MY DEAR GLADSTONE,

THERE would be no impropriety, I think, in addressing the following remarks to any member of parliament, who may, and probably will be, called upon hereafter to legislate upon the important and complicated subject to which they refer. But it appears to me that there is an especial propriety in invoking your particular attention to them—not upon the personal ground of the friendship which has subsisted between us for so many years, though there is no reason why this .motive should be without its influence upon me, but because you have filled very high offices and taken a very conspicuous part in the government of the country, because you were a distinguished member of that administration which propounded and carried through one branch of the legislature (the most judicial branch, I may be permitted to say) a measure of wise, vigorous, well-considered

and practicable reform upon this subject; and also because you are the Representative in Parliament of one of the Universities, and, as such, necessarily interested in whatever affects their privileges, and in whatever concerns the study of, what is usually called, the Civil Law.

Your very sincere Friend,

ROBERT PHILLIMORE,

CONTENTS.

PRELIMINARY REMARKS

FIRST PART.

PAGE

.. 7

Inquiry into the Correctness of the Charges contained in

Mr. Bouverie's Speech..

9

Report of the Commission of 1832, as to Doctors' Commons 13

Alleged Specific Instances of the Mal-administration of

Justice in Doctors' Commons

Comparison of the Courts in Doctors' Commons with the

Courts of Common Law and Equity, as to Delay and

Expense..

1. In Maritime Cases..

2. In the Testamentary Court

3. In the Courts of Marriage and Divorce

18

30

30

34

41

The Mode of Procedure in the Courts of Civil and Eccle-

Tribunals to which it is proposed to transfer the Jurisdic-

59

59

61

Ecclesiastical Courts in the Country-Peculiar and Exempt

Jurisdictions

B

73

History of the Civil Law in England and of the Profession

of Civilians..

Advantage of the Rules relating to the Admission and

Practice of Advocates at Doctors' Commons ..

Opinions of eminent Persons as to the Value of the Pro-

95

135

139

148

1. Evidence of J. W. Freshfield, Esq.

2. Evidence of W. R. Hamilton, Esq., Under Secretary of

3. Patent of the Professor of Civil Law at Oxford

4. Charter of the College of Advocates

151

PRELIMINARY REMARKS.

THE speech recently delivered by Mr. Bouverie in the House of Commons may be fairly presumed to contain the severest bill of indictment which the utmost pains and information could instruct, and the fiercest zeal could prefer, against the Courts of Civil and Ecclesiastical Jurisprudence. It swallows up and embodies all the petitions of persons not permitted to practise in these Courts, of Quakers objecting to pay tithes, Dissenters to pay rates, Clergymen to submit to canonical discipline, and of individual suitors in all Courts, whether testamentary, matrimonial, or maritime, who have been so unfortunate (through, I need not say, the ignorance or corruption of their judges) as to be cast in their suits; all the petitions on these matters which may from time to time have been laid upon the table of parliament, from the first precedent about the time of the abolition of the Episcopate and the breaking out of the Civil War in these realms down to the present day.*

The speech is made by a gentleman who is a member of the common law bar, and therefore,

* I have now before me a scurrilous pamphlet, evidently written by the Puritans, entitled the "Last Will and Testament of Doctors' Commons," &c. and of which "all the Scottish Covenanters" are appointed Executors. "Printed in the Yeare, of Doctors Commons Feare, 1641."