1825.) 
with an extract from his concluding obser- 
vations. u bak 
«*Such was the end of the unfortunate Charles 
Stuart, an awful lesson to the possessors of royalty, 
to. watch the growth of public opinion, and to mode- 
rate their pretensions,-in conformity with the rea- 
sonable desires of their subjects. Had he lived at a 
more early period, when the sense of wrong was 
quickly subdued by the habit of submission, his 
reign would probably have been marked by fewer 
violations of the national liberties. It was resistance 
that made him a tyrant. The spirit of the people 
refused to yield to the encrcachments of authority ; 
and one act of oppression placed him under the ne- 
cessity of committing another, till he had revived 
and enforced all those odious prerogatives, which, 
though usually claimed, were but sparingly exer- 
cised, by his predecessofs. For some years his 
efforts seemed successful: but the Scottish insur- 
rection revealed the delusion ; he had parted with the 
real authority ofa king, when he forfeited the con- 
fidence and affection of his subjects. 
*©But while we blame the illegal measures of 
fharles, we ought not to screen from censure the 
subsequent conduct of his principal opponents. 
From the moment that war seemed inevitable, they 
acted as if they thought themselves absolved from 
all obligations of honour and honesty. They never 
ceased to inflame the passions of the people by mis- 
representation and calumny : they exercised a power 
far more arbitrary and formidable than had ever 
Been claimed by the king; they punished sum- 
marily, on mere suspicion, and without attention to 
the forms of law; and by their committees they 
established in every county a knot of petty tyrants, 
who disposed, at will, of the liberty and property 
of the inhabitants. Such anomalies may perhaps 
be inseparable from the jealousies, the resentments, 
and the heart-burnings, which are -engendered in 
civil commotions: but certain it is, that right and 
justice had seldom been more wantonly outraged, 
than they were by those who professel to have 
drawn the sword in defence of right and justice.” 
An Inquiry into the present State of the 
Civil Law of England. By Joun Mitre, 
Esq. of Lincoln’s-Inn, 8v0.—If the pariia- 
mentary reformers, with all their zeal and 
exertions, have done little yet towards 
opening any prospect of a practical exten- 
sion of the suifrages of the people; or purify- 
ing the representation in the House of 
Commons, those exertions, nevertheless, 
have not been made in vain. The bold 
and incessant attacks which haye been 
made, during the general agitation of the 
question, upon’ the various departments. of 
misgovernment, more or less. connected 
with the present system of a representa- 
tion, independent of the votes of the people, 
professed to be represented, have awakened 
a general spirit of inquiry into the state 
of the administration of our respective 
institutions, which has opened the eyes 
of the nation to many abuses, heretofore 
pereeived, or regarded only by the in- 
dividuals who were immediate and per- 
sonal sufferers by them ; and, eyen by such, 
but little understood in their causes, and 
not unfrequently referred to incidental and 
personal sources, instead of being attributed 
to Sate and corruptions in the 
very state and organization of the institu- 
tions themselves. : 
* “Moyrity Mac. No, 413. 
Domestic and Foreign. 
57. 
The case is now, by these means," ésséen= 
tially altered; and, for meral’ influence on’ 
the characters of sufferers and complainers 
themselves, as well as for political purposes 
of general application and probability of 
redress, that alteration is equally for the 
better. Instead. of inflaming our. minds 
with personal rancour against individuals 
(as against the professors of the: law, for 
example, who are really, generally speak- 
ing, a great deal better than, from the state 
of the laws themselves, and the established 
modes of administering them, could ration- 
ally be expected), we now direct our in- 
quiries to the nature and organization of 
the institutions under which those indi- 
viduals are compelled to act; and imper- 
fections, absurdities and mischievous in- 
congruities are laid open in every direction: 
so glaring, indeed, that individuals and nu- 
merous masses of people, who would eyen re- 
coil, with Joyal horror and indignation, from 
the imputation of being what are politically 
called Reformers (or, in the cant of courtly _ 
corruption, Radicals and Jacobins), cannot 
shut their eyes against them. And it is 
curious enough, upon some occasions, to 
hear persons who, from station in life, and 
the habitudes of association, think them- 
selves good high church-and-king courtiers, 
nevertheless express themselves in such 
terms, relative to such particular parts of 
the all-lauded institution of things as they 
are, as, some thirty years ago, might have 
rendered them suspected of being candi- 
dates for co-partnership in the honourabl 
distinction of-safe-custody in his Majesty’s 
castle——the Tower, or the auxiliary for- 
tress in the neighbourhood of the Old 
Bailey. ; 
Aimong the rest, the abuses (or, to speak 
more correctly, the absurd forms, processes 
and constitutions) of certain of our courts 
of law and equity, with their ridiculous and 
vexatious fictions and technicalities, ori- 
ginating in slavish barbarism, and improved 
into immeasurable worseness by the trick- 
‘sical subtleties of modern sophistry, have 
not escaped severe scrutiny and animad- 
version ; and, in the volume we are now 
noticing, we have the testimony and the 
sentiments of a gentleman (evidently no 
Jacobin or Radical, but) of the identical 
profession of the law itself, appealing to the 
sense of the Legislature and the nation, both 
as to the extent and nature of the evils com~ 
plained of, and the necessity of speedy re- 
dress. - One grand and obstinate obstruc- 
tion, however, he seems to find in the way 
and prospect of such remedy; and, as we 
believe that the generality of those whose 
attentions have been turned to the subject, 
and who have noticed the fate,and the manner 
of the fate, of ali the efforts that have been 
made to bring the question to fair issue, 
will be prepared to agree with him on this 
point, he shall state it in his own words : 
‘« Lord Eldgn caine into power at a conjuncture 
when the decided change which was taking place ip 
1 » 4gnte, . the 
