doubt arise such as have been entailed by the separation of Law and Equity, but from which your Committee trust the country will soon be relieved.

Lastly, your Committee would remark that every division of judicial functions tends to the creation of a multiplicity of Courts, each of them but partially occupied, and to a consequent diminution in the remuneration and qualifications of the presiding Judge, and to a lowering of the standard of the Bar. It is true that the institution of County Courts is not free from this danger; but in their case the advantages more than countervail; besides, by providing for the administration of justice near at hand, the whole amount is so largely increased that the evil of half-occupied Courts does not arise.

The Legislature has lately granted to the Court of Chancery power to obtain the assistance of accountants, merchants, engineers, actuaries, and other persons possessing special knowledge, the better to enable such Court to determine any matter at issue; and your Committee would recommend that similar powers should be obtained for the Common Law Courts, including the County Courts; and that the superior Judges should make their periodical tours and hold assizes more frequently than at present; so that such causes as cannot be tried in the County Courts may without the present delay be brought into the Superior Courts.

Your Committee would also strongly urge the reasonableness and importance of the suggestion of the Liverpool Chamber of Commerce, that the law should provide a ready means of carrying into effect the awards of arbitrators, whether by direct enforcement, or by supplying power to rectify an award when it is defective in the mode by which its object is directed to be attained. A Court of Arbitration is one specially chosen by the parties interested; and if the requisite authority were given to its decisions, objections to the constitution of other Courts would lose much of their weight.

Your Committee would also recommend that when in the case of a contract, bearing an agreement to refer any controversy to arbitration, one of the parties, by refusing to choose an arbitrator, attempts to evade the agreement,

power to appoint such arbitrator be given to the County Courts.

In the evidence appended to the Report of the Select Committee of the House of Commons on Joint Stock Com

panies in 1844, Mr. Hodgkin stated: "It has always appeared to me an anomaly that parties who have bound themselves by the most stringent terms to adopt a certain course of proceeding not only not illegal in itself, but which has by various Acts of Parliament received the express sanction of the Legislature, should nevertheless be at liberty to treat such an agreement as nudum pactum, which is practically the effect of the present decisions of our Courts both of Law and Equity, with reference to prospective provisions for references of disputes to arbitration. I think it would be desirable that in any legislative enactments the onus of showing that the case was not a fit one to be determined by the private tribunal of arbitration should be thrown upon the party seeking to escape from the terms of his own contract, and at the same time that where a reasonable doubt existed, the Court should have the opportunity of providing a remedy equally efficacious, and perhaps on the whole not much more expensive."

Your Committee would express an earnest hope that the Commission which, in compliance with the application from the late Conference on the Assimilation and Improvement of the Mercantile Law, Her Majesty's Government have consented to appoint, will, as recommended in the resolutions of the Conference, be so constituted as to give confidence both to the legal and mercantile classes; and that its labours will result in such a simplification and amendment of this branch of law as, not only to facilitate the decisions of our Courts of Justice, but greatly to diminish the very sources of doubt and contention, and thereby largely to reduce the number of cases to be adjudicated.

In conclusion, your Committee submit for the consideration and approval of the Society the following resolutions:

First. That it is not expedient to establish in this country Courts such as exist in several parts of the Continent under the name of Tribunals of Commerce.

Second. That it is nevertheless important by other means to afford increased facilities for the speedy and economical settlement of commercial disputes.

Third. That these means can best be rendered by giving a

ready power of enforcing agreements to refer cases of dispute to arbitration, and for carrying out the awards of arbitrators; by gradually extending the jurisdiction of the County Courts as these Courts rise in character and public esteem; by making the circuits of the supreme Judges through the provinces more frequent; and by extending to the Common Law Courts, including the County Courts, the power lately conferred on the Court of Chancery, of calling for the assistance and advice of men acquainted with the usages of commerce, or having other special kinds of knowledge.

ART. VIII.-THE JUDGES AND THE CRIMINAL CODE.

1. Copies of the Lord Chancellor's Letters to the Judges on the Criminal Law Bills of the last Session, and Copies of their Answers thereto. (Lords' Paper, ordered to be printed 9th Feb. 1854.)

2. A Letter to the Lord Chancellor, containing Observations on the Answers of the Judges to the Lord Chancellor's Letter, on the Criminal Law Bills of the last Session of Parliament. By CHARLES SPRENGEL GREAVES, Esq., one of Her Majesty's Counsel, and JAMES JOHN LONSDALE, Esq., Barrister-at-Law, Secretary to the late Criminal Law Commission. London: W. G. Benning & Co.: 1854.

THE reference by the Lord Chancellor to the Judges, on the proposed Bills for consolidating the Criminal Law, and the results of that reference, which are the subject of the above publications, have raised sundry questions of a constitutional, a practical, and a personal nature, which it is of great interest and importance to the right conduct of public affairs, especially in relation to the Progress of Legislation and the Amend

nient of the Law, to consider with attention, and indeed with a determination to put matters on a somewhat better footing.

Constitutionally, the relation of the Legislature and the Judiciary is involved.

Practically, the proper way of doing business, especially, as we have said, in reference to the Amendment of the Law, whether it be by Codification, or by Consolidation, or by Single Statute, or by judicial determination, or by official action, or how otherwise.

Personally, the conduct and competence of the Lord Chancellor, the conduct and competence of the Judges, the conduct and competence of the learned gentlemen who in the capacity of Draftsmen have been the instruments of writing these Criminal Law Bills, the conduct and competence of the several Criminal Law Commissioners and the ministers who instituted the Commissions of which these Commissioners were members, and lastly, though by no means the least, the conduct and competence of the learned and distinguished men who were members of the Criminal Law Committee of the Upper House of Parliament, by whom, to some extent at least, the Bills the subject of reference had been sanctioned and approved.

Our space will not permit us to follow step by step each of the considerations above indicated; but we recommend our readers to bear them in mind while perusing the Bills, the letters of the Chancellor, the Judges' letters, and the elaborate pamphlet of Mr. Greaves and Mr. Lonsdale, the Draftsmen employed on this occasion.

Our recent observations upon the Statute Law Consolidation Commission, the failure of which we anticipated from the want of purpose, the want of method, and the want of means with which it was instituted, and the suggestions which on that occasion we deemed it our duty to offer for the safe conduct of so important an enterprise, will have forestalled in some degree the exposition which we have now to offer; but there is so much of specialty in this branch of the subject, and its contribution to the success of the general subject of the Digest, Consolidation, and Codification of the Law,

which must take place sooner or later, is so great, that we must enter upon it fully and decisively.

The Chancellor, it appears to us, committed several errors in his Reference. It did not distinguish the matters; it begged the question as to the conclusive character of the Bills as models; and it seemed to say, Come and help me to defeat this measure. It was not in proper form; it was too loose in its shape, too epistolary, too much after the manner of familiar correspondence, almost as much as to say, This loose reference calls for only a loose answer; and considering that the Chancellor is Ex-Officio President of the House of Lords, it treated far too lightly the determinations of a Select Committee of that House, consisting of some of its most distinguished members.

We wholly acquit the Chancellor of any sinister purpose. Too little confident in his own powers, and too little reliant upon the authority of his own position, (although he be at times too much disposed to take upon himself, yet hesitatingly and misgivingly, the whole responsibility in matters which, on account of their universal application, must be shared by the experience and concurrence of others), he sought counsel from the sages of the Law with whom he had so long acted, and among whom he was not the least distinguished; forgetting that the office to be performed on the occasion was that of Statesman, Legislator, and Administrator, not that of Judge.

The Judges, with a facility of temper which men are apt to suffer when suddenly called upon to act upon matters to which they are unaccustomed, answered for the most part in the tone to which the Chancellor had given the key-note, and with a severity of criticism, which might well be spared by a class of persons who are themselves seldom sucessful when they undertake legislative labours: and though there is much pertinent practicality in their somewhat special and minute criticisms, it must be admitted that the direction which they have taken do not always do credit to their sagacity or their candour.

But we attribute these consequences, not to the personal character or conduct of the Judges, but to the nature, manner, and circumstances of the reference, which were such as almost