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would be overwhelmed with ap plications, and would have to mortgage Ardwall to send copies to all the applicants.
As you ask us to make corrections, there are two I should like you to make.
1. In referring to the Budhill case in my letter, I did not make it clear that the First Division case which was decided in the same fortnight, and in which the judgment of the Second Division was naturally followed, was a different case, between diff
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erent parties - I forget the names - The point was the same viz whether a Ry Coy were vested in the ordinary strata under a compulsory conveyance in terms of the Ry Clauses Acts, or whether all they acquired was the surface soil on which to lay the lines, with the result that they would have to pay compensation further for the support of the soil, if they interfered with the surrounding owners working the rock. The First Division held themselves bound to
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follow the Second and gave a formal judgment for the Mineral proprietors: so for the time it was Jameson contra mundum.
2. When you state that my father was bored with "the damned metaphysics" of the law you are right. He had a broad grasp of the principles of justice & of law: but abstruse refinements were not his delight.
I think the phrase is characterist ic of the man. I remember he used
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it to myself in reference to a long discussion he had been lured into when pleading from the bar in apicibus legis, and a rarefied atmosphere he found it difficult to breathe in by "that subtle bugger Kinnear", as he affect ionately termed the Senator.
But as stated at first hand in a book which will be read by many of the Bar & all the Bench, I think the sentence you
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use might have the effect of making his written judgments in reported cases less quoted. Perhaps you might put it into oratio obliqua as a criticism he had made on abstruse refinement, so that it would not in any way detract from his being "an author ity", which you know is the sort of immortality coveted most by judges.
I say, as a great personal favour, could you manage to shove in to your indispensible
