ing a portion of Lincoln's Inn Fields with buildings is gravely announced as a sanitary measure; the foliage and vegetation of the interior being, it seems, noxious instead of wholesome; while, of course, he thinks little of the importance of clearing away those fastnesses of vice and misery between the Strand and Carey Street, which Sir Charles Barry was of opinion would be one of the greatest improvements that could be made! And here we cannot but admire the ingenuity of our author in dealing with the sanitary question. He says that placing the Courts in Lincoln's Inn Fields would necessitate a variety of clearances in the neighbourhood, several of which, however, were projected long ago, without the slightest reference to the removal of the Courts from their present position. As, for instance, Mr. Bellamy's projected street seventy feet in width from Holborn to the Strand in continuation of Little Queen Street, with branches into Lincoln's Inn Fields, an opening very much required whether the Courts are removed or not, or wherever they may be placed after such removal. Having assumed that all possible improvements in the neighbourhood of Lincoln's Inn Fields must depend on his being permitted to encumber the Square with his new Courts, our friend, whose memory is a little on the wane, forgets that the choice of the Strand site will in like manner be connected with improvements, several of which, it may be admitted, are, like his own, required by the present wants of the neighbourhood, and are irrespective of its being applied to its new purpose.

With regard to sanitary matters, we have the highest authority for stating that there is no comparison between the choice of the two sites. Take Lincoln's Inn Fields, and you create a nuisance; take the Strand site, and you destroy one. The authority to which we allude hardly thought our veteran friend could be serious when he objected that the spacious area of Lincoln's Inn Fields was improperly called "a lung of the Metropolis," because it had not large openings into it, as if the air would not swoop downwards in refreshing streams wherever it could find room, but must move along the surface of the earth as the old reformer himself is obliged to do. It happened to us to read the passage of his pamphlet

in which this novel theory is broached while sitting in the library of Lincoln's Inn, and as it was a breezy day, though not to be called windy, we raised our eyes to observe the conduct of the trees. But, alas! we found them and their branches vibrating too and fro with the most callous indifference to the brilliant discoveries of our ingenious friend, of whom we must now take our leave, hoping he may be induced to write again, if not for our instruction at least for

1. A Practical Treatise on the Law of Corporations in general, as well Sole as Aggregate. By JAMES GRANT, Esq., of the Middle Temple, Barrister-at-Law. London: Butterworths, 7. Fleet Street: 1850.

2. Report of the Commissioners appointed to enquire into the existing State of the Corporation of the City of London, and to collect Information respecting its Constitution, Order, and Government, &c.; together with the Minutes of Evidence and Appendix. Presented to both Houses of Parliament by Command of Her Majesty. 1854.

3. The Laws, Customs, Usages, and Regulations of the City and Port of London, with Notes of all the Charters, Ordinances, Statutes, and Cases. By ALEXANDER PULLING, Esq., of the Inner Temple, Barrister-at Law. Second Edition. To which is now added, A Summary of the Commissioners' Report on the Corporation of London, and the Municipal Government of the Metropolis, 1854, showing in what Particulars the Laws and Customs of the City are proposed to be altered. London: Bond, 8. Bell Yard, Temple Bar; and Wildy and Sons, Lincoln's Inn Archway.

4. Report of the Poor-law Commissioners on Local Taxation. 1853.

5. Third Report from the Select Committee on Private Bills. Ordered by the House of Commons to be printed. 1847.

6. Healthy Homes. A Guide to the proper Regulation of Buildings, Streets, Drains, and Sewers; with a Postscript especially addressed to Surveyors and Commissioners of Sewers. By WILLIAM HOSKING, Architect and Civil Engineer, one of the Official Referees of Metropolitan Buildings, and Professor of the Principles and Practice of Architecture, and of Engineering Constructions at King's College, London. London: John Murray, Albemarle Street: 1849.

THE question of local government has recently acquired peculiar importance from the discussions which have arisen as to the Corporation of the City of London, and the total want of system in the government of the British Metropolis. It is a great piece of good fortune that the whole subject comes at length to be considered together. Our inveterate habit of considering matters singly or piecemeal, which, by a singular misconception, we call practical, leads to the miscarriage of almost every measure of reform that is undertaken. We lessen or mitigate an abuse by erecting some anomaly. We construct nothing which is capable of progressive development without having as much to destroy as we make.

Government, among this most governing people, is less understood than almost anything else; and through fear of losing our independence of all control, we subject ourselves to the tyranny of every abuse.

The expression piecemeal legislation is in a very peculiar manner applicable to the laws which regulate local govern ment in this country. A mere glance at the titles of the apparently heterogeneous publications enumerated at the head of the present article will serve to show how this comes to be the case. As one branch of the subject of local government, we have to consider the law of corporations in general,— so well handled in the best Treatise on Corporation Lawthat of Mr. Grant. As another branch, must be regarded that of charters and grants of privileges. Then whilst we find a few general statutes bearing upon this subject, such as the Municipal Corporations Act, the Poor Law Amendment Act, the Lighting and Watching Acts, the Health of Towns and Nuisances Removal Acts, we have to keep in view as part of our system of local government the provisions of some

hundreds of local and personal Statutes creating, constituting, or regulating particular districts, and with them, also, the ancient privileges, liberties, and franchises which the Municipal Corporations Act of 1835 leaves untouched. The distinct laws, customs, usages, and regulations which govern the peculiar constitution of the City of London, the system of local government formed by county boards, hundreds, parishes, manors, leets, tithings, and vills, &c., and the thousand and one separate systems which arise from other sources.

The London Corporation Commissioners have collected some most valuable information, and gathered the opinions of experienced witnesses to show what is the operation of such conflicting regulations upon the inhabitants of the Metropolis of England, how far social security and prosperity is attained by them, what are their actual operation on the Merchant and Trader, how far economy as well as efficiency is consulted in the order and government of the important district to which their attention was peculiarly directed. The Commissioners comment at considerable length upon the complicated mass of the local laws of the Metropolis collected in Mr. Pulling's work. The Poor Law Commissioners' Report calls us from the consideration of the subject of Municipal Corporations, their 'constitution, order, and government, uses and abuses, to that of local taxation. Here, figures stare us in the face, and privileges come to have the utilitarian test applied of their actual worth in £ s. d., and lastly, after contemplating the origin and nature of these various franchises and liberties, and their cost, arises the ultimate question, said to be never absent from the mind of an Englishman, how does this contribute to his comfort? Has all this social machinery succeeded in really securing to us the "Healthy Homes" which Mr. Hosking advocates?

In modern times there has been a species of crusade against what is called class legislation, and the champions of Free Trade have almost succeeded in sweeping from our Statute Book those laws by which particular classes of the community have been [directly benefited to the prejudice of the rest. Much may yet be done, no doubt, in systematising the laws by which particular classes of the community are exclusively

regulated; but with regard to local government the practice of legislating for the few rather than the mass-fostering and creating privileges instead of securing general rights, is still warmly defended by those whose influence in this country is great, and by the mis-use of a French term of opprobium, attempts to systematise the laws which peculiarly affect us in our own immediate homes are branded by the term centralisation.

Our constitution, derived as it is from such a variety of sources, countenances systems of local government, the machinery of which is incapable of working in harmony. The privileges which it was the policy of ancient Rome to grant to her free cities, the franchises and liberties which were wrung by the sturdy burghers of the middle ages from feudal tyrants, or were, regardless of general rights, afterwards so freely granted to Norman lords and royal favourites, are still to be traced in the ancient municipal corporations. The manors and seignories existing in this island, form a sort of patchwork with that general system of local government by. counties, hundreds, and decennaries, which it was the policy of Alfred, so many centuries ago, to establish. And with the dis-use of charters of privileges and exclusive powers, has grown up a practice equally obnoxious to general right, and even more opposed to the formation of system, that of local and personal statutes, by which Parliament concedes, at the prayer of particular bodies, isolated powers of local government which vary in their nature and operation according to the notions or plans of the applicants, or the caprice of the draftsman to whom the irresponsible care of framing such private laws is at present abandoned by our Legislature.

It is not perhaps possible to entirely regulate local districts by general law. Local as well as personal exigencies must constantly call for special provisions. Such, at all events, has been the notion acted on from the earliest times. To quote from one of the works before us:

"The distinction between general laws and those applicable only to a particular district or class, is observed not only in our own code, but also in the Roman Law, and probably in most other systems of civil jurisprudence.