A curious illustration of the horror which our English climate
sometimes inspires,—and no one can wonder, at the present time, at its inspiring any amount of horror,—came before Sir James Bacon on Tuesday, under the form of a question whether an English peer, Lord Howden, was " domiciled" at the time of his death in England, or only in France, where he actually died,—the question arising as to whether a certain portion of his personal property as to which he died intestate should be distributed according to the French or the English law of distribution. He had declared himself to have been for twenty years domiciled in France, " sine animo revertendi." In a letter writen in 1863, he says •—" I am little interested in English politics, but I am still much less so in all things appertaining to what you call Court circles.' I have been displaced from the first, and never had any real relationship with the second. We have both seen a great deal of warm suns in our life ; perhaps your affection for the brilliant deity is not so great as mine. I confess I seek him with unlimited devotion, and I am appalled by both the moral and physical gloom of England." It was endeavoured to prove that an English peer who has duties in the House of Lords cannot give up his English domicile, but Sir James Bacon decided that it was left entirely to the discretion of an English peer whether he would sit in the House of Lords or not,—no individual peer being necessary to it,—and that he was really " domiciled " as well as resident at the time of his death in France only. And if Lord Howden is conscious of the decision, it will certainly comfort him to know that not even theoretically was he held to be. domiciled amid that appalling gloom to which it made him shudder to refer.
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