A knowledge of the character and construction of British legislation in the taxation of estates and successions is essential to an understanding of the Succession Duties of the various Canadian Provinces. Of the death duties in the United Kingdom the probate is the oldest. For practical purposes it was abolished by the Finance Act in i894, but the principles of its incidence apply to the estate duty. As administered by the early ecclesiastical courts it was imposed upon only so much property of the deceased as was locally situated within the jurisdiction of the court. For the court to declare property liable to probate was to affirm that it was locally situate in its area of jurisdiction. For example, the courts held that shares in a canal company should be probated in the diocese where the transfer office was located;' that foreign personal property of a person dying domiciled in England was not liable to probate duty;2 that duty paid in England on shares of a railway situate in Scotland with its transfer office also in Scotland was wrongly paid and must