80 difficult nature were of frequent occurrence. Mr. Sandars was succeeded in liis office by Mr. Albert de Souza Larcher, i/he senior Portuguese judge in the Mixed Courts. Mr. Larcher was succeeded as Vice-President of the Mixed Court of Appeal by Mr. Prancis Laloe, the senior French judge.

Of the three English judges of the native courts who joined the army, one, Mr. G. H. Fox, sacrificed his life, being killed in action at Katia in 1915. The judicial service lost in Mr. Fox a man of unusual promise.

Although it falls outside the period to which this report relates, I cannot refrain from referring here to the recent death of Mr. Albert Eeman, the frocureur general of the Mixed Courts. Mr. Eeman, after a distinguished career in Belgium as an advocate and a member of the legislature, joined the Mixed Courts as a judge in the year 1897. He was endowed with exceptional qualities of mind and disposition, and had ably fulfilled the functions of p'ocureur neneral since 1912.

The principal activities of the Ministry of Justice during the year 1919 have been of an administrative character. In the month of July the Council of Ministers promulgated a decision which involved far reaching changes in the cadre and salaries of the native courts. The decision of September, which granted substantial increases of salary, as well as temporary allowances, to all Government officials, made a further revision of judicial salaries necessary, which were only carried into effect in January 1920. It will be sufficient to record two outstanding features of the system which is the outcome of these successive measures. In the first place, with a few exceptions, the salary of each judicial post is arranged on a graduated scale, so that the occupant of the post moves from a minimum to a maximum salary by automatic increases at regular intervals of two or three years. The second feature of the reformed system is that while EurojDeans and Egyptians, holding similar posts, receive similar salaries (subject to the automatic increases referred to) Europeans are entitled to a further allowance of from £E. 100 to £E. 300 per annum according to age. European luagistrates have always received a somewhat higher rate of pay than Egyptians in view of the greater expenses which they have to meet owing to living abroad. The effect of the new arrangements is to systematise and to render more equitable the application of this principle.

Schemes for the revision of the salaries of the Mixed Court judges and of those of the judges of the Mehkemchs, were under consideration, but were not carried into effect during the period under review.

50. Legislation. At the outbreak of war three commissions were at work, under the auspices of the Ministry of Justice, elaborating important projects of legislative reform, namely, a revised Penal Code, a revised Code of Civil Procedure, and a revised Civil Code. Of these only the first, which was presided over by Mr. J. H. Percival, survived the second year of the war, and completed its labours. The draft which it prepared, after having been the subject of the labours of successive committees of revision, now holds the field as the draft Penal Code proposed for application to foreigners, when general criminal jurisdiction over non-Egyptians comes to be exercised by the Mixed Courts. * In the year 1917 the Ministry of Justice took up once again, and this time on very broad lines, the general problem of the legislative reforms which would be necessitated or rendered possible by the abolition of the Capitulations. The conduct of these studies were entrusted to a strong commission, which bore the title of the Capitulations Committee, and was composed of Yousef Pasha Wahba, then Minister of Finance, Chairman; Abdel Khalek Pasha Sarwat, Minister of Justice; Adly Pasha Yeghen, Minister of Education: three advisers, one judge of the Mixed Court of Appeal, and one other senior legal olficial. Sir William Brunyate acted as reporter to the commission, and sustained the principal burden of preparing the material for its discussions.

The commission prosecuted its inquiries with energy from the time of its creation in April 1917 until the resignation of Rushdy Pasha’s Ministry in December 1918 brought its labours to an inevitable conclusion. In this period of time a large area of ground was covered and material was accumulated which for a long time to come will be of value to those responsible for tlie promotion of legislative reform.

Such actual legislation as was strictly necessary during the war took to a lai'ge extent the form of proclamations under martial law, and apart from assistance given in preparing proclamations the activities of the Department of Justice have been largely devoted, as indicated above, to the study of the reforms involved in the House of Commons Parliamentary Papers Online. Copyright (c) 2006 ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights reserved.