LEGAL REFORM. [From the Times, February 18.]

New Zealand Spectator and Cook's Strait Guardian, Volume VI, Issue 515, 10 July 1850, Page 4

LEGAL REFORM. [From the Times, February 18.]

There is such a tendency in human nature to refer the decision of all questions to authority rather than to place confidence in the inspirations of plain, straightforward common sense, that it is fortunate indeed when authority steps in to affirm the necessity of those changes which had been long and loudly de- | mantled by the general voice. Sir John RoI milly on Friday evening last endeavoured to impress upon the House a view of the philosophy of legal reform, which we have often endeavoured to urge upon the public in our own columns, but which we are now most happy to reproduce under the sanction of the 1 Solicitor General. "He must warn the House if they attempted legal reforms, that they must not allow lawyer after lawyer to get up, and tell them that they were not capable of understanding the subject. The House might depend upon it, if they could not reduce a legal proposition to the plain principles of common sense, comprehensible to persons of ordinary intelligence and understanding, the defect was that it was a technical system invented for the creation of costs, and not to promote the due administration of justice." We rejoice to give every prominence in our power to this liberal and rational opinion, proceeding as it does from a lawyer, and our gratification is unalloyed when we find that its author bears the honoured name of Romilly. It is not often that we have so pleasing a task as it is to comment upon the Friday night's speech of the Solicitor-General. -He has directed his attack precisely where we wished it should have been pointed, namely, at the forms and proceedings in Chanceiy, not at the equitable principles and system of law administered in that Court. We do not wish to see the English Chancery shaken, but to see it purified from pettyfogging and avarice. Mr. Keogh, the other night, in a speech that did him infinite credit, reckoned up to the house the manifold forms into which an application to the Chancellor by bill could be moulded before it was ripe for hearing There was, first, the original bill, then the supplemental bill, then the bill of revivor, then the bill of revivor and supplement ; then an original bill in the nature of a supplemen tal bill ; then an original bill in the nature of a bill of revivor and supplement ; then a bill of review ; and then a bill in the nature of a bill of review. Our reports record the fact that the enunciation of this horrid jargon was received — as well it might be — by the House with shouts of laughter. But, as every one knows who is at all acquainted with the subject, Mr. Keogh did but indicate one amongst a thousand shifts and tricks by which the ends of justice are defeated, and the unhappy suitors of the Court driven to despair. And is such a system to be continued when every institution of the countty is in turn examined; and if found effete, useless or cumbersome, is in turn ameliorated or cast aside ? It is mere idleness to waste time in arguing with men who can still maintain the position that the form of proceeding by a Chancery bill and interrogatories and written examinations of | witnesses is the best of all possible systems. We will leave these legal Panglosses to find an audience if they can, and revert to the measure now before Parliament, which, at least, seems like the beginning of a practical attempt to deal with one of the greatest grievances under which the people of this country continue to suffer. It has been said that this measure is merely useless, and that all it effects is simply to change the name of a particular form of application to the Chancellor. The persons who make such a statement display the shallowness of their knowledge of the existing state of the law, as vtell as the most perfect ignorance of the objects aimed at by Sir John Roroilly's measure. The bill attempts to cut down the reams of pleading in a Chancery suit before the case is brought into court at all into something like modest dimensions ; and thus to effect two distinct objects, — in the first place, to bring the matter in dispute before the Judge in an intelligible shape, and, in the second place, to combine that object with the saving of costs to the suitor. When the matter is absolutely brought to a hearing, and a decree is obtained, Sir John Romilly steps in again, and gives the power of examining witnesses viva voce, instead of leaving the parties absolutely bound down to the present absurd system of written evidence. But he does not stop here ; he follows the abuses of the present Chancery system into the Master's office and the Court. Yet it is said that this bill effects nothing, and is intended to effect nothing, but a formal altera-

tion in the vocabulary of Chancery proceedings! This was the first objection urged by Mr. G. Turner, the other night, and, as we observed the other day, it was amply met by the retort of Sir John Romilly. "If nothing more is effected .or aimed at than so unimportant a change, why all this wrath and opposition ?" Surely, the answer was as much as the objection deserved. But if the opponents of the Solicitor-General would say that which they might say with perfect truth, — either that his proposition does not go far enough, or that other expedients might be devised for carrying out his views, no doubt they would have truth on their side, and their opinions would be listened to with respect. Sir John Romilly's bill is merely an attempt to deal with certain notorious evils in the forms of proceeding in the Court of Chancery, which we have just enumerated, and a very modest attempt too. We entreat Messrs. Stuart, Turner, Walpole, &c, to believe that we are as profoundly convinced as any of them can be, that even if we should be so fortunate as to find Sir John Romilly's measure a successful one, we do but consider it as an instalment to further changes and curtailments in the form of Chancery proceedings before coming into court, in court, and in the Master's office. We will go further than this, and add, that from our experience of legal reforms, we are led to consider all measures tending in that direction but in the light of experiments, until we have seen them practically worked, and for a considerable period of time. Sir John Romilly's bill is aa experiment which promises very favourable results. Let us try it, or if any gentleman learned or unlearned, will propose some plan that seems more calculated to attain- the end we all desire, let us by all means throw aside the plan of Sir John Romilly, and adopt the expedients, not of his rivals, but of his fellow-la-bourers in the good cause. The leading speech in opposition to the proposition of the Solicitor- General emanated on Friday night from Mr. Stuart. What fell from this gentleman, in point of fact, amounted to this, — that, granted that there were evils in the existing method of Chancery proceedings, the proper remedy must be sought, not in a Parliamentary enactment, but in a motu proprio from the Irish or English Chancellor, as the case might be. Rusticus expectet ; we have been waiting some little time already without much practical change for the better, and it is time we should take the matter into our own hands. But it would be doing great injustice to either of the Chancellors to leave the question in such a state. That the superior Judges of the principal courts, either in equity or common law, are the proper persons to regulate the proceedings of their several tribunals, as far as the routine of business is concerned, and even upon various points of practice, we readily grant. But, at the same time, had either the English or the Irish Chancellor effected so sweeping an innovation as the destruction of the entire system of procedure in his court, and had substituted another in its place, oui feelings might have approved the result, but our judgment must have condemned the man. Such a proceeding would have been a gross abuse of authority, and unconstitutional in the broadest sense of the term. When Parliament delegates to a committee of Judges, or to a single Judge, the duty of considering and carrying out whatever changes in the forms of legal proceedings they may deem advisable, it is different ; but that is not the case contemplated by Mr. Stuart. In conclusion, we cannot refrain from recording the great gratification we felt at perceiving the spirit in which the question of Chancery reform was taken up by almost every lawyer who addressed the House. It was very honourable to the English bar, and will, we trust, prove the inauguration of a better epoch iv our legal history.