cupy less time than one single cause in the court of King's-bench does at present; and the cost of carrying the former through, would fall infinitely short of that incurred by the latter. The Parish-court, District-court, and Provincial-court of Appeal, all to be administered by single judges, who would be nominated by the Crown, but removeable by the people, in case they gave dissatisfaction, either through an incompetent knowledge of law, or any other imperfection ascribable to their manner of executing the office. The judges would be allowed periods of rest if they needed such, but must be answerable for the conduct of their respective deputies whom they would appoint to fill the judgmentseat during their absence. The liability to removal is beyond all comparison the most efficient check upon misconduct which can be devised. It is likewise useful in procuring the appointment of men sufficiently qualified for the office, since the Crown would hardly find it worth while to nominate an individual who would be immediately displaced. And here it may be well to bestow a small space upon the subject of the securities adopted by the wisdom of our legislature, for the virtue of English Judges.

Were a person, unacquainted with the beauties of English jurisprudence, to be asked, what means he would deem likely to be taken, for this purpose, by a government desirous of administering pure justice, we fancy it would never occur to him to name the sublime invention of making them judges for life, independently of their conduct, and wholly removed from responsibility to the public; their nominal liability to impeachment before the House of Lords, being, as in some other analogous cases, a delusion-mere empty talk. Yet this singular help to virtue has been extolled as a wonderful example of sagacity in our late "lamented and beloved Monarch's" councils! All that can be said in favour of it is, that, where a judge chooses to prefer the popular side, and to decide against the Crown, he may do so without fear of losing his place. But the real truth is, that no man likely to take this course is ever chosen a judge. The government take pretty good care to select the most zealous partizans of "things as they are," for the situation (and they choose them at such an age, too, that a change of character and sentiments is to the last degree improbable); and, when promotion is to be made from lower seats to the higher ones, we see that the men who have served the interests of government with zeal are advanced, whilst those who may have evinced something like a disposition to favour the people are left stationary. Every lawyer knows this to be the fact. To suppose that because a man cannot be made

worse off than he is, he will therefore have no desire to be made better off, is contrary to all experience. Yet such is the reasoning we are desired to pursue with regard to their judgeships. Judges, like bishops, are ever looking forward to promotion. The whole bar, like the whole of the clergy, stand in the attitude of expectation. There are individual barristers who depart from this policy and take the line of popular advocacy, whereby they reap an ample pecuniary reward; but they never arrive at the dignities of the profession. Nay, even the lower honours are withheld from such as have dared to lift up their voices on the side of the many. There are not wanting instances of the vindictive spirit with which the highest law authority may be animated towards fearless popular counsel; and although it is to be hoped that we never shall again see so much rancorous prejudice and littleness, conjoined with so much power, in one human being, as we have seen, yet such things ought to be noticed in taking a view of this most important department of legislation.

One word more as to securities for good services in judges. No fallacy more common than that which argues "because a man has no interest in acting ill, therefore he must have an interest in acting well." A judge who has to decide between A. and B. certainly may have no motive for awarding in favour of one more than in favour of the other. Neither has a man any motive to do so, apparently, who should toss up for his decision; yet tossing up would not be acting well. "If a man who is to try my cause is lazy, and will not go carefully into the evidence; or if he wants to go to his dinner, and hurries to a judgment, it is one and the same to me whether he is actuated by motives favourable to my adversary, or by motives favouring his own love of ease and enjoyment. Even if the decision be in my favour, it is only by a chance, and by one which may turn to my disadvantage on the next occasion. I should, therefore, equally have reason to blame the judge's conduct, as hurtful upon the whole."

This love of ease or love of self, in all possible shapes, must be provided against, in the person of every individual who is intrusted with services to perform. Punishment is equally indispensable with reward: where the indulgence of this universal tendency, love of self, is likely to prove prejudicial to any other human being, place a penalty against it. In the case of a public functionary, his love of ease, and the active discharge of his duties, are in opposition to each other-penalty noneservices imperfectly performed. You pay him for what he does not execute. Hold out the painful sanction, and he earns

his wages. This is what every one does who keeps menial servants. The salary alone is never considered a sufficient inducement to act righteously; the main reliance is always placed upon the painful motives. Nay, we may even draw an useful lesson on this head from the priesthood, who evince their distrust of the efficacy of the pleasurable motives although consisting in expectations of the most blissful enjoyment. In working upon the human mind, they never fail to super-add the all-powerful incentive of fear, and that under the most terrible forms. It is only where the public are the party served, that the painful sanction is left out of the question. Here salary and emoluments are continually assumed to be the safeguards of virtue, unassisted by the liability to punishment for misconduct. Does a minister of state, or a judge, or a clerk, or a store-keeper, take opportunities of serving his own interests in an irregular manner-" Give him more salary! fill him up with wealth! that is the only way to secure his integrity !" method may certainly be designated, with equal reason, wise and economical! We do not find, however, that the supporters of an expensive establishment at public expense, resort to this expedient to fortify the consciences of their own butlers and housekeepers!

This

But we can afford no more space to the exposure of the nonsense which flows so readily from the friends of misrule. They will go on uttering it, until the mass of the people are sufficiently instructed in what concerns good government to despise it, and then we may hear them without concern. We have abstained from commenting upon the wisdom of the laws themselves, in the foregoing pages, confining our exposition to the manner in which those laws, whatsoever they be, are carried into effect, or in other words, the law of procedure. We shall have many opportunities of discussing our civil and penal code, but we must, like the great pensionary De Witt, do one thing at a time, if we desire to do much. We have said enough, we trust, to prove that, in the system we have been examining, no regard is manifested towards those maxims which we laid down in the beginning of this article, as essential to a well-constituted and vigorous judicature. More than this is hardly required to justify the opinions of those who desire and recommend its recon. struction upon the principles of sound jurisprudence.

ART. V. The Commercial Power of Britain, exhibiting a complete View of the Public Works of this Country, under the several heads of Streets, Roads, Canals, Aqueducts, Bridges, Coasts, and Maritime Ports. By the Baron Dupin, &c. Translated from the French, 2 vols. 8vo. with a quarto of plates. C. Knight. London, 1825.

THIS work, our readers may remember, was published in France some years ago, being the second part of the author's entire plan, of which the first described the Naval and Military System of our Country. It does not at present appear that there is any intention of translating that portion; and, of the present Translation, it is sufficient to say, that it is respectably executed.

so very

All our readers may not know that M. Dupin is a mathematician in the first class, and still fewer can know that he is a person of singular modesty, added to a courageous and independent spirit; no small praise at present in France. The general extent of his acquirements will be perceptible to the readers of his work; and perhaps many an English reader may be surprised to find a foreigner possessing more knowledge of his country than himself, so generally right, as well as full, and seldom in error; but persons have yet to learn in what the art of travelling consists. Possessing that art, M. Dupin has stored his mind with every branch of knowledge to which his inquiries were to be directed; and, adding to those means of examination and analysis, a logical and analytical mind, he has been enabled, first to discover, and then to disentangle and arrange, the crowd of objects and relations of which he has here given us so luminous a view. We wish that there were more travellers of this stamp: we should not then be inundated with the abominable trash called travels, with which our press is daily teeming; and, even for their own sakes, those who travel ought to know, that unless they have learned the art of seeing and inquiring, they might as well remain at home.

It was M. Dupin's object, not to instruct us, but from us, to instruct his country; to describe our institutions and practices, and to point out to France what to follow rather than what to avoid. Yet he has also rendered us no small service, by teaching us to know ourselves. Whether to our own disgrace or not we need not ask; but it is true that, from no work in this country could the information here presented to us have been derived. He has not only brought together within a small compass, a great mass of important and scattered details, but he has given the appearance of a connected political system to

institutions which, we well know, have, like our political constitution, been more the result of successive trials, and almost of chance, than design. Thus he has enabled us, by his able arrangement, not only to know what we possess, but to see where there are yet blanks to fill and errors to correct.

Such a work might have been thought the duty of the government most interested in it; but that government seems generally to be otherwise occupied. Leaving all to individual exertion, it perhaps often leaves too much; since there are matters in which individual exertion has an insufficient interest, while there are others which it is unable to accomplish, without unjustifiable sacrifices. We do not desire the perpetual, nor even the frequent interference of government, that is most certain; but there is an useful medium between the intermeddling of some of the continental states, and that neglect, or rather discountenance, which our own throws on numerous matters where its aid would be of use, and which, without that aid, cannot be accomplished.

If it is an error in M. Dupin to have imagined a regular political system guiding our institutions, if he has paid our government the compliment of supposing that it has been from system, and not from indolence, perhaps, or neglect, or parsimony, that it has left every thing to individual exertion, it is a trivial and a pardonable error. It is a greater error, but we must pardon it too, to have overlooked the differences between the designs and the practical results. We must pardon it, because nothing but a longer residence and more perfect intimacy, an intimacy scarcely attainable by any foreigner, could have enabled him to discover the neglect of duties, the private interests, the frauds, the jobbing, which beset as much our private institutions and proceedings as they have been supposed to do those of the government. Had he known practically how a board of commissioners of sewers, how a collection of road trustees, how a dock committee managed their affairs, he would have paused in his praises, and perhaps paused in his recommendations of the examples to his own country. Had he known what it was to belong to a vestry, or to pay parish rates, he would not have considered self-taxation as a security against fraud and oppression. Had he known how private bills were carried or refused in parliament, he might have doubted of its unvarying wisdom or attention, or both. Had he known the Trinity Board, he would have questioned its purity, at least, and doubted whether its utility might not be obtained on much better terms. Had he examined the Caledonian Canal through his own eyes instead of Mr. Telford's, he would have retracted