106
paper nor such big sheets, on the greater part of which nothing is written. When circum«lances permit, a half or even quarter sheet on y should be usi, and it should also be of an dinary kind."
[1
THE HONGKONG WEEKLY PRESS AND
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(February 17, 1908.
sending with our intimate chat a not always truthful representation of the roof that covers us for the time being. There is still another motive that leads some people to As our readers may remember, the empty the racks on public writing tables.
They are globetrotters whose friends, living | Governor of Tiflis was anticipated over a
in humbler-looking buildings, have to be year ago by a Department at Hongkong, where some people entertain the idea that impress d with the fact that they (the cheeseparing in small matters does not globetrotters) are staying at the best and excuse extravagance in greater thing. It most fashi nable hotels. The snob who gets is not that, however, which has chiefly into a distinguished houseparty is a diligent and entitled to be admittel as suob in the
altracted our attention this tim, but the preamble of our contemporary to the same note. "It requires," it is therein remarked, "no great record of travel to become acquoted with that section of our fellow.baings to whom the sight of a supply. “gra'is and for nothing, of writing paper offers an irresistible temutation to sit down at once to indite a letter. They are to be met in ho ́els, on ships, even in the lobbiesing therein. of the big London emporis, where every spare moment cau be more pr‹ fitably employed in the study of human nature, Af heart everybody breaks the eighth and tenth commandments, and the anxiety t communioste with our friends, because we come across a stock of paper laying claim to no personal owner, is merely the primaeval instinct of ignoring the doctrins of 'Meam et taum' reduced to terms of modern conventionalities. This weakness, a lowed fuller scope among the primitive races of mankin has laid the foundation of many fortunes for
those who trade with nativ s. It was the the custom among Dutch storekeepers in South Afrioa to leave bars of lead lying about on the counters where tea, coffee, sugar ets, were sold The salesman having put a small portion of the "order" in the bag, would find it necessary to tarn his attention to something at the other end of the store; and the guileless Kafr could be relied upon to place in the bag a substantial than the pieos of lead of far less value oorresponding weight of comestible."
We are not
correspondent, especially if his or her host's creat. Cases have been paper carries a known where people have put up at a cheap ian in a back street, and then, going in to purchase a drink at the famous first-class hotel of that town, have annexed a few sheets so that they night pretend to their home staying admirers that they were stay
Yet even then there was no primaeval dishone-ty of the kind it dicated. Such folk would willingly and cheerfully have paid for the paper used, if they could decently have de so. That the doctrine of 'mneunt t toum' is univers.lly ignored, we are not really to deny, but concerning notepaper the be not guilty.' We never plea must yt met a man who believed that there can be any proprietary rights in a box of matches, for instance, while as for pencils, we seem to be victimized alinost every day by otherwise honest acquaintances. Then there are looks and umbrellas, aud things like that, in respect of which we have all suffered at the hauds of the kleptocracy. But because the users of public notepiper are legion, and because they assist the re- venue of the post office, we cannot sit silent and see them painted blacker than they really are. They are more sinned against than sinning. When cigarettes, beer, and opium, et hoc genus omne, have been re- stricted in output, we hope to see human nature saved from still another vice by greater difficulties being put in the way of its access to writing materials. This is to lay ourselves open to the obvious tu quoque, of course; but we feel bound to face that possibility meokly and contritely.
SUPREME COURT.
Monday, February 10th.
BEFORE HIS HONOUR SIR FRANCIS PIGGOTT (CHIEF JUSTICE).
KNROLMENT OF A SOLICITOR.
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It will be noticed that the first part of the last quotation refers ostensibly to a study of human nature, which course of study, a humourist has remarked, is at once the most fascinating, profitable, and cheap hobby that a mau can take up. sure that our contemporary has taken up that study with sufficient ser ousness in the
Is it correct, for instance, present case. in attributing to those whose cacuethes scribendi is stimulated by the sight of the hotel notepaper some breach of the com- mandments against coveting and stealing? We are inclined to think that the motives of that amiable weakness have been inis- interpreted. There is no question of petty theft, for the paper, well marked with advertising walter as a role, is put there to There is less question of invite its use.
Before the business of the Supreme Court economy, for the posts on several letters, | opened yesterday, Hon. Mr. H. E. Pollock, K.C. that there was no necessity to write, more | moved that Mr. Henry Lardner Denoys be than covers the cost of the paper obtained japproved, admitted, and enrolled to practise as an attorney, solicitor aud proctor of th‹ Supreme gratis.
Without quarrelling with the
Court of Hongkong. The application was dictum that at heart everyholy is peculator, we certainly have little hesita supported by the usual affidavite, and there was an affidavit by Mr. Dennys himself, showing tion in saying that the prima-val instinct that he was admitted to practise as a solicitor of referred to has nothing to do with the¦ the Suprema Court of Judicature, Engisad, ou impulse to scribble letters whenever! the 19th September, 1907. Thers was also the usual affidavit of identity by Mr. F. B. 1.. the free notepaper and envelopes are
Bowley. encountered. Such material is usually noticed when the victim is at a loose-end" for something to do, with nothing to read, no one to talk to, and when the pictorial advertisements in the hotel corridor have lost the power to conquer temporary boredom. It is a case of "idle hauds," though not of Satan finding mischief, for we all are guiltily. conscious at times of the letters we think We "owe." Here are paper, peus (bad ones, usually) and ink. The very thing! Why not "
'get square" with the friends who have favoured us with embarrassing re- minders of their existence? Thus the thing is done, and we spend far more on postage We than we have cost the hotel in paper. have also advertised the hotel, in many cases
:
His Lordship had much pleasure in admitting Mr. Denny to practise in the Court and hoped that is oireer in the Colony would be a very successful ou
this olaimant
It has been
the creditor of Kwong Yik Wo, who was represented by the Offcial Receiver, would a st be bound by the estopper which it was contended on the authority of Woodley v. Coventry, would have operated against the bankrupt; sa imagin. ary interpretation of that 0159 was erroneous. What I said was obiter, becaus; it was not absolutely necessary to the determination of the question then before us, nor was it fully argued, and therefore it is still open. housing, and says that he is a secured creditor sets up his documents of pledge and ware-
bankruptcy, and that this opinion of mine needs revisiou, as it stands in the way of his olsim. The other claimants have proved as unsecured It seem to me, evən after listening creditors. to further argument, an exceedingly diffi sult ques ion whether the trustes would be bound by such an estopper si the one which would have existed in this os, suppo ing Woodley v. Coventry applied. I am not prepared to say that that opinio 1 is wrong because in the case that I stated with regard to the application, it is androas-ary for me to do so. necessary, however, to go over that part of my judgment which deals with the question of estopper, and I flad one pirage p'i on soother pag» (page 59) which did not at all satisfy ms. It is that paragraph in which I applied the decision i Woodley v. Coventry to the faula in the pressat dis
matter of fat that decision bas no appliostion to these fiots at all, and I must say that on further consideration I am rather at a loss to understand why I allowed that passage to stand, because the effect of it is clearly annihilated by subsqva
It had, however, DO passage on page 90. offrot од the question which was really arrived at before the question of estopper
and
not altered by was discussed, the result of that discussion. The estopper ia Woodley v. Coventry was against the aupaid rendor, and in favour of the third party. The page in my judgment which I am now criticising followed too much the line of argument which had been based on Woodley v. Coventry, that the purchaser was estopped oa account of something which the servait of his The estop.
As a
was
&
agent, the warehous man, had said.
per bai nothing to do with the fact that
Corea'ry was also warehousing the goods he had sold, but the plaintiff raised the fact that he There is no unpaid was an unpaid vendor. ven ler in this case, and this is pointed out in my judgment, the pas‹age bagiaùing “hɩre the person against whom the eatopper is sought is not the vendor." The difficulty of applying Woodley v Coventry to this casarises from the fact that the question of asc irtainment was not gone into, though it undoubtedly forms part of The decision, but as regards Woodley there was no such question as bitween Clark the purchaser and Coventry the veador; there had beeu no Ascertainment, bat owing to what took place and Woodley, Coventry's agent b.tween
the fact,
result from Coventry was estopped as against Woodley
89lting up this
to ben would have of which
have the him property in
as unpaid vendor. The facts in this case are far more simple. They reiste merely to something which pissed in the Hop Yik gudiwa when the far was looked at by the intenting lender, and it 18 said tha' Kwong Yik Wo is est pyed by what took place, so he probably is within the limits of that estopper. If the Kwong Yik Wo hid borrowed money on bags of flour, and the intrading lender was shown a pile of bags which the borrower or bis ageut said corresponded with his description, thed in any possible pro- gedings in which the question was material the borrower would be estopp‹d from deny.
ja the bagi
fact
Dot did ing that
orrespond with description whether In the es to weight, quality or descri ptica. base of one of the claimants Kwong Yik Wo was himmlf present, s. that here there woali Re Li King Shek (Kwong Yik Wej ex parte | b, if the fio's fit'ed, un estopper iu its sim. Pang Shifong, croliter. Hon. Mr H. E. Pollock, K.C, repressuted the Official R osiver, | aud Mr. M. W. Slade the appellant.
His Lordship, in delivering judgment in this action said :—Another claimant, Ng Sau Chi, was the subjset of such to this four which protracted argument last March in the case of the Kwong Yik Wo frand. has appeared upon the scene. I said, page 96 of the Reports, that
IN APPELLATE JURISDICTION.
A B NKRUPTCY APP AL
Bu. really it would have been plst form, hardly worth while to discuss the cas, from the severil olaimants who have lent money, tʊ sil point of view of au upper, for thers being same story has of om apparently the been told, I suppose, it E question of
would there
be priority priority aros, by estopper just as there might have been priority among the lenders, all of which however,