"GREATLY EXAGGERATED"

Dominion, Volume 10, Issue 3102, 5 June 1917, Page 4

"GREATLY EXAGGERATED"

OBITUARY NOTICE TOO SOON. The joke about tho obituary notice of our Solicitor-General that appeared in different papers has been heard of by most people,' but tow have perhaps had the opportunity of reading just what is the reputation of Mr. J. W. Salmond, | K.C., amongst the jurists of the British Empire. Tim report was the result of a mistake ia identity. Tho man who was dead was the lather of the SolicitorGeneral, Professor Salmond, of Otago University, and he died full of age and honour, a uot less worthy man than his sou, but h« did not profess a knowledge of law. The following is an extract from "The Solicitors' Journal," one of the most important legal papers in England:— "It is with tho deepest regret that lawyers who care for the academic interests of their profession will have learned of Professor Salraond's untimely death. Only fifty-four years of age, the late jurist had been for nearly a.decade a law officer iu New Zealand, and for nearly twenty years on% of the most distinguished of English jurists. But unlike most other men whose fame rests mainly en their scholarship and writings, Professor, Salmond was a busy practitioner and a successful advocate, no less than a great jurist, although tho forum in which no achieved fame was that of a somewhat remote colony. His treatise on the Law of Torts is perhaps 'the greatest monument to his name; its- scholarly precision, as well as its brilliant criticism of principles, sometimes too hastily accepted as sound in normal treatises, has given it a unique position anions modern texttooks on law. The late Professor Gray's "Bulo of Perpetuities" is, perhaps, the only other recent law book in our language which tho academic world of lawyers can regard .as of equal excellence. His treatise on (Jurisprudence, too, is a •reat and original work. Essentially rea--1 sonable and practical, it discards at once ! the somewhat narrow doctrinarism of tho Austinian School, the metaphysical unreality of German Natnrreclit, and the rather cumbrous historical metnods of Maine and Maitiand. The student .who wishes to grasp the reol meaning of juristic 'institutions must go to Salmonds work." . ■ ,> i ■ - L ' ir This is how Hie.paper corrected itselt the following week:— ~.-.. "We are glad 'to hear that the information on which vc based op statement last week of the death of professor Sal-, raond has proved to be incorrect. It js n case in which less aeriou's .journalists than ourselves would, we believe, sny that tho report was "greatly exaggerated." But while we regret to have given currcnev to a statement which would cause pain to friends of the distiiiguisii-d lawyer and writer, we are plad_ to think that the maxim de mortii ml nisi boinun 1 gave 'place in this instance to do vivo I nil nisi optimum." -'