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instruments of his civil extinction." In a recent case the Preposition UPON seems to have played a similar part in the hands of some who "perchè non erano grammatici, eran perciò cattivi legisti."

The point at issue was the meaning of UPON, as a preposition of Time, that is, as employed to express the relation as to time between two acts; the Declaration now required of magistrates, &c., by the Act 9th Geo. IV., being directed to be subscribed "within one calendar month next before, or UPON admission to office." If then the Declaration shall not have been subscribed within the space of one month next before admission, it is to be subscribed UPON admission. "The words next before,' of course," says the Attorney-General, "are clear; next before must make it antecedent to his admission."-Q. B. p. 68. And let us be thankful that next before is still permitted to mean antecedent. But alas for the doubts and difficulties in which the other alternative is involved! Does UPON also mean antecedent to? or subsequent?

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"That 'upon' may mean before there can be no doubt at all; says the Attorney-General.-Q. B. p. 16. "Now here it is upon his admission' that he is to do this. I say that that is before he is admitted.'" "I do not say that 'upon' is always synonymous with 'before.' It may possibly be after, it may be concurrent, but it may be prior."―ib. p. 15. 'One of your Lordships mentioned," adds Sir J. Campbell, "looking to this very Rule, that it was drawn up 'UPON reading the affidavit of David Salomons.' The affidavit had been read before your Lordships granted the Rule. Now your Lordships will read 'upon' as meaning before, if in that way the intention of the legislature will best be effected." p. 16. "Lord DENMAN.-'Upon reading the affidavits' is 'after reading the affidavits.' Then if the two are analogous, upon admission' is ' after admission;' so that it will be after his admission that he is to make the Declaration. ATTORNEY-GENERAL.-Suppose it were, that upon making the Declaration he is to be admitted. Mr. Justice PATTESON. That would be intelligible: and then I should say the Declaration would be first. Mr. Justice COLERIDGE.-But here it is, that upon admission he is to make the Declaration:...... You say, it means before. Read it so; then it is 'shall within one month next before, or before his admission.'"-Q. B. 17, 18.

The extracts marked Q. B. are from the arguments in the Queen's Bench, 1838; and those marked Exch. are from the Proceedings in the Exchequer Chamber on a Writ of Error, 1839; both printed from the Notes of Mr. Gurney.

Sir F. Pollock says, with perfect truth, it has "no meaning in Johnson bearing the import of before."

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"Sir F. POLLOCK.-Now, my Lords, the question is, What is the meaning of the word 'UPON?" In the first place, in plain English, among a number of meanings given to 'upon-upwards of twenty, I think.-Mr. Justice LITTLEDALE. Twenty-three, I think : and there may be a great many more enumerated from Johnson's Dictionary. Mr. Justice COLERIDGE. It could hardly mean either indefinitely before, or indefinitely after, for that would be no time; then you must add something to the words before or after. Sir F. POLLOCK. -My Lord, there is no meaning in Johnson bearing the import of before. Mr. Justice LITTLEDALE.-There is one which means concurrently: ' that is, I think, the eighteenth. Sir F. POLLOCK.-There is one which is 'in consequence of;' then if it is to be in consequence of admission, admission is to come before it. There is another, supposing a thing granted here admission was not granted, but refused. There is another, 'in consideration of,' which certainly does not import that the act done in consideration, is to go before the act in consideration of which it is done; and there is another, which is ‘at the time of, or on occasion of.' Mr. Justice LITTLEDALE.-That is the one I meant to refer to. Sir F. POLLOCK.-But there is a general observation in Johnson in con. nection with all these. 'It always retains an intimation, more or less obscure, of some substratum, something precedent.' Now, my Lord, let us see what are the legal instances in which the word 'upon' is used. I am quite surprised, I own, that my learned friend should refer to the expression on payment of costs,' and 'upon reading the affidavit,' to show that the admission is to come after, because the payment of costs comes before; and it is the second time he has fallen into the error. Says my learned friend, upon the payment of costs' means that payment of costs is to come first, and therefore on admission' means that admission is to come last; that is really my learned friend's argument. ... Upon reading the affidavit' certainly imports that the rule is granted after that; and that is one instance in which it is impossible not to perceive that upon must import the precedence of the act which is so introduced."-Q. B. pp. 39, 40.

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1 Several of these are, as is usual with Johnson, meanings not of the word he explains, but of some other word in the sentence: thus, 2. Thrown over the body. "Thrown her night gown upon her." 3. By way of imprecation. "My blood upon your heads; Sorrow on thee.' 5. Hardship or mischief. If we would neither impose upon ourselves.” In these it is clear that throw, body, imprecation, mischief, blood, or sorrow, are no meanings of upon. As well might it be said that upon means blessing, Blessings on thee!"—or ink, "Ink upon paper."

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The example quoted is from Swift: "The king upon this news marched." The news obviously preceded the marching; and they were not concurrent.-ED.

3 It will be seen in the subsequent proceedings, that Sir J. Campbell does not abandon this mode of reasoning, by which it might as well be proved that after means before. "B comes after A: then A comes before B:-Therefore after means before.—Q. E. D."

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Notwithstanding Sir J. Campbell's suggestion that the law was to be expounded "without very nicely scanning or criticizing the language employed,”—p. 24; and "without entering into any very nice criticism of the words,"-p. 65; "the language employed" being "not very happily selected," p. 68, the Court of Queen's Bench gave the following clear and straightforward judgement :

"We are of opinion that, as the Declaration is to be made upon admission, the Admission is the first thing to be done."-Judgement of the Court, delivered by Lord Chief Justice Denman, p. 54.

This judgement has, however, since been reversed by the other Judges in the Exchequer Chamber, and the question decided on grounds quite independent of philology. Sir J. Campbell thus objects to it, in the proceedings on the Writ of Error, 1839:

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"The effect of this decision of the Court of Queen's Bench is, that a Jew or a Mahometan may be Lord Mayor of London."-Exch. p. 12. "My Lords, can your Lordships suppose that those who framed that Act of Parliament really had it in contemplation that there might be a mayor of any corporation in England who was a Mahometan or a Pagan? p. 71. "There certainly was the greatest anxiety that no one should be admitted until he had made a declaration in the form given; so that no one who was not a Christian-that neither Jew nor Papist nor Infidel-should be allowed to be admitted."-p. 12.

"Sir F. POLLOCK.-My learned friend seems to me to have a pious and a Christian horror of a Jew wearing the Lord Mayor's chain : " yet "a Jew may be Lord Chancellor, Lord Treasurer.... "-Exch. p. 37. "The Court of Queen's Bench have chosen to put their Judgement upon the broad plain ground; they say 'upon' means after; and we can give no sensible construction to the Act unless we so read it."-p. 59. "There is nothing in which the dexterity of an advocate is so conspicuous as in turning the question. In the Court below, my learned friend said the question was this,-whether corporations should be inundated with Jews, Turks, and Atheists: at any rate, my Lords, that is not the legal question."-p. 70.

"ATT. GEN.-I acknowledge that my learned friend will find no difficulty in citing instances whereupon' means after; whereupon' doing an act means after doing the act; but there are others whereupon doing the act means before the act is done. Suppose a new trial granted 'upon payment of costs; the costs are to be paid before the new trial takes place. Sir F. POLLOCK.-The payment of costs comes first :-and here we say the admission comes first.' -Exch. p. 27.

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"ATT. GEN.-There are, I think, thirty meanings given in Johnson's Dictionary to the word 'upon.' Baron ALDERSON.-If one man is to do one thing upon another man's doing another, then each is to do his

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part.' "1-p. 30. "Sir F. POLLOCK.-My Lords, I say that the meaning of the Act is, that.' upon' means after; and if you are to take it that it is concurrently, and at the same time, and on the same occasion, still that that which is to be done upon something else taking place, is, in point of order, to come after it."-p. 55. "The law says that upon conviction the party shall be hanged. Does that mean that he is to suffer the penalty before or after conviction? The word upon occurs more frequently in that way than in any other; upon refusal,' 'upon receipt.' Mr. Justice VAUGHAN.-A reward to be paid upon conviction.'.

Lord Chief Justice TINDAL.-A copyhold fine is payable upon admission; which means, and is decided to mean, after admission. There the admission is the consideration upon which the fine becomes due. You will however find it have a double meaning in many cases. Sir F. POLLOCK.-It never means before. Baron ALDERSON.-It may mean at the time...... upon admission' must mean before, or immediately after, or at the time."!!—p. 57.

Lord Chief Justice TINDAL.-"The words of the Act, upon his admission,' do not, as it appears to us, mean after the admission has taken place, but upon the occasion of, or, at the time of, admission." "We hold it to be unnecessary to refer to instances of the legal meaning of the word upon,' which in different cases may undoubtedly (! !) either mean before the act done to which it relates, or simultaneously with, or after it."-p. 93. "We therefore think that the Judgement of the Court of Queen's Bench ought to be reversed."―Judgement delivered by Lord Chief Justice TINDAL.-Exch. pp. 93, 96.

Should the philologist complain that this Decision is in complete violation of the nature and use of language, let him remember that the cause was removed out of the province of grammar; the great consideration being, not the true and plain meaning of words, but how religious exclusions should best be perpetuated. And although UPON was pro hac vice tortured and sacrificed, Grammarians will nevertheless recur to the manifest truth, that, when used to mark the relation of Time between two acts not simultaneous, the act which is governed by the preposition is always that which is first in order.

P. 79.

IF.-The derivation of IF from the imperative Give, seems very plausible so long as we limit our view to the English form of the word, especially as taken in connexion with the Scotch GIN, supposed to be the participle Given. But we cannot arrive at a correct opinion without viewing the word in the forms in

1 Undoubtedly: But in what order?

which it appears in the cognate dialects, and which do not seem at all referable to the verb To Give.

Thus, in Icelandic we have ef, si, modo, with the verb efa, ífa, dubitare; and the substantive eft, dubium, and its derivatives. See Ihre, v. Jef, dubium. In old German it is ibu, ipu, ube, oba, jef, &c., and in modern German ob, in the sense only of an, num, all of which must surely be identified with the Gothic ÏA, Ï ́ÀI, and GABAI, which latter Grimm (Deutsche Grammatik, vol. iii. p. 284.) considers as a compound of ja and ibái, and supposes that the sense of doubt is included in the Gothic word, and that ibái may be the dative of a substantive ïba, dubium, with which also he conjectures some adverbs may be connected (ib. p. 110.). In old German, he remarks, the substantive iba, dubium, whose regular dative is ibu, was preserved in the phrases, mit ibo, áne iba, p. 150, 157. Wachter gives the same account, and adds, "Hæc particula apud Francos eleganter transit in substantivum ibu, et tunc dubium significat:" as in the Athanasian Creed, ano IBU in euuidhu faruuirdhit, "without IF he shall perish everlastingly : "—that being considered a matter of so great certainty as not to admit of a doubt.' In the A.-S. IF, Grimm considers the prefixed as representing the Gothic G in jabai; and the old Frisic has ief, gef, iefta, iof, which Wiarda considers the same with the Francic oba and ibu.

Mr. Richardson, in his lately published Dictionary, and the writers of several recent grammars, implicitly follow Mr. Tooke in this etymology of IF, adopted from Skinner; but which appears more than doubtful, and inconsistent with the Teutonic or Scandinavian forms of the word.-See Jamieson, Hermes Scythicus, p. 122.

P. 82.

The following particulars of the author of Criticisms on the Diversions of Purley, published under the assumed name of I. Cassander, are taken from a memoir in the Gentleman's and Monthly Magazines for 1804, probably written by the late Mr. William Taylor of Norwich, the authenticity of which I have no doubt may be relied on. I well remember Mr. Bruckner, who had been my Father's preceptor in the French and Dutch languages; and I believe Mr. Tooke had no other reason for coupling him with Mr. Windham, ("my Norwich critics, for I shall couple them," see pp. 123, 126 and Note,

1 See Dr. Hook's Letter quoted at p. 186.

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