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for it is potently believed that the evidence given under an informally administered oath is not to be relied on. English lawyers must suppose that the evidence given upon an oath not taken in the presence of a Magistrate must differ from the evidence which would have been given if the Magistrates had been in the same chamber, or the same house, in which the witnesses were sworn. Unless this be potently believed, why are the trials void? The witnesses doubtless imagine that what they stated after having been sworn without the presence of a Magistrate, they would have stated also (and neither more nor less) if they had been sworn in the presence of Magistrates! but in this they imagine a vain thing. They don't know the peculiar force this oath would have derived from a Magisterial or judicial atmosphere! An oath taken in a chamber in any part of which there is, occupied in any way whatever, a Magistrate or Judge is a very different thing in point of force, from an oath taken in a chamber not having such ingredients to veracity. The writer of this paper was sworn at Clerkenwell, about two years ago, before giving evidence, and the method was this: he was detained in a dark, narrow, unventilated passage, till about fifty people had collected to be sworn; as, before there was a good lot, the officer did not think it worth his while to set about the business. At last he entered a sort of closet, and the assembled herd scrambled for precedence, and took the oath as fast as they could gabble. No Magistrate was present. The writer cannot conceive that the evidence he gave after this informal oath was different from what he would have given had a Magistrate been within any four walls in which he might have been sworn; he thinks he spoke the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth; but yet it is not competent for him to deny the effect of any peculiar virtue which may exist in a Magisterial atmosphere! As he has not tried both methods of swearing, he cannot negative the particular efficacy of the Magisterial presence! Had new trials been had of the prisoners at the Middlesex Sessions, it would have been edifying to observe in what degree the evidence would have varied, in consequence of the vitiating informality of the oath. That there must be a variance in the evidence the lawyers must believe, or why do they hold the form essential?

The Globe, extracting satisfaction from the Lords' rejection of the Bill for rendering Justice accessible by the establishment of Local Courts, says, "There are in the present state of the administration of justice in this country, and in the habits which have grown up under it, great advantages; some of which we may lose in realizing other benefits. The continual desire to compromise differences,—to avoid litigation by concession,-the disposition to exercise the rights of property leniently, and, above all, to trust in ordinary and trivial transactions rather to the character and honour of individuals than to legal remedies—these habits, which appear to us to exist in an eminent degree in England, contribute to the smoothness of all transactions, and to the comfort and tranquillity of the people; and they are probably, in some degree, connected with the difficulties which have been opposed to the resort to justice or law. By the united force of law and morals, a high degree of security for property, a high degree of respect for all ascertained rights, a high degree of immunity from personal injury-in fact, many of the chief ends and advantages of law, are actually attained and enjoyed by the people of this country, with a small expenditure of trouble and expense on the aggregate

mass of litigation." If the defects of law, in the opinion of the Globe, work so much good to society, the perfection would be to dispense with it altogether. Indeed, according to the Globe, what we call DEFECTS should be called merits; and Magna Charta amended should declare, To none shall Justice be sold or denied, unless to the poor. There is a desire to compromise differences-to avoid litigation by concession, because there is vast trouble, and vast expense in appealing to justice, and vast uncertainty about obtaining it. With the best case, no one is secure against the quirks of law and the caprices of jurors: no one can promise himself success. No lawyer, who has a character to maintain, will answer for the issue of any suit, however clear the merits may appear to be. People are thus deterred from seeking redress: but are not others encouraged by these very considerations to commit wrongs? It is looking only at one side of the effect to confine the view to the amiable patience of the sufferers; the impunity which makes knaves enterprising is also to be taken into account. The difficulties of the law, to which the Globe traces such curious advantages, are the encouragements to knavery. There are few states of being for which something may not be said: the habits of the desert have their advocates, and the barbarism of the law has an eulogist in the Globe. The journalist should observe that Ireland is in advance of England in the obstruction of justice he so much admires; and yet there is not discernible any desire to emulate her freedom from the restraints of justice. Thus we see that, when the difficulties in the way of law are pushed a few degrees beyond our stage, the effects are not enviable. As for the "high degree of security for property, the high degree of respect for all ascertained rights, the high degree of immunity from personal injury," how is it that these various high degrees co-exist with the highest degree of crime, the highest degree of knavery, and the highest degree of gallows, in the civilized world? Our rogues, who make a population of themselves, and out-number the rogues of any other nation of Europe, as much as they exceed all others in skill,—which is, indeed, the consequence of this great practice,-are the children of the defects of the law.

We have heard a great deal of virtuous indignation expressed against persons who have recommended the people not to pay taxes; but what should be said of a journalist who recommends the great to deny justice to the poor? If any persuasions should be matter of prosecution, surely, persuasions of this class should be of the number. But there is no libel law for the people-there is no libel law punishing those who instigate power to the greatest wrongs against them. Certain I am of this, that if justice be systematically denied to the poor, they are discharged from all obligations to the state. The arguments employed by the Lords against Local Courts, are insinuated in the cunning Globe; and most malignant is the tendency of them.

In Alison's History of the French Revolution, it is remarked, that in a system of Universal Suffrage, the contests of mankind are reduced to a mere calculation of numbers, and the vote of a Napoleon or Newton has no more weight than that of an ignorant mechanic. This position indicates a very superficial view of the matter; but it is unnecessary to show the shallowness of it, for the author is contradicted by his own instance in the turn of a leaf. In Vol. I. p. 272, I find the doctrine I have quoted, and in p. 275, in observation on the royalists at Coblentz,

it is said that "the young and presumptuous nobility, possessing no estimable quality but their valour, were altogether unfit to cope with the moral energy and practical talent, which arose among the middling orders of France."-How did they arise, if an equality of rights makes a Napoleon or a Newton of no more weight than an ignorant mechanic? But Republicanism levels the arbitrary distinctions; Aristocracy levels the great spirits, or rather confounds them with the vulgar great, or the vulgar little, in whichever class they may be found. Aristocracy, below its own exaltation, is a leveller; and the things it holds level and ob. scure under its cold shade are the virtues.

EFFECTS OF AN EARTHQUAKE.-To convey an idea of the violence of the earthquake at Mansfield, the reporter says, that "two or three women were so alarmed as to faint away." What a tribute to the terrors of an earthquake!

LYING TRADES.-The Lord Mayor having remarked to a Jew, that the "general dealing" in his trade was calculated to deprave the moral character, as it introduced a system of lying and fraud; the man shrewdly observed, that "there were professions which acquired for their honourable supporters considerable emoluments by lies." Of course, he did not mean the law.

Ir is to be observed that certain Radicals, who are disposed to coalesce with the Tories, and to uphold the House of Lords, because it is opposed to the Ministry, are the very men who were the most eager partisans of the Whig Ministry, and who did all in their power to prevent the first criticisms on the truckling, compromising policy of Ministers from having effect. When others were pointing out the fatal course upon which Ministers were entering, these men deprecated censures and suspicions, canvassed for praise and encouragement. When timely warning might have checked the false career of Ministers, they drowned the voice of warning in clamours of confidence and approbation. Their enmity is now as wild and indiscriminate as was their friendship; and they are the loudest railers against the faults which they protected from censure, when censure might have availed to nip them in the bud. The thief at the gallows who bit off his mother's ear, spoke the rebuke which applies to these persons who have so miserably failed either in sagacity or in duty. Let them be marked by the sounder-thinking Radicals, and their judgments valued with reference to the exhibitions of them in 1832. They seem to be men wanting the mind's eye, incapable of distinctions, and ready to hug one evil because it conflicts with another. Because the Whigs are bad, the Hereditary Legislature which opposes them is good, and finds favour in the sight of these sages. "It does not follow," says Bacon, "that the privation of an evil is a good ;" and he illustrates by Æsop's fable of the old man, who called on Death to relieve him from his bundle of sticks, (such another imposition as our Ministry :) but when Death came, the old man liked the look of him so ill, that he told him he had only called upon him to put the load which he had thrown down, upon his shoulders again. The persons to whom our

remarks point, calling themselves Radicals, and doing no honour to the name by their method of wearing it, omit to observe, as Bacon says that, because the sticks were bad, Death who would release from the burden of them was not good.

The Lords are the interested and inveterate enemies of reform and improvement; with them lies the main contest. The quarrel with the Ministry is merely a detached part of the same battle. It is with the Aristocracy that the grand conflict lies, and the main phalanx is the Hereditary Legislature.

We never hear the danger of increased patronage urged by a Tory but we know that some object useful to the people is to be defeated. Let there be a question of raising a Regiment of Dragoons, with its Colonel, Lieutenant-Colonel, Major, Captains, Lieutenants, Cornets, Paymaster, Adjutant, Surgeon, Assistant-Surgeon, Veterinary Surgeon, and Quarter-Master; all these officers, averaging in pay and allowances from three to four hundred a-year each; and we never hear of the danger of conferring on Lord Hill the disposal of so many valuable appointments. But let there be a question of improving the judicial establishments of the country, and every patrician plunderer of the public purse becomes an economist. This is quite natural; they cannot see the use of any establishment in which they and their families are not directly to participate. A cornetcy for Lord Charles, or a paymastership for the Steward's son, are present goods of which they can estimate the value; but the equal administration of justice is a benefit of which they have not the means or inclination of forming an estimate. None of the idlers of their house are likely to have attained the professional eminence which would justify their appointment to the bench, or to possess the requisite diligence for the inferior offices. The organ of the aristocracy," the Morning Post," is clamorous against the Chancellor on the ground of his grasping patronage for political purposes; and, in an article replete with wilful falsehood, or the grossest ignorance, cites the Bankruptcy Court Act in defence of its accusation. Of the judges and commissioners,* only one, the late Sir Albert Pell, had ever been publicly conspicuous in politics; not one, we believe, had ever sat in Parliament; only one had powerful political connexions, and that connexion was Tory. Could Lord Eldon, can Lord Lyndhurst, boast of equal impartiality? How many Whigs can we find on the bench -how many in the Master's Office-in their time? Sir Albert Pell had stood at the head of his Court, and in the lead of his Circuit, for years: how many judges from his own Court and Circuit were made over his head, on little other grounds than that "mediocrity and subserviency" which are said to have been the titles to Lord Eldon's favour? Who were the marked objects of Lord Lyndhurst's patronage? did a vote for Cambridge, did electioneering activity, go for nothing? yet it was for Lord Lyndhurst's disposal, and it was while Lord Lyndhurst was in power, that Harry Brougham, the Reformer, first drew his Local Courts' Bill. Lord Lyndhurst himself the Lord Chief Baron of the

We do not believe that more than one of the Registrars had been conspicuous in politics, and that principally professionally, as an election agent. The eighteen official assignees were elected by a committee, most impartially appointed, as the Chancellor showed in the House of Lords; and we happen to know, that several candidates, who calculated on his personal favour or influence, were thrown out.

Exchequer, stands on high the living proof of the Chancellor's political bias in the disposal of his patronage. To support the position of the Post, we must imagine that the Chancellor had annihilated time, space, and circumstance, and had given office to John Singleton Copely, who wore the laurel in triumph for the escape of Napoleon from Elba. For his politics (bating a little of their ultra-radical, of their trans-atlantic extravagance,) Harry Brougham may have been supposed to feel some sympathy; but for Lord Castlereagh's Lord Lyndhurst (whatever might have been his hitherto disappointed calculations of versatility) he could have no fellow-feeling. We may say that the Chancellor has misapplied his patronage, for he has bestowed it on the enemies of his projects; but Lord Lyndhurst should be silent, were it but for gratitude; Lord Eldon, for very shame at the disposal of his own; and Lord Ellenborough, in respect of his sinecure clerkship of the Court of King's Bench.

A SERVICE OF POLICE.

THE new police force, which, there is some reason to suspect, is about to become a "national force," and, little by little, as sly opportunity will admit, to be spread over the kingdom for the special behoof of grumbling people, what time they may kick against the domination of their betters, are often called into action on extraordinary occasions, and by extraordinary powers. Every rate-payer in the metropolitan parishes knows, to his sorrow, that he pays just now a costly price for protection against the aggression of wicked people called thieves and murderers; unfortunately he knows another thing: that whilst his house is being robbed, the parish police are away in the suburbs, hard at work with their truncheons, among a herd of men, women, and children, whom Saint-Monday may have haply brought together. Two or three weeks ago a flunkey of the Marquis of Londonderry was charged at the Police Office with having done the indignant, at a fête given by that talented nobleman the previous night. It appeared that Lord Londonderry had ordered and obtained" a service of the new police." We forget the exact number constituting the "service;" but a good many, in order to keep in order the domestics of the Order attending the entertainment. John Flunkey aforesaid, in common with his brethren, felt bitterly aggrieved at this impertinent introduction; and taking up the cudgels in his own and their behalf, broke, at one blow, a policeman's head, and the peace of our sovereign Lord the King; for which he was not only kicked out of the Marquis's service by the Marquis, but was sent to kick his heels at Brixton tread-mill for a brief space, by the magistrate. Now why the Marquis of Londonderry should be supplied with a body of new policemen taken from the performance of their ordinary duty, to do his especial bidding, we cannot understand. They may have received from his Lordship a little douceur for their extraordinary duty, or they may have not; but it is quite clear that no abatement in the parish police-rate will be made, and no account has reached us, that the streets of the parish from which this "service of police" was abstracted, received any guardianship by deputy during its absence.

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