among those qualified by law, such as he pleases. The civil courts appear either to have fallen entirely into disuse, or to have been but little resorted to. According to the evidence given before the Committee, the Admiralty's jurisdiction, belonging to the corporation of Yarmouth, is one which has not been administered advantageously or usefully, and that, and others, if such there be, are very fit subjects for future inquiry and improvement. "The privileges and exemptions from tolls and dues which are enjoyed by freemen give them, in some cases, very considerable advantage, in the conduct of the ordinary affairs of life, over those who are not freemen. It is stated, that two | persons engaged in trade in Hull, and in all other respects being equal, except that the one is, and the other is not, a freeman, the exemption from port and other dues will give an advantage to the freeman to the amount of 100%. per annum. It may well be questioned whether such exemptions rest on any public principle sufficiently strong to compensate for, and justify an interference with, that equality of rights which ought to be enjoyed by members of the same community. In most considerable places, private acts of parliament have been obtained for the purpose of watching, paving, and lighting the towns. Thus some important functions of police have been transferred to bodies independent of, and unconnected with, the corporations; and as the Committee did not consider that, under the reference made to them, they had power to inquire into the efficiency and administration of those acts, as regards the police of the respective towns, they have abstained from the inquiry. It may be remarked, however, that it is probable that if the corporations had been more popularly constituted, and had enjoyed a larger share of public confidence, they might have been invested with a greater, if not an exclusive, control over the execution of these acts of parliament." They afterwards add the following general expression of the opinion to which they have come as to the means to be taken in order to restore the usefulness of these institutions; "Your Committee are further led to infer, that corporations, as now constituted, are not adapted to the present state of society; the corporative officers are not identified with the community, who have rarely any influence in choosing them, and have no control over their proceedings; corporate offices, even the highest in rank, are not always objects of desire, and are likely to be less so now that the political influence of corporations has been so much diminished. To make corporations instruments of useful and efficient local government, it seems to be essential that the corporate officers should be more popularly chosen; that the offices should be accessible to all that have entitled themselves by their conduct to the good opinion and confidence of their fellow-citizens; that their proceedings should be open and subject to the control of public opinion; and that it should be felt by the community that the maintenance of order, and the equal administration of justice in all things, depend on the energy and principle of the corporate officers. If these objects could be obtained, there seems to be no reason to doubt that the wholesome influence and authority of corporations would be increased, that their powers of usefulness would be extended, that public confidence would be established, and that the desire of honourable distinction and the sense of duty would call into the service of the community those who are most capable of discharging the duties of the corporate offices with ability and integrity. Such are some of the results which your Committee anticipate from a zealous and honest prosecution of this most important inquiry." : The Report concludes as follows:"The proposal to recommend the appointment of a commission has met with the almost general concurrence of the Committee. "If the country is divided into districts, the labour will be abridged; the commissioners being on the spot, will be accessible to those who have important facts to communicate; they will be enabled to command the evidence necessary to decide on the weight of conflicting statements; and they may, in a short space of time, collect the necessary information more easily and more accurately than it could be obtained by any other proceeding. Your Committee, therefore, deeply impressed with the importance of the subject, earnestly recommend that no time should be lost in taking the necessary measures for appointing commissioners to prosecute the inquiry with promptitude and vigour, so that the materials to be collected may be arranged and brought under the consideration of Parliament early in the next session." The evidence, as might be expected from the sources whence it is chiefly derived, affords so imperfect an exposition of corporation abuses that we shall not at present submit any extracts from it. We may look for a much more searching and complete investigation of the subject from the commission which is probably about to be appointed. Such an investigation is quite indispensable to enable Parliament properly to deal with the evil, and to construct the better system that must be substituted for the present. Meanwhile the Report, as far as it goes, is extremely satisfactory and gratifying, and may be regarded as a most auspicious beginning of the work of reform in this important department. LOCAL COURTS BILL. In our fourth number we gave an account of the principal provisions of the bill which has been introduced into the House of Lords by the Lord Chancellor, for establishing Courts of Local Jurisdiction, in order, as it is expressed in the preamble, that the means may be "afforded to the people of this realm of having their suits tried as speedily and as near their own homes as may be, whereby expense, vexation, and delay, may be avoided." This bill has now been read a second time, and is at present in committee. The measure is one of the most important ever submitted to the legislature, and we therefore return to it for the purpose of adding a few observations in further illustration of the great principle which it involves. With the exception of the courts of quarter sessions, and certain ancient district courts, irregularly scattered over the country, and exhibiting every conceivable diversity of constitution and jurisdiction, England, as is well known, does not at present possess any other tribunals for the trial of causes except those which sit in Westminster Hall, and those which are held twice in the year in other parts of the kingdom, by the judges on circuit. The principle of the system is, that the dispensation of justice over the whole realm shall proceed from, and be governed throughout by, the body of judges sitting in Westminster Hall, who accordingly are appointed, either collectively or individually, to act as its sole superintendents. In this way it is conceived that the surest means are taken to secure the important object of a uniformity in the administration of the law; and to prevent the many inconveniences and mischiefs that would arise from decisions on legal points being given by one independent tribunal, contradictory in principle to those proceeding from another. It would appear that, for the sake of this object, the system of English judicature has, in the course of ages, been materially changed from its original form. In the Saxon times, local courts seem to have existed not only in every county or shire, but even for smaller districts; and their jurisdiction, in regard at least to civil suits, was probably of unlimited extent. Some have even thought that they had a criminal jurisdiction also. The abolition of these tribunals, whatever peculiar advantages may have been afterwards discovered in the new system, in all likelihood originated merely in the despotic policy of the first Norman kings, and their wish to retain in their own hands so immense a power as that of the interpretation and administration of the law for the whole country. The Court of King's Bench, to which all the other courts in the kingdom were thus subjected, was, in the literal sense of the words, the king's own court, which for a long time followed him wherever he went, and in which he frequently presided in person, while the ordinary judges were always of his appointment, and sat merely as his substitutes. It is true, that as good often arises out of evil, this arrangement has eventually turned out to be productive of certain advantages which were probably but little contemplated when it was first introduced; but this accidental result has perhaps had the effect of making some inconveniences be too much overlooked with which it has been also attended. Among these is one at least of serious magnitude-the general withdrawal of justice from the doors of the people, to a distance at which it is always of difficult access, and frequently altogether inaccessible. If two of the king's subjects have a difference respecting a matter of which the law of the land can take cognizance, they are entitled to have it decided in the speediest and cheapest manner that is consistent with the dispensation of justice to each. Under the A system according to which the law is now administered in England, this principle seems to be almost wholly forgotten or disregarded. The making justice speedy and cheap does not appear to have been thought an object worth aiming at. It cannot be said that the attempt has failed; it never has been made. It may possibly be that law cannot be lowered in price without being also deteriorated in quality; but our present system cannot be deemed even to have recognised the former result as desirable, although there were nothing to prevent its being attained. The spirit of that system may almost be asserted to have rather been that cheap law was in itself an evil-that the more expensive, tedious, and vexatious, suits could be made, so much the better-that the farther justice could be removed from every man's door, as if it were the case of some nuisance upon which people wanted to turn their backs, the more perfect did the arrangements of society deserve to be accounted. Other views, however, have of late years begun to be expressed. The public have become tired of the blessings of dear and difficult law. The suitor who, having obtained a judgment in his favour, finds that he is nevertheless out of pocket by the result of the action, after having been put a thousand times out of temper during its dilatory progress, has shown symptoms of a disposition to grumble at this mode of dispensing justice, by which, although declared to be in the right, he is yet treated as if he were in the wrong. Even the less unfortunate litigant, who has succeeded in recovering a part of his claim, and has thus come off a gainer upon the whole, asks why he should have had so much trouble, and should have been put to so much expense, in obtaining what was his due. Supposing the outlay to be all eventually repaid, still its pressure in the first instance is severely felt. To the man who is without funds, it is often a complete bar to the assertion of his right, let it be ever so strong. Plaintiff and defendant, in every suit, except where one of the parties is playing a dishonest game, and making use of the heavy charges of the cause to oppress and overwhelm his adversary, alike suffer and cry out under this grievance. sky These complaints have long ago established a general conviction in the public mind in favour of some such measure as that which is now, we trust, about to be adopted by the legislature. The institution of a system of local judicatories has been recommended to Parliament by several of the most influential persons on both sides of politics. Many years ago, the subject was taken up by the present Chancellor of the Exchequer, Lord Althorp. A bill to effect its accomplishment was afterwards introduced into the House of Commons by Mr. (now Sir Robert) Peel, then one of the ministers of the crown. On the 29th of April, 1830, the present Lord Chancellor (then Mr. Brougham) obtained leave to bring in another bill for the same purpose. In the debate which took place on this occasion, a concurrence in the general views of the mover was expressed by Mr. Secretary Peel, the Solicitor-General (Sir Edward B. Sugden), and other speakers; and no opposition was made to the proposition for bringing in the bill. The measure, however, after having been read a second time and committed, was allowed to drop, principally in consequence of the prorogation of Parliament in the following July. A few days after the commencement of the next session, namely, on the 10th of November, Mr. Brougham again introduced nearly the same bill, but was prevented from carrying it farther by his removal soon after to the House of Lords. On the 2d of December following, however, he brought it forward in that house, when it was read once and ordered to be printed, but was not farther proceeded with. The present bill, which differs from the former in some of its details, was introduced by his Lordship on the 28th of March in the present year. The public attention, therefore, has been repeatedly called to the subject; and ample opportunities have been afforded for its consideration. But, notwithstanding this, on none of the occasions on which the measure has been brought forward, with the exception of the last, has any stand been made by any party or individual against its principle, or more than some doubts expressed as to the practicability or expediency of some of its provi sions. Even now it can hardly be said that the principle of the bill has been contested. Both Lord Lyndhurst and Lord Eldon, while objecting to several of its details, have, by implication at least, assumed the possibility of its coming out of the committee in such a form as might induce them to withdraw their opposition. Lord Lyndhurst, in the committee, even described a counter-project of his own, by which he proposed to attain the same object with that contemplated by the Lord Chancellor's bill, namely, the providing of courts to which suitors might resort, and where they might have their causes tried, in the neighbourhood of their own homes. The necessity, therefore, of some such reform of the present system as shall secure this end, may be regarded as a point conceded on all hands. Whether the present measure shall pass or not, or whether it may or may not be found to answer its purpose, it may be taken as certain that Westminster Hall will not much longer continue to be the place in which nearly all the suits are carried on that arise in every part of England. There is now, however, every prospect that the bill, with some modification, perhaps, of a few of its clauses, will receive the sanction of the legislature. JUVENILE VAGRANCY. In our two preceding Numbers we have noticed and deplored the progressive growth of juvenile delinquency. To arrest this increasing evil, to snatch the youthful vagrant from temptation and misery, ere his mind is tainted with vice, to lead the young criminal from the path of guilt, and to give to both habits of virtue and industry, are among the highest objects which can engage the attention of the philanthropist. To preserve the rising generation from crime is at once to strike at the root of the mischief, since the misery in which our thieves and malefactors are reared is then destroyed. The benefit which is thus done to society is infinite, and every member of the community must be personally interested in the furtherance of such an object. "If crime and misery are increasing, is the public sufficiently aware that the fault is in a great measure our own? The felons of 1832 were the neglected children of 1810; and prisons are colleges where misguided youth is placed under the tuition of the most expert masters in the arts of fraud and villainy. In the streets and workhouses, thousands of children are under a course of education in crime at the public expense; eventually, perhaps, also to be hung or transported at the expense of the public." The above quotation is from the Prospectus of a Society for the Suppression of Juvenile Vagrancy, formed three years ago by Captain Brenton and some other benevolent individuals. It is evident, however, that such a Society should be on a very extensive plan to be productive of any permanent efficacy. Ample funds are necessary, as well as the active support of all persons who are more anxious to prevent the existence, than to punish the commission of crime. The above Society has, at present, an establishment at Hackney Wick for the education, employment, and maintenance of Juvenile Vagrants. Here they are instructed in reading and writing for about two or three hours daily, the rest of their time being spent in cultivating the ground. The master works with the boys and superintends their general conduct. He reports that, considering the circumstance of their having been taken from so degraded a class, their good behaviour and their industry are astonishing; they are in general, he adds, attentive to the instruction bestowed on them, and are apparently happy. The history of some of these unfortunate children shows that, notwithstanding the enormous poor-rates levied in every parish, there are cases of hopeless poverty into which even children may fall; and that at the age when they still require the fostering care of a parent to minister to their wants they may be left neglected and alone, either to starve, to beg, or to steal, as their previous habits may lead them. The account given of himself by one little boy who is now in this asylum is particularly affecting. He is apparently about nine or ten years of age; and for the last twelve months this child has been a houseless wanderer in Hyde Park. He does not recollect ever to have been the object of a mother's care. His father was a seaman, and when he went on his last voyage, left 30s. for the use of his child, who received it in weekly payments of three shillings at a time. The father died on his passage home, and no farther allowance was made to the boy; on which the woman with whom he lived refused to keep him, and turned him adrift. He then went to the place where he was accustomed to be paid his weekly allowance, and some compassionate sailors gave him money. He afterwards called again at his former dwelling, but the woman no longer lived there; from that time he begged in the neighbourhood of Hyde Park, and at night slept in a hollow tree. In the severe weather he obtained some straw to put into his miserable resting-place; but he was often very cold. Many days he was entirely without food, and once he fasted for forty-eight hours. He was sometimes ill, yet with all this suffering he would not steal, because, as he says, "his father told him it was a crime to God." If he attempted to join other boys, they drove him from them; and thus was this poor little outcast struggling through life, till he was discovered and received into this asylum, where he is very happy and very willing to work. It appears that, joined to the excellent moral precepts of his father, he had likewise received some education for six months in a national school at Whitechapel, and can now read tolerably well. There is no reason to doubt the truth of the child's statement; he has been repeatedly questioned and cross-examined by different gentlemen of the committee, and he has never deviated from his first account. There are now about twenty-eight boys in this school; but it is evident that, with funds however large, the employment of young vagrants, and the reformation of juvenile offenders cannot be conducted on a sufficiently extensive scale at home. There are now on board the Euryalus convict hulk at Chatham, 407 boys, between the ages of nine and sixteen years. "I will only ask," says Captain Brenton, "if these poor creatures, thus pent up and associated, are likely to improve in their moral or religious habits; whether the trades of shoemakers and tailors, which they are learning, are likely to be enriched by their labours; or whether, on their release from the hulk, they are not likely to be out of work themselves, or to displace others in these crafts, which are already overstocked with labourers? Assuming that these questions can only be answered in the affirmative, I ask what possible good can accrue to society from such a forced and expensive education, and whether the honest and industrious of those trades, who have fairly served their time, and paid their premium of apprenticeship, have not a just right to complain that their earnings have been shared by a superabundance of workmen, who are thrust upon them by means of a government capital? For if these be good workmen, such must be the effect; and if bad workmen, then has the money expended on them been thrown away. The only remedy for this, and most of the evils now existing, is the application of labour to those works which can do injury to none, and are ready to receive all. Such occupation is to be found in our colonies. To maintain children here in the unprofitable labour of turning up soil which will yield little or no return, is clearly an improvident waste of that industry which might be beneficially employed in the more fertile lands of our colonies; and this society is anxious to extend its sphere of usefulness, by permanently providing for the myriads of poor children who infest our streets, and sending them to some of our possesNor should we wait," says the Report, "until they had disgraced themselves by crime, or plundered and destroyed ten times as much as their voyage and outfit would cost. If children can be snatched from infamy at a small expense, and if our colonies will receive them, shall we not carry on the good work with vigour and perseverance equal to the object?" sions abroad. 66 settlement, who immediately on their arrival would draught them off among the settlers wishing for such young labourers. To these settlers the children should be bound apprentices for five or seven years, according to their ages, and in return for their services, should be maintained entirely during that time, and should likewise receive at the end of their term something to begin the world with, when they could either become small farmers themselves, or continue as daily labourers. The committee would not lose sight of these apprentices, but would continue to watch over their welfare, and take care that they were well treated by their masters. Religious and moral education would, it is hoped, be provided for them as far as circumstances might render possible. The expense of furnishing with clothes and outfit, and of shipping the children already sent, was under 107., for each, while the cost of maintaining a child in a work-house is estimated at 107. per annum; therefore, for not more than the cost of supporting them for one year, those children, who have no parents or friends to be interested in their welfare, whose melancholy, isolated situation, is emphatically denoted by the term " parish children" can be sent to a country where they may obtain independence by the exercise of honest industry, while by their labour they will materially benefit the rising colonies." "In this society," says the South African Advertiser' of the 18th October, 1832, we see the germs of much good to the Cape. Our friends in Albany, and other parts of the colony, have often expressed a strong desire for a steady supply of free labourers from Europe; and experience has shown, that such apprentices as the Society are training, would be upon the whole preferable to adult emigrants, whose habits have been formed in a state of society very different from that to be found in our agricultural districts, and whose fixed dispositions and tempers render them not only averse to a mode of life and a species of labour quite new to them, but in many instances absolutely incapable, even if willing, to discharge their duty as apprentices. * * * If the Albany farmers take this plan into consideration, they can open a correspondence with the society upon very favourable grounds. In their district the apprentices would neither be associated with slaves, as in some other coloniesand in some districts, unhappily, of this colony-nor with convicts, as in New South Wales, or any of our other penal settlements. They would be soothed and reconciled to a life of peaceable industry by being placed among their own country people, speaking the same language, professing the same religion, and entertaining the same feelings and sentiments respecting the many topics of daily thought and conversation with themselves.' In Nova Scotia, labour is likewise in great demand, and steps have been taken to establish a branch society there on the same plan as that at Graham's Town. The expense of sending children to this settlement it is supposed would not be more than 70s. each. Some gentlemen who are now exerting themselves for the farther extension of this institution have likewise an interest in the prosperity of the emigrants of Nova Scotia, and are fully impressed with the conviction that the free importation of these young labcurers will greatly benefit the colony. They are, therefore, willing to afford every facility which can best forward their emigration and promote their future advancement. Some of the members of the Society are rather desirous that delinquents before they are sent abroad should pass through a probationary state here; but to attempt this would be unadvisable in if the emigration be pursued on an extensive scale, would be much beyond what the most sanguine could hope to raise; while it is doubtful whether the work of reformation could be so successfully carried on among several hundreds of boys already initiated in vice. Rather take the children from their old haunts, separate them at once from their depraved associates, disperse them among respectable settlers where no bad example will be exhibited to them-where no motive for a continuance in depravity will be given to them, but on the contrary a strong motive for doing right. They are then placed in a more favourable situation for losing their old habits, and for becoming useful and virtuous members of society, than if they were under the most judicious course of education, within the limits of a school, where they must The originators of this institution are already in communication with a committee of gentlemen of the Society for Promoting Emigration to the District of Albany at the Cape of Good Hope, who have evidently seconded the views of their correspondents, and are anxious to co-operate with them in every possible manner. Encouraged by this prof-two points of view. The funds necessary for such a purpose, fer of support, the Society has sent twenty-four boys to the Cape, and intends to forward another division as soon as its funds will admit. Government has paid one-half of the expenses for the passage and outfit of this first shipment, but is pledged no farther. "At the Midsummer sessions at the Old Bailey," to quote again from the Report, "thirtythree little boys, between ten and thirteen years of age, were sentenced to various terms of transportation; and thus the gangs of full-grown villains are constantly recruited by the operation of the law, and thieves are educated at the expense of government, at a greater cost than it would require to make them honest and happy." The settlement to which the children have been sent, is Graham's town, a considerable distance inland. Since the first communication, " demands have been pouring in from the Cape of Good Hope to send children out in almost unlimited numbers." It is proposed that these children should be consigned to a Committee of gentlemen in the This is the settlement formed in the year 1820, when about 5000 British emigrants were conveyed to South Africa under the patronage of government; an account of their early adventures appeared in Nos. 51 and 52 of the " Penny Magagine." necessarily herd with their old companions, or with some equally vicious. Emigration then, as soon as possible after they are received into the asylum here, appears to be the plan most likely to be attended with success. tor becomes involved in certain circumstances entitling another person to call upon the law to take its course, notwithstanding that it may be passed over when attention is not thus specially directed to it? If this great work is to be carried on to any beneficial If this was really the object of the law, it would have extent, the co-operation of the hearts and heads of many been better to have enacted at once that credit should not benevolent and intelligent persons will be required-all be at all allowed, and that every person detected in so trans acting in unison and with judicious foresight. A few indi-gressing the law should be sent to prison. This would at viduals however zealous, however able, cannot unassisted any rate have been the more open and straight-forward accomplish so great an end. Large funds are essential to course. Besides, in that case the power of applying or suscomplete success; the time and thoughts of many intelligent pending the law, which is here the power of deciding whe persons are required to appropriate these funds judiciously. ther or no an individual shall be treated as a criminal, The benevolent may therefore be expected to come forward would not have been left to the caprice of the very party liberally with their aid in support of this most excellent and who is worst situated for its calm and dispassionate exercise. useful charity, the object of which is to promote both the It is not impossible that, in the uncommercial period happiness of the individuals more immediately benefited, when our law of arrest originated, some prejudice against and the good of society at large. By its successful working, the practice of credit, akin to the prejudice against usury, not only crime, but the producing cause of crime, will be may have contributed to its introduction and maintedestroyed, and a wide spreading contagion of vice will be nance. It certainly, at any rate, would be no favourite obexchanged for individual industry, virtue, and happiness. ject of legislation in those days to facilitate credit. But the motive of the law is no doubt to be principally sought in the same spirit which has given so tyrannical a character to various other laws protective of the rights of property, and which appears to have constantly regarded the conservation of those rights as an object almost paramount to every other. In this instance the operation of the spirit in question has produced a singular result. In the first place, the right of the creditor to his property, namely, the money due to him by his debtor, has been held to be so sacred that it has been deemed proper to allow it to be exercised at the cost even of the personal liberty of the debtor. And in the second place, the property of the debtor also has been fenced round with nearly the same extreme solicitude; so that in many cases it is actually possible to incarcerate his person, when it is impossible to lay hands upon a shilling of his property. ABOLITION OF IMPRISONMENT FOR DEBT. AMONG various important measures of law reform which have been this session introduced into the House of Commons by the Solicitor-General, is one entitled "A Bill for facilitating the recovery of Debts, the prevention of Frauds by Debtors, the relief of Debtors willing to make Cession of their property for the payment of their debts, and abolishing Imprisonment for Debt, except in cases of Fraud." The last of the objects enumerated is that which the bill may be said to have chiefly in view, and in reference to which all its enactments may be considered to be framed. The previous clauses having laid down the modes by which it is proposed that the property of debtors shall for the future in all cases be made available for the satisfaction of the claims of their creditors, the 81st and 82d clauses proceed as follows:-" And whereas the present power of arrest is unnecessarily extensive and severe, and, provision being made to facilitate the remedy of creditors against the property of debtors, may be safely relaxed; be it therefore further enacted, that from and after the passing of this act, no person shall be arrested upon any process for debt issuing out of any court, unless the plaintiff shall make oath that he believes the debtor is about to abscond to avoid payment of his debt, or on special order made by one of the judges of the superior courts.-And be it further enacted, that if any debtor, having been arrested either on mesne or final process, shall bring an action against the person at whose suit he was arrested, it shall be incumbent on such person to prove that he had probable cause for believing that the party arrested was about to abscond." If this bill shall, as there is every reason to expect, be passed into a law, it will put an end to the worst relic of barbarism that still disgraces our legal system. The principle on which the present law of arrest proceeds is, that to be owing money, and to be unable to pay it, is in all cases a species of crime. Imprisonment, or the deprivation of personal liberty, is one of the common punishments of criminals; it is also appointed to be the punishment of debtors. To this punishment all descriptions of debtors are subjected indiscriminately no distinction being made between the worst cases of improvidence or of fraud on the one hand, and those of the most unavoidable misfortune on the other. There are few persons, probably, who will contend at the present day that such a law as this is consistent either with equity or with common sense. The only object, indeed, which it can be reasonably regarded as contemplating, is the interdiction of credit altogether. It has in effect said that the person who borrows, or purchases on credit, although he will not be called to account if he shall be fortunate enough to be able to meet his obligations, nevertheless does so at the risk of being punished as a criminal, if any accident, no matter how unavoidable, should intervene to put it out of his power to discharge his debt when it becomes due. Or, to put the thing in another way, it has left every man who may have incurred a debt so far at the mercy of his creditor, that the latter, if not otherwise able to recover the amount with which he has entrusted him, may insist that he shall be treated as if he had committed some crime. What is this but to declare that to ask credit is really a criminal act, which will be punished whenever the perpetra Any thing more absurd than this state of the law can hardly be imagined. Of two powers, either of which might have been given to him, the creditor has actually been denied the only one which he was likely to find at all serviceable in the recovery of his money, and invested with the other, which in most cases he cannot apply for that purpose with any effect whatever. But the worst characteristic of the present law is its unnecessarily cruel bearing upon the debtor. We have already observed that it makes no distinction between the honest and the dishonest debtor-between the scoundrel who has incurred obligations which he never expected and perhaps never intended to discharge, and the merely unfortunate man who, without any fault of his own, may have been ren dered unable to pay what he owes. But we might have gone farther than this: for it actually places the dishonest debtor in a far better position than the other. It sends both of them, indeed, to prison; but him who refuses to surrender his property for the benefit of his creditors, it permits to live there in the enjoyment often of almost any accommodations or luxuries his pecuniary resources can procure; while it leaves him who has honourably despoiled himself of everything, that he may pay what he owes, at least as far as he can, to pine in destitution and wretchedness on the gaol allowance. It thus offers an immense premium to dishonesty, and does its utmost to tempt and encourage the insolvent debtor to refrain from taking that course which is the only just one that he can adopt, namely, to surrender his property, if required, to the last farthing to help to discharge his debts. The imposition of imprisonment as a punishment for the non-payment of a just debt, might indeed be necessary, were there no other method of giving the creditor a hold upon his debtor. The former must of course be enabled in some way or other to recover what is due to him from a party unwilling to pay it. But so far from there being no other means available for this purpose, there is a mode by which it would be answered a thousand times better, ready at hand if the law would only adopt it. It consists simply in depriving the creditor of his control over the person of his debtor, and giving him in exchange a control over his property. This amendment of the law it is the object of the present bill to effect. We cannot here enter into any explanation of the various arrangements which it proposes with the view of placing the property of insolvent debtors more completely at the disposal of their creditors; but we may probably return to this part of the subject after the bill has received its last cor rections in passing through the two Houses. If it shall With a rapidly increasing market, the two or three hunbecome a law, as we trust it will do, the improvement, we dred plate-printers of London hold that they are equal to repeat, which it will introduce into our legal system, will be supplying all the demand of that market. They begin, one of the greatest ever made. It will destroy a power held therefore, by asserting that no master, whatever be the exby one class of men over another class, which ought not to tent of his capital or connexion, whether he employs two exist in a country calling itself civilized; which is more presses or two hundred, shall take more than two apprentices liable to be abused than any other which it would be pos--in some special cases three have been allowed. If any partsible to name; and which, in by far the majority of in- ner in a plate-printing firm has not been regularly apprenstances, is only injurious instead of the reverse to the inte- ticed in London, the privilege of taking any apprentice at all rests even of the person exercising it himself. And for is refused. This is tolerably arbitrary, to begin with. But this barbarous, dangerous, and almost useless right of con- the folly and despotism do not end here. Having prevented trol, it will substitute a natural and really effective check, any addition to the number of labourers, with a rapidly inand one which can hardly admit of being in any circum- creasing demand for their labour, the journeymen platestances abused. printers draw a line of circumvallation round London; and maintain that no man shall be employed who has not been apprenticed in London, or within ten miles. Many plateprinters are employed in Birmingham-they cannot come to the metropolis; and yet the metropolis is ready to offer them constant work and high wages. An industrious and skilful hand in this branch may earn from 21. to 31. per week; and the extension of the market ensures the continuance of this state of things. But no: the workman from Birmingham is not to set foot in Middlesex; the workmen in Middlesex are resolved that no addition shall be made to their numbers; the extension of the market is of course to be limited by their authority. To prevent this extension they resolve to keep up prices;-and they set about this in a most injurious way. COMBINATIONS. THE metropolis, at the present moment, presents one of the most curious and instructive examples upon record, of the ignorance and tyranny which are too often displayed by workmen in the management of their unions. It is the case of the copper-plate printers. Before we proceed to detail such of the facts of this particular case as have come to our knowledge, we must premise, that we thoroughly admit the right of workmen to join together for the protection of their own interests. The old combination laws were, with great propriety and justice, repealed, because they were destructive of the freedom of industry. The object which we have in view in pointing out some of the absurdities which united workmen commit, is to show that the greater number of their laws and regulations are, in the same way, destructive of the freedom of industry; that they could not be tolerated if they emanated from any government or corporate authority; and that, in truth, they are without any parallel in the extent of their folly, except the instances which are furnished by the anti-commercial decrees of various states in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. The copper-plate printers of London, for the most part, form a society or union. The number of workmen, altogether, does not reach 300. For the last fortnight the business has been nearly altogether suspended; and the progress of the periodical works of art, the great branch of the business, is either interrupted or altogether stopped. Several publications which had furnished employment for many hands, from month to month, will not appear on the regular day. The dispute between the masters and the journeymen originated in a question of price, not very important in its amount; but the masters, finding that the regulations of the union, as they ought to have discovered long ago, were calculated to embarrass the natural operations of their manufacture at every step, have resolved to resist many of the conditions which the men require to be observed before they will consent to exchange their labour for wages. The hours of work in this trade are from eight in the morning till eight at night, with two hours deducted for meals. There are no fines for not being at work early enough; but if a man presumes to stay a moment beyond eight in the evening without charging for night-work, he is fined a guinea. Night-work is paid one-half more than day-work; at night the work is worse done, and there is a waste of capital in artificial light. But the journeymen like night-work, and night-work accordingly enters largely into the price of all engravings. We had intended to have offered a few parallel examples of the modes in which the freedom of industry was kept down by the ordinances of guilds and states in the infancy of commerce, but our space will not permit us, although we may return to the subject. These evils have been destroyed, as far as governments and municipal corporations have been concerned, by the growing intelligence of society, but chiefly by the competition of country with country. The nation which permitted such clogs upon industry to exist, found out that poverty and decrepitude followed in their train; and that whilst the interests of particular classes were sought to be protected, the common welfare of all was destroyed. It will be the same with all combinations of workmen which are founded upon such gross injustice as that of the plateprinters. They will be destroyed by competition. France, and the Netherlands, and Italy, have many skilful plateprinters, who will soon find their way to London if such ignorant resolutions as those we have described are persisted in. The journeymen of this trade are fortunately situated, if they could appreciate their own position. The wages of their labour must have a natural tendency to rise, if they will leave the balance of demand and supply in the labourmarket to regulate itself. The business of plate-printing has very considerably increased within the last seven years, and it is daily increasing. This is the natural consequence of the introduction of engraving upon steel; by which the finest works of art may be so multiplied from a single plate, that they are placed within the capacity of purchase of the middle classes, instead of being the exclusive luxury of the rich. Now it is perfectly clear that, with an extending market, derived from an extension of the taste which creates a demand, the supply of Combinations of workmen are becoming so general, that labour which was adequate seven years ago is not sufficient it is of the utmost importance that some steps should be now. In point of fact, the business of plate-printing in taken to inform them as to their own real interests. We London has increased six-fold. The regulations of the work-shall endeavour to contribute to this work whenever we see men have not had the effect of proportioning the supply of occasion. We may properly conclude this notice by an exlabour to the demand: they have kept the supply below the tract from "The Information received by his Majesty's Comdemand, and consequently production has been impeded to missioners as to the Administration and Operation of the a considerable extent. The labourer, the capitalist, and the Poor-Laws." It exhibits, in a very striking manner, the consumer, are each injured by such regulations. self-abasement and real misery which a workman encounThe principal points in which the combination of plate-ters when he relies, not upon his own honest exertions, but printers exhibits a lamentable ignorance of the principles of commercial freedom are, 1st. in their regulations for the taking apprentices; 2d. in their proscription of all other workmen but those of London; and 3d. in their enforcement of enormous wages for night-work. For the assertion of their opinions upon these subjects nearly two hundred men are now out of employ; living, indeed, upon a common fund, but, in so living, exhausting the provision which might have supported them in sickness or old age. Unfortunately, they do not look to these casualties of life; the parish is seen at the end of a long vista of high wages and improvident expenditure. upon union funds and parish funds-both, in their misapplication, intolerable evils: "A leather-dresser has, for some years past, preferred parish and casual relief to the honest gains of his employment. The overseer stated eighteen years as the period of his present mode of life. The pauper seems to think it is not quite so long; he talks of thirteen: however, he does not violently impeach the overseer's statement, which may therefore be assumed to be tolerably correct. "He belongs to an incorporated or combined trade; the directors of this combination issue tickets to the members. These tickets are renewed from time to time. The holder |