proceeding and pleading, their lordships suggest, might be so altered as to bring the matters in controversy to more simple and precise issues of law and fact; that matters of fact might be referred more extensively to the Jury Court; that resort to a jury might be had with advantage in the inferior courts; and that by separating the decision of fact as much as possible from the mere matter of law, the appeal might finally be reduced to a question of how the law should be applied to previously ascertained facts. Secondly, that an intermediate Court of Appeal might be usefully established in Scotland, without any material increase of delay or expense to the parties; by laying aside the present mode of reclaiming petition to that division of the Court of Session with whose decision the party is dissatisfied, and by giving the appeal from one division to the other; or by dividing the Court of Session into three divisions, and giving the appeal to the two divisions who have not pronounced on the first hearing; or by giving an appeal to the whole Court of Session sitting together; the decision to be vested in a majority of the whole number. Thirdly, that it might be expedient to make the decisions of the Court of Session final in some cases. Thus, that ecclesiastical or consistorial causes might be left to their absolute and final determination in Scotland. Whether any bankruptcy cases should be left to the final decision of the Court of Session may deserve further consideration; and also, whether the Admiralty jurisdiction in matters of prize might not be vested exclusively in the High Court of Admiralty in England. Fourthly, it has been suggested, moreover, that the pro- "Some branches of the business transacted in the Court of Chancery, it is conceived, could not be removed from it without great detriment to the public; whilst others might be beneficially transferred to other courts or judges.-1. Of the first sort are matters of lunacy. These employ occasionally very considerable portions of the Chancellor's time of attendance in this court; they are not matters in which the Chancellor, as such, has jurisdiction; but are committed to him by a special commission, or warrant from the crown, which may be given to any other person. The lords chancellors, have, however, been intrusted, for a very long series of years, with the care of idiots, lunatics, and persons of unsound mind, exercising on behalf of the king, as parens patriæ, the duty of taking care of those who are unable to take care of themselves; and the Committee think, that although this duty might, according to law, be intrusted to others, the discharge of it ought not to be withdrawn from the Chancellors, who, in their court, have long administered the affairs and property of such persons according to settled rules and doo trines, and with establishments of officers necessary for the despatch of business, and the security and improvement of the property of such persons. 66 Amongst the measures which it may be most expedient to adopt for relieving the lord chancellor from some of the business of the Court of Chancery, are the following:-1st. Matters arising out of the execution of local and private acts of Parliament, to be referred to the Court of Exchequer,' instead of the Court of Chancery. 2ndly. Gases on writs of error to be referred to the Courts in Westminster-hall, where the lord chancellor deemed it reasonable so to do. 3rdly. As to answers and references to the Masters. And 4thly, A revision of the orders, &c., connected with the practice of the court." As to the most urgent part of the matters referred, their lordships state, on the subject of disposing of the present arrears, that none of those measures which have occurred to the committee can be adopted without many great inconveniencies. Any such measure," (observed their lordships) "must necessarily have something of novelty in its character: but, being intended for obviating a temporary difficulty, it may be hoped that it will be only of temporary duration: yet even in this view, it seems to be desirable that it should accord as much as possible with established forms, and afford to the suitor as nearly as possible, the same tribunal as that to which he considered himself to have brought his appeal; or he may have just ground for complaint, that the expectation on which he appealed has been defeated. "The appeals from all parts of VOL. LXV. the united kingdom, since their respective dates of union, have been to England, and it seems, therefore, unadvisable to send their adjudication to any tribunal constituted elsewhere; and the appeals from Scotland, which are by far the largest number, and give the principal occasion for any new measure of this sort, would not, ás the Committee are informed, be decided any where, so much to the satisfaction of the parties as in England and in the House of Lords. "If in the House of Lords, the hearing must be either in a Committee of the House, or in the whole House. To the proceeding on such matters in a Committee, it has been considered as an insurmountable objection, that the report of the committee cannot bind the House; and if the whole matter is still to be open to the House upon the report, no final adjudication is obtained by this sort of tribunal. It remains that appeals must be heard in the whole House. The object, therefore of the committee has been to provide some means of hearing appeals, by which the constant and regular attendance of the lord chancellor may be dispensed with: and for this purpose, it is submitted that it may be so arranged, that a Speaker appointed by royal commission, should preside in the House, as according to the law of parliament, he occasionally does preside now in the lord chancellor's absence. "Such Speaker, although not a lord of Parliament, to have liberty to declare his opinion upon the case, and the reasons apon which it is founded, before the question is put, as to what the judgment of the house shall be respecting which it may be important to re E* mark, that, according to the present standing orders of the House of Lords, the judges, and such of his majesty's privy council as are called by writ to attend, may speak and deliver their opinion, if required and admitted so to do by the House. "It is expedient, also, that provision be made for obtaining the opinion of the Court of Session in Scotland upon any questions of law which it may be thought proper to send for the opinion of that court; such questions, and the answers thereto, to be entered on the Journals of the House. The answer of the Court of Session if unanimous, to be given by the lord president, with the reasons upon which the same is founded; and in case of any difference of opinion amongst the judges, the answers of each to be given separately, with the reasons for the same, and transmitted through the lord president." After some suggestions as to securing the attendance during five or six days in the week, of four peers, from ten till four o'clock, EVIDENCE ON THE STATE A Committee of the House of Commons, was appointed to inquire into the present mode of engrossing bills, with the view of ascertaining whether it was susceptible of any alterations with advantage to the public service, The following is a summary of the evidence on this subject : The bills of the House of Commons are at present engrossed on parchment, and tied up in the form of rolls, which has been the practice from before the time of Henry 8th down to the present day. their lordships thus conclude their report: "These statements and observations comprehend all the matters which the committee have thought it necessary at this time to lay before the House for its consideration. They are fully aware of the magnitude, importance, and difficulty, of the various questions into which they have found it to be their duty to enter; and they submit to the wisdom of the House, that whatever may be the measures finally required for preventing the future accumulation of appeals, the further consideration of all such measures should be deferred until after such a commission as above proposed shall have made its report; but so far as regards the present arrears, the Committee have no hesitation in pressing upon the House the immediate necessity of providing some adequate means for relieving the parties, whose causes are now before it, from the heavy grievance which they are enduring by the present delay and interruption of justice." OF THE PUBLIC RECORDS. Many separate skins of parchment, called presses, which are stitched together, are required to form a bill. Each press measures 27 inches by 12 inches (which has been their size for about 200 years), and contains 40 lines, com posed of about 25 letters each, which makes about 1,000 letters in the skin. The cost of every press to the public is about Is., including the labour of the clerks The number of engrossing clerks depends on the quantity of business to be done, and the time al lowed for its performance. Sometimes fifty clerks are employed, and they sit up all night. It was stated, that there was no difficulty in getting engrossing hands in London. The different presses which compose a bill are stitched together by an old woman and her daughters, who have been employed for many years by the House. In order to prevent any additional sheets being furtively introduced into a bill, the number of presses in the roll are examined by the clerk of the engrossments in the House of Lords by the House bill. Of the public statutes, and the local and personal acts, and all acts having evidence clauses, which make them (being printed by the king's printer) evidence in courts of justice, a copy is made in the courthand for chancery, which is enrolled in the Rolls-chapel, Chancery-lane. The first record in the Rolls-chapel which came from the parliament-house, is supposed to be the date of Richard 2nd, and is also written in the old court-hand, which has continued to be used in the records deposited in Chancery down to the present day. The copy deposited in the Rolls-office is copied from the printed bill, which is first compared with the original roll; but the two rolls are never compared together. The last engrossed document which goes on from the House of Commons to the House of Lords (the one from which the printed copy is taken) is kept in the Parliament office. It is to this, or to the copy in the Rolls-office, that courts and judges would refer, if the printed copy of a bill appeared to contain an error. It is, however, extremely rare that reference is made to these documents. A clerk in the engrossing office stated, that the largest bill which had ever come under his observation, was the land-tax bill, which contained about six hundred presses, and was nine hundred feet in length, and would occupy about two hours in being unrolled! The committee put some questions to ascertain, whether the common round hand might not be employed, instead of the engrossing hand, in writing records. All the witnesses who were examined on this point were unanimous in giving the preference to the engrossing hand. It was said to be written much faster than the common hand. Sir Thomas Edlyne Tomlins, the parliamentary counsel to the Treasury, said, "I have always found the oldest hands the most legible; the court-hand, which was the original hand for records, was, perhaps, the handsomest hand that ever was written: the present engrossing hand results from the court-hand; from a continued experience in consulting acts of parliament and records, I find it more easy to read the engrossing or the court-hand than any other written hand whatever." Mr. Gunnell, a clerk in the engrossing office, gave the following evidence respecting the mode of engrossing:-" In engrossing on parchment, we make use of a very strong quill, a turkey quill; that is the only one found to answer; it is cut with a broad point, and we have not to lean hard to form the substance of the letter; but from the breadth of the pen, it makes it as it goes on. If we were to write the common round-hand, we should be obliged to make use of the small quills, because it would require greater elasticity, and consequently would press upon the parchment; the pen on ac count of the rough nature of the parchment, would require nibbing every two or three minutes, which would be attended with great trouble and loss of time." The following evidence of Mr. Hewlett, a secondary of the court of Common Pleas, respecting the writing of the records of that court and the court of King's-bench, is extremely important, and calls for the interference of the proper authorities to put a stop to the bad practice which has lately obtained there:-"The records of the King's-bench and Common Pleas are kept in a wretched hand, for within the last twenty or thirty years a mercantile hand has got into use, instead of the old hand which used to be employed by all professional men; and I do really believe that some of the writing in Westminster-hall now, which has not been there twenty years, is not legible. *** Mr. Jus tice Blackstone prophesied truly, that when the court-hand was left off there would be such illiterate persons introduced into the profession that the records would not be legible; and so it is now.' Mr. Bailey, the clerk of the recordoffice in the Tower, was of opinion that the common English hand would not be good for writing records, but he thought the hand which was used in Chancery about the time of Henry 6th and Edward 4th was preferable to the engrossing-hand. Mr. Cohen, a subcommissioner for the publication of the parliamentary records, gave some interesting evidence on this subject, of which the following is an extract:- "It has always happened that legal hands have been somewhat older than the hands of the time. What we call the ancient Gothic hand, in which the records are written with various abbreví ations, is, in fact, derived from the Roman notarial hand, and is much older in point of origin than the records themselves; and there is always a marked distinction between legal hands and what may be called monastic hands. There may be some confusion now and then, for many churchmen were lawyers; but still there is always a distinction between records and documents which may be supposed to have been written in a monastery for common readers. Lawyers, accustoming themselves to precedent, copy the forms immediately before them, rather than come down into their own time; but there is a certain degree of advantage resulting from this practice: a very slight difficulty will dispose the lawyer to consult the record itself; consequently every habit which tends to make him acquainted with the hand-writing of preceding times, will facilitate his reference to the records of preceding times." In another part of his evidence, the same gentleman observes "I have never seen the "enrolments in the Rolls-office, but I should concur in the opinion which Mr. Bailey has given in favour of a hand-writing approximating to that introduced in the reign of Edward 4th, which is very distinct from any preceding hand, or any in subsequent times." A manuscript journal of the preceedings of the House of Commons, in the common English hand, has been kept, without interruption, from the reign of Edward 6th. These manuscript journals are copied by the clerks during the vacation, and is represented to be of use in making them acquainted with the business of the house, and keeping up their hands. |