land, goods, money, and debts-for to himself they no longer belong. To allow any distinction between one kind of property and another seems the height of injustice. Yet this is of hourly occurrence in the frustration of a creditor after he has obtained judgment, and taken out execution. His debtor has a landed estate; if it be copyhold, the creditor cannot touch it in any way whatever; if it be freehold, he may take half by elegit, and receive the rents and profits, but no more, in the lifetime of his debtor. The debt for which he has received judgment may be such that the rent of the land will not even keep down the interest; still he can take nothing more; he cannot turn the land into money: so that, when a man sues for a thing detained unlawfully, (a horse, for instance,) you give him money which he does not ask; and when he asks for money by suing for a debt, you give him land which he does not want. But if his debtor die before judgment can be obtained, unless the debt is on bond, he has no remedy at all against any kind of real property of any tenure; nay, though his money, borrowed on note or bill, has been laid out in buying land, the debtor's heir takes that land wholly discharged of the debt!

But not only is land thus sacred from all effectual process of creditors, unless the debtor be a trader, the great bulk of most men's personal property is equally beyond reach of the law. Stock in the public funds-debts due in any manner of way-nay, bank-notes, and even money-are alike protected. A man may owe a hundred thousand pounds in any way, and judgment may have passed against him over and over again; if he have privilege of parliament, live in a furnished house or hotel, and use hired carriages and horses, he may have an income from stock or money lent, of twenty thousand a-year, and defy the utmost efforts of the law; or if he have not privilege, he may live abroad, or within the Rules, and laugh at all the courts and all the creditors in the country. So absurd are the laws in this respect, that if a person borrow a thousand pounds, and the creditor has obtained judgment, the sheriff's officer appointed to levy upon his personalty may come into his room, and take a table or a desk; but if he sees the identical thousand pounds lying there, he must leave it he touches it at his peril: For this quaint reason," says Lord Mansfield, " because money cannot be sold, and you are required, by the writ, to take your debt out of the produce of goods sold."

Lord Brougham, in concluding his observations on these barbarous, absurd, and aristocratic laws, eloquently apostrophises-" who is the innovator-he who would adhere to such rules in violation of the manifest intent and spirit of our old law, or he who would re-adjust them so as to give it effect? In ancient times there were none of those masses of property in existence which are exempt from legal process. When the law, therefore, said, "Let all a man's goods and chattels be answerable for his debts," it meant to include his whole personalty at the least. Things have now changed in the progress of society; trade has grown up; credit has followed in its train; money, formerly only used as counters, has become abundant; bankers' accounts have been

invented; paper currency and the funds have been created. Threefourths of the debtor's personalty, perhaps nine-tenths, now consist of stock, money, and credit; and the rule of law, which leaves those out of all execution, no longer can mean as before-" Let all his personalty be liable"-but, "Let a tenth-part of it only be taken." Can there be a greater change made upon, or greater violence done to, the old law itself, than you thus do by affecting to preserve its letter? The great stream of time is perpetually flowing on; all things around us are in ceaseless motion; and we vainly imagine to preserve our relative position among them, by getting out of the current and standing stock still on the margin. The stately vessel we belong to glides down; our bark is attached to it; we might " pursue the triumph, and partake the gale;" but, worse than the fool who stares, expecting the current to flow down and run out, we exclaim-Stop the boat!-and would tear it away to strand it, for the sake of preserving its connexion with the vessel. All the changes that are hourly and gently going on in spite of us, and all those which we ought to make, that violent severances of settled relations may not be effected, far from exciting murmurs of discontent, ought to be gladly hailed as dispensations of a bountiful Providence, instead of filling us with a thoughtless and preposterous alarm."-Speech on the present State of the Law, p. 109.

But the imperfect recourse against the debtor's estate, although the grand opprobrium of the debtor-laws, is by no means its only vice: the unequal distribution, in case of insolvency, is scarcely a less notable defect. Only traders, or those who voluntarily take the benefit of the act, are compelled, when insolvent, to make an impartial division of their property. All others may easily, and with impunity, pay one creditor twenty shillings in the pound, and the others sixpence, or nothing. So, when a man dies insolvent, his representatives may, by acknowledging judgments, secure one creditor his full payment at the expense of all the rest. Thus, lax and impotent as the law is against property, wide as are its loop-holes for fraud and extravagance to escape by, utterly powerless as is its grasp to seize the great bulk of the debtor's possessions, against his useless PERSON it is powerful and unrelenting. The argument used is, that the concealed property may thus be wrung from him: the principle, however, of the law, and on which all its provisions are built, is, that the seizure of the body works a satisfaction of the claim; and this satisfaction is given alike in all cases-alike where there is innocent misfortune, culpable extravagance, and guilty embezzlement. Surely," says the great Advocate, whose words we are copying, "for all these evils the remedy is easy. Let the whole of every man's property, real and personal-his real, of what kind soever, copyhold, leasehold, freehold; his personal, of whatever nature, debts, money, stock, chattels-be taken for the payment of all his debts equally, and, in case of insolvency, let all be distributed rateably; let all he possesses be sifted, bolted from him unsparingly, until all his creditors are satisfied by payment or composition; but let his PERSON only be taken when he conceals his goods, or has

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merited punishment by extravagance or fraud. This line of distinction is already recognised by the practice of the Insolvent Courts; but the privilege of the Rules is inconsistent with every principle, and ought at once to be abrogated as soon as arrest on mesne process is abolished."*

INSECURITY OF PROPERTY.-Our aristocratic legislators have always manifested the greatest repugnance to admit the slightest change in existing institutions, under an alleged apprehension it might endanger the security of individual possessions. Nothing, however, can be imagined less secure than the condition of real property, as explained by the Law Commissioners, in their report to Parliament. It staggers one to comprehend how the law of any country could get into such a state, or how it has worked or been so long tolerated. The deeds, it seems, are endless, countless, and exceedingly complex, and, after all, do not give a legal title to the subject. A lord chancellor has been heard declare that there was scarcely a legal title to an estate in England. This defect appears to be remedied by a system of trusts, under which every thing, if not actually in the stomach, is at least within the jaws of the great Leviathan of Chancery. Then there seems to be no way in which the exact tenure of any piece of property can be ascertained, except by getting and studying all the deeds which may have ever been executed respecting it. And, after all, a flaw may be overlooked, and a flaw once is a flaw for ever: for time cures little or nothing in a legal title.

LAWS OF MARRIAGE.-The contract of marriage can only be lawfully entered into by strictly complying with certain religious ceremonies. Unless a special license has been obtained, banns must be previously published, and the nuptials must be solemnized in a church or chapel of the establishment, and by a minister of the establishment. These obligations sometimes entail great hardship on parties by whom they have been unintentionally violated. Parents may rear families, and honour them as legitimate, and afterwards discover they have been living in concubinage, and nourishing a spurious offspring, merely from having been mistaken in supposing a priest to have been ordained, or a chapel to have been licensed. No allowance is made even for Dissenters, though their faith is tolerated; they must join in the ritual of the privileged worship, however repugnant to their conscience, on pain of their marriages being invalid. But mark the inconsistency of the law: parties have only to cross the border to Scotland, where marriages' may, with impunity, be contracted in contempt of English ceremonies -without publication of banns-or the payment of surplice-fees, and such marriages are recognized as lawful in an English court of justice.‡

This arrest, the end of which, it is to be hoped, fast approaches, was not generally given by the common law. The capias ad respondendum is given in Debt and Detinue, by West, 2 (13 Ed. I.) cap. 11, in case only so late as 19 Hen. VII. c. 9.

† Edinburgh Review, No. 101, p. 129.

Lord Stowell's judgment, in Dalrymple v. Dalrymple.

Another hardship may be mentioned, though it cannot be ascribed to the ecclesiastical monopoly of marriages by the established clergy, but to the decisions of the courts on the law of settlement. The hardship to which we allude is the fact that an English woman, marrying a native of Scotland or Ireland, loses all claim to parochial relief in England, and may be passed, like an Irish or Scotch vagrant, to the birth-place of the husband.-7 Barnw. & Cress. 615.

Now, too, that religious disabilities are abrogated, measures ought to be adopted to mitigate the severity of the law in regard to marriages celebrated by Roman Catholic priests; and, in certain cases, to render valid marriages solemnized by ministers of that persuasion. In Ireland, by the law as it now stands, a Catholic priest, in celebrating marriage between a Protestant and Catholic, commits a capital felony, punishable with death. By another statute, for the same offence, he is subject to a penalty of £500: so that, agreeably to the observation of a distinguished Irishman, a Catholic priest may be first hanged, and called upon after to pay a fine of £500. The poor Irish, who flock over to this country, from early habit mostly prefer being married by a Catholic priest. Such marriage is invalid, even between two Catholics. The consequence is, the husband may desert his wife when he pleases, and leave his children utterly destitute; for they have no claim on parochial aid in England, not even if they have an English mother.

COSTS OF LAW-SUITS.It is related by Swift, of Captain Lemuel Gulliver, that his father was ruined by gaining a law-suit. Notwithstanding the imputed selfishness of mankind, their addiction to litigation is a strong proof of disinterestedness, or at least shows they care less for money than the indulgence of vindictive feeling, or the acknowledgement of an unprofitable right. The doors of courts of justice are armed with terrors, threatening destruction to all who enter therein, yet they are beset with applicants for admission. Law, proverbially uncertain, is morally certain of inflicting loss on all parties; for, victor or vanquished, we are sure to be out of pocket. This singular issue results from the rule which allows no more than taxed costs to a successful litigant, leaving him to pay the difference between them and the law-charges of his legal adviser. It often happens that a person who sues for a debt of £10 or £15-and the majority of suits are for such diminutive sums --and gains the day, with costs--is minus three or fourfold as much for his own share of the expenses. But on this point we shall extract a passage, the first sentence of which we are sure--coming as it does from such high authority-is well worth the ordinary fee of 6s. 8d. to every one with the least disposition to unnecessary litigation. Speaking of the excess of costs which a suitor is obliged to pay his attorney, over and above what he can recover from his antagonist, Lord Brougham says,

"This is so certain, and so considerable, that a man shall in vain expect me to recommend him either to bring forward a rightful claim, or to resist an unjust demand for any such sum as twenty, or even thirty pounds—at least, upon a calculation of his interest, I should presently declare to him he had much better

say nothing in one case, and pay the money a second time in the other, even if he had a stamped receipt in his pocket, provided his adversary were a rich and oppressive man, resolved to take all the advantages the law gives him. I have here before me some samples of taxed bills of costs, taken quite at random, and far from being peculiar cases in any one respect. There is one of £428, made out by a very respectable attorney, and from which the master deducted £202; of this sum £147 were taken off, which had been paid for bringing witnesses. In this other, amounting to £217, £76 were taxed off; and, in a third, of £63, there were nearly £15 disallowed; it was an undefended cause, to recover £50: had the defendant been obstinate and oppressively inclined, he would have made the extra costs a good deal more than the whole debt, although the suit was in the Exchequer, where the taxation is known to be more liberal. We had lately, in the King's Bench, a bill of above £100, to recover £19, and probably, of that £100 not above £60 would be allowed. As things now stand, a part of this master evil is inevitable; for if practitioners were sure of receiving all their bills, they would run up a heavy charge wherever they knew the case to be a clear one. But, as the fundamental principle for which I contend is to alter no part of the law by itself, or without considering all the other parts, there can be no difficulty, consistently with this doctrine, to enlarge the allowance of costs as soon as other amendments have prevented the abuse of litigation by professional men. Some erroneous rules of taxation may, even in a partial or insulated reform, be altered. Whatever is fairly allowed, as between attorney and client, should be allowed between party and party, except only such needless charges as have been ordered expressly by the client himself. There can surely be no reason for disallowing, as a general rule, all consultations, often absolutely necessary for the conduct of a cause, generally more beneficial than much that is allowed; nor can it be right that so little of the expense of bringing evidence should be given, and that the cost of preparing the case, by inquiries, journeys, &c. should be refused altogether. The necessary consequence of not suffering an attorney to charge what he ought to receive for certain things, is that he is driven to do a number of needless things, which he knows are always allowed as a matter of course, and the expense is thus increased to the client far beyond the mere gain which the attorney derives from it."

Thus it appears attorneys are placed in a similar predicament to what medical men were, prior to Lord Tenterden's decision in their favour, when they were compelled to seek a remuneration for attendance on their patients, through the medium of unnecessary draughts, or exorbitant charges for drugs. It is due, indeed, to the respectable part of the legal profession to say that they are not entirely to blame for the monstrous bills they deliver to their clients. A shameful system of extortion prevails in the courts, and many of the fees exacted by the officers, during the see-saw of a cause, can be considered nothing but legalized robbery of the suitor. In the Common Pleas, the prothonotaries charge 8d. per folio of seventy-two words, on all pleadings entered; and if the declaration and issue, or declaration and judgment, be of different terms, the 8d. is doubled. In the King's Bench 4d. per folio is charged. The entry, by them so called, is, in fact, nothing more than imprinting a stamp by a clerk in the office; the attorney performing the drudgery of engrossing or entering the proceedings on the roll. The charges for passing records and setting down causes are a grievous burthen. They are passed by an officer, whose clerk charges from 30s. and upwards. If the cause is not tried on the day on which it is set down, the marshal must be paid for his deputy marking the cause as a remanet; for the first of which he charges 6s. and for