CANADA'S FEDERAL SYSTEM.
Canada's Federal System. By A. H. F. Lefroy. (Toronto : Carswell and Co.)—In this revised and reconstructed edition of his Law of Legislative Power in Canada Mr. Lefroy gives an exhaustive study of Canadian constitutional law under the British North America Act. The relation of the Dominion with the Imperial Government on the one hand and the provincial governments on the other is never static, and the years which have elapsed since the appearance of Mr. Lefroy's first book have seen developments which have made a reconsideration of the law extremely desirable. The most effective agent in superintending and elucidating this perpetual process of adjustment is, as Mr. Lefroy recognizes, the judicial committee of the Privy Council, and many important decisions such, e.g., as those in The City of Toronto v. C.P.R. Company, Ltd., The Burrard Power Company v. The King, The Province of Ontario v. The Dominion of Canada, The Attorney General of Ontario v. The Attorney General of Canada, and the recent reference on the subject of the Dominion and Provincial powers in relation to marriage legislation, are discussed in the present. volume. Mr. Lefroy deals almost exclusively with the correlation of the various legislative powers under the Act, and his attitude is throughout a thoroughly sane one. He seccessfully resists the temptation to magnify the Dominion's powers at the expense of Imperial control. Indeed, the only important proposition of his which one feels disposed to question is to be found in a passage where he maintains, as a conclusion "beyond doubt," that the provincial and Dominion legislatures have the same power to bind their own" subjects" outside their respective jurisdictions as the Imperial legisla- ture has with regard to British subjects. This, however, opens a wider field of controversy than we can traverse here. It remains to be said that the form of Mr. Lefroy's volume is admirable, the book remaining, for all its nine hundred pages, a miracle of lightness and convenience.
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