ing of papers treating of points of modern law in a merely professional or technical manner, or with reference to any merely professional or technical conclusion.”

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The society consists of ordinary, associate, and honorary members. Ordinary members must be members of the English Bár, of the College of Doctors of Law in London, of the Faculty of Advocates in Scotland, and of the Irish Bar, and special pleaders. Associate-members are "other persons, being distinguished in literature or science, or qualified and desirous to co-operate in promoting the objects of the society, but not members of the legal profession." The subscription to the society is one guinea annually, with half a guinea entrance. The office-bearers comprise a president, vice-presidents, treasurer, council, and honorary secretaries. The society has been established on the principle of the Statistical and other learned societies. At the meetings, which are held the second and fourth Monday in every month, from November to the end of July, after the formal business, the paper for the evening is read, and then a discussion, conducted according to the ordinary rules of debate, ensues, and the proceedings terminate without any vote or resolution being come to on the subject under discussion.

It will readily be observed that the aims and objects which the Juridical Society have in view, are essentially different from those of its elder brother the Law Amendment Society, which has now, presided over by its distinguished president, been for upwards of twelve years pursuing its useful labours, and, it may be truly said, non sine gloria.

To elevate the study of the law into the rank of a science; to promote and encourage inquiry into its sources, history, and origin; to invite comparison between our own jurisprudence and that of other countries; to examine its anomalies and inconsistencies; to encourage examination into different systems of legal education; to consider the expediency of the codification or consolidation of our law; to interpose a check on the one hand to extravagant measures of legal reform, and on the other to assist in the development of well-digested and maturely-considered schemes of improvement; to examine into the principles which 1 Rule 6.

regulate our courts of judicature, the influence of judges, the mode in which their discretion has been exercised, the feasibility of a fusion between law and equity; to consider the proper relation between the Roman jurisprudence and our own, and between moral philosophy and municipal law; to investigate the history and principles of the constitution, the rise and development of our commercial and maritime law, the elements of international law, the conflict of laws, the extent to which the canon law has been received as part of our jurisprudence-these and similar matters are within the purview of the society. It is not intended, however, that the society should, by any active steps or interference of its own, endeavour to carry out any scheme or proposition of reform which may be there promulgated.

We must here venture to anticipate an objection which, in this utilitarian age, will probably be advanced against the objects of the society. It may be said that, to propound reforms without taking any steps to carry them into effect; to hunt out abuses without attempting in any practical manner their correction; to investigate and enforce the expediency of principles without putting them into practice-that these are feeble objects, and unworthy of the efforts of any learned body of lawyers. We would, in some manner at least, have assented to this objection had not an elder society already existed, established for these very purposes, and the better calculated, combining as it does both branches of the profession, and laymen as well as lawyers, for action, and for preparing and carrying through the Legislature the different reforms which may receive their sanction and approval. To have attempted to enter a field of labour already so well occupied, would not only have been useless and unnecessary, but the danger would have been incurred, remote though it might be, of creating a rivalry which would have impeded the efforts and impaired the energies of both learned bodies. We therefore think that the promoters of the Juridical Society have acted wisely in striking out a new path for themselves, altogether dissimilar from that of the Law Amendment Society, and in confining its exertions within their present reasonable, and in some respects modest, limits.

Having now endeavoured to place before our readers a brief

account of the origin, nature, and objects of the Juridical Society, we shall proceed to direct attention to the published papers before us. The first meeting of the society was held on the 12th March, 1855, when Sir Richard Bethell, now attorney and then solicitor-general, the president for the year, read an inaugural address. "It is with much pleasure," commenced Sir Richard, "that I meet you this evening, for the purpose of inaugurating the proceedings of this society. I congratulate you on its formation. It seeks to supply a defect which has been long observed to exist, and which is almost peculiar to the Bar of England. It is, indeed, a singular thing to note the contrast which exists in England between the indifference of the professors of law, and the anxiety shown by those who are engaged in other departments of science. The country abounds in societies for the promotion of literature, art, and almost every subject of intellectual pursuit. We have long had the Royal Society, societies for the study of antiquities, history, geography, chemistry, architecture, and the arts of painting and sculpture; and yet we have had no general association for mutual aid and instruction among members of a profession who, from the beginning to the end of their lives, ought to regard themselves as students of the most exalted branch of knowledge-moral philosophy embodied and applied in the laws and institutions of a great people. There is no other class or order in the community on whom so much of human happiness depends, or whose pursuits and studies are so intimately connected, with the progress and wellbeing of mankind." The Attorney-General then adverted to the neglect of the study of the science of jurisprudence by English lawyers, and attributes such neglect partly to the want of recognition in early times of the Roman jurisprudence, as a source from whence our common law was derived, and also to the distinction which very soon arose between law and equity. "For above a century," observed Sir Richard Bethell, "this country has exhibited the anomalous spectacle of distinct tribunals acting upon antagonistic principles, and dispensing different qualities of justice. Two orders of legal mind have been created by this unnatural tearing asunder of an entire and indivisible science, each conversant with a part only, and neither

familiar with the entire system of English law. Each body has set itself with diligence to the practical duty of cultivating its own particular field, but few concern themselves with the contemplation of the entire domain; and we are accustomed, without surprise, to hear judges on one side of Westminster Hall contentedly expressing themselves as ignorant of the jurisdiction on the other, and both sides evidencing that they know little or nothing of what prevails in the Courts that sit in the seclusion of Doctors' Commons." The Attorney-General then refers to another great obstacle in the way of the study of jurisprudence; namely, the want of a code. "Great part," says Sir Richard, "no doubt, of the evil resulting from the cause I have described, would be removed if we possessed a code or digest—an universum corpus of English law. But this is one of the peculiarities of the English legal mind, that it has always been averse from the duty of extracting, consolidating, and arranging legal rules and principles in a plain and simple order and form; it prefers that these rules should be scattered up and down many hundred volumes of decided cases, where they lie involved and entangled in different combinations of facts and circumstances, and that a rule should be painfully extracted for the occasion from a mass of statutes passed at different times, expressed in terms of varying import, and frequently inconsistent with, and contradictory of, each other. Cases are argued, not on principle, but supposed precedent-not from reason, but from memory; and he is esteemed the best lawyer whose recollection enables him to cite the greatest number of former decisions bearing some resemblance to the case which requires to be decided." After adverting to the antipathy of the English lawyer to the study of the civil law as a cause of our inferiority in jurisprudence, and to some doggerel Latin lines to this effect by a continental jurist of by no means a complimentary nature, Sir Richard directs attention to "the want of a systematic and well-arranged course of legal education," and concludes as follows:-"Let us hope that there is now a promise of better things, and that, as we confessedly excel all nations in manufacturing and commercial skill and industry, so we may soon have equal reason to be proud of possessing liberal institutions for the education of legal stu

dents, and an uniform, simple, and comprehensive jurisprudence."

The first published paper after the inaugural address, is “On the Policy of the Rule of English Law, which exacts Unanimity in the Verdicts of Juries," by W. M. Best, A.M., LL.B.; read 7th May, 1855.

"Trial by jury," observes Mr. Best, "is unquestionably one of the most marked and characteristic features of the common law of England. Having for ages attracted the attention of mankind, and protected the constitutional liberties of the landhaving been the subject of the most fulsome and extravagant eulogy by its admirers, and the most virulent abuse and bitterest sarcasm by its opponents—having extended itself in its entirety over nearly the whole continent of North America, and in a modified shape over a great part of that of Europe, the trial by jury has, in modern times, been brought to stand its own trial at the bar of public opinion in the land of its birth. Its utility has been questioned by many, its abolition openly advocated by others, and the opinion has become very general, that it requires modification of some kind to bring it into harmony with the march of intelligence and the altered state of society. These questions are not, however, the object of this paper, which will be devoted to a single, but very peculiar, feature of the English jury trial; namely, the rule which exacts that the verdict of every jury must be the unanimous act of the twelve men composing it."

The institution of trial by jury has ever been considered as one of the great bulwarks of English liberty. It has indeed, in our own times, more often served as a means of escape for the guilty, than proved a safeguard for the innocent. But still the whole of our jurisprudence has been framed on the principle, that a prosecutor in a criminal, and a plaintiff in a civil, case should prove, beyond the shadow of a doubt, to the satisfaction of the jury, that he appears on the side of right. The necessary result of such a principle is, that many persons who are morally guilty must escape punishment, and that many plaintiffs must fail, though they have substantial justice on their side. Better that ninety-nine guilty persons should escape punishment than