probity, and they ought to be tried simply,
and on their honest merits only, before men
who are themselves also engaged in commerce,
and are versed in all the usages of which they
treat. The extent to which law backs men
who will study its windings for the purpose of
commercial fraud, by bill-manufacturing, and
by a dozen other ways, is so great, that appeals
to "justice" only tend to weaken the reliance
upon honour, which is the mainspring of
European trade. So merchants, here or there,
daily suffer loss or wrong from others, and
submit to it, rather than be also wrong-doers
to themselves by going to the lawyers for a
remedy.

Wherever merchants are, the want is felt,
or has been felt, of an upright and competent
Tribunal of Commerce, before which
commercial disputes might be brought, and tried
without legal equivocation, upon their own
merits, by men acquainted with the principles
of trade. By the Conseil des Prud'hommes,
the want has been supplied in France; it has
been supplied also in Italy, Spain, Belgium,
Hamburg, and Sardinia. It will very shortly
be supplied in North America. In England
it is felt, but it is not supplied.

With the important aid—in fact, under the
presidency—of Lord Wharncliffe, with the
support of Lord Brougham, never failing in
any cause which promises to lessen the great
burden of a complex state of law—an effort is
now being made to obtain the establishment
of Tribunals of Commerce in this country.
The judges desired are to be men of high
rank in the various departments of commercial
life—men who find time to act as directors
of many companies, and who would cheerfully
find time, as paid judges, sitting on certain
days, to give the benefit of their experience
for the solution of disputes among commercial
men. The justice of a case is soon arrived at
in this way. The Tribunals of Commerce in
France settle more cases in one day than all
the civil tribunals together get through in a
month. In our own Stock Exchange, for
more than fifty years, all questions are
brought before a tribunal of this nature,
from whose decisions no appeal has once been
made.

On the 8th of May last, a meeting, called
by the Lord Mayor at the request of more
than a thousand merchants, first thoroughly
submitted to the public this question of
Commercial Tribunals, of doing in England what
has been done already in other commercial
countries. Lord Wharncliffe, at that meeting,
said that "he, for his part, would lend every
assistance in his power to aid the movement,
for he regarded the improvements in the
machinery requisite for settling commercial
differences in a moral rather than a material
point of view. He looked upon it not merely
as an arrangement for settling questions
between individuals, but as giving tone to the
entire commercial world."

The details of the question cannot find place
in our pages; the principle we have plainly
stated, and commend heartily to all whom it
concerns.

BUILDING AND FREEHOLD LAND
SOCIETIES.

WE said, in our article on Combinations*,
that we assented heartily to the whole
principle upon which Freehold Land and Building
Societies have been established. We reserved,
however, a packet of cautions, which we now
proceed to open. We feel no captious objections,
or indirect opposition. Our simple
object is, to help on the movement by making
it more fully understood.

* "The Good Side of Combination," page 56 of the present
volume.

The number of Building Societies at present
registered is said to exceed two thousand and
fifty; and the total yearly amount paid into
them by the middle and working-classes is
perhaps equal to four millions sterling. New
societies of this kind are continually being
projected and commenced. Let us now add,
that of the societies existing, and of those
proposed, not more than about one in twelve is
conducted upon principles that will enable it
fairly to fulfil the promises which it holds out
to its supporters. We do not mean that they
are often fraudulent in their intention; very
far from that. We mean that such institutions
require to be based on better calculations than
their projectors generally can supply. They
are too frequently established empirically, by
men erring in innocence; because they do not
know the delicacy and the difficulty of the
question with which they undertake to deal.
The consequence is not, indeed, ruinous to the
multitude of industrious men, out of whose
acquired habits of providence this large
amount of money grows: they do not lose
the bread that they have cast upon the waters;
but it comes back to them after too many
days. Their money returns to them with
increase; but it is an increase vastly less than
had been promised, and a good deal less than
might have been obtained out of a system of
Mutual Benefit Investment, placed upon a safe
and cautious footing.

Freehold Land Societies and Building
Societies are not identical, but brother schemes.
One brother is much older than the other;
and, in the present state of the law, the elder
is the safer one to open an account with;
that is to say, there is no cobweb of legal
doubt hanging at present over the proceedings
of a Building Society, while the operations
of a Land Society are mystified a little
by the texture of the law.

They came across the border out of Scotland.
Hard-headed Scotch labourers first struck out
the idea, perhaps assisted by their parish clerk.
Their idea was as follows: We think it very
expensive work to hire house furniture, or
carts, or ploughs, paying their value perhaps
several times over in our lives, without