THE business of the Houses, since the appointment of the new Ministry, has been rather of a rambling and conversational character. The Government has been wisely cautious of precipitating itself upon the important measures which it is pledged to bring forward and to support; and waits to consolidate itself before it proceeds to unsettle existing systems, in which the most important interests are concerned. There have, however, been some measures gravely proposed in the Upper House, and many matters slightly discussed in the House of Commons, upon which some remarks may not be uninteresting nor unuseful at the present moment. We shall, therefore, take a rapid glance at the most prominent matters which have occupied Parliament during the present month; and we may take this opportunity of stating, that during the current session, when parliamentary business may be expected to be of such vivid and paramount interest, we shall take a regular and methodical view of it, not only with reference to the debates, but the papers laid before the House, which frequently contain a vast quantity of important information that the kingdom in general knows nothing about, though the public pays a swinging sum for the preparation and printing of the documents.

Two parliamentary commissions, and three members of the House of Lords, are now busily employed with schemes for the reformation of the administration of the law; and it is to be hoped (unless, according to the old adage, too many cooks should spoil the broth) that we may ere long obtain some amendment of rules of law and practice so obviously contradictory to common sense, so plainly a hinderance in the way of justice, that it is only amazing that habit should have so long induced men to shut their eyes to such monstrous absurdity.We may boast of the principles of British law as much as we will; but in its details, and in its practice, it is, and must be, in the view of every man who loves truth, and plainness, and simplicity, the most revolting and ridiculous thing that can possibly be imagined. The simplest action at law is a course of lie upon lie, and fiction

upon fiction, the expense enormous, and the result doubtful to the end, although the truth may be as obvious as the sun at noonday. If you go into the King's Bench with a common action, the very right of the court to try it is founded upon an assumption of that which the court knows not to be true. The declaration with which you commence must be full of lies; and when you know right well that a man has craftily and fraudulently obtained your goods,and will not give them back unless forced by the law, you are obliged to aver that you lost these goods, and that he (the defendant) casually found the same. This is only a taste of the quality of all legal proceedings. An indictment where a man is, or rather should be, solemnly charged with taking away the life of another, must, of necessity, be a hideous jargon, stuffed with gross and trifling absurdities, and altogether unintelligible to a plain English scholar. It is, therefore, no wonder that people are at last thinking of reform in the administration of the law. The difficulty of real reform, however, lies in this, that lawyers, from long habit, and because the law's intricacies put moneyin their pockets, are not sharp to see the absurdities which ought to be remedied; and yet none but lawyers can be intrusted to prepare the bills for the amendment of the administration of the law, because none but they can see his way through such a matter. If one unlearned in the law, should be rash enough to attempt such an amendment, he would be apt to fare no better than the sage on ship-board, who made a hole in the ship's bottom to let out the bilge water, and had the satisfaction of being drowned in clear water immediately after.

On the first of the month, Lord Wynford brought forward his bill for amending the practice of pleadingfor lessening the expense of witnesses, by allowing written interrogatories to be used in law courts as they already are in courts of equity-and for giving power to judges to make security be entered into in certain cases for costs. The special pleaders say, that the bill is nonsense; but they have an interest in keeping up the abuse which the

On the second, Lord Brougham brought forward his very important bill, for the establishment of local courts. He carefully stated, however, that it was no government measure, but one emanating from himself, as an individual member of Parliament. This was a prudent declaration, for it is the next thing to impossible that the bill, in its present state at all events, should pass into a law. Like many other of Lord Brougham's projects, the plan is bold, and the intention good, but the practical part of the matter has not been looked to with sufficient closeness, and we believe that every practical man who has examined the project, has decided that such a scheme is fit only for the imagination. That much may, and ought to be done, to reduce the wasteful and ridiculous excess of expense in law proceedings, is quite certain; but a regiment of flying courts like those proposed by Lord Brougham, is almost as wild a notion as the flying men and women of Peter Wilkins's celebrated narrative, which entertained our marvelling boyhood. Lord Brougham should have experience enough to know, that what might be a very good scheme if he had to build society anew, may be a very bad one for a community whose habits are formed, and arrangements made, in such a manner that the scheme would not fit them, unless they were totally altered. It is wise to undertake the alteration of our institutions, (so as it be done cautiously and soberly,) in order to adapt them to an altered state of society, because the matter is within our view and our power of management; but it is not within our power to alter society, so as to suit it to new institutions, which appear, to our abstract reasonings, better than those we have. In former days, when people were thinly scattered, when they themselves, as well as their laws, were more simple and natural, and when a plain story was told in a plain way, and decided without the aid of hundreds of books of law, and thousands of books of commentaries upon the law, county courts were fit for the people, and were used, but even then they did

not fly about from place to place. In the present day, people are so closely locked together-every thing being done by societies rather than by individuals, the various descriptions of property so much increased, and so much more difficult of definition

the quantity of rules touching the legal distribution of property in various cases increased a thousandfold, and not possible to be known except by those who make it the study of their lives; and in addition to all this, a description of people having grown up, whose interest, and whose constant practice it is, to entangle and perplex every dispute by the application of an intricate system of laws to the circumstances of the controversy, it is supposed that none but the first judges of the land can satisfactorily preside over even the least important cause, and it is considered especially beneficial to remove it out of the way of local interests and local prepossessions, which continually operate more or less against strict justice. The people would not be satisfied with a flying tribunal, and a jury of their next door neighbours to decide their causes; nor is it likely that so very difficult a thing as the administration of our laws in civil actions, could be properly accomplished by itinerant local judges, even though a spring van were appointed to travel about with the library of the court, and lawyers should ride post, with volumes of reports and decisions stuffed in their saddle-bags.

Those who had not read the Report of the Common Law Commission would doubtless be surprised to see, by Lord Brougham's statement, how much of the litigation of the country was about paltry sums. He said, that at the Lancaster Spring Assizes of 1826, when fifty-two ver dicts were given in civil cases, the average amount of each verdict was only L.14, 15s. In the year 1829, out of the causes tried by the Lord ChiefJustice in London, one hundred and eighty-four were for sums under L.20; three hundred and nine for sums under L.50; and four hundred and six for sums under L.100. In Middlesex, in the same year, three hundred and thirty-two were for sums under L.20; five hundred and eighteen for sums under L.50; and one third of the whole number in Lon

don and Middlesex was for sums under L.100. Now, what does all this prove? Not certainly that itinerant courts are necessary, but that there is a premium upon, an inducement to, litigation somewhere, that ought to be sought out and cut away; for who can believe that many persons, left to the calm exercise of their own judgment as men of business, would, for the settlement of a sum under L.20 or L.50, travel into Court, subject themselves to the loss of time, and the risk of defeat, and the certainty of costs beyond the amount in dispute? They do not follow their own judgment, but they are artfully led along, step by step, by those persons to whom lawsuits give an inordinate profit. No doubt in many cases where the sum involved is nominally small, the interest at stake is great, and the sum put in issue, is only a criterion for the settlement of a much larger sum; and this circumstance Lord Brougham does not seem to have noticed; but still many of the actions-the greater proportion of them-are actually for small sums, and over and over again is the trite but true fable illustrated, of the disputants about the oyster, whose controversy was settled by a lawyer gobbling up the fish, and handing an empty shell to each of the parties litigant. What is required then, we humbly apprehend, is not a carrying about of our involved, intricate, twisted, unintelligible forms of enquiry and decision from door to door; but a thorough reform and simplification of the legal means of obtaining redress IN WESTMINSTER HALL AND ON THE CIRCUITS; at least this is what should first be done. How disgusting is it to remember, that an attorney is permitted to charge in proportion to the number of sheets, lines, words, that his ingenuity can thrust into the papers in a cause! Which of our readers has been happy enough not to have seen an attorney's bill of costs for an action in an English court? Was there ever seen such a jargon of things unintelligible save in their expense? What a multiplicity of fees of which no plain suitor can tell the meaning or the reason! What reasonable person that has ever looked at the brief in a plain two and two affair, but must have been struck with the nonsense of so much paper, and so many

words, to a matter so simple? The reason is, that the man who prepared the brief is paid according to its prolixity and consequent complexity. Then the barrister's speeches! Heaven defend us, and bless Lord Brougham for endeavouring to put some check upon this enormity! Let any one who has learned mathematics or logic, listen to any barrister making a three-hours' speech, and note down the propositions he has enunciated bearing upon the matter in hand, and compare the number of words they require, with the mass which has been uttered, making due allowance at the same time for a proper sprinkling of rhetorical flourish, and then he will see, how capitally thirtyfive minutes might have done the business. By some it is contended, that a long speech is but the "menstruum," in which the precious pearl of argument is dissolved, in order that it may properly soak and saturate the minds of the judge and jury; or, that as an hostler puts chopped hay into the oats of horses who swallow too fast, this verbiage is necessary along with the argument, that the judge may leisurely chew and digest it; but this is not complimentary to the judges, and we dismiss the excuse at once. But one very principal cause of the expense is the delay. Why is this delay after the cause is ripe for trial? Because the King's Bench has more to do than it can dispatch. What is the Exchequer doing? Nothing. Why not then take your cause there? Oh! because the King's Bench is the "favourite court;" and having commenced our proceedings there, the forms of the other court are so different, that in order to get into it, we should commence de novo. How absurd is all this! Here is the evil to be remedied. Let no judges be appointed to any court, who are not competent, and then make it imperative on every suitor to have his cause tried by whatever judge of the land is at leisure to try it. When proper reforms are made in the law itself, or rather in legal practice in the highest courts, then it will be time enough to see whether tribunals must be sent round from town to town. As to sums under L.10, we see no reason why a simple and summary jurisdiction might not be given to the Court of Quarter Sessions, assisted, as in Ireland, by a

barrister who might attend periodically for the purpose, and who would be well enough paid for his temporary absences from the metropolis by six or seven hundred a-year. Lord Brougham wisely proposes to try the experiment of his bill in two counties, before he carries it further. We very much doubt that his system will ever reach those two counties, and we feel quite sure that it will never go beyond them.

On the 3d, the Duke of Newcastle rose in his place, to complain to the House of the intemperate language used respecting himself by the King's Attorney-General,at an election in the principal town of the county, in which he (the Duke) is the King's Lieutenant. It is a strange thing that a man of Sir Thomas Denman's years, and experience, and character, should be so forgetful of himself, and the office which his Majesty, no doubt with some reliance on his discretion, intrusted to him, as to allow a vulgar desire of mob applause to bear him away into expressions so unbecoming and so dangerous to the public peace. We cannot help regretting that the Duke did not bring forward his complaint in the form of a motion, which would have compelled the AttorneyGeneral to resort to a defence different in manner from that which he is stated to have used in reply to the personal application for explanation. It may belong to a man's infirmity to be easily hurried away into passionate language, but when cooler judgment returns, candour and fairness should induce the promptest and fullest reparation. The Duke of Newcastle, however, informed the House, that "when he called for an explanation, the answer from the King's AttorneyGeneral was neither explicit nor distinct; that he made use of all the legal sinuosities, twistings, and turnings, that could be made use of; but though it was hard to know what was meant in the answer, it was sufficient to identify the speech of the learned gentleman with the report." It does not mend the matter, that the Attorney-General put it in the power of the Lord Chancellor to make, on his part, a more explicit denial of the offensive expressions than he himself would make when applied to, nor does the excuse put forward by Earl Grey appear at all satisfactory. He stated, that "all he could then say

was, that his Majesty's AttorneyGeneral was a man who stood not only high in his estimation, but in the estimation of the whole country, as a man of great acquirements, great talent, and of the soundest principles. It was to be observed that he was at Nottingham not as an Attorney-General, but as a candidate for an election, and it was probable that he expressed himself in a manner that he thought most conducive to that end." We submit to the noble Premier, that when he next condescends to defend his Majesty's Attorney-General, something a little less resembling special pleading would be more suitable to the order to which he belongs. Sir Thomas Denman escaped for this time without any other censure than that which public opinion gives, but the lesson to observe more temperate behaviour we trust will not be lost upon him.

On the 6th, the Lord Chancellor was extremely erudite on the subject of the Regency Bill, and displayed a minute acquaintance with a portion of family history full six hundred years old. The Lords marked, learned, and inwardly digested," but no one opened his mouth, so the House adjourned. In the Commons, the question of the ballot was introduced upon the occasion of a petition from Armagh. This is a very important question, to which an incidental notice can by no means do justice; but we may be permitted briefly to observe, that notwithstanding the refinement of argument which some able journalists have used in favour of the ballot, and which, as an abstract argument, it is not easy satisfactorily to answer, the common sense and feeling of the middle orders seem to be against its use in political matters. We think they have decided that practically the ballot would not be a good thing, and their judgment about the matter (assuming that such is their judgment), is, in our view, of more importance than the conclusion drawn from any subtle argument, which treats matters touching mind and morals, as it would matters coming within the scope of the exact sciences. There was a great deal of sound practical sense in the observation of Lord Acheson, and with that observation we shall leave the subject for the present.

"Undue influence at elections may be gradually diminished, the evil may, to a certain extent, be remedied, but how it is to be totally eradicated, I know not. I am told that vote by ballot would effect all this, for that it would establish secrecy and security to the voter. In considering this subject, my first enquiry naturally was, how this could be proved? I must confess that I have not succeeded in this enquiry at all to my satisfaction. The assertion is everywhere made, arguments are founded upon it, but I find nothing to satisfy me that the assertion itself is well founded. The voter may conceal the actual fact of his vote at the time of delivering it, but of what avail is this secrecy, unless it be followed by security afterwards? For I can hardly call that a state of security in which a man lives as it were by a perpetual falsehood, and in continued fear, lest by a breach of confidence in some friend to whom in an unguarded moment he may have disclosed the truth, or by some other chance, the whole should come to the ear of the landlord, and his total ruin should ensue."

On the same evening were presented in the House, two scenes from a rather trifling farce, the plot of which turns upon the rival claims of the in and the ex-government, to the credit of abolishing the office of Postmaster in Ireland. It is pleasant to see Mr George Dawson and Mr Goulburn shining in a performance of this sort, so well fitted to their abilities. Seriously, we wish the House some better employment than debating upon whether one statesman or another decided upon so magnificent an act of executive authority as the abolition of a manifestly useless office which cost a few thousand pounds a-year. If the late government have no other act of economy than this to shew for themselves, it is hardly worth their while contending for it; if they have many more, they may leave this act of grace as the commencement of a stock in trade for their successors: the main thing that concerns the public is the abolition of the office, and that, it appears, at all events, is done.

On the 8th, the Chancellor of the Exchequer gave notice of his intention to move for a select committee to enquire whether any, and what,

reductions ought to be made in the salaries of persons holding office under the crown, and being at the same time members of either House of Parliament. This is a matter of more importance to the Ministers themselves than to the public. It is not the salaries of ministers who really do some work for the monies they receive, that the public complains of, but it is the multiplicity of boards and offices, and the superannuations and pensions held by ignorant insolent persons, who have neither brains nor manual dexterity to transact any business, and are therefore not worth the wages of ordinary clerks. Such places are made the resource of imbecility, or the reward of infamy, more often than they are bestowed from any worthy motive, and their pride is generally in direct proportion to their helpless incapacity. But ministers say, we shall have it in our power to reduce others, when we can point to ourselves as having suffered reduction already. Be it so; we are willing to give ministers credit for their self-denying ordinances, unless, indeed, they expect to go out very soon, and wish to make these reductions for the benefit of their successors. But, after all, this rather too much resembles Mr Goulburn's fine reason for mixing up large sums with the civil list grant which did not belong to it, in order that it might not be seen how much was spent by the King. This is no time for mere prettinesses in politics: let it be plainly avowed, that those who do not work will no longer be paid; but let those whose abilities fit them for the discharge of important affairs, and who may possibly not have the advantage of a private fortune besides, be adequately paid for their services.

In a conversation which followed the notice given by Lord Althorp, Mr John Wood of Preston, who has lately taken upon him to censure and to praise, as if he were a person of some consideration, indulged in a little severity upon Sir Robert Peel, and the right honourable baronet seemed to be perfectly astounded by the magnitude of his audacity. "That he should presume to lecture ME!" said the ex-secretary. Now, there was Sir Robert's besetting sin again breaking forth. Was there