monarchy is a state of blessedness as compared with an oligarchy. The king can have no direct, daily, ever-working interests in opposition to those of the body of his people, there are, it is true, some passions which, on occasion, may lead him to acts very detrimental to them, but it is out of the nature of things that those multifold, constant, every-day motives of selfishness, which actuate so large a proportion of the aristocratical body, can have any effect upon him. These are not vague words; they are grounded on facts. We do not mean to assert that all the country gentlemen are actuated by such motives-but many are, and more by some portion or other of them in some degree. We fear we cannot indulge in any reasonable hope that we shall ever see the magistracy composed of a class wholly different from those who constitute it at present. We have not, in the very least, changed our opinion that it is strongly advisable that the justices should be of the profession of the law. On the contrary, the more we have thought upon it, the more we consider it feasible;-would to heaven we could say we believed it to be nearer adoption! It would be necessary that the salaries should be of a magnitude sufficient to attract barristers undeniably competent to the office; but we firmly believe the superior administration of justice would be thoroughly worth the paying for. In matters of such importance, dread of expense is exactly the very most expensive thing in the world. Bad service is not worth buying at all-and it creates expense by its very badness. But even one of the chief merits of the plan we propose will operate against its adoption; the absence, namely, of those local prejudices and personal interests which the present magistrates have, by being in the commission, such means of promoting, and the frustrating of which, by an impartial and more wholesome system, we fear it will be many a long year before they in any degree allow. The arrangement we suggest would combine all the advantages of constant residence, and be free from all its drawbacks. some of these latter are our readers will have an opportunity of seeing as we go on. What Mr. Peel grounds the proposed increase of qualification on the fact that property has increased, and that there are plenty of persons who possess the amount about to be required to form the necessary number of justices. We cannot see that this can, in itself, support Mr. Peel's alteration in the most remote degree. It is only the minor of a syllogism from which he draws his consequence, without any major at all. To make the assertion in the least available, it ought to be preceded by the proposition, "That it is advisable that no one should be a justice of peace who has not 300l. a year;" then his allegation that there are plenty of people with that property competent to the office, might fairly be followed by the conclusion, ergo, the law shall raise the qualification to that amount." But it is somewhat remarkable that Mr. Peel, almost in the same breath, makes the admission, both by words and action, that the 1007. a year magistrates are competent; for he says, he does not mean to propose the removal of those who now exist. This places him upon whichever horn of the following dilemma he may be pleased to select. If such magis trates are incompetent, the country has a right to demand their removal; if they be competent, there is no reason for declaring there shall be no more such. Mr. Peel says, "he believes that the rise of qualification would be an improvement;"-now, we really are at a loss to conceive why, in a matter of such vast national importance, the honourable secretary will not condescend to give the House or the country the slightest intimation of what the grounds may be on which that belief is founded. And of such reasons he does not give even the very least shadow. For our own part, we think the increase of qualification the very last thing that should be adopted; and we, at least, shall make no secret of why it is we think so. It is to us matter of amazement that Mr. Peel can have held his present office so long, and not have seen that at least seven out of ten of the multitudinous evils arising from the magistracy, as at present constituted, are caused by the narrow, selfish, aristocratical, and territorial spirit of the mass of the country-gentlemen. The soul (if we may abuse so noble a word by thus applying it, even metaphorically) of the feudal system still, to a very great degree, exists among that class in this country, though, thank heaven, its carcase is rotten long ago. There is no longer the arm of flesh to enforce the dictates of the mean and tyrannous spirit by a blow with a battle-axe;-it now must work circuitously, by misapplying, distorting, and not seldom by violating, the law. We have used the words which may seem strong in the last sentence, not in the heat of argument, but from calm and deliberate reflection. This is a subject which we have long studied, both by watching, and by applying facts, and if we feel strongly upon it, it is because we know its vast importance, and that we feel that if we are wrong it is not from want of diligence in our investigation. We are most far from saying, or from wishing to imply, that there are not many most well-intentioned gentlemen on the bench, a large proportion of whom are highly able also. Nay, there are several instances occur to us in which application and constant experience have rendered the parties as effective as even professional men could prove. But these last are very rare; and the others, with all our esteem for them individually, we cannot but consider as a small minority of the whole body. As a mass, passing over for the present the want of legal knowledge, which is inseparable from the present system,-but which is the constant cause of the most hurtful errors, there is, to a great extent, a carelessness not short of culpable, both in the neglect and in the manner of doing business. Clerks, who have a direct interest in forwarding litigation, are trusted to a most injurious extent; but, above all, local and personal interests, and, if we may so speak, the spirit of caste, lead to malversations of which the public in general have no idea. It would startle them were the evasions and direct breaches of the law under the one head of Game cases to be laid before them. It constantly occurs at the Assize that persons accused of poaching are kept back, that the justices, possessing above 300l. a-year, may try them themselves. This is a direct violation of the first principle of law, even to say nothing of justice-that every prisoner shall have his trial at the first gaol-delivery which occurs after his commitment, in which the court is competent to try his case. The Quarter Sessions never, in practice, try capital cases-but the Assize is always a general gaoldelivery; and the gaol ought to be left without a single prisoner, save as a convict, when it is over. It would be next to impossible that in the county-gaols, if the governor were-which in most instances certainly is the case-a man who thoroughly knows, and honestly executes, his duty, such things should happen; for, if no prosecutor appeared, he would inform the judge, who would insist upon the necessary steps being taken. But, in counties of any magnitude, there are general divisions, and from one to four or five local prisons, where such prisoners may, with a little dexterity, be kept back from the Assize. A friend of ours has pointed out to us more than one case in one county, which occurred on this very last circuit, of men committed, on accusations of poaching, early in January" till Sessions," thereby taking no more notice of the Lent Assizes than if they did not exist. The Epiphany Sessions being over about a week, these men have to lie in gaol till the week but one after Easter, notwithstanding their direct legal right to be tried at the preceding Assize. And these instances, as is known to many more than will speak, are of frequent occurrence in various parts of the kingdom. This proceeding should be put a final stop to. It is most grievous that any one should lie in prison one moment longer than is necessary before he is tried for the offence wherewith he is charged, and there can be no reason assigned why a peremptory clause should not be inserted to that effect; the liberty of the subject demands it imperiously. We have cited these as points directly tangible; but the same spirit exists in numberless instances, which it would be vain to attempt to set before general readers. An attempt to do so would be intricate to all, and unintelligible to many; and we always design these articles to be perfectly plain to the non-professional. It is evident that a body with common interests is not likely to be thoroughly impartial when those interests are called into play in the case of a friend, and may be in his own to-morrow. And it is to neutralize this spirit, to prevent the whole body of magistracy having the same line of interest and prejudice, which is by no sort of means always, or even generally, in consonance with that of the bulk of the people,-that we would have a leaven of the upper portion of the middle classes introduced into the existing dough. We do not wish the qualification to be reduced below its present amount-but we answer Mr. Peel's increase of property, by saying, that the progress of events has raised it in fact, though not nominally. Education and intelligence have spread to a degree, that a man with an income of 100%. in the the fifth year of George II., would not recognise his grade in his successor in the tenth of George IV. The magistracy would, we have not a shadow of doubt, be far more fair and trust-worthy if such persons as we have alluded to were made members of it. There is, indeed, one principle of qualification which we would alter: it is a principle which pervades almost every qualification by property in this country, and which we cannot but consider both an insult and a disgrace to England in its present state. We allude to the property required being always real property. This, too, is a relic of the feudal system. It is one of the very few principles of that equally wicked and absurd system which had some shadow of common sense in its own day-for in that day there was no other description of property. But now!-in what does the real power of England consist?-in what are the interests of the vast majority of its inhabitants involved?—In the land?-Look at the geographical size of the country, and be answered. Could such a mite in point of size have its gigantic power from that size alone?-No; it is our commerce, our manufactures, that have brought us to where we are. That description of property has given us our present strength, and it ought to be officially recognised, as well as that ancient kind which has retained a superiority merely on the ground of its existence. The absurd prejudice that innovation is never an amendment also, which would have kept us still going naked and living on berries,— and which has ever retarded, and continues to retard, the great improvements of society by long years, sometimes amounting to centuries-it is this which still gives to landed gentlemen that preponderance in power which, seeing that their real value is far less than that of the commercial classes, cannot but be most unfair, and therefore injurious*. We do, perhaps erroneously, but still most conscientiously and after the most mature thought, believe that, next to the appointment of salaried magistrates, the intermingling of a fair proportion of men, lower in the (very enigmatical) advantage of birth, and without large territorial possessions and establishments, and the habits that naturally spring from such things,-in a word, of sound, sensible men of the middle classes-would be the greatest amelioration of the present state of the magistracy that could be effected. They would be free from, and consequently tend to counteract, those aristocratical feelings which now form the general characteristic of the body. In our last article of this series† we have given some instances of gross misconduct in the magistrates, directly springing from this spirit; and we have cited others from Mr. Brougham's celebrated speech on the state of the law. They might be multiplied almost infinitely; but we must remember that there are other provisions of this bill to consider. This spirit of aristocracy pervades a great number of those provisions. In the very first instance in which it is allowed to proceed against a magistrate, viz. for acting without having taken the oath, or without qualification, there is this monstrous piece of lop-sided justice. If the party suing succeed, he is entitled to costs as between party and party; if he fail, the magistrate may claim costs as between attorney and client. We must explain to those of our readers who are neither lawyers nor lawyees,-if we may be allowed the phrase-what these technical expressions imply. They will, many of them, be surprised to hear—we know we were most intensely,—that when a man wins his It is often forgotten that the absurd prevalence of this principle leads the majority of the House of Commons to avoid direct perjury by a mere trick, so as to swear to the favourite qualification of 300l. a-year real property. + London Magazine, No. VII. October, 1828. suit, and is consequently declared entitled to have his costs paid by the opposite party, he gets only a very small proportion of them ;-as they are rated on a very old scale-would that it were in fact as well as reason obsolete!-by which a great number of items for things, quite as necessary as those that are allowed, are excluded, and he is left to pay them himself. These are called costs between party and party, because it is what is generally paid by one to the other. But when the gainer gets costs as between attorney and client, he is paid all. That such a system should still exist, is one of the very many disgraces to our existing laws: the man who justly brings an action, or he who has one unjustly brought against him, should be repaid all his fair and proper expenses. But we think its application in the present instance quite as disgraceful as its existence. Every law-contest ought to be on a fair field with no favour." We have, however, heard this defended, as being exceedingly just and proper. Will our readers try to guess why?-Simply because magistrates should be protected !—yes protected-on account of their taking all their trouble gratuitously for the good of the country. We have just three objections to this argument. The first is that, except in the merely technical sense, he is not paid in money, the magistrate does not serve at all gratuitously. He is plentifully repaid by importance, by power,-to say nothing of the crooked application of the latter, for that ought not to exist, and therefore cannot be brought into a general argument. That he is repaid is amply proved by our second objection, viz. that it is not an inflicted office. No man need be a magistrate unless he pleases, and therefore he has no right to demand conditions which tend to injure his efficacy as such. The third is, that supposing it were, as several offices are, such as constables, overseers, &c., an office which a man might be compelled to serve without fee or reward, still the legislature is doing direct injury to the people to create one of which the holder has any advantage allowed him in the enquiries into his conduct, which may be necessary, over individuals who undoubtedly have no voice in his nomination, or its manner. These arguments also apply to the fatal practical absence of responsibility which the justices enjoy-a system formally recognised in this bill. For the system, which would be farcical were not its effects monstrous, viz. that those to be appealed against shall have the option whether any appeal shall lie at all, is made the express foundation of one of the clauses. What chance, indeed, there is that practically any redress can be had, will appear when we state, that we happened lately to be in company with four or five lawyers of considerable reputation and standing, when the conversation turning on criminal informations against magistrates for improper conduct, we asked if any of them ever knew of any case in which a rule that once should be filed, had been made absolute. There was first a rapid fire of no,no-no-from every one of them. But after a pause, the senior of them recollected that he had heard it rumoured that such a thing had occurred once, under very peculiar circumstances. Our non-legal readers must be informed, that making the rule absolute does not, in the least, decide the case, it only allows it to be tried! How likely application to the authority which controls the appoint |