These informations are filed in the Court of Exchequer for real or supposed frauds on the revenue. The prosecutions are almost invariably instituted either on the testimony of hired spies or the Excise-officers. They form a principal source of emolument to the law-officers of the Crown. Every prosecution costs the country about fifty guineas. Of this sum, ten guineas are for a brief to the Attorney-General; to the Solicitor-General, ten guineas; to two counsel, eight guineas each; to two other counsel, four guineas each. And to these sums must be added another item of £7:13:6 for the court-crier. Let the case be ever so simple, this is the usual array of counsel which appears for the Crown; and against which the accused has to contend. In one year, there have been no less than 761 informations under the Excise-Laws; and the law-expenses on each case were not less than £120, making an annual sum of more than £120,000. The nature of these proceedings will be best illustrated by examples, selected from many others, which have been brought before the Parliament.

The first case we shall mention is that of Jeremiah Abell, a small farmer, in Norfolk. This man was prosecuted by the Excise for penalties to the amount of £1000, on account of an alleged smuggling transaction. He was able to prove, most distinctly, by seventeen witnesses, against the single testimony of the informer, that he was thirty miles from the place where the offence was sworn to have been committed. When the case was tried, his counsel most unaccountably consented to compromise the matter with the Board for £300, contrary to the express injunction of the defendant. Afterwards, the matter slept for a year, when Mr. Abell was taken into custody; and, at the time his case was mentioned in the House, he had been confined sixteen months in Norwich gaol. Of his innocence there could not be the slightest doubt. He had the most satisfactory evidence to prove that the informer was at Norwich at the very time he had sworn to have been thirty miles from that place, watching the defendant and six others engaged in smuggling.

Mr. Henty, another sufferer, and a most respectable gentleman of Sussex, had a very narrow escape from a gang of wretches patronised and employed by the Excise. He was found guilty of an attempt to defraud the revenue, and sentenced to pay fines and costs to the amount of £2400. The evidence on which he was convicted was of the most infamous description; and such as none but the agents of an odious system would ever think of employing. One of them was accused of an atrocious murder at Greenwich; others were afterwards convicted of perjury; some transported for robbery; and others (there being seven witnesses in all) we believe, were hanged. The conduct of the Excise in this case was the more unjustifiable, because they had been apprised of the characters of these miscreants: nevertheless, the solicitor commenced his prosecution against Mr. Henty, and, on their evidence, he was found guilty. When an indictment for perjury was preferred, the Excise came forward, and offered bail for them; and no doubt they would have absconded, and Mr. Henty been deprived of all means of proving his innocence, had they not been committed to prison on a charge of felony.

A great number of informations have been filed apparently for no other motive than to obtain heavy costs from individuals, and add to the enormous emoluments of the law-officers of the Crown. A case of this description was brought forward by Mr. D. W. Harvey. An information was laid against a merchant for retailing a certain vegetable powder, of the illegality of which the accused was wholly ignorant. The penalty was £100. The merchant memorialized the Board; admitted that such a powder had been sold, but protested his ignorance that the practice was unlawful; and prayed that the commissioners would investigate the case, and mete out such a punishment as the offence deserved. In answer to this, he received a private circular, which, among other things, said that "the petition makes no offers; and, as the Board has already ordered proceedings, it cannot now stay them, there being no offer to pay fine or costs, or both." The merchant reiterated his memorial, offering £10, which was refused; but in lieu, no other sum was suggested: he was merely told that it could not be accepted. He then made an offer of £20, which was also negatived, but with a hint that £30, with an agreement to pay costs, would be accepted. On this intimation, the gentleman was induced to inquire of the solicitor of Excise what would be the probable amount of costs. He was told £60 or £70; so that, though there was no wilful violation of the law on the part of this individual, he was compelled either to pay the full penalty of £100, or, which amounted to the same thing, £70 costs, and a composition of £30.

The solicitor not condescending to give any explanation of the £60 or £70 costs, the party proceeded to try the case; and that being almost an admitted one, it might have been supposed that one counsel and one witness would have been sufficient. This, however, would not have answered the interests of the legal establishment of the Crown. To conduct the prosecution, five counsel were retained. These five counsel were an expense of £50 at least. There were other expenses attending the examination of witnesses, &c. but this was not enough: a special jury must needs be summoned to try a man for a crime he had acknowledged; a common jury might have done, but then only three counsel would have been requisite: a special jury rendered five necessary. It is in this way that tradesmen are frequently reduced to beggary, in order to enrich, with fees, the Crown lawyers. However clear the accusation may be, the Attorney and Solicitor General, two king's counsel, and a junior counsel, are, always employed for the prosecution; and the costs usually amount to not less than £150. The solicitor for the Excise, in these matters, has almost unlimited power, and exercises the function of both judge and jury. The petitions that are sent to the Board are referred to him; and which, for the sake of his own emolument, it is generally his interest to reject.

Frequently, Excise prosecutions originate in the conspiracies of base miscreants, who, for the sake of the reward, or to gratify their malice, unite to ruin particular individuals. As an instance of this sort, we select the following:-A man took a range of obscure and dilapidated buildings, in London, for the pretended purpose of becoming a brewer of

ale, and immediately set to work to draw honest tradesmen into his snares. By an act of parliament, a penalty is imposed on those who sell treacle or molasses to brewers. This miscreant, to accomplish his purpose, used to frequent those shops which were left under the superintendence of apprentices and children; he procured a small quantity of these articles to be sent to him, and then gave information that the parties had sold them to a licensed brewer. Another case of the same stamp:-A respectable and industrious tradesman of Colchester, Mr. Underwood, had, on some account or other, incurred the hatred of a notorious smuggler, who made a vow that, by some means he would accomplish his destruction. This, he thought, could not be more effectually done than by putting him in the hands of the Excise. He accused Mr. Underwood of being engaged in a contraband trade. Two informations were filed in the Exchequer; one for the condemnation of Mr. Underwood's vessel, the other to recover the penalty of the bond which all masters enter into not to be concerned in any smuggling transaction. When the case came to be heard, the smuggler admitted that the information was false and malicious, and, of course, Mr. Underwood was acquitted; but he had incurred expenses to the amount of £327 in triumphing over the malice of his enemy. He had no redress for his loss; and his only resource was to commence an unprofitable prosecution against the smuggler for perjury. At the same place, a brewer, having lent a friend his copper, was prosecuted for that friend's brewing a quarter of malt. The penalty for his friendship was £100; and the first intimation of it being incurred was an appalling bill of forty or fifty folios in length. He applied to the Board, who consented to remit the penalty, provided he paid £30, and what small costs might have been incurred in the prosecution. Three months after, he received a bill from a solicitor, in which these small costs were charged £46.

Persons are frequently dragged into the Court of Exchequer without knowing for what offence, when it had been committed, nor who is the informer. In the case of Mr. Waithman, a handkerchief was brought into his house, not worth thirty shillings, by a person in his employ, at the solicitation of a friend in the country. An information was laid against him, and a penalty of £200 demanded, which was afterwards softened down to £100, as a particular favour to the worthy alderman.

We will only mention one more case of Exchequer process; that of a Captain Bryan. This gentleman was called on for a penalty of £200, two years after he thought the transaction had been entirely settled. On a petition to the Board, the penalty indeed was remitted; but a bill of costs was brought forward by the solicitor to a nearly equal amount. The misfortune of this gentleman originated in mistake in the report of the ship's cargo. The error was explained to the commissioners of Excise, who appeared perfectly satisfied, and the Captain concluded the matter was at an end. Two years were suffered to elapse, when the unsuspecting Captain was surprised with an Exchequer process, showing that an action had commenced against him to recover the penalty for the infraction of the Excise-Laws. The Captain, as we

have said, petitioned; the penalty was remitted: but the solicitor brought in his bill of costs to the amount of £160:5, and his own solicitor's costs amounted to £89:5: 9 more.

Another evil resulting from the Excise system is the power vested in the Commissioners of Excise or Lords of the Treasury to mitigate penalties or stay proceedings against offenders at their discretion. This enables them to make the most odious distinction between persons supposed to be friendly or hostile to the Borough System. We had a singular instance of this in the case of Mr. ABBOTT, brewer and magistrate, of Canterbury. This man had, for a long time, been selling, according to Mr. Brougham's statement, rank poison in the beverage of the people. It appears he had been selling a liquor resembling beer, manufactured from beer-grounds, distillers' spent wash, quassia, opium, guinea pepper, vitriol, and other deleterious and poisonous ingredients. The officers of Excise having examined this worthy magistrate's premises, found 12 lbs. of prepared powder, and 14 lbs. of vitriol, or copperas, in boxes, which, if full, would have contained 56 lbs. Proceedings were instituted against him by the Board. The penalties he had incurred amounted to £9000; and the case being notorious and atrocious, the Commissioners appeared determined to levy them with rigour. Mr. Abbott, however, was a loyal man and an active magistrate; and he prevailed upon some other loyal men to write on his behalf to the Lords of the Treasury. Among other persons who stept forward in behalf of this virtuous magistrate, were the very reverend the Dean of Canterbury, Dr. Gerard Andrewes, Mr. Baker, M.P. and the late Sir William Curtis. All these were loyal men and true; and, in their letters to the Lords of the Treasury, spoke in the highest terms of the public and private virtues of the good Mr. Abbott. Mr. Baker styles him " my much esteemed and valued friend, Mr. Abbott." Sir William Curtis was still more eloquent and touching; stating that he was a very long acquaintance of fifty years, and a "most honourable and virtuous old man." The reverend Dean went on in the same strain; stating that he was a good neighbour of his, and an useful magistrate;" and that he should regret were his " usefulness and respectability diminished by a matter that concerned ONLY ALE-DRINKERS!"

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But only think of this! Here is a man, a very reverend dean, who regrets that a good neighbour of his should be dragged before the public, merely for poisoning ale-drinkers. Had Mr. Abbott been poisoning wine-drinkers, we imagine his crime would have appeared very different in the eyes of the reverend dean. It is related of a right reverend bishop, in the House of Lords, that he once remarked that he did not know what the people had to do with the laws but to obey them. One is at a loss to conceive where these notions have been taken up; they certainly belong to another age, or at least to another country than England. For our part, we can only ascribe this unseemly insolence of the clergy to the undeserved respect which they have been accustomed to receive from the people, and which has begotten in them a feeling of superiority to which, above all men, they

have the least claim, either on account of their knowledge or virtues, or any other qualification useful or ornamental. The views of some of them in respect of the people are very little more elevated than those of the nobles of Russia towards their boors. We remember an anecdote of a Russian officer travelling through Germany, who, on account of a trifling delay or provocation, shot his postilion. The circumstance exciting some noise, the officer was given to understand that, though such things might do very well in Russia, they could not pass in Germany with impunity. The officer, considering the interruption impertinent, demanded the price of a German postilion, and said he would pay for him. This was not much worse than Dr. Andrewes's notion of the social importance of ale-drinkers.

To return, however, to the good Mr. Abbott: so many testimonies, from such quarters, to his various excellences were not to be neglected. The Treasury, without seeking any more evidence, but merely at the instigation of their political friends, ordered the proceedings to be stayed, and penalties to the amount of £9000 were softened down to £500.

The cases we have cited will, we apprehend, be sufficient to exemplify the nature of Excise informations. The proceedings of the Court of Star Chamber, of the Inquisition in Spain, or Lettres de Cachette in France, were not more diabolical and oppressive than those which often occur in this country to uphold an oppressive system of taxation. Much of the evil results from the endeavours of the Aristocracy to throw a disproportionate share of public burthens on the industrious classes by taxing heavily all articles of general consumption. Tea, spirits, and tobacco are the chief articles in which frauds on the revenue are attempted; and these are respectively taxed 100, 520, and 900 per cent. on the cost price. It is the high amount of duties which renders smuggling and adulteration so profitable that all attempts to suppress them prove unavailing. Three-fourths of the whole quantity of tobacco consumed in Ireland is smuggled ;* and one-third of the tea sold in England is the produce of adulteration. What blessed effects are these of our fiscal regulations; especially coupled with the fact that the coast-guard for the prevention of smuggling alone costs the country £700,000 per annum.

PROSPECTS OF LEGAL REFORM.

England is not less a law-ridden than a priest-ridden country; and we regret that Mr. Brougham cannot devise plans of reform having a less tendency to increase the number and emolument of a profession already too predominant. It has been remarked, by Mr. Bentham, that lawyers oppose improvement from the same motives workmen oppose the introduction of machinery,-they are apprehensive it would lessen their employment. Undoubtedly it would have this effect; for the great object sought to be attained is to simplify and expedite judicial proceedings: by which, unnecessary delay and expense may be avoided. Mr. Roscoe, in his Life of Leo X. (vol. iv. p. 179,)

*Sir Henry Parnell on Financial Reform, p. 49.