The final award of Lord Cairns in the Albert Assurance
Arbitration was published last week. The whole business of winding up the affairs of the Albert Company has occupied six years and some days. The liquidation of the Company was com- menced in the Court of Chancery before Vice-Chancellor Melina in August, 1869, and in May, 1871, after £71,600 had been spent upon the proceedings, and little or no progress had been made in adjudicating upon the vast mass of claims involved, a special Act of Parliament transferred the jurisdiction to a Court of Arbitration, in which Lord Cairns was appointed to preside, with- out appeal. After four years and three months, and an additional expenditure of £70,250, Lord Cairns has disposed of every claim, not to the complete satisfaction of all the claimants. We do not think that this second chapter of the story diminishes the force of Lord Westbury's emphatic statement that the necessity for the transfer was " a scandal on our judicature." The need of an appeal has been recognised in the case of the European Arbitra-
tion, which is still incomplete, and in which the decisions of the arbitrator, Mr. Reilly, may be revised by the Lords Justices at Lincoln's Inn.
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