in reporting for a similar amalgamation in the English courts, and have pledged themselves to draw up the
outline of a code of procedure for that purpose. Nor does it seem likely that the proceedings at this
meeting will evaporate in mere speech-making or report-making. Mr. Bethel did not scruple to take part in
them with a very decisive expression of his favourable opinion. Lord Campbell, not many days before the
meeting took place, had remarked how lamentable was the necessity that so often barred the superior courts
from giving a complete remedy to parties seeking aid from them. And Lord Brougham has already
introduced to the House of Lords a bill for assimilating law and equity procedure in one important respect, by
carrying into the superior courts the county court practice of admitting the testimony of parties to suits.
Lord Cranworth and the Lord Chief Justice appear to be in favour of the principle of this bill.

The truth is, that the cause of Law Reform has received such irresistible impetus from the operation
of those county courts, brief as it has been, that another term or two is likely to make law-reformers of
all the barristers in Westminster Hall, will they nill they. It is a sign of the times which all will have to
read, that the late Lord Chief Justice of England, a man illustrious for all the qualities that Englishmen
most revere and look up to, should have taken this occasion to send forth from his retirement into
Westminster Hall a warning voice against longer indulgence in the fiction and verbiage ("those pets of
English lawyers") which have hitherto prevented the establishment of a natural and intelligible course of
legal practice. "I take the fact to be clear," says Lord Denman, "that the public decidedly prefers the county
courts to the common law courts in Westminster Hall for the trial of causes. The proof of this fact, that
the former tribunals swarm with suitors while the latter are almost deserted, involves another fact of a
more general nature—the destitution of the bar, the ruin of many now in business, the disappointment
of many more in their just expectations, and, finally, the annihilation of a most valuable class of society as
it has existed for the advantage of the public. If the interest of the bar come in competition with that of
the public, there cannot be one moment's hesitation as to which must be sacrificed. Neither that, nor any
other set of men, has any vested right in misgovernment or maladministration; no privilege to defeat, or
even delay for a single hour well-considered improvements." Does not this read like the handwriting on
the wall? We really think so. The doom would seem at last to have gone forth; and "the sons of Uriah,"
formerly too strong for the most absolute and powerful sovereign that ever ruled the English Commonwealth,
lie helpless now at the feet of our gentle Queen Victoria. "Can we expect a sane man," pursues Lord
Denman "to resort to a court which refuses to hear him and his adversary, possibly the only two persons in
the world who know the truth, and which makes him pay £20 for admission into its precincts, while in
another court, close at hand, and always sitting, he may state his own rights as he understands them, call
his antagonist to disclose the whole merits of the disputed transaction, and, finally, recover his own at the
one-twentieth part of the cost? The evil points out its own remedy. If we are right in our premises, and
suitors keep aloof from courts of unimpeachable knowledge and integrity because they are exclusive and
expensive, the conclusion is obvious. Make them open to receive information from all, and cheap enough to
be aceptable to all, and the same amount of business will be found to flock thither as was seen there before
this unexpected rivalry was created by the legislature."

That, in plain, forcible, uncompromising language, is the assertion of a principle of transcendant
importance to the public. Nor do we anticipate, on the part of those now entrusted with power, any
disposition to be slow in giving effect to it. When Lord John Russel brought in his first Chancery Reform
bill he threw-out some remarks that showed his thorough discernment of the pernicious fallacy which has so
often urged that litigation would increase if justice were made too cheap. To suppose that the cost of
proceedings ever reined in the demon of litigation is preposterous. The lawmaker who first used the argument
simply showed that he was thinking of the rich man and forgetting the poor one, as lawmakers all
through our history have unfortunately been much given to do. Give a rich man a spite to inflict, and a
poor man a wrong to redress; and where a thousand pounds would not stay the ardent spirit eager for
litigation, the poor soul in search of justice would find a thousand pence insurmountable.

It is now exactly twelve months (in our number for June, 1850) since we noticed the fact of "a curious
question" having arisen in Dublin from the circumstance of a verdict being given in an action on a bill of
exchange, "of which the effect is to affirm the validity of a bill already declared a forgery by an English
jury, and which has consigned a money lender to ten years' transportation." At that time the case had not
attracted any notice; but very soon attention was drawn to it, and it became manifest that the money lender
under sentence in England must receive a pardon. Now observe in this respect the crying want of a reform
in our modes of procedure. The man sentenced for a crime which a subsequent jury declares him not
to have committed, remains nevertheless a transported felon for twelve months after the presumption of his
innocence has been thus strongly raised; and it is not till after the law's delays have been exhausted, and
the person whose signature was alleged to have been forged confesses its genuineness by paying the amount
of the bill, that a pardon is issued from the Home Office. The circumstances of this case could hardly have
passed with so little remark if the character of its victim had been less involved in suspicion. But it is overlooked
that the injustice would have fallen not less heavily on a character the most spotless; and that where
sentence has been passed for a crime which absolutely has not been committed, it is high time to dispense
with the farce of a royal pardon, and in its place to substitute legal and legitimate means of reversing the
conviction that should never have taken place. The absence of a court of appeal in criminal cases, which
criminal lawyers of the widest experience have always most earnestly urged upon the legislature, is one of
the gravest defects still waiting remedy. It is to hoped that Lord Campbell's attention may be drawn to it
when his admirable bill, now passing to its final stage in the House of Commons, shall have corrected other
less grave omissions in the administration of the criminal law.

But if law reformers have all this work on their hands, and are setting about it more or less earnestly,
what shall we say of the chances of reform in the Church, where fresh disorders are daily breaking forth,
and no one seems to dream of any possible attempt at a remedy. Intelligent foreigners must smile to see
what in this respect is passing around them, if such matters appear to them worthy of even so much
attention. The Bishop of Exeter, backed by creeds and councils, cheers on his synod to flat revolt against
the Church as by law and statute established; while the Archbishop of Canterbury stands by Prince Albert
on the platform of the Gospel Propagation Society, as the illustrious prince holds forth "the gospel and the
unfettered right of its use " as the sole inestimable safeguard of the protestant faith. Doctor Merle d'Aubigné,