in the Code. We have not space to refer to the subject of Appeals or that of Bail. To the latter just attention has been given, embracing fully the whole subject. The sections relating to it are the 631st to 686th. No unnecessary restrictions are imposed in respect to bail in the lesser class of crimes; and the act provides, that in cases of felony, bail shall not be taken except on ample notice to the prosecution of the names of the bail and their qualifications, with a description of the property in respect to which they intend to justify, and a statement of all incumbrances upon it. The public officers must then inquire diligently and carefully into the sufficiency of the bail, and, if deemed proper, the examination may be adjourned to afford further time for scrutiny.

We feel conscious that we have here given but a very meagre outline of the subject we have undertaken to illustrate; but it may serve to show that many of the abuses of the old practice have in this Code been remedied, and also the principles on which it is drawn up. Our readers will at once perceive that our space will allow no more than this in dealing with a subject spreading over so wide a basis and a Code containing nearly 1000 sections. With this apology for the imperfect manner in which we have grappled with the subject, we leave it to the mature judgment and consideration of our readers.

R. F.

ART. VII.-THE BILL FOR THE BETTER ADMINISTRATION OF JUSTICE IN THE COURT OF CHANCERY. Times Newspaper, 28th March, 1851.

AT the date of our last number we entertained a reasonable

expectation that the ministerial propositions for the reforms connected with the various duties of the Lord Chancellor, and the remodelling and reconstitution of the officers and machinery of the highest courts of justice in these realms, would, by the time of this present publication, have been not only fairly before the public, but scrutinised, canvassed-modified, perhaps and certainly advanced some perceptible degrees towards the form in which they would finally be placed upon the statute roll. We also entertained an expectation, whether reasonable or otherwise, that the ministerial propositions about to be brought forward would be framed, if not so as to effect all the

reforms we would wish to see effected, at least with a full view of all the objects to be desired and of all the evils to be avoided in the present system. Reasonable or unreasonable, these expectations have been wofully disappointed. Events, the consideration of which is totally out of place in these pages, and to which we need not, therefore, more distinctly refer, have so long postponed the period for bringing forward these measures that the proposed bill is not yet printed leave having only been given on the 27th March to bring in the Bill, which will not have been read a first time until after the recess. And although this disappointment of the hopes we once entertained might be pleaded, perhaps, in bar to any strictures or observations to be made upon the measure itself, yet, in this our own court, we shall not scruple to set aside that plea, and express the further and much greater disappointment we have felt at the nature of the proposed measures, so far as they appear in the speech of Lord John Russell on moving for leave to bring in the Bill.

It is a mockery on the meaning of words to call the proposed alterations reforms. They are, in effect, only two in number: neither of them point at the removal or mitigation of any real difficulty: each of them is a change for the worse. The bill should be intituled, " A Bill for enabling the Master of the Rolls to sit for the Lord Chancellor, and for enabling the Lord Chancellor to act as an Attorney-General in the House of Lords: for augmenting the Patronage of the First Lord of the Treasury: for obstructing the course of Business in the inferior Courts of Equity and other Matters."

The minutes of the proceedings state that the bill is to be brought in by Lord John Russell, Sir George Grey, and the Attorney and Solicitor-Generals. Popular fancy has exhausted itself in the various forms of expressing the conclusions of popular philosophy with respect to this multiplication of guardians. The very great calf indeed that was suckled by so many cows, the soup that was spoiled by pleonastic cooks,-the "puddock" that felt every tooth in the harrow,-this unfortunate bill may point to all these figurative existences, and many more, as types of itself. How any one of the four gentlemen above named will reconcile it with his sense of self-respect to advocate an alteration embracing the two points mentioned by the premier, and no other points, remains to be seen. We can conceive many propositions to be made by well-informed minds which we should decline to follow out. We can conceive that many sincere persons, of intelligence superior to our own, might decline to approve of alterations so extensive as we think necessary. But we cannot conceive how any person of ordinary information

on the subject should bring forward the two alterations of Lord John's proposed measure, not as part of a plan, but as constituting the whole plån,-and call that a reform. We are informed, and are ready to believe, that Lord John has been very ill-advised. That may be,-but really this subject has been so often sifted during the last twenty-five years, and by so many hands, that the whole bearings may be mastered, without any very great difficulty, by a mind so ready and so powerful as his lordship's, and he ought not to be advised at all, well or ill, but judge for himself. The necessary sources of information are not very scattered, nor very hidden. Nothing is less requisite, or, indeed, desirable, than to bring to the task of legislation any practical knowledge of the technicalities of the courts. We do not ask his lordship to collect and consult the oracles delivered by hosts of pamphleteers,-Sybilline leaves, scattered abroad at every breath which rises in St. Stephen's. We do not ask him to recognize the existence of anonymous scribblers like ourselves, much less to place any reliance on our statements. Let him consult Hansard, and the publications of the speakers whose names appear in Hansard, when they have expressed their sentiments elsewhere than in parliament. Let him peruse the statements and speeches of Eldon, Twiss, Lyndhurst, Canning and Liverpool on the one side,—and of Eldon, Lyndhurst, Brougham, Cottenham, Sugden, and, now alas no more, Langdale on the other: with the parliamentary returns of causes, &c., for statistics all of which he might read in a morning; and we defy him to go down at night and propose such a measure as indicated in his speech of the 27th March last. We appeal, not from Philip full to Philip fasting, but from Lord John fasting to Lord John full: from Lord John uninformed to Lord John after he shall have imbibed somewhat of that ether which inspires statesmen with large and general views. We entreat him, as he values himself, to peruse the speeches of these great men, not merely with the object of quoting their statistics or re-stating their difficulties, but endeavouring to enter into the views of each in his turn, and see matters as the speaker saw them, then digest and reproduce a measure worthy of his name, and of the cause which he has at last deigned to undertake.

For though in the course of the speech to which we have referred the names of Lord Langdale, Lord Cottenham and Sir Edward Sugden are introduced, and the various plans specially recommended by these great authorities are, to a certain extent, discussed, it must strike every reader, even without any previous acquaintance with any of those plans, that they are brought on the stage like the wretched king of the Amalekites, to be dis

missed to instant execution; introduced without ceremony, condemned without a hearing, and put to death without mercy or hesitation. Lord Langdale's measure, indeed, meets a somewhat more dignified reception; but what strikes us as peculiar is the slender reasoning which satisfies the noble reformer in pitching over deeply-revolved and anxiously-matured plans with the same imperturbable nonchalance as if they were filbert husks. Lord Langdale's plan involves the creation of a new officer, a minister of justice; but the House of Commons are too stingy to grant any new salary; exit Lord Langdale's plan. One other reason is brought forward against Lord Langdale's plan; that the minister of justice, being removable, will probably be a less attractive office than the chief justiceships of the superior courts at Westminster, and so the ministry would have an adviser of inferior merit. We do not admit this; for under the present system the Chancellor and the Attorney and Solicitor-Generals, who are the ex officio ministerial advisers, are all removable. Yet, granting it to be so, is it not evident that the whole application of one man of eminent ability (even if he be not the admitted leader in every branch of his profession-who is so?)-will probably be more valuable than the flitting attention of a distracted Lord Chancellor of the present régime? In short, the argument runs thus: Lord Langdale suggests the creation of a high office, with weighty duties, administrative and political, with competent salary and extensive patronage; but, says Lord John, the House of Commons will not grant the salary, or at any rate I will not ask for it; and I want the patronage myself; therefore Lord Langdale's plan will not do, because, without salary or patronage no competent person will take the place. Perhaps not; but is this mode of argument fair? Is it even ingenuous ?-Lord Cottenham's plan is dismissed in six lines: it was rejected by a majority of 3 to 1 in the Lords fifteen years ago; therefore it is useless to discuss it now. Is Lord John not aware of the immense change of feeling since 1836? and that of the deepest root, because springing from the diffusion of information and comparison of other systems with our own? A division on the Corn Laws in 1836, or on a motion for a Corporation Act or Reform Bill in 1826, might be quoted at the present day with precisely the same meaning and force. Sir Edward Sugden fares more ignominiously than Lords Langdale and Cottenham: they are simply executed; Sir Edward's views are with considerable ingenuity brought forward so as to appear partly to support the measure now proposed. Sir Edward, when proposing his scheme of an Equity Exchequer Chamber, remarks on the weight of responsibility bearing on the Chan

cellor, from his sitting alone; and Lord John brings that forward as an authority in favour of his contemplated measure, the real effect of which would be that the Chancellor would never sit at all.

We remember that when, upon the retirement of Lord Cottenham, the seals were held in commission during a somewhat anxious pause, and then delivered to the present Lord Chancellor without any allusion on the part of the government to the question of Chancery Reform, the dissatisfaction which was expressed was allayed by the observation, that by that very appointment ministers at all events now stood pledged to substantial reform, and to a severance of the official functions of the Lord Chancellor-since it was manifestly absurd to contemplate the continuance of all those functions in Lord Truro, as nobody pretended that he could adequately exercise them all, although he might very efficiently exercise some of them. And in the same manner we may point to the measure now contemplated as the most cogent demonstration of the necessity for the appointment of that very officer, call him Minister of Justice, Secretary of State for Affairs of Law, or what else may be thought a proper title, whom Lord John conceives the House of Commons to be too parsimonious to maintain. Would such an officer venture to bring forward such a measure, for which he alone should be responsible? We scarcely think so. If he did, it would be met, and he himself overwhelmed, with the same unceremonious huée as was raised against the late Budget and its responsible contriver. Look at every other department of government; each is under one head. And as to those which are governed by "Boards," e. g. the Admiralty and the Woods and Forests, although in each there is an ex officio head, yet, unless public opinion vehemently lie, those are the departments in which peculation and mismanagement principally prevail. What are the names to be on the back on the bill? Lord John Russell-worried with a breaking cabinet, recalcitrant Smithfield constituents, suspicious radical supporters, bellowing phalanx of agriculturists in front, auxiliary "Irishes" of uncertain fidelity on his flank, and the Romish Aggression Bill' and his Durham Letter pinioning either arm

The Romish Aggression Bill is another irresistible proof, if other proof were needed, of the necessity for one qualified officer to take charge of the construction of such bills. It is in some parts, grammatically speaking, nonsense; in other parts redundant; in other parts, again, so elliptical as to leave the gravest doubts of what would be the judicial construction of the words employed-and this in a penal act. When the acutest counsel now practising at the Equity bar, in consultation a short time since on the effect of the bill, was asked by one of the other counsel present what he considered would be, under certain circumstances likely to arise, the meaning of the only clause proposed to be retained,