282 Notes for the Month. [MARCH, 



Mr. Brougham's " commission" is to inquire into say the following, 

 for a few of the leading matters. The state of the law as regards its 

 merits. Its state, with reference to practice. Its administration ; includ- 

 ing the constitution of peculiar courts, and the possibility of amending 

 them. The Welch judicature. The selection and powers of the magis- 

 tracy. The practice of pleading. The law in the colonies and in India. 

 The game acts ; the Privy Council ; the alehouse licensing system : 

 &c. &c. 



Now, we are afraid that here is a little too much undertaken at once : 

 and that a distribution of Mr. Brougham's enterprise to twelve commis- 

 sions, instead of one, as suggested by Mr. Hume, upon the considerably 

 less onerous proposition of the " Finance Committee/' would be very 

 well worth the honourable and learned gentleman's consideration. As 

 the proposal stands, looking to the number and importance of the 

 subjects to be discussed, it will hardly be possible for the commission to 

 report within five years before which time new circumstances will arise, 

 and its very existence (perhaps) be forgotten. Life is not long enough 

 to do business in this way. The Chancery commission had a single court 

 to deal with : and the complaint is that it did nothing : and yet now a 

 single commission is to grapple with the whole business and interests for 

 the administration of the law forms three-fourths of the real business and 

 interests of the nation ! We confess that, from the labours of any single 

 body of men upon such a subject, we expect little more than a stupen- 

 dous pile of crudity, which, ,from its mere weight and unwieldiness, 

 every body will be afraid to approach. Mr. Wilmot Horton's Emigra- 

 tion Report was complained of for weighing five pounds ! Why, the 

 report of Mr. Brougham's commission will hardly lie in ten volumes of 

 equal thickness. It is a strange anomaly too, that, while, on the one hand, 

 Mr. Brougham is crying out against the mass of business in the Court of 

 Chancery " The mere quantity of labour laid upon one tribunal leads 

 inevitably to ruinous protraction ! There is no fault in individuals : but 

 their physical powers have a limit : division must take place : new courts 

 must be appointed"i~with these facts and principles laid down on one 

 night, on the nexU we proceed to provide (in an affair most pressing to 

 the state) for a delay of an incomparably more unprecedented and im- 

 measurable description, by imposing a task wilfully upon one court of 

 inquiry, which we have the full power of dividing, and which would be 

 sufficiently arduous and responsible, if it were divided among twenty ! 



Excepting the appointment of the "Finance Committee," and the 

 " Explanations" (which are still going on, and likely, apparently, to do 

 so beyond the day when our Magazine is published), nothing of much 

 interest but Mr. Brougham's motion has occurred in the House of 

 Commons. 



In the House of Lords, the best thing has been a motion by the 

 Marquis of Salisbury, upon the subject of the game laws. We discussed 

 this subject so fully in our last number, that we shall only notice (for the 

 sake of recording it) the object of the liberal Marquis's bill ; which was, 

 to enable " qualified landed proprietors to sell their game, instead of 

 giving it away !" The incomparable modesty of this proposal, which was 

 to empower the qualified landowner to sell the game which is fed upon 

 the fields of the unqualified landowner to give the parties whose privi- 

 leges are already intolerable under the game laws, a good round slice of 

 peculiar advantage more. The excellent equity of this design was well 



