1831.] [ 45 ] 



LORD BROUGHAM S LOCAL COURTS. 



NOTHING but the most imperative causes can justify abrupt revolu- 

 tions, political or judicial. The course of human affairs stability 

 and security are valuable qualities requires, when changes must be 

 made, that they be gradually made. Institutions of any considerable 

 standing, get worked into the frame of society ; associations couple 

 with them ; habits accommodate ; occasional inconveniences are practi- 

 cally remedied or relieved, or when they grow into incumbrances, can 

 generally be cut away, like other excrescences, without taking with 

 them the life of the plant. It is better to make the best of human 

 imperfections than to speculate upon " absolute wisdom." It is better, 

 usually, to pare down superfluities, and do what you can to obviate 

 defects, than to sweep away at once good and bad, and replace them by 

 some new fangled structure, just to shew your architectural dexterity, 

 by something which is strange to every body, and against which the very 

 strangeness excites prejudice, and indisposes every body. More grave- 

 ly, it is better, all allow, to bear the ills we have, than to go to others 

 that we know not of; and at all events, it is safer to remove what we 

 see and feel to be bad, than rashly, by slashing novelties, to incur the risk 

 of creating new ones. Every one sees the evils of our Courts of Juris- 

 diction, but every one, at the same time, recognizes the stuff and tex- 

 ture of them to be good. Improvements might doubtless be made in 

 the machinery, and more perhaps in the working of it then why should 

 not these be first attempted? What is Mr. , we beg his lordship's 

 pardon what is Lord Brougham and Vaux about in this matter ? Op- 

 posing, in the very teeth of his own maxims, arrangements which he 

 has long been urging, and trampling upon principles which none more 

 than he has been forward to inculcate. But Mr. , pish ! Lord 

 Brougham, is a lawyer; the yea and the nay of a question are equally 

 familiar ; he is a ready scribe as well as speaker ; words cost him no- 

 thing ; and there are few subjects from that of the slave-trade upon 

 which he may not be quoted on both sides. " The best and most effica- 

 cious plan of improvement (we quote him, or the Edinburgh Review) 

 is that which does the smallest violence to the established order of things ; 

 requires the least adventitious aid, or complex machinery, and as far as 

 may be executes itself. It is from ignorance of this principle that the 

 vulgar perpetually mistake a great scheme for a good one ; a various 

 and complicated, for an efficacious one ; a shewy and ambitious piece of 

 legislature, for a sound and useful law/' 



Lord Brougham, as well as others, has for years been projecting 

 law reforms ; many of these reforms, as they are called, have been put 

 into practice, sometimes with good, and as often perhaps with question- 

 able effect ; but what is a very remarkable peculiarity, come from what 

 quarter they will, they all end we must use a plain term in jobs ; not 

 in reduction of courts and judges, arid expence, but in augmenting all 

 law-reform is a synonyme for new law-offices. 



The increase of law-patronage of late years, accomplished, or con- 

 templated, is prodigious. Not long since we had a new Chancery judge; 

 more recently a whole set of judges for circuit insolvent-courts, commis- 

 sioners for charities, commissioners of inquiry, secretaries, &c. An 

 exchange of Welch judges for English ones, fewer in number, it is true, 



