and peace in the drunkenness, the riot, and dissipation of the place; but of still more serious moment would be the acts of fraud and depredation upon the commercial community-not perpetrated on the race-ground, but inevitably resulting from the habit of attending it-and the losses which young and giddy mercantile aspirants to equestrian, or rather assinine distinction, would be sure to sustain. The Government that patronises, or that openly or covertly encourages such a speculation, we should hold to be morally responsible for the misfortunes and crimes of all the victims of its demoralizing temptations. Every forgery-every embezzlement-every fraud, committed by clerks, apprentices, and shopmen, of this great commercial metropolis, in consequence of embarrassments produced by their visits to the Hippodrome, would be chargeable upon a Government lending its assistance to such a scheme, and thereby making the crimes, which its laws severely punish. If the House of Lords does its duty, this great evil will be averted from the metropolis, and Mr. Fox MAULE will not have the opportunity of converting the metropolitan police into the bodyguards of a gambling establishment. If the House of Lords does not do its duty and protect the public from the threatened evil, our consolation will be that we have done ours.

April 20.The "reformed" representatives of the people have, indeed, done all that they could to effect that confiscation of a popular right [the public footpath over Notting-hill] for the benefit of a gambling speculation; but we are greatly mistaken if the Lords do not protect the people against the act of their representatives, and prevent the meditated spoliation.

We observe that at this public meeting, [Kensington,] Mr. WHYTE, the proprietor of the Hippodrome, made his appearance, and charged the Morning Herald, Times, and other Papers, with having published false and scandalous statements respecting his speculation. Wherein the falsehood of any of the statements which we have published consisted, he did not condescend to point out. In our own observations upon the Hippodrome, we never spoke or thought of Mr. WHYTE at all,

-we confined ourselves to the question as it affected the public interests. We spoke strongly-we are sure not too stronglyof the evils of a race-course established so close to the metropolis. In this view of the subject, even the inconvenience and positive mischief which it would produce to Kensington and its neighbourhood, was a matter of minor consideration. We cared not who might be the projector of such a scheme, or who might be its supporters. When vice and immorality rear their heads under the patronage of either rich or poor, is it a novel thing for us to take up the cause of religion and morality?

*

* A correspondent stated in our columns yesterday, that the only point really at issue, as regards the bill now passing through parliament, is, not that it is a bill to establish races, but to stop a public way. He says, "the discussion both in and out of the house has run almost exclusively upon the expediency, or propriety, of establishing races close to the metropolis; while both parties seem to have forgotten that this is-not the Hippodrome Bill—but the Notting-hill Footpath Bill.” If we mistake not, we were the first who made the discussion turn upon the danger of establishing a gambling speculation, such as the Hippodrome, close to the metropolis. We deny that the stopping up the footpath in question is the only, or is the chief point in issue. That is a matter of some importance, indeed, to the people of the neighbourhood, independently of which the legislature would establish a very bad precedent, by destroying a public right, in favour of a private speculation of any sort. But by far the greatest matter at issue, is that to which we took the liberty of most emphatically directing the public attention, when we described the evils to which a commercial community would be exposed, if the Hippodrome scheme received the sanction of the legislature.

As we have not seen the bill we cannot speak of its particular provisions; but this we may venture to assert, that a bill, ostensibly introduced to stop up the Notting-hill footway, for the purposes of the Hippodrome, will, if it should pass through parliament, confer upon the Hippodrome itself a legislative sanction. If it should be carried on merely as a private

speculation, without legislative sanction, it will be liable, as another correspondent correctly states, should it produce public obstruction or inconvenience, to be indicted at common-law, as a nuisance. It is, therefore, of vital importance to obtain for it the sanction of the legislature; and the bill, for stopping up Notting-hill footway, just answers that purpose. By depriving the public of their right of way through the grounds, the speculation is put in a condition to be rendered profitable, and if it were not profitable, of course it could not long go on. So that in this point of view, though the bill expresses in its title nothing more than the stopping up Notting-hill footpath, it is, in effect, a bill to establish permanently the Hippodrome, by removing a great obstacle to its establishment.

There are many inconveniences attaching to a private speculation of this sort, which might make it rather troublesome and hazardous to go on with it, unless it received the sanction of the legislature. The stopping up the footway is a very desirable thing to the projector, no doubt; but it is only a secondary consideration to obtaining for the scheme the support and protection of parliament. Besides, the bill is to provide the concern with the regular attendance of the metropolitan police so that the accomplished gentry, who may hereafter drive a prosperous trade there in the "pigeon-plucking" line, need be under no apprehension of summary justice being executed upon them by their enraged dupes.+

On the Eloquence and State of the ENGLISH BAR.-
Written in 1820.

THERE is nothing, we believe, in the real spirit of British law which makes it discountenance eloquence; yet if we were to form our opinion from the actual state of practice in the courts, it would seem as if the exercise of the legal faculty put every other power of the mind into abeyance, and more

[+ The Hippodrome scheme ("Notting-hill Footpath Bill") though carried through the Commons by a large ministerial majority, was happily defeated in the House of Lords. ED.]

especially that which gives to ideas-order, lucid arrangement, and a happy expression. But this is the vice of practice, not its perfection.

It is neither necessary nor useful that the study of the law should discourage the cultivation of the liberal endowments; nor is it a proof of superior understanding in the lawyers of our day, that it has this effect. There is surely nothing morally inconsistent in the knowledge of the law, with the right and proper application of language. We cannot discover what necessary affinity there should be between sound information, and bad reasoning-between acquaintance with books, and awkwardness of language; nor do we see why a man should suppose himself better calculated to convince, because he is totally ignorant of the art of persuasion. Propriety of speech is a grace; it is also a prepossessing accomplishment; and the lawyer who does not take some pains to acquire it, may not indeed be as shallow a man as his client :-yet his capacity might be enlarged without rendering him very formidable.

There are certainly but few who, at the Bar or elsewhere, can be orators: the perfection of rhetoric and elocution we do not insist upon; but surely between that and a mode of expression and delivery, coarse, slovenly, and dissonant, there is some medium, not unattainable by the majority of those who will give themselves the trouble to look for it. Yet how very few of our barristers can express themselves with even common method and correctness. But this very neglect of the accuracies of logic and language, accompanied by the hum of a drowsy monotony, or the ear-piercing notes of a jerking discordance, with now and then a startling rap upon the table, is by some thought to show a bold, natural simplicity of manner, disdaining to give argument and learning any meretricious decoration. But with all deference to the Bar, we must distinctly say that it shows nothing at all but great carelessness, and greater conceit. Nothing can be farther from simplicity than either real, or affected coarseness. There are coxcombs in slovenly habits as well as in finery, and the former class is the worse of the two. Simplicity belongs to grace, and is an essential in sublimity; but it has no connexion with what is either gross, or ridiculous.

It is also said that this uncouth and graceless style of thought and expression, is the proper business-like way to treat matters of legal decision. Why? Is it because it gives more force to the arguments of the speaker, or saves the public time? As to the former, it would be strange indeed, if making either truth or sophistry as ugly and as disagreeable as they could be made, were to render them more prevailing:-it is as contradictory to reason as to experience. The softness of a cold and sleepy delivery, is not persuasion; nor is the harsh increpancy of disconnected periods, with all the lusty enforcement of rude action, the convincing power of truth. Imbecility may be very dry, dull, and monotonous, and folly can be very noisy but wisdom and eloquence are equally removed from both extremes; they prevail, as mind always does, by a charm enlivened by energy, and graced by temperance.

As to saving the public time, we could rather believe that somewhat more arrangement of thought, more unity of object, more comprehensiveness to grasp a subject, more method in unfolding it, together with a little more of just application of language-in short, somewhat more eloquence than our lawyers at present possess would not only cause less expenditure of time in arguing the merits of a case than is usually consumed, but would likewise preserve the invaluable gift of patience from exhaustion. For how does the fact stand?-the speaker, from the incoherence of his ideas, from his immethodical mode of reasoning, from his awkwardness in expression, feels it necessary to recur to frequent repetition, before he can be confident that he has put his argument in such a way, as to make the strongest impression on his audience. He drags the fatigued attention backwards and forwards through a field of rambling thoughts-he imagines that he can say better what he has already said-that he can make more clear what he has already laboured into obscurity. He therefore plods over again the ground which he has already gone-returns to it, struggles, entangles himself, wearies his hearers, and thus consumes the time which real eloquence would have valuably filled with clear thoughts, happy illustrations, method, perspicuity, and conviction.

But there is another great error, which of late years has