1828. ] Court of Chancery. 229 
of a country to the changes of its political aspect, is to enter upon a wide 
field of speculation. The Court of Chancery has achieved almost all that 
it has accomplished through the exercise of a power in its inception 
almost entirely arbitrary. Against a repetition of a similar mode of 
‘operation, we have already entered our protest. We see nothing then 
left to trust to than either a periodical revision of the whole body of the 
law, or the creation of some permanent responsible body in, the state 
exercising a surveillance over it, and, indeed, with a perpetual power to 
supply its deficiencies.—Among other excellent suggestions for the refor- 
mation of our laws, Mr. Cooper, in his work on this subject,* has recom- 
mended the adoption of a similar plan.—< Nothing,” says he, “ would 
tend more to the improvement of our laws than the appointment of a 
perpetual commission to receive communications from the judges and other 
individuals as to the alterations or additions which they require. ‘The 
shadow of such an institution has existed two centuries in the grand 
committee of courts of justice.’—Our readers may, probably, not be 
aware, that the committee of courts of justice to which Mr. Cooper 
alludes, is a standing committee of Parliament for the improvement of the 
law, which was indebted for its being to the energies of former times— 
-but which now has an existence only in name.—We know not how it 
‘happens, but drowsiness is a complaint which seems to visit all associated 
bodies of men, who are not in constant collision with the public—and, 
therefore, in the formation of such a body, a large proportion of flappers 
would probably be found necessary to keep them awake.—These, how- 
ever, we doubt not, might be provided ; and if we could only secure the 
diligence and efficiency of the functionaries, we know of no office in the 
state which could be rendered more valuable. If it did not divert alto- 
gether from Parliament its judicial legislation, it would necessarily be a 
part of the province of the officers to prepare the several acts submitted 
for enactment ; and our statute book might then groan a little less heavily 
than it does at present, with acts passed in each succeeding session only 
to redress the blunders of the last. : 
Regarding the extraordinary jurisdiction of the Court of Chancery 
however less as a provision for exigencies which have yet to be discovered, 
than as a corrective to an inadequacy of the common law already ascer- 
tained, the consolidation of the two courts of law and equity into one 
tribunal, as in the Supreme Civil Court of Scotland, has been urged, and 
by high authority ; while the philosophical reasoning of the jurists has 
been backed by the contemptible cry of the “ practical men,” who, in 
their utter ignorance of jurisprudence as a science, can find in the prin- 
ciples of equity nothing else than what they call abstract right,t and 
_ewho have, consequently, been extremely puzzled when they have been 
told of a difference existing between two such analogous things as law 
and equity. If we have made ourselves understood, these gentlemen 
might here discover that there is somewhat more in the distinction than 
“ their philosophy had dreamed of.” We cannot here recapitulate, for 
their accommodation, all we have said on the subject ; but we must, how- 
ever, remind those who have followed us through our paper, that while 
__* Parliamentary Proceedings as to the Court of Chancery, the House of Lords, and 
Bankruptey. By C. P. Cooper, Esq. Murray; 1828. 
+ By the by, we believe these gentlemen know as much about the meaning of the 
term abstract right; as Sidrophel knew of the inhabitants of Mercury. 
