The Express.
London, England, 1847-09-29 00:00:00

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some little experience of public affairs, and
is not either so dull or so rash as to rest
the future reputation of his party on a course
of policy of which its leaders disapprove. It is very
possible that he may wish to stimulate their activity
as well as to publish their inclination, and to commit
them to a coarse of action, when at present only their
opinions are known to him : but it is not likely that
the most able and acute of the subordinate members
of the government would select for public censure
any class of grievances, unless he had reasonable
ground to suppose that his friends would attempt to
redress them.
There is, indeed, no party reason which should
induce any administration to delay or neglect the
improvement of the law. It would be impossible to
unite an opposition in defence of assignable terms, or
of special demurrers. The prejudices of laymen,
whatever may be their political persuasion, are always
opposed to legal abuses ; and lawyers alone, even if
they were united in opposing change, could not
endanger the supremacy of an existing government.
Nevertheless, there is a lion in the path. Law
amendments, if they do not involve the risk, are also
devoid of the excitement and unrewarded by the po-
pularity which attend
.political reforms. It is only
the learned and industrious who can appreciate their
wisdom ; it is only the individual litigant who finds
their practical value. It is easier to brave danger
than to face the difficulty which takes the prosaic
shape of trouble ; and there must necessarily be great
trouble in forming a general or a partial code —ia
making acts of parliament simple and consistent—in
retrenching the superfluous formalities which encum-
ber every legal proceeding. Many men who are ca-
pable of good, and even of heroic acts, will shrink day
after day from the trouble of arranging a mass of ac-
cumulating papers, or writing a few necessary let-
ters ; and it is from similar indolence and want of deci-
sion that the abominations of law are allowed to acts-
' mulate from year to year with so little strenuous
effort to reduce the heap. We can only advise those
who have the power to begin. Twenty reforms
might be mentioned in as many sentences, which
have been over and over again recommended, and
only neglected because the whole question of the im-
provement of the law is so complicated and formid-
able. Vigour and determination alone are wanted ;
there will be no want of useful and ingenious sugges-
tions for the government to work upon, if it will only
prove that it is in earnest. It will not do to appoint
commissions and to collect information only; there
must also be experiments made without delay. It
requires no commission to tell us that techni-
lit objections which the courts overrule, if
they are not made in eight days from the
delivery of a document, may be dispensed
with in all cases; or that thieves ought to
be punished, even though a clerk of indictments or
a lawyer may have been misinformed as to the chris-
tian name of the person whom they have robbed. If
no subordinate absurdities are to be got rid of till a
general remodelling of the law in completed, it would
perhaps be better to give up all ambitious hopes of a
code, and content ourselves with increased activity in
botching, and patching, and darning.
Mr. Butt ER is quite right in treating the county
courts as the remedy for only one among the many
defects of our jurisprudence. The new tribunals give
retail tradesmen a convenient method of getting in
their bills, and that is nearly all that can
be said of them. It is an object aaffi-
ciently important to justify all the praise which
has been bestowed on them —it is most fit
that just debts should be paid; but simple
debts, as we have explained on a former occasion,
scarcely belong to the province of litigation. The
tailor and his customer cannot be said to have any
dispute between them, because the coat has been de-
livered and not yet paid for. The county court
judge compels the wearer to pay for his coat; and we
believe his jurisdiction might usefully be extended
so far as to secure the coachmaker payment for his
carriage. He also has a litigious jurisdiction to a
small amount—bat the whole range of litigation for
property of more than 201. value is subject to all the
uncertainty and injustice which a casual legislation
interpreted by a minute and sophistical logic is
capable of producing.
Our criminal jurisprudence is, as we have often
said, the most efficient part of the law, with all its
faults. It secures the acquittal of almost all the in-
nocent, and the conviction of a large majority of the
guilty. Its faults and absurdities, flagrant as they
are, lie on the surface, and are easily separable from
the system. An act of parliament of a page might
sweep away three-fourths of the useless technicali-
ties of criminal law, by getting rid of grand juries,
and, consequently, of indictments. A longer and
more complicated statute might attain a part of the
same result by extending the power of amend-
ment to some of the obsolete formalities which
are at present held sacred in criminal pleading.
A statute of jeybils is always an improvement. " I
have made a slip," the pleader is allowed to say
(whence the Norman-French jeVails), and to correct
it. It is better that a technical slip should be cor-
m eted than that the right should fail ; but it might,
perhaps, be simpler to remove the elide which has
been constructed to try the sure-footedness of justice.
In this department, however, we are satisfied that
the government must and will do something. It has
Tea to its hands the code of the criminal law com-
almoners almost eiginti annorum lucubrationed, to
Width it need only give the sanction of law. We by no
means think that the code will preclude the necessity
of future change, but it will be an improvement upon
the present law as embodied in the learned labours of
Mr. ARCHBOLD and Mr. GREAVEB.
The so-called ecclesiastical law, which has little or
nothing to do with the church, has long been recog-
nised as an anomaly. To an impartial observer there
is something not a little ludicrous in the virtuous in-
dignation with which the Queen's Bench decides, in a
suit of prohibition, that the ecclesiastical courti has
transgressed its constitutional limits by entertaining
collaterally some question of title to property. ft
might be supposed that the tidings of Henry VIII.'s
separation from Rome had not yet penetrated into
Westminster-hall, and that the judges were still
sternly defending the rights of the nation against a
=or a rival tribunal. That a court should have
tion over wills, as far as they relate to
sad yet yet be incapable of knowing whether
life possidenn which they contain as to landed pro-
pwty me good or bad, is an inconvenience which
could only arise from our dogged determination to
let all legal arrangements depend upon accident.
There is an urgent demand for a cheaper and more
efficient mode of proceeding in the numerous cases
which now belong to the ecclesiastical courts. It is
aimed incredible that some of the moot important
civil rights should be determined by reference to such
obsolete fictions as that the goods of intestates pass to
the ordinary for charitable purposes, or that courts
take proceedings against individuals in salutem anions.
Of all our courts, we believe the equity tribunals are
meet efficient in attaining their object. The specific
performance of contracts, the execution 01% trusts, and
the other litigated duties which they have to en-
force, are in fact considered by the Court of
Chancery with a regard to substantial justice, to the
real intentions of parties, and the actual state of facts,
which is impossible to judges who are bound by the
technical limitations which have established them-
selves in the common law. Even in the department
of costs, the power of a judge in equity to award
them according to the justice of the case, without re-
gard to the form of the decree, enables him to avoid
some of the most grievous oppieesions which are prac-
tised in actions at law. The only ground on which a
defendant resists an action is often to be found in the
exorbitance of the costs. In Chancery, the court
has power to look to the real merits in this
as well as in other respects. The great grievance
of Chancery is the expence and delay of its pro-
ceedings. A more convenient machinery for ascer-
taining facts, and the substitution in some cases of oral
for written evidence, would form one of the first steps
to an improvement in the efficiency ef these tri-
bunals.
Of the common law we have often had occasion to
weak. With the exception of the system of the
Ecclesiastical Courts, there is no part of our juris-
prudence so oppressive in its ineff
iciency. It provides
a clumsy, expensive, and uncertain machinery for the
recovery of simple debts, and a mixture of charms
and of a conflict of ingenuity when disputed
rights call for adjudication. We are well aware how
easy and how useless it is to utter general strictures
on a system. We have not been wanting, and shall
not hereafter be wanting, in practical and detailed
suggestions for the redress of the grievances of which
we complain. At present, our object is only to confirm
Mr. BULLER'S general statement of the condition of
the English law, and, as far as possible, to tie him
and his colleagues down to a pledge to commence the

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necessary &OM. IC they Politte. this course with
wisdom LA vigour, they wal have the sup-
port Of praihnt lawyers as well as of the
public. The affairs of this ' country will bear
much more litigation thin they can afford
at present. Compromises and arbitrations are
but proofs that law is defective. Ten suits decided
justly and cheaply would be more profitable to the
profession than one however complicated with issues
of law and of fact, with demurrers and motions for
judgment non andante reredicto. Nor when the law-
yer had increased his gains would he regret to know
that nine suitors had established their right or resisted
injustice, who under the old system would have been
compelled to submit to wrong, and would not have
contributed to his profits.

We have become accustomed to a published state-
ment of the affairs of the Royal Bank of Berlin,
which appears monthly, as the statement of the Bank
of England appears weekly. Do any of the readers
of our money article, when they see the two state-
ments in juxta position, take this similarity in the
mode of communication with the public to indicate a
similarity in the principles on which the two establish-
ments are founded? Many, we dare say, who are not
much interested in the state of the Prussian funds,
assume that it does. Others, who have watched the
phases of Prussian finance, shake their heads, and ex-
claim. How can a bank founded by royal ordinance
be compared to one that has been set up with
mercantile capital, and all whose movements
follow the pulsation of the national trade ?
We are, nevertheless, inclined to think that there is
at the present moment a greater similarity between
the two establishments than many would suppose.
We have certainly, as yet, had no order in council
placing ten millions at the dieposal of the Bank and
recommending it to get them into circulation as
fast and on the best terms it can. Still less have we
seen the Bank of England faollitate a traffic in
foreign bills by taking them at the cur-
rent price to sell them at a moderate gain
to those who may chance to need them unexpectedly.
The Bank of England confines its operations' to nk-
ing, strictly se called. It discounts the bills of others,
and allows itself to be drawn upon but it does not
assume the office of bill-broker—it does not part
with the bills that it has once absorbed from circula-
tion. The nature of the trade carried on by the Bank
is, therefore, one-sided : it aids only the humerus that
is done in England, or which is done abroad, through
the agency of English houses.
No foreign bank is in this position. Neither the
Bank of Berlin, nor that of Paris, nor that of Vienna,
would refuse to discount a good bill on London or
any other commercial capital. These foreign banks
must, therefore, provide a means of getting nd of the
bills they take. They are mere facilitators of ex-
changes of credit. They cannot easily create artificial
credit, for they must take care to accept of nothing
that pill not in the free course of trade be taken from
them again. These banks poasess a safety valve
which the Bank of England dive not.command. For
if the notes which they have issued are returned to be
exchanged for bullion, they can go into the market
with the bills which they hold, and, submitting to the
necessary difference in exchange, can at any time
command bullion for them. The bills they discount
cannot, therefore, be said to be withdrawn from circu-
lation, in the manner in which those lodged in the
Bank of England are. These are, however, differ-
ences in matters of detail which may be modified
without affecting the main question. To understand
the principle on which both banks are founded, we
must inquire into the sources of their power to issue
notes, and the use they make of that power.
Governments alone can, and do, interfere to create
credit when private credit has been disturbed, or, for
some reason, does not exist. When private credit is
in a healthy state there is no opportunity for govern-
ment interference. Banks founded by private enter-
prise, and managed by private industry, do more,
better, and cheaper business than a government bank
can. Indeed, considering the temptation which go-
vernment banks have ever held out to unprin-
cipled ministers, no government has of late been con-
sidered very safe when it meddled with banking; and,
both at Paris and at Vienna, pains have been taken to
give the banks an appearance of the greatest inde-
pendence. This can arise from no other motive than
the desire to inculcate a belief that the issues are
based upon the regular demands of trade; that no
notes go abroad for which value in the shape of some
deposit has not been received. Anyother supposition is
carefully precluded, as injurious to the credit of the
Bank and of the government. But a case may be sup-
posed when the demands of trade exceed the power of
private credit. Such a case can arise only out of some
disturbing cause that has operated injuriously upon
private credit.
In Prussia we are at no great loss where to look
for such a cause. When, after the termination of the
revolutionary war, the financial affairs of that kingdom
were settled, it was judged most convenient for the
crown to reserve the exclusive right of issuing small
notes, as the easiest mode of keeping up a certain
amount of unfunded debt. The late King of Prussia
found it necessary, however, to put a limit on those
issues, as the sole means of raising the value of the
national stock in the money market. He accordingly
appointed a commission of men of note, who were
bound by the most solemn oaths not to allow of an
addition to the sum of the national debt as
it stood when they took this oath. The paper
circulation of Prussia was thus limited to a
certain sum, no regard being paid to the demands
of trade. Private banks of issue were nowhere
tolerated in Prussia. As a natural consequence,
the government notes, which were not circulating in
excess, although to a large amount, came into demand.
They now frequently bear a premium locally. Pri-
vate credit, which is not of rapid growth, has been
repressed during the last thirty years, and it is now
unavailable for the wants of the trader. Under
these circumstances alone was it possible to
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found a new bank of issue under the government
management, without causing a rapid dechne of the
Prussian funds. The announcement of the pro-
posed issue of ten millions of dollar notes last
year, did for a moment lower the price of stocks,
and the minister was obliged publicly to deny
that the state was responsible for the new notes.
Still the obnoxious element in the Royal Bank subsists
the governor is an officer in the service of the crown,
and the bank has no power to issue other notes than
such as it is authorised by the crown to emit; but
necessity has conquered public opinion. A nation
mast have a circulating medium.
Now we do not see how, under the Bank
Charter Act, the Bank of England's position
differs much from that which we have here
described. The manufacture of notes is taken
' from the banking side, that is to say, from the Bank,
and is transferred to the issue department, that is to
say, to the printing press. Who keeps the press
key? Who is responsible to the public for the
issues—that they pass through no channel but the
Bank? Is not the government here, too, comp-
troller and dispenser? The similarity in another
point is also striking. We have a currency that is
not elastic to the demands of trade. It is fixed to a
certain point, beyond which it can only be stretched
by means of deposits of bullion. This novelty was
introduced with a contraction of the right of private
issue, in other words, with a pressure on private
credit. No such plea could be, or was, attempted as the
Prussian government put forward after the was. Why
was this pressure submitted to ?
Whatever the motive, the result has been most
disastrous. Houses of first-rate respectability in
the City are obliged to suspend their payments
with their cases full of bills which they have
every right to deem negotiable, but which the want
of competition in the banking world renders useless.
Railroad and other speculations calculated to furnish
the population of our islands with the means of im-
proving their condition and accumulating wealth are
put a stop to. The last result that has been pro-
claimed is, that the high rate of interest and scarcity
of money make the tradesman balance between the
chance of profit, if he accommodates a customer, and
the gain likely to result from a command of cash.
That the first victims of this new calcula-
tion have been in aristocratic circles is no
evidence that it will not deeply affect the
course of trade before long.
When all classes are reduced to the utmost
need, we shall have a crisis. Will it be solved
in the Prussian fashion, and a shower of notes
independent of bank mediation fall like manna
from the issue department under the avowed
risibility of the minister? Or will the old
anglish fashion of self-government be recognised,
those who abandoned their palladium when they
were prosperous, stand up for it in defeat and ruin ?