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of the Courts in the Republic of Ireland and the
Courts of England of acting in aid of each other
has survived the constitutional changes in Ireland
and a number of Orders have been made in the
Republic of Ireland under Section 70 of
the
Bankruptcy
(Ireland) Amendment Act
1872
directing the Courts here to act in aid of the
English Courts and the Irish Courts have also
been granted such Orders in England.
This work is well bound, excellently printed
and for present times reasonably priced at £5.50
and will be a most useful addition to the library
of solicitors and barristers in Ireland interested
in this branch of the law.
R. G. H. CARTER.
Goode (R. M.)
Hire Purchase Law and Practice.
2nd Edition. 8vo. Pp. LXXII, 1,302. London,
Butterworth, 1970. £12.
This is the Second Edition of a work which first
appeared
in 1962. This Edition has been re
written completely, includes no less than sixteen
new Chapters and must now rank as the standard
work on the subject. There is a comprehensive
Index of 45 pages. Because of Governmental
Regulations controlling deposits on Hire Pur
chase Agreements, there is a trend nowadays for
finance companies to avoid (evade?) the pro
visions of the Hire Purchase Acts by making
personal loans to the buyer or by the use of
trading cheques, and it seems clear that the law
relating to
instalment credit will have
to be
extended to embrace these methods of financing
the sale of consumer goods.
It is interesting to recall that modern Hire
Purchase Law stems from a decision of the House
of Lords in 1895 holding that a hirer of goods
with an option to purchase was not able to pass
title to a bona fide purchaser for a value without
notice of the Hire Purchase Agreement. As with
most English text books the reader must be care
ful to discern where English law departs from that
of Ireland. In particular our law does not give
protection to the bona fide purchaser of a motor
vehicle (but see Section 28 of Hire Purchase Act,
1960) or a "cooling off" period during which a
hirer may decide to rescind an Agreement which
were both brought into English law in 1964.
There is an interesting explanation in Appendix
A as to the cost of borrowing on a hire purchase
basis and Appendix E contains some very good
precedents. The publishers are to congratulated
upon a most legible presentation. This book is
highly recommended.
M. R. CURRAN.
LAW IN A CHANGING SOCIETY
Mr. Brendan McGrath, President
of
the
Incorporated Law Society, who is also President
of the Medico-Legal Society, said in the course
of a talk given by the Medico-Legal Society on the
subject of "The Law in a Changing Society" that
freedom is not the power of doing what we like
but the right of being able to do what we ought.
All may not be well in contemporary society as
manifested by the growth of State intervention,
the dehumanisation of work, the feeling of re
moteness and non-participation in vital decision-
making, the upsurge of violence, the deterioration
of morals, the rule of the trend, the excitement
of the gimmick, the almost total equation of
leisure with fun and of ease with
indolence.
Nevertheless if protest and demonstration lays
claim to support the search for a better quality
of life, society is entitled to expect of the pro
testors and demonstrators that they have some
defined objects. To obey only the laws you like
unsupported by any positive programme for
action is nihilism. Equally any call for Law and
Order which is resistant to change is as unproduc
tive as the revolutionary with a theory of revolu
tion.
Law must be seen as an instrument designed to
enhance the welfare of the community by promot
ing the human values for which society exists.
What law is cannot be separated from what it is
for, and what it is for cannot be separated from
what it ought to be. It ought to reflect the com
munity's moral conscience in conformity with
the declared purpose of the Constitution "to
promote the common good so that the dignity and
freedom of the individual may be assured."
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