to add to that memorial: or had they any
suggestions to make beyond those contained in the report
of the committee on the Privy Seal and Signet Office.
Mr. Campin replied, that "the suggestions of the
committee's report are good, but they do not go far enough:
the main object is to have an immediate reduction of the
cost of the patent from its present prohibitive amount
of £100 for each of the three United Kingdoms, and to
have preliminary registration at no cost. In America
the cost of a patent is about £6 or £7 to a citizen; to an
Englishman it is 500 dollars, because we charge so much
in our country." Mr. Price stated that he had been secretary
to a society formed to assist poor inventors; but
the society fell to the ground, from inability to meet the
immense charges of the Patent Office; if a society was
so beaten, how fatally must the poor inventors
themselves be repressed? Mr. Campin, Mr. Waller, and
Mr. Townley said, that if something be not done
immediately, a number of persons intending to prepare
models for the exhibition next year must hold back.
Mr. Labouchere observed, that what the applicants
wanted seemed to be not so much a general measure of
Patent-law as an immediate measure to reduce the
expenses. Mr. Campin assented; and Mr. Labouchere
expressed his wish to receive a written communication
stating how it was proposed to accomplish this object.

At the yearly meeting of the Burton-on-Trent
Farmers' Club, on the 14th, Mr. Adderley, M.P., Mr.
Evans, M.P., and Mr. W. Gisborne, gave expression to
their views on the difficult position of the agricultural
interest. Mr. Adderley urged on proprietors the necessity for
meeting, in a temporary manner, the depression of the
present transition state. Mr. Evans acknowledged that
if prices continue as they are, there can be no doubt
that the relations of landlord and tenant must undergo
considerable alteration. Mr. Gisborne declared his
opinion, after giving the whole subject his most
impartial consideration, that the landed interest is
unequally and unfairly burdened in respect of local taxation:
nevertheless, with respect to burdens, he was little
sanguine of a reduction; he did not name members of
parliament, nor the ministry, on this subject; for the
real fact was, the constituencies themselves cared
nothing at all about economy. He ascribed the fall
of prices to the fact that commodities have for many
years increased faster than gold; larger supplies of gold,
especially those from recently-discovered sources, would
check this. And on the whole his opinion was, that the
lowest point was passed, and that there were signs of
improvement.

The Board of Health has published a report by the
Honourable William Napier on the gathering-grounds of
the proposed Water-supply to the Metropolis. Mr.
Napier had been commissioned to gauge the streams
and make a careful re-examination of the capabilities of
the country for the purpose intended. He states that,
at first view, he rather feared he should not find sources
that would yield as much as the present supply—equal
to a canal nine feet wide and three feet deep, flowing
two miles an hour throughout the day and night; but
a month's search has produced the result. He gives a
table of forty springs which yield at their source nearly
forty millions of gallons per day, of a quality at and
under one degree of hardness, equivalent to the supply
of more than half a million houses, at the rate of seventy-
five gallons for each house per day; and he can answer
for at least ten more millions of gallons per day at and
under two degrees of hardness. He gives the names of
these springs, in a table showing the yield and hardness
of each. Mr. Napier's researches, however, have thrown
so much doubt into his mind in reference to the plan of
gigantic reservoirs for storing the supply for months, that
he proposes a plan of tile-drains which shall catch the
waters as they issue from the earth, and lead them to a
main trunk that shall flow into a covered reservoir on
Wimbledon Common, large enough to contain two days'
supply against any emergency, and throwing its waste
into the Thames. He promises in a future report to
give the details, and estimate the cost of his proposed
plan.

A correspondence, respecting the Boys who were
expelled from Woolwich and Carshalton, has taken place
between Mr. J. Leveson Gower (on the part of the
parents and guardians of the boys) and the Master-
General of the Ordnance. Mr. Leveson Gower urges
Lord Anglesey, amongst other points, to revoke the
sentence passed upon the boys, and re-investigate the
case, which the Master-General declines to do on various
grounds—one of the most cogent being, that to do so
would involve a publication of the whole evidence;
which Lord Anglesey not only deprecates, but warns
the parents and guardians against having recourse to.
Lord Anglesey further denies that his circular ordering
the removal of the boys can justify the assertion that it
tended to impute the worst of crimes to a single
individual implicated. Mr. Leveson Gower closes the
correspondence by stating that such further measures in
the conduct of the case will be adopted, as upon
consideration may be deemed to be expedient.

The Admiralty have determined to put an end to the
practice of having "Mess-men" in the Navy. No
person is in future to be entered on board her Majesty's
ships, or to be employed in the service, as a "mess-man,"
whether in the gun-room mess or the ward-room mess;
it having been found that most of the extravagance, and
nearly all the intemperance, with their concomitants—
ruin, disgrace, degradation, and loss of position in the
service, and society—are attributable to the practice of
the gun-room mess of large ships appointing a regular
"messman," from whom any quantity of spirits or
wine could be procured by paying for it.

At a meeting of the Law Amendment Society, on the
18th, Mr. Dudley Field, one of the Commissioners who
prepared the Amended Code for the State of New York,
was introduced, and gave an account of the improvements
made by that code in the system of legal
procedure. He stated, in the first place, that the courts of
justice in the State of New York were originally
modelled on the old system of England. They had a
Chancellor and a Vice-Chancellor, whose jurisdiction
was modelled on the English Courts of Equity; they
had a Supreme Court, like the Court of Queen's Bench;
they had a Court of Appeal, consisting of the Senate,
answering to the House of Lords; and when an appeal
came from the Court of Chancery, the Judges of the
Supreme Court sat with the Senate; when, on the
other hand, the appeal came from the Supreme Court,
the Judges of the Court of Chancery sat in the Senate.
Thus they had two systems—that of Common Law, and
that of Equity; and suitors were bandied about between
both till their patience or their purse was exhausted.
They had also different forms of procedure in actions at
common law, which added to the difficulty and
uncertainty of obtaining justice. Such were the intolerable
evils of the system, that the first thing the Convention
did was to abolish the Court of Chancery in toto, and
to create one supremo tribunal, which should administer
all the laws of the land, whether in law or in equity;
and that testimony should be taken, whenever the
witnesses were within the State, vivâ voce. This was in
1847, and three commissioners were appointed to carry
their recommendation into effect. The commissioners
reported from time to time; their first report being
made in February 1848, and their recommendations
passed into a law on the 1st of July in the same year.
In the next year some additional portions of the code
were prepared, which were passed into a law in the
course of last session; and on the last day of last year
the whole code, civil and criminal, was given in by the
commissioners, but that had not yet been passed into a
law. What had been made law comprised nearly all
the provisions relating to civil actions, by which all the
previously existing rules of pleading were abolished, and
one uniform course of procedure for all kinds of actions
was established. They had adopted such a system of
pleading as parties would naturally adopt in a case of
private arbitration. The plaintiff, in his first pleading,
stated in plain and ordinary but precise language what
was the nature of his complaint, and what the ground
of his remedy. Then the defendant put forth his
answer, specifically denying those portions of the
plaintiff's allegation which he meant to controvert, and
admitting those which he did not, besides stating any
new matter on which he might rely. To that new
matter the plaintiff was allowed to reply, and then the
proceedings closed and the cause was ready for trial.