than retarding other measures, and wearying to death the poor suitors, their agents, and advocates.

While writing these remarks, we receive the announcement of the decision of the Lords upon the question of the admission of Jews into Parliament. Is there no remedy for the protraction of a question upon which the public have made up their minds? Is there no means of appeal? Is there no remedy but the swamping of the Lords? Or must the power of the government, now impelled constitutionally by the Commons' House, be paralyzed in all forms of its action, and rendered incapable of making a confident stand against foreign influences, or a bold and decisive effort in the reforms of our internal institutions? The bugaboo of the House of Lords is the means of restricting many public measures within limits not satisfactory to the people; and it becomes a question of instant importance to devise some means of obviating the danger which besets the constitution on this account, especially if we are to have a House of Commons more importunate and impulsive.

We would suggest, that the whole community be divided into a senatorial class, and a popular class. Let the suffrage be widely extended in regard to the latter. Let the former consist of all the nobility, of the men of property, of the emeriti, and of persons of a certain age, who have conducted themselves without reproach of a kind to subject them to punishment or degradation. Let the popular class elect the representatives of the people. Let the senatorial class elect the members of the senate; and let the Sovereign nominate a certain number, and let the Peers elect a certain number, and let a certain number of members of a certain standing pass from the Commons to the Lords. It is clear that, if the House of Peers be not made conformable to its purpose, and brought in harmony with the State, the recurrence of these Thirty Years' Wars of Public Questions will eventually bring down the House of Peers, as Samson brought down, on the heads of the Philistines, the building to which he was bound. The people of England will not endure that the power of the Peers shall be employed for factious purposes, after frequent demonstrations by the legitimate organs of public representation, that the public sense is decisive on

the matter. We venerate the House of Peers. Many of our noblemen deserve high praise and consideration for their patriotic conduct; but, experience shows, their influence is not adequate to win over the great body of their colleagues to a course of conduct in harmony with the policy and mature conviction of the

nation.

If the method we have suggested should be considered too large, it may be found possible to establish a system of appeal. Suppose that a question should be carried three times, once in three successive Parliaments, and rejected as many times by the Lords, why should not the matter be referred to the whole nobility of the realm, and to the whole representation of the people; that is, to all persons bearing titles of honour and holding places of dignity, and to all the representatives of the people, local as well as general?

Westminster Hall might, on such rare and solemn occasions, be the place of assembly, and the votes might be taken in person or by proxy.

It is clear that, for a grievance of such frequent occurrence, there should be established a fit tribunal, even if it were for no other purpose than to postpone the ultima ratio of popular force, and prevent the impatient question which the recurrence of such occasions, without remedy, is apt to provoke, viz.: What is to be done with the House of Lords? We say, preserve the House of Lords by such expedient as we have indicated—by an expedient calculated to save its pride and may be its conscience, and also rescue the nation from an embarrassment which, in untoward times, might precipitate us into revolution.

We would preserve the House of Lords, but not at the expense of the State. We would make it more senatorial-the aristocracy of the aristocracies of the country; or provide, by way of appeal, an assembly of moderators, which, at rare intervals might interpose a conciliatory course in harmony with constitutional proprieties. We must remember that the House of Lords no longer represents the elite of the nation, nor its wealth, nor its power, nor its high intelligence; and that it has not, as it had in the time of the old barons, the following which made it respectable, whatever might be its title to respect. It is but the name

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of the power which it once was-a venerable name which, for auld langsyne, and much abiding virtue, the nation reveres; but it must be recollected that we have fallen upon times when the tendency is to realize pretensions, or to question somewhat severely such as are not realized. We fear that the attitude which the Peers have taken is not a favourable nor a prudent one; but one which is calculated to make the people more than ever impatient at the long duration of our "Thirty Years' War of Public Questions."

To lessen these consequences, and the mischiefs of fragmentary legislation, we desire to counsel more caution, more method, more definiteness, more resoluteness, more thorough-goingness, more completeness in the prosecution, deliberation, and settlement of the questions that are now "under consideration;" and the practical way of providing all these good things, is to take care that our forces and our aids are composed of a fair admixture of the cabinet, the parliament, the press, the closet, and the office, or men of business; and that, by judicious arrangements, all these forces are brought in contribution to one and the same object. The two that are primarily requisite, and the want of which occasions the defeat of the rest, are the closet and the office, we mean, as connected with our present subject. We have abundant force for current business-very little for record and research-appropriately and connectedly applied, and acting in aid of and in subordination to the greater powers-the Cabinet, the Parliament, and the Press.

Let us, before we reform Parliament in its external relations, ask ourselves how it may be reformed and reinforced in its internal relations, and how all the bodies-politic of the State may work harmoniously together as one aggregate body, for one object -the common good of the whole body, and each individual member.

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ART. VII.—INDIAN LAW REFORM.

A Summary of Statements and Arguments submitted to the Right Honourable the President of the Board of Control, and some other Gentlemen. BY WILLIAM THEOBALD, ESQ., on Deputation from Calcutta and the Lower Provinces of Bengal. London: W. BERNARD & Co., 43, Fleet Street. 1857.

THE

HE learned author of the above pamphlet was deputed, towards the end of last year, from Bengal, to represent to the Government at home the desires of the British and Christian inhabitants respecting various measures of Indian Law Reform. Among those measures, the "amalgamation," as it was called, of the Supreme and Suddur Courts was one; and it was prepared under a royal commission, composed of very eminent persons. To oppose this, not absolutely, but on the plan devised by the Commissioners, is one of the objects of Mr. Theobald's mission. The amalgamation, Mr. Theobald says, was intended to accomplish two objects-first, "to abolish the Supreme Court, which, as a Crown Court, has always been regarded with dislike by the East India Company and its Indian service; and, secondly, to improve and strengthen the great Appellate Court of Lower Bengal." The latter object he and his constituents approve, but desire to accomplish it without extinguishing the Supreme Court, and in this view he proposes the following plan:—“ Double, we say, the number of the Supreme Court Judges, making it six instead of three, and establish a rota amongst them for three constantly to sit in the Suddur. On this plan, the Suddur will undergo the desired improvement, while the Supreme Court will be preserved and even strengthened."

We are not in a condition to enter into a full discussion of the rival plans; but, from a variety of sources of information, we learn that the Supreme Court gives tolerable satisfaction to the public at large, and is the only Court that does so, and is at the same time regarded by Mr. Theobald's constituents as essential to the protection of British capital. So far, therefore, as the proposed

amalgamation involves its abolition, it will probably be necessary to modify the scheme. On the counter-scheme we can offer no very decided opinion; but Mr. Theobald argues that it will much more effectually accomplish the chief object of the amalgamation than the original one, and be clear of many objections of detail to which the latter is open.

Another duty with which the Commissioners were entrusted, was the preparation of a reformed procedure for all the Courts, which thereby would be put under one uniform system. Mr. Theobald accepts the reform for the East India Company's Court, evidently on the ground that almost any change must be an improvement; but he objects to the new procedure for the Supreme Court, or new court intended to take the place of the Supreme Court. He states as follows one of his objections :

"I have several remarks to make on the general merits of the code; but here I will indicate a fundamental peculiarity in it, which alone would render it objectionable for the Court of Calcutta. It classes the Court which will be in the place of the Supreme Court, as a Court of first instance, one only of a rabble of Courts, all the rest being Courts of the East India Company, which cannot be trusted in a single detail, without the right of appeal at every step of a litigation. Accordingly, being placed under the code-our Court being regarded as a Court of first instance-it is to be put under the appellate system. This change is of a momentous character. The Supreme Court is not a Court of first instance. On the contrary, it is a Court of the highest caste and character; is formed after the fashion and model of the great Courts of Westminster Hall; has, like them, inherent powers of correction in case of error; and through these powers it effects what in Courts of first instance is effected by an appeal. I shall not stop to contrast the practical advantages of the Supreme Court procedure; but I know of only two reasons which can be alleged in favour of the new procedure; first, that the new constitution will change the Court, and put in its place a deteriorated and inferior one, from which an appeal must be given as a practical security; and, secondly, that it is necessary for uniformity. The latter necessity, we reply, rests on a sacrifice wholly unnecessary, the sacrifice of a substan