comers.
Since its first introduction into Parliament, in 1888, the Bill has been modified in several respects, not always, perhaps, for the better. The sections relating to the Contract of Exchange have been very properly omitted; but the special law relating to the sale of horses, which was to have been neatly consolidated into a sort of footnote, is now left outstanding; and the symmetry of the whole is not a little impaired by its extension to Scotland. One is inclined to grumble becau'se sect. 2 touches upon the incapacity of infants, which is by no means confined to their purchases. Necessaries,' for instance, may just as well be services rendered as goods sup plied. One may have misgivings as to the adequacy of the treatment of warranty one may fail to see why the re-vesting of goods on conviction should come into the Bill at all; and one looks in vain for the enactment now hidden away in the County Courts Act, which provides that no action shall be brought for the price of ale and certain other liquors consumed on the premises. But the only way to make a department of law at once symmetrical and complete is to get it stated in a series of propositions; and from this point of view there would be much to be said in favour of even avowedly tentative codification.
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