The sixteenth annual provincial meeting of the Incorporated Law Society
was opened on Tuesday in the Philosophical Hall at Leeds, Mr. Grinham Keen, the President of the Association, giving the customary inaugural address. According to the speaker, the public would not welcome the change from a private to a public trustee, since a public office is not fit to control the family relations involved, and great extra expense would be incurred. These remarks show that peculiar inability to appreciate their clients' feelings so often shown by solicitors. The public, in reality, is half-crazy to be delivered from the risks, worries, and anxieties of trusteeship. Again, the maker of the will or settlement would like to feel that his money would be safe from all chance of fraud, and that it would be strictly ad- ministered, and not in accordance with the whims of a trustee who possibly did not mind committing occasional breaches of trust. Next Mr. Keen attacked registration of title. There is something almost funny in his inability to believe that land can ever be made easily or quickly transferable. So accustomed is he to the existing system, that he quite sincerely regards it as a law of Nature not lightly to be interfered with. Of the many other subjects touched on by the President, that of fusion with the Bar was the most important. He suggested that though it is better to maintain a division of labour, the change from one side of the profession to the other should be made as easy and rapid as possible.
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