tory, final and complete; whilst the
unsuccessful litigant goes away exceeding sorrowful, knowing that his
only possible revenge is to file his petition in bankruptcy.

This, however, is not always so.

In August, 1904, the House of Lords decided in a properly constituted
_lis_ that a particular ecclesiastical body in Scotland, somewhat
reduced in numbers, but existent and militant, was entitled to certain
property held in trust for the use and behoof of the Free Church of
Scotland. There is no other way of holding property than by a legal
title. Sometimes that title has been created by an Act of Parliament,
and sometimes it is a title recognised by the general laws and customs
of the realm, but a legal title it has got to be. Titles are never
matters of rhetoric, nor are they _jure divino_, or conferred in
answer to prayer; they are strictly legal matters, and it is the very
particular business of courts of law, when properly invoked, to
recognise and enforce them.

In the case I have in mind there were two claimants to the
subject-matter--the Free Church and the United Free Church--and the
House of Lords, after a great argle-bargle, decided that the property
in question belonged to the Free Church.

Thereupon the expected happened. A hubbub arose in Scotland and
elsewhere, and in consequence of the hubbub an Act of Parliament has
somewhat coyly made its appearance in the Statute Book (5 Edward VII.,
chapter 12) appointing and authorizing Commissioners to take away from
the successful litigant a certain portion of the property just
declared to be his, and to give it to the unsuccessful litigant.

The reasons alleged for taking away by statute from the Free Church
some of the property that belongs to it are that the Free Church is
not big enough to administer satisfactorily all the property it
possesses; and that the State may reasonably refuse to allow a
religious body to have more property than it can in the opinion of
State-appointed Commissioners usefully employ in the propagation of
its religion. Let the reasons be well noted. They have made their
appearance before in history. These were the reasons alleged by Henry
VIII. for the suppression of the smaller monasteries. The State,
having made up its mind to take away from the Free Church so much of
its property as the Commissioners may think it cannot usefully
administer, then proceeds, by this undebated Act of Parliament, to
give the overplus to the unsuccess