The Gazette 1933-36

The Gazette of the Incorporated Law Society of Ireland.

JUNE, 1935]

a strenuous half-year, and we are very hopeful of the outcome of the work we have been engaged upon. Since our last Half-yearly General Meeting death has been busy amongst our colleagues, and it is with deep regret that I recall to your memories the names of those gentlemen, many of them eminent in their profession, who have passed away since November last. We lament the deaths of Mr. William Deverell, formerly Clerk of the Crown and Peace for the County of Wicklow; and Mr. William Alexander, formerly Solicitor to the Irish Land Commission; Mr. Patrick E. O'Donnell, of Limerick, a member of your Council for some years ; and Mr. W. W. Carruthers, one of the Auditors of the Accounts of the Society from 1894 to 1928. We also mourn the death of Mr. Edward C. Jameson, Mr. Wm. H. Geoghegan, Mr. John M. Salmon, Mr. James Dunlevy, Mr. J. T. Walshe, Mr. L. McL. Dix, Mr. Timothy J. Hunt, Mr. Frederick D. Darley, Mr. Randal Howe, Mr. William H. Dunne, a past President of the Society, and Mr. Michael Buggy, for many years the Provincial Delegate for Leinster on the Council. The deaths of all these gentlemen is a great loss to our Society, and on my own behalf and on yours I tender to their relatives a tribute of our sorrow and respectful sympathy. The question of the want of Legal Text Books referred to by the President at the last half-yearly General Meeting in November 1934 is still engaging the attention of your Council, and it is hoped that a solution will be found which will assist in disposing of this problem. It is quite plain that something must be done in regard to this matter. This difficulty has mainly arisen from the cost of production of appropriate law books and the very limited market for their disposal in the Irish Free State when produced. The urgency which has arisen is becoming every day more pressing because quite a number of law books, on which the teaching authorities in the legal profession in the recent past relied, have actually gone out of print, and are now unobtainable except by way of loan or second-hand, and of course none of these books were written up to date before they went out of print. I understand Carleton's " County Court

Practice " and Wylie's " Judicature " are both out of print. Strange as it may seem, having regard to the large number of Acts passed for the purposes of Local Government administration by the Oireachtas since its establishment in the year 1922, no Law Book on Irish Local Government administration has been published since Mr. Vanston's Local Government Supplement was published in the year 1919. This is all the more surprising when we recall that there have been four or five times more Acts passed by the Oireachtas dealing with Local ad ministration matters than were passed for Ireland by the British Parliament in the hundred years preceding the establishment of the Irish Free State in the year 1922. The explanation of our failure to produce such books lies in the fact that it would pay no person qualified to do the work to give his time and trouble to the proper production of such works in the very re stricted market the Irish Free State offers for the sale of Irish Law Books. As far as I can see there is only one way to meet the difficulty which exists. There must be a fund created out of which the expense of production will be met. Your Council, to make a beginning to meet the difficulty, would be willing to make a contri bution from the funds of your Society to such a fund. I would hope that the Bar Council and the Universities would also co-operate and I think the Government of our Country ought to come to the assistance of the legal teaching authorities who, in this emergency, will require financial assistance from the Government. We cannot have sound lawyers without Law Books. We cannot have our country governed by laws if they are not taught and understood as construed and defined by our Law Courts. This we cannot have without books. It must be clearly under stood that the production of Law Books in the Irish Free State, except at a loss to the author, is practically impossible because, as I have already said, the market is too small. It seems to me, therefore, that the only way out is a periodic subsidy from the Government of the Country as the necessity from time to time arises, with suitable co-operation from the Bar Council