confidence, also, which is unspeakable, resting on another ground. I come not here to raise cavils before men ignorant of the details and niceties of the profession I belong to, and who, in that unavoidable ignorance, would be unfit judges of their merits; I am determined to avail myself in no respect of their situation, or of the absence of the learned Body of the Profession, for the sake of a futile and pitiful triumph over what is most valuable in our jurisprudence. I am comforted and confirmed in my resolution, by the accidental circumstances that have joined me, in some sort, to the administration of the law in which I have had so considerable an experience. I have seen so much of its practical details, that it is, in my view, no speculative matter whether for blame or praise. I pledge myself, through the whole course of my statements, as long as the House may honour me with its attention, in no one instance to make any observation, to bring forward any grievance, or mark any defect, of which I am not myself competent to speak from personal knowledge. I do not merely say, from observation as a bystander; I limit myself still further, and confine myself to causes in which I have been counsel for one party or the other. By these considerations emboldened on the one hand, and on the other impressed with a becoming sense of the arduous duty I have undertaken in this weighty matter, I will, without further preface, go on, in the first place, to state the points which I intend to avoid.

I

I shall omit Equity in every branch, unless where may be compelled to mention it incidentally, from its interference with the course of the common law; not that I think nothing should be done as to Equity, but because in some sort it has been already taken up by Parliament. A Commission sat and enquired into

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the subject, and produced a Report, received though not yet acted upon. The Noble and Learned Lord who presides in the other House, has announced his intention of proposing a Bill, founded on that Report. I may also add, that the subject has, to his own great honour, and to the lasting benefit of the country, been for many years in the hands of my Honourable and learned Friend, the Member for Durham;* it is still with him, and I trust his care of it will not cease.

For reasons of a like kind, I pass over the great head of Criminal Law. That enquiry, happily for the country, since the time when first Sir Samuel Romilly (a name never to be pronounced by any without veneration, nor ever by me without sorrow) devoted his talents and experience to it, has been carried forward by my honourable and learned friend the member for Knaresborough, † with various success, until at length he reaped the fruit of his labours, and prevailed upon this House, by a narrow majority, to bend its attention towards so great a subject. On a smaller scale, on one indeed of a very limited nature, these enquiries have been since followed up by the Right Honourable gentleman who is now again Secretary of State for the Home Department. It is not so much for any thing he has actually done, that I feel disposed to thank him, as for the countenance he has given to the subject. He has power, from his situation, to effect reforms which others hardly dare propose. His connexions in the Church and State render his services in this department almost invaluable. They have tended to silence the clamours that would other

*

Mr M. A. Taylor. Sir James Mackintosh. Sir Robert Peel.
VOL. II.

X

wise have been raised against the reform of the law, and might possibly have proved fatal to it. If (which I do not believe) he intended to limit his efforts to what he has already accomplished; if he were disposed to say, "Thus far have I "Thus far have I gone, and no further can I go with you," the gratitude of his country would still be due to him in an eminent degree, for having abashed the worst enemies of improvement by his countenance and support. But I trust he will again direct the energies of his mind to the great work of reformation, and bestow his exertions over a wider space.

Another reason for avoiding this part of the subject altogether, is to be found in the nature and objects of the Criminal Law. I do not think it right to unsettle the minds of those numerous and ignorant classes, on whom its sanctions are principally intended to operate. It might produce no good effects if they were all at once to learn, that the Criminal Law in the mass, as it were, had been sentenced to undergo a revision-that the whole Penal Code was unsettled and about to be remodelled.

I intend also to leave out of my view the Commercial Law. It lies within a narrow compass, and it is far purer and freer from defects than any other part of the system. This arises from its later origin, It has grown up within two centuries, or little more, and been formed by degrees, as the exigency of mercantile affairs required. It is accepted, too, in many of its main branches, by other states, forming a Code common to all trading nations, and which cannot easily be changed without their general consent. Accordingly, the provisions of the French Civil Code, unsparing as they were of the old municipal law, excepted the law merchant, generally speaking, from the changes which they introduced.

Lastly, sir, the law of Real Property forms no immediate subject of my present consideration; not that I shall not have much to propose intimately connected with it, and many illustrations to derive from it; but I am flattered with the hope that the Secretary for the Home Department intends himself, on this subject, to bring forward certain measures, by which the present system will eventually undergo salutary alterations: And I cannot help here saying, that whatever the Criminal Law owes to the persevering and enlightened exertions of the late Sir Samuel Romilly, and of his successor, the member for Knaresborough,* I am sure an almost equal debt of gratitude has been incurred on the part of the law of Real Property, to the honest, patient, and luminous discussion which it has received from one of the first conveyancers and lawyers this country could ever boast of. My honourable and learned friend (the Solicitor-General) † opposite, and those members of the House who are conversant with our profession, will easily understand that I can only allude to Mr Humphreys.

With these exceptions, which I have now stated as shortly as I was able, and for which I shall offer no apology, because it was absolutely necessary that I should begin by making the scope of my present purpose understood, I intend to bring all the Law as administered in our Courts of Justice under the review of the House; and to this ample task I at once proceed. But I shall not enlarge, after the manner of some, on the infinite importance and high interest which belong to the question, and the attention which it, of right, claims from us, whether

+Sir N. Tindal (now Lord Chief-Justice of Common Pleas).

we be considered as a branch of the Government, or as the Representatives of the people, or as a part of the people ourselves. It would be wholly superfluous; for every one must at once admit, that if we view the whole establishments of the countrythe Government by the King and the other Estates of the Realm, the entire system of Administration, whether civil or military,-the vast establishments of land and of naval force by which the State is defended, our foreign negotiations, intended to preserve peace with the world,-our domestic arrangements, necessary to make the Government respected by the people,-or our fiscal regulations, by which the expense of the whole is to be supported, -all shrink into nothing, when compared with the pure, and prompt, and cheap administration of justice throughout the community. I will indeed make no such comparison; I will not put in contrast things so inseparably connected; for all the establishments formed by our ancestors, and supported by their descendants, were invented and are chiefly maintained, in order that justice may be duly administered between man and man. And, in my mind, he was guilty of no error, he was chargeable with no exaggeration,—he was betrayed by his fancy into no metaphor, who once said, that all we see about us, King, Lords, and Commons, the whole machinery of the State, all the apparatus of the system, and its varied workings, end in simply bringing twelve good men into a box. Such-the administration of justice is the cause of the establishment of Government-such is the use of Government: it is this purpose which can alone justify restraints on natural liberty-it is this only which can excuse constant interference with the rights and the property of men.