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1828.) ai 469° J 
WELSH JURISPRUDENCE.* 
As nations conquer to extend the sweets of patronage to their rulers, 
and not the blessings of civilization to the vanquished, it seldom happens 
that the latter derive much benefit from the more-improved institutions 
of their conquerors. Such, at all events, has been the eventual history 
of English aggrandizement ; and, if the state of its jurisprudence be 
taken as an indication, the fate of Wales is but the repetition of a twice~ 
told tale. 
In their petition to Henry VIII. to be admitted into the laws and 
privileges of Englishmen, we find the Welsh complaining “ But as the 
kings of this realm, weary of their attempts in person against us, did 
formerly give not only our country to those who would conquer it, but 
permitted them, jura regalia, within their several precincts, so it was 
impossible to come to an agreement, while so many that undertook this 
work usurped martial and absolute power and jurisdiction in all they 
acquired, without establishing any equal justice; and that all offenders, 
for the rest, flying from one lordship marcher (for so they were termed) 
to another, did both avoid the punishment of the law, and easily commit 
those robberies, which have formerly tainted the honour of our parts.” 
It is true, that in answer to this petition, a more regular system for the 
administration of justice through the principality was attempted to be 
provided, by the establishment of Courts Baron, Hundred, and County 
Courts, and the institution of the Court of Great Session. The three 
first are distributed about the country pretty much in the same way as 
our own petty courts of the same denomination. The last is an itinerant 
court corresponding with our courts of assize—possessed of powers 
equally ample for the trial of civil and criminal causes, with the addition 
of an equitable jurisdiction—and administered by judges appointed by 
the government. But this, in the one instance, was to leave the dispen- 
sation of justice to a description of tribunal which has never proved 
especially competent to its discharge: in the other, instead of embracing 
the country within the circuits of our judges, to trust it to the care of 
such inferior functionaries as it suited the purposes of patronage to 
bestow—and in both to turn the principality into a mere local jurisdic- 
tion. We do not indeed deny that a distribution of local tribunals 
throughout the whole face of a country, may be the best system of 
judicial organization it can adopt. Indeed, when we know that this has 
been recommended by so high an authority as Mr. Bentham, and hear its 
practical operation so loudly extolled in France, we wish devoutly that 
the current of popular attention set more strongly towards it—In Eng- 
d, however, a local tribunal is synonymous with an incompetent one ; 
and though sharing most of their defects, both the petty courts and 
courts of Great Session, are very far behind our own courts, both in the 
ability and impartiality of their officers. 
« Practice makes perfect,” saith the adage ; and, if that wise saw of our 
grandmothers were an universal truth, most perfect indeed ought to be 
the county and baronial courts of Wales. From the parliamentary 
returns to the committee of 1821, it appears that the number of actions 
instituted in these courts for the county of Carmarthen, during a period 
“ Letter to Lord Lyndhurst on the Administration of Justice in Wales, by Earl 
Cawdor. 3 
