his existence is an eternal eye-sorethis is nothing but what might be expected. But that such a person as Mr Henry Brougham should condescend to join in the yell of such baseness, is indeed a thing to make every one that has any respect for intellect blush. Mr Brougham is, I see, occasionally sneered at by some of those who write political articles in your Magazine, as if he did not deserve the intellectual reputation he possesses. I cannot pay these gentlemen the compliment of joining my voice to theirs, quoad hoc. Mr Brougham is a man of astonishing talents and acquirements; he carries on his shoulders one of the most vigorous heads now in England, or in the world; he has a massive strength of understanding; he has patience unwearied, and industry inexhaustible; he is, if not an elegant speaker, a most powerful declaimer; he is, in short, the only Whig now in Parliament to whom anything like first-rate talent and capacity can be ascribed. This is my opinion of Mr Brougham's intellectual station. I think proper to begin with saying so much, to prevent mistakes ;-for my purpose certainly is to abuse him very heartily in the sequel.

Mr Brougham is all I have said; but he is not all that he thinks himself-far less all that his slavish and doltish admirers, within his own party, give him out to be. Among other defects, he certainly is no great lawyer. No man of real eminence at the English Bar ever dreamt of saying that he was. He must, however, be enough of a lawyer to understand something of the real legal merits of the first lawyer that has appeared in England for more than two centuries past. He must understand in some degree the extent, the wonderful extent, of Lord Eldon's genius as a lawyer and he has never hesitated to avow his admiration of Lord Eldon's inflexible honesty and candour as a judge. Having, therefore, that feeling and knowledge of what the man really is, which I cannot help thinking it absolutely impossible such a person as Mr Brougham can want-I confess, it is to me a matter of very painful observation, that Mr Brougham has of late condescended to lend his great talents to the support of an attack, which even their best exertion cannot save from being every way vile and contemptible.

Is it possible that all this can have originated in a cause so basely selfish and unworthy as that, the influence of which the world must be allowed to be excusable in detecting elsewhere? Is it possible that Mr Brougham should have acted from a motive so dirty, as his friend Mr Denman certainly has done his best to insinuate. Mr Denman, the Common Sergeant of the city of London, says, that he, Mr Denman, cannot help ascribing Mr Brougham's want of a silk gown to the improper political antipathy of Lord Chancellor Eldon. Mr Denman also disapproves of the Chancellor's not having given a silk_gown to his friend Mr Williams. No doubt, if the Aldermen of London town had not given Mr Denman the office of Common Sergeant, Mr Denman would also have abused the Chancellor for allowing Mr Denman to wear so paltry a stuff as bombazeen. This cry, however, is chaunted and rechaunted by every Whig and Radical paper in the country; and in the midst of the clamour uprises, first, Mr Brougham, and then that ineffably inferior person Mr Williams, to abuse the Lord Chancellor, where the Lord Chancellor could not be present to defend himself-in the House of Commons !

Few persons who have been in the habit of attending to parliamentary affairs of late years, will hesitate to admit that the licence of parliamentary abuse, in regard to absent persons, has been carried to a most alarming height. Well does the author of this pamphlet say,

66

Scarcely anything is entitled to less credit from the public, than parliamentary accusations, because the accuser is privileged, and can state with impunity whatever tale he thinks fit, without any examination into its truth, and he can LIBEL whom he pleases with➡ out personal responsibility. It is a lamentable fact, that these statements are often circulated through the country, to the disgrace of men of honour and integrity, who have not, at any time, any fair opportunity afforded them of repelling such attacks, however unjust or scandalous; for to publish contradictions and proof would be ruinous; and in that place where the accusations are made, the accused cannot be heard."

This is indeed the truth, and I have no hesitation in saying, that if things go on in the present train for a few years more, a parliamentary reform of one kind will be forced down the

times, the author should at once have made his paper a contribution to your Magazine, or the Quarterly Review; but since he has not done this, I mean to do the next best thing, by skimming off the cream of his pamphlet for the benefit of you and your readers. In doing so, I shall probably occupy a good many of your columns, but I am sure you will never think that they can be devoted to a more useful purpose. The general reader, however, need not be alarmed; I shall extract nothing but what is amusing, as well as instructive.

The two great topics of abuse against the Court of Chancery, were the extravagance of the costs, and "the law's delay." In regard to the first of these, Mr Brougham, who, by the way, is not, nor ever was, an equity lawyer, had said in the House of Commons, that no honest lawyer would ever advise the instituting of an equity suit for the sake of a sum of L.50, or L.100, or for any inconsiderable sum. Now, hear the answer ; it is logical and philosophical; it is like a lawyer, and like an honest man.

“Nothing can be more silly or unfair than to cast reflections on a judge or his court, because, to gain a right of little value, greater expense must be incurred than the right is worth; such a case may occur in a mere court of conscience of the pettiest description. Let it, however, never be forgotten, that these expenses commonly fall on the party against whom a decree is pronounced, and by whom the suit is rendered necessary.

"It is impossible to frame a law to prevent costs of suit exceeding the value of the subject in litigation, where that value is inconsiderable; because rules of evidence cannot be relaxed or abandoned to the destruction of the principles on which they are founded, so as to admit of insufficient or imperfect proof, in petty matters, lest by that means precedents might be made for deciding all claims on false, uncertain, or insufficient evidence. If this was done, we should have established one system of law for the poor, and another for the rich. If the law allowed any pooof of necessary facts to be dispensed with, that a party might at little costs acquire a petty right, who could calculate in how many instances false judgments would be given, from trusting to insufficient testimony? The rights and wrongs of the poor would be always in a state of legal uncertainty, and no professional man could advise them with confi

dence.

"It is incident to all good laws that as much and as minute testimony should be required to sustain a small as a great demand, to prove a title to a cottage, as to prove a title to a nobleman's mansion and estates. Facts cannot by human ingenuity be reduced or arranged according to the importance of the things to which they relate, and suitors often cannot prove facts, which form links in the chain of evidence, without bringing together many witnesses from different places, while the most important facts are often proved by the production of a written document or by a single witness. Reforming legislators

cannot reverse, or overcome this order of

things, without reducing the certainty of a court of justice to the level of a gambling-house.

"The common law courts of justice, which passed unnoticed in the late debates, are, in the trial of causes, more expensive than the Court of Chancery, which was so unjustly and so severely attacked, because, on the trial of common law cases, at the sittings or the assizes, several hundred witnesses are kept in attendance from day to day, and for many days together; while in Chancery suits the precise period at which each witness may make his deposition, can generally be ascertained and regulated to suit the convenience of the parties, and to prevent the necessity of witnesses attending on the examiners or commissioners from day to day, and for many days, as is the case on the trial of suits at common law. The names of some suits in Chancery have been given, and their attendant costs set forth; and in the Appendix, No. I, will be found, indiscriminately selected, two or three suits which were tried at common law, for small demands, with the amount of their verdicts, and the differences between the taxed and the real costs; and these proofs will evince, that whatever can be said on the subject of costs in our courts of equity, applies with equal force to our common law courts.

But it was deemed improper,

by the chief declaimers in the late debates, to contrast their own courts, with whose practice, it is to be presumed, they were best acquainted, with the practice of the Court of Chancery."

The reader is aware that Brougham, Denman, and Williams, are all practitioners in the Common Law Courts, not in the Courts which they were attacking as expensive. Remarking this, it is pleasant enough to cast one's eye over the article in the appendix, to which the preceding extract points. It is thus:

ean accuse him of MEETING THE CAUSE HALF WAY, OR GIVING OCCASION TO THE PARTY TO SAY HIS COUNSEL OR PROOFS WERE NOT HEARD.'+

duration.

"The Lord Chancellor acts on the belief, that what he may be enabled to decide by patient hearing or reading, and calm and deliberate consideration, he is bound to decide, in the honest discharge of the duty attached to his high office, without reference to any other jurisdiction. He considers that he is not justified in exposing parties to the enormous additional expense of a trial or hearing in another Court, unless where the ends of justice cannot be attained by any other means; and, influenced by this opinion, he does not often refer to courts of law or to juries."* He never does so if he can bring his powerful mind to a right decision, by laborious consideration of the evidence before him, whether that evidence comes before him on motion, on petition, or on a hearing. Those hours of retirement, which other men devote to pleasing and interesting pursuits, he devotes to the wearisome consideration of common-place and contradictory factsfacts which perplex and weary the mind, without ever affording to it any pleasure or information worthy remembrance. He never suffers himself to be hurried into error; and this care, unjustly called delay, is a blessing to the suitors and the country. He is a Judge who appears to have read Lord Bacon's hints on judicature with approbation and profit; for it cannot be denied that he has acquired that essential part of justice-' PATIENCE AND GRAVITY OF HEARING. He considers it no grace to a judge first to find that which he might have heard in due time from the bar, or to shew quickness of conceit in cutting

"It is one thing to arrive at the truth by the comparison of contradictory evidence; and another, to send its contradictions to be reconciled before another tribunal. To decide on it may occupy a judge many hours, while, to refer it for decision to another court, would not occupy him many seconds; and frequently it consumes more time to weigh and consider the evidence, and to deduce accurately the facts in one single cause, than is consumed by directing issues, inquiries, and special cases, on the hearing of one hundred,

"The Vice-Chancellor has credit for deciding a cause or petition, when he directs an issue to be tried, or refers a case to a court of law; and he often takes this course as soon as he discovers by reference to the affidavits or the deposi tions, that there is a plain and indisputable contradiction in the evidence not to be reconciled, without either requiring additional testimony, or bestowing great labour in examining minutely its worth, its competency, and its credibility. As soon as the issue is determined, he has credit for deciding another cause, when he directs a decree to be drawn up consistent with the finding of the court, whose verdict or opinion has been obtained. This course of proceeding saves his honour the tediousness of hearing or reading dull and uninteresting depositions and affidavits, in some cases covering upwards of one hundred brief sheets; but these issues, and these cases, which others are required to determine, increase the parties' expenses at the rate of from L. 100 to L.300, or even from L.500 to L.700 in each cause; ‡ and sometimes an inquiry or an issue is not directed with sufficient precision to be useful, and a second inquiry or issue becomes necessary.

"The same parties, on similar occa