against him: you may then get an attachment from the court where your bill was filed, and take his body for contempt of court. The costs incurred by plaintiff and defendant, respectively, will then be as follows:

This is a fine exemplification of law, and shows how greater are the advantages offered to finesse and knavery than to integrity and plain dealing. Some restraints are laid on frivolous writs of error by 6 Geo. IV. c. 96, but in other respects the above outline is a substantially correct exposition of the legal resources available to the unprincipled debtor for harassing his creditor.

SECTION XXIX.

PROSPECTS OF LEGAL REFORM.

Britain is not less a law-ridden than a priest-ridden country; and we regret that Lord Brougham cannot devise plans of reform having a less tendency to increase the number and emolument of a profession already too predominant. It has been remarked by Mr. Bentham, that lawyers oppose improvement from the same motives workmen oppose the introduction of machinery,they are apprehensive it would lessen their employment.

Undoubtedly it would have this effect; for the great object sought to be attained is to simplify and expedite

judicial proceedings, by which, unnecessary delay and expense may be avoided. It by no means follows, because there are laws, there should be a host of legalists to interpret them. The causes which render English laws difficult and unintelligible are obvious, and have been explained. It arises from their multiplicity, their contradictions, and the uncouth and nonsensical jargon in which they are expressed. All these are defects which would be speedily obviated by a government that represented the mind, the wants, and interests of the community. The Statute-Book, and the mass of decisions engrafted upon it, we verily believe, might be compressed into an octavo volume, and rendered so plain and readable as to form an appropriate class-book in every seminary of education in the kingdom.

Sad calamity this for the gentleman of the bar! Their occupation would be curtailed; their wigs and gowns cease to be venerable; and all their learned lore be as much out of date as the cocked hats and ruffles of the last generation. Can we wonder, therefore, at their hostility to improvement? They have a great stake—not in the country, but the law; and we may generally reckon upon them for our opponents; though it is rather too much that they should accuse (as some of them do) the reformers of being irrational and visionary, while their own mountebank profession is the reverse of both reason and common sense.

Between lawyers in this country and on the Continent, there is a marked difference: by the latter, law has long been treated as a rational science; by the former, it is considered nothing more than a mass of precedents, conundrums, forms, and technicalities-an art or mystery by dabbling in which men may soon become rich. A few splendid exceptions there are, no doubt, to this description; but this is the general character of the fraternity; their object is to gather fees, not study the principles of jurisprudence.

Hence it is not from the profession we anticipate a systematic and effective reform in our judicial administration;-though, if any unlearned person venture to suggest improvements, the whole craft is in arms, and ready to devour him. So far as the practice of the pro

fession is concerned, lawyers are the fittest persons to expound it; but so far as regards any thing new,—a code, for instance, or a different mode of administering justice, they are the last persons in the world who ought to be consulted. For our parts, we should as soon think of advising with the disciples of IGNATIUS LOYALA about the institutions of the order of Jesuits, as with lawyers on the subject of legal reform.

All

Yet it is to lawyers the great work of legal amendment is confided, and from them alone are the people to expect reform in our judicial system. Nothing but disappointment, we fear, will flow from this source. the law-lords are opposed to reform of any sort, with the exception of Lords Lyndhurst and Plunket, and these, either from interests at stake and indolence, or personal disappointment, are not expected to lend efficient aid. Sir James Scarlett has suggested some minor improvements; but it is evident he views with no favourable eye, innovations on the great field of his triumphs.

Only think of this gentleman's defence of special pleading, the absurdities of which are enough to make a horse laugh; a drizzling maze of empyrical inventions, circuitous procedure, and unintelligible fiction, calculated for no purpose but to fortify monopoly, and wrap justice in deceit and mystery. With such obstacles and prejudices what can be anticipated but delay and evasion without end, and ultimate failure at last?

The Common-Law Commissioners are not expected to conclude their inquiries in less than three years, and the Commissioners of Inquiry on the Laws of Real Property, in less than twelve years. At the expiration of these periods what may be expected? The accumulation of innumerable volumes of reports, and the useful suggestions they contain, buried in as impenetrable a mass as the laws whose abuses they are meant to set forth; and, after all this expenditure of time, labour, and money, it is probable no measures of reform will be founded upon them. They will share the fate of the Chancery Report, made five years ago, of the volumes without number of Reports on Public Charities, on the state of Ireland, the state of the finances, the poor, and other national subjects, in which there is much research

and many useful suggestions, but they are never reduced to practice.

Next let us advert to the reformatory labours of the Secretary of State. The consolidation acts of Sir Robert Peel are, no doubt, improvements; but the progress of the Right Hon. Gentleman is much too dilatory, and his plan of proceeding deficient in comprehensiveness. The entire body of criminal law ought to have been taken up at once by a select body of individuals competent to the undertaking, and digested into a simple and uniform code, accessible and intelligible to the whole community. Granting, some thirty years hence, Sir Robert may have finished his task, still it appears to us the criminal laws will be in as great a state of obscurity, contradiction, and perplexity as at present. We shall cite an example from the Forgery Act of last session, to illustrate the working of this partial legislation.

In the twenty-third section of the act it is provided, that the punishments of the 5 Eliz. c. 14, so far as they have been adopted by other acts, shall be repealed, and other punishments substituted in lieu of them. Now, as these other acts remain on the statute-book, without reference to the 1 Will. IV. c. 66, by which they have been altered, how is it possible this fact should be known to any person who happens to refer to them? This appears to us a convincing proof of the perplexities which will pervade the criminal statutes, after the process of consolidation has been completed.

They will be a sealed book, as heretofore, to all but lawyers and judges: in short, the legislature appears to proceed on the principle that laws are framed for the benefit of the profession only, not for the people; but surely the penal code, which affects every member of society, ought to be constituted for a very different purpose. Again, how little is the advantage of consolidating the statutes, if the decisions engrafted upon them, and which are as valid a portion of the law as the statutes themselves, are not incorporated? It will be all labour in vain, and "confusion worse confounded!"

In our humble opinion a different course might be pursued with advantage in the great work of legal reform. In the first place, it appears to us inquiries are not so

much needed as remedies; abuses in our judicial system are not far to seek they are obvious, and so are the means of reforming them. Why, then, not dispense with those voluminous reports and endless researches ? A commission might have been appointed to consolidate and simplify the criminal law-another the civil lawanother the law of property-and another the laws which regulate civil and criminal procedure, and each commission might not only have incorporated the statutes relative to the several departments of jurisprudence, but also the decisions of the judges founded upon them, and which have become part of the law of the land. When each commission had finished its task, their labours might have received the fiat of the legislature. It is only, we imagine, by some such measures the laws of England, Scotland, and Ireland,, can ever be made worthy of the enlightened communities, for whose benefit they are intended.

But it is high time we conclude this article. When the first Common-Law Report was presented to the Duke of Wellington, his only remark is said to have been

"Too much of it, too much of it,—a d- -d deal too much of it." We fear a remark of the same tenor may escape some of our readers, owing to the prolixity of our lucubrations. But the importance of the subject must form our apology. The dearness and delay of justice are national grievances of long standing. It appears from Whitlocke's Memorials, Oliver Cromwell presented a petition to the Collective Wisdom of his day, praying that "a speedy consideration might be had of the great oppressions, by reason of the multiplicity of unnecessary laws, with their intricacies and delays, which tend to the profit of some particular men, but much to the expense and damage of the whole." The Lord Protector, later in life, triumphed over every difficulty; but the lawyers gave him most trouble, and he was constrained at last to acknowledge they were too many for him.