The Sun.
London, England, 1863-12-07 00:00:00

THE SUN, LONDON, MONDAY EVENING, DECEMBER 7, 1863,

the evidence, with the shoes of the prisoner. There were
no in any way or at any part of
the m
the outside, but the "hasp" of
haqr house
ean of violence
entrance
from indicating
the pantry window was found to have been freshly forced
up as if with a screwdriver, and a screwdriver was found
in a drawer in the pantry. The prisoner then went and
told his master of the robbery, admitting that he had left
the pantry shutters unfastened, and that he had found the
plate-basket outside the pantry. According to the evidence
of the gardener this could not have been the case, and the
basket when produced by the prisoner was found quite dry.
One or two articles suggested to be the prisoner's were
found outside the house; and sometime afterwards one of
the green baize plate bags was found with burglars' imple-
ments inside. No part of the plate, however, had been re-
covered, and the value was estimated at about £5O.
The case appeared to excite some interest. The court
was crowded, and the bench was full of country gentlemen.
Mr. Clark, in opening the case for the prosecution,
which he did with much ability, said the case was one of
great importance, not only from the magnitude of the rob-
bery, but from its circumstances, and especially from the
position of confidence in which the prisoner had been placed.
He did not believe it would be disputed that there had been
a robbery.

Mr. Woollett, for the prisoner, said he should not dis-
pute it.

The learned Judge remarked that in a criminal case,
and one so serious, he could not take any admissions.
Mr, Clark said it was manifest, and it could not be dis-
puted, that there had been a robbery, and he believed the
evidence, though entirely circumstantial, would, by a chain
of numerous and carious links, bring home the guilt clearly
to the prisoner. It was apparent that the robbery had not
been committed from without, and must have been com-
mitted from within. The prisoner slept in the next room to
the pantry, and was the only person who slept down stairs.
Moreover, he had isolated himself from the rest of the house
by keeping a door of internal communication with the
pantry. The noise heard by the servants upstairs he could
hardly have failed to hear downstairs; and there could be
little doubt that it must have been at that time the robbery,
by whomsoever it was committed, was in course of com-
mittal. It would be for the jury to consider whether the
prisoner could possibly have been ignorant of it. Of course,
the prisoner being known to be there, no alarm was felt
about the noise, and that was the very circumstance which
gave such cogency to the case. The statement as to the
finding of the plate-basket would be proved to be false, and
the only conceivable reason for the falsehood was guilt, and
the only reason for the retention and production of the
plate-basket by the prisoner was that it was part of the con-
trivance, in order to divert suspicion from himself. The
case for the prosecution was that the plate-basket was not
found, as the prisoner pretended, outside the house, but that
it had never been there at all. For if it had, as the prisoner
suggested, been left behind by the robbers, it would have been
outside all night, and, if so, it must have been covered by
the hoar frost, and when brought in would have been wet,
whereas it was quite dry. Another important part of the
case was that which related to the footmarks, which were
all the more observable because of the hoar frost upon the
ground. And the footmarks to and from the pantry
were alike, and were the prisoner's. The suggestion,
therefore, in the case for the prosecution was that the
prisoner had got out of the house with the plate and
then, of course, returned, He was seen in bed by one of
the servants only a few moments before; just after the
gardener came to the pantry, he was met coming from the
pantry declaring that " the plate was gone." The gardener
had already observed the footmarks before the prisoner was
out, and when the prisoner's attention was called to them he
put his foot on them and was treading them out. No one
could doubt that if the prisoner was not the actual robber
he must have " put up" the robbery, to use the expression
which the police applied to such cases—that is to say, that
others had been put up to it by some one inside the house,
and who could it have been but the prisoner ? The robbery
had been planned, and skilfully planned, and who could
have planned and carried it out at that early time of night
but the prisoner He must have been awake between half-
past 10 and 11 o'clock at night, for he had not long retired
to rest, and no one but he would have ventured so early to
perpetrate such a robbery. Whether he was the actual rob-
ber or not was not material, for if he were privy to it, and
planned it, and took part in it, he would be guilty. Had
any one heard the noise and comedown to inquire, he would
have replied from behind his locked door that he was up,
and that it was all right, and thus further inquiry would be
stopped. That was the very reason why he had managed it
at so early an hour, which no one else would have done.
The whole affair was skilfully planned, and could not have
been carried out without his aid. No doubt there were
others engaged in it. Seven hundred pounds worth of plate
could not be carried off without assistance, And very likely
the burglary would be performed by accomplished burglars.
The bag which had been found contained implements of
burglary. No doubt burglars would never go on any such
work without their implements, although it had so happened
on this occasion that by the aid of the prisoner they were
enabled to dispense with them. Having perpetrated the
robbery with his aid they would naturally throw the useless
tools aside ; and had they used them traces of violence would
have been found on the outside. There were no circum-
stances to cast suspicion on any one else in the house, and
no one else could have ventured to attempt it at such a time,
or could possibly have succeeded in it without the aid of the
prisoner.

Mr. Woollett addressed the jury, and urged upon them
that the case was one of suspicion only, even if all the facts
relied upon were proved, but that when carefully examined
they one after another melted like shadows away.
The learned Judge carefully summed up, and the jury,
after some deliberation found a verdict of not guilty.

OXFORD CIRCUIT —WORCESTER, Dec. 4.
CROWN COURT.
(Before Mr. Justice Crompton.)

John Green was indicted for the manslaughter of William
Boughton.

Mr. Best was for the prosecution, and Mr. Richards for
the prisoner.
The prisoner was a clerk in the office of Messrs, Clifton
and Hooper, proctors. of Worcester, and had been a clerk
in the District Registry of the Court of Probate, and %Vm.
Boughton, the deceased, was a horsedealer, of Glocester.
On the night of the 2d September last the prisoner and the
deceased and some others formed a drinking party at the
Albion Hotel, in Worcester, and about midnight some earlier
bickering led to a quarrel between the prisoner and deceased,
which resulted in a scuffle. The subject of the quarrel was
as to whose turn it was to pay for the last beer had. The
landlady interfered, but on her leaving the room the quarrel
was renewed, and the deceased, who was a fine, powerful,
tall man, began to follow up the prisoner, who is slight
and short of stature, as he retreated into the passage.
They got into the passage together, but in a minute or so
the deceased returned into the room where the party had
previously been, and it was discovered that he had been
stabbed in the abdomen. The prisoner had earlier in the
evening been comparing a spring clasp-knife of his with
that of a man named Corbett, and afterwards stated to
the superintendent of the police that he had had the knife
open up his sleeve, and that ho supposed he had stabbed
the deceased in the scuffle. A doctor was sent for, as soon
as the wound was discovered, and the deceased was put
to bed, but he never rallied, and died on the 6th of Sep-
tember. The prisoner got a good character for peaceable-
ness from one of his employers; and, after the summing up
of the learned judge, the jury found him guilty.
His Lordship sentenced him to 15 years' penal servitude.

NORTHERN CIRCUIT.—DURIZAM, Dec. 4,
(Before Mr. Justice Wightman.)
Daniel Downey and Sarah Downey, brother and sister,
aged respectively 29 and 27, were indicted for the man-
slaughter of William Thomas, at Felling, on the night of
the 30th of August last.

Mr. Campbell Foster and Mr. Laycock appeared for the
prosecution; and Mr. Blackwell defended the prisoners.
It appeared from the opening statement of the counsel for
the prosecution, and from the evidence, that a large num-
ber of Irish resided at Felling, and between those of them
who were Protestants and those of them who were Catholics
a bad feeling existed. On the night of the 30th of August
the deceased man Wm. Thomas and a friend of his named
Fox were talking on some religious question in a loud tone
in the streets of Felling, and Fox said "`Nell, I'm as good
a Protestant as anybody. This observation seemed to have
attracted notice. They went to the house of a man named
M'Voy, and had not been long there before several persons
came and knocked at the window shutters ; on Fox going
out soon after stones were thrown at him, a rush of a num-
ber of men was made upon him, and he was knocked down,
his head being cut and himself rendered insensible. Among
the crowd were the two prisoners, the female prisoner
having a poker or coal rake in her hand. The deceased
man Thomas then came out of M'Voy's, and shouted to
them to "stop that work," and on going up to where Fox
was lying bleeding on the ground, said " You unmanly
scoundrels, would you murder the man ?" A man named
Hagan cried out "By Jesus, we will murder you," and
immediately a man named Kelly threw a half brick at him,
which appeared to have struck him on the head and
knocked him down. Hagan, Kelly, and the two
prisoners and others then all rushed at the deceased while
he was down and commenced kicking him. Mrs. M'Voy
having raised a cry of " Police " Murder 1" assistance
came, and the two men Fox and Thomas were removed,
Thomas to his lodgings. He became sick soon after he was
carried home and never spoke after, and died at two o'clock
the following day. A post mortem examination of his head
showed that there was a severe bruise on the left side of his
head. On opening the skull under this bruise a clot of blood
tend
was found, about three ounces in weight, which, pressing
which their acts 'll3on the brain, had caused his death. There was no direct
gave the blpowuwer
proof how he came by this blow, but probably it was from
thaftdhealf brick thrown by Kelly. Both Kelly and Hagan
tended
dcattad being taken into custody. But it was con•
ftoirf
aaullwtheree:preikrseonlisabwleh. o were kicking Thomas
had a common
e
usi
hand
were
eohs canredal evidence,
ldy ti
causedgiwa:f thell
immaterial.
enagthh iowmf thesoef
deceased,
not conclusive that the For the defence it contended that the evidence was
his reiastobners had done anything to the
by
dKelly.
decased, and that
firing
gmast cbl.earl) attributable to the
blow from the half back fl
His Lordship, having carefully thee
aevidence,t;i of
left it to the jury whether, in their jadmgeuteuut

the deceased was not caused by the half brick thrown by
Kelly; and, secondly, if so, did they think that the two pri-
soners had a common design with Kelly to kill the de-
ceased, seeing that they had done nothing till after the halt
brick was thrown, which probably really caused his death.
The jury retired, and, after a short absence, fuund the
prisoners not guilty.

eeclesiastieal,ihave for fifty years been reserved to
men freshly imported from England. The Duke of
Wellington may have been moved by the second
feeling when, after the half-hattu mutiny, he ad-
vised that no Company's servant should ever be
Commander-in-Chief ; but her Majesty's Govern-
ment were not. They were perfectly willing when
they found men like Lord Metcalfe, to entrust to
them the most valuable British dependencies; but
they abstained from giving them what might seem
the natural prize of their lives. No Indian was
appointed Governor-General, or Commanderdn-
Chief, or Metropolitan, or, with an exception more
apparent than real, Chief Justice of the Supreme
Court. The Indian officer, however able or dis-
tinguished, or well informed, laboured, it was justly
felt, under two fatal disqualifications. He had been
bred up among the class whom he was called to
govern, probably married among them, certainly
formed friendships and intimacies which, in that
great family party the Indian administration,
were fatal to strict control. If he were a nepo-
tist the machine would probably come to a stand :
if he were not a nepotist, everybody would believe
that he was. Sir Chorles Metcalfe was pure in
patronage, but men who heard aide-do-camps call
the ad interim Governor-General " Charley" across
the table, were not predisposed to believe so. So
urgent was the necessity of avoiding this danger
that a rule was introduced, and is still observed,
prohibiting the employment of kinsmen in office in
the same country ; no native, it was known, would
appeal, say from the magistrate to his father-in law
the judge, nor would any native Prince resist a
Resident whose kinsman sat on the throne. More-
over, and the second difficulty was far more impor-
tant than the first, no Indian could ever be made to
feel the true relation of India towards the British
Empire. Imported young, and with their minds
still immature, the Indian civilians regarded India
almost as their own land. That terrible vastness of
scale which is the special feature of everything on
the Indian continent, a vastness no man accustomed
to Europe can ever fully realise, possessed their
imaginations, till England seemed to them a neces-
sary but annoying appendage to their magnificent
empire. To this day, greatly as this tone has
altered, hundreds of Anglo-Indians cannot conceal
their contempt for the "parochial interests of Great
Britain" as compared with the "Imperial interests
of a fifth of the human race." The notion that the
smallest English innovation affects the character of
a race whose daily action will influence the whole
future of man never enters their heads, and they
persistently postpone Imperial interests to those of
the Presidency in which they live. They have many
of them a positive pleasure in tariffs which, as
they think, protect native muslins against the
English invaders, and resent expenditure for the
Empire, as if England did not relieve India
of the cost of a foreign policy and maritime de-
fence. The feeling is immaterial, or even healthy,
in subordinates, but England must have some
link between the Empire as a whole and her
vast dependency, and that link has been sought
in Governors-General not bred up in India. The
habit of English statesmanship, moreover, the cone
scant collision amidst which English rulers work,
if it does not increase mental power, does develop
intellectual moderation, and intellectual moderation
is the one quality Indian statesmen lack. They are
always for beginning afresh, iu preference to im-
proving the old machine, are capable, for example,
of octroying a new code of procedure, because the
old one gives to creditors a little too much power.
In practice the remedy for these defects has worked
exceedingly well. The principles of government
are everywhere much the same, and a succession of
ignorant" servants of the Queen have since the
days of Hastings built up, consolidated, and re-
formed the Empire, for wt jell the Company had the
credit. It was Lord Wellesley, Sir H. Hardinge,
the Marquis of Hastings, and Lord Dalhousie, who
conquered the martial races of India, not the Com-
pany ; the interlopers who built the trade, not the
old officials; Lord Dalhousie who founded the rail-
way scheme, not an Indian engineer; Sir Charles
Wood not the Council, who carried out the recent
reorganisation. The rule was and is a wise one,
but the use of such rules is simply to secure the man
beet fitted to do the work required, and there can
be little doubt that in the present conjuncture Sir
John Lawrence is that man. We do not mean
simply that he is qualified only by his services,
though these have been beyond compare. Indian
stories are always so crowded with details that their
drift too often escapes the public; but the popular
theory about Sir John Lawrence is, as a whole,
quite true. Ile did most unquestionably save us
from the necessity of having to conquer India. From
the moment the Sepoys seized Delhi, to the moment
when its fall made civil government once more pos-
sible, India was cloven in twain, with Lord Can-
ning ruling on one side and Sir John Lawrence
upon the other, but with scarcely the faintest means
of communication between the two. For three
months, we believe,not an order from Calcutta ever
reached the Punjaub. There, however, was Sir John
Lawrence, with lees than 10,000 effective Europeans,
with 50,000 drilled veterans in revolt between him
and his only source of reinforcements, with the
Afghans threatening him on the West, all lost away
to the South, the Krialsa or fighting Sikhs held in
order only by their personal awe of him, one great
Sikh Prince with an army and treasury at disposal,
and hosts of small chiefs as hostile as mediatized
chieftains always are. For five months Sir John
Lawrence, without help save from within, main-
tained his position, inspired his own Crow wellian
energy into his chief subordinates, induced demi-
hostile princes to guard his communications, hurled
two armies successively upon Delhi, for whose fall
all Sikhs were watching, bribed the Afghans, raised
loans on his own bare word, enlisted the doubtful
warrior clan, the Khalsa, whom we had but just
settled down to the plough, actually ventured to
sanction the Khalsa national rite, " the baptism of
the sword," and when, in September, all seemed un-
availing, sent forward to Delhi his last hundred of
reliable troops, and stood amidst thirty millions of
nearly certain foes, confident only that his duty had
been done. There never was in the whole history
of British India such an interval as the fortnight
which preceded the fall of Delhi—Nort hero India
was utterly exhausted, the Mahrattas were gather.
ing round Lord Elphinstone, and the Sikhs even
before Delhi were muttering that the hour for them
had arrived. If Delhi did not fall, the Empire would,
and it was then that the application was made to
Sir John to choose between an assault which, had it
failed, would have been followed by the massacre
of every white face north of the Nerbudda, and a
suspension of the siege. Lord Lyveden is right
when he says that Lord Canning had no intention
of retreating from before Delhi, wrong when
he implies that retreat was out of the
question. Lord Canning could send no orders,
and did send none ; but every purely mili-
tary reason was against the assault. The responsi-
bility was thrown on Sir John, and to his prompt
reply it is owing that we had not to reconquer India
against, instead of with. the Sikhs. He authorised,
without legal power, an act of military madness—
the storm of a fortified city supposed to be defended
oy twice the besieging force and by a hostile popu-
lation tenfold the assailer'. e' number, with an army
which ten minutes' check would instantly have dis-
solved. Three days later the tidings, " Delhi has
fallen," were flying along that rapid telegraph of
successive human voices which so often puzzles ob-
servers in Asia, Bombay was subsiding into its
usual discontented calm, the Sepoy army was flying
to Rohilcund, the Sikhs as a nation were rallying
to the British standard, and Lord Canning was
able to write that the neck of the rebellion was
broken before a man had landed to his aid. That
' Sir John had marvellous assistance—Edwardes,
who held the dangerous valley of Peshawur with
a garrison his foes could have eaten ; Nicholson,
in whom England lost that boundless source of
power, an original General ; Montgomery, who en-
abled his chief to double himself, is true ' but then,
who saw and selected these men ? The first attri-
bute of a born ruler is his ability to pick his own
tools, and that ability is possessed by Sir John Law-
rence in the highest degree. There was one point,
moreover, on which even these men could lend him
no assistance, for it required a quality always in-
communicable. Major Edwardes could have crushed
the Sepoys with just as heavy a hand, Nicholson
might have planned an even more perfect campaign,
Mr. Montgomery could infuse into all classes equal
zeal and equal hardihood, but the Sikhs were the
true masters of the situation, and they looked to
"Jan Sahib" alone, feared him only among men,
quailed only before the thought of his unchangeable
fortune, and 'had cholera or over-exertion carried
him off—as seemed mice only too probable—
energy, and generalship, and skill in the guidance
of men would alike have been unavailing. The Sikhs
would have conquered India for another race than us.
It is not, however, on account of his services that
we believe this appointment wise. Better pay men
for services in any coin than governments for which
they are unfitted. But we believe Sir John Law-
rence is, at this juncture, the very man to fill his
splendid position. The two Indian difficulties are
at this moment the disturbances on the frontier and
the necessity of maintaining severer discipline
within the new Sikh force, and the mere arrival of
the Viceroy will probably terminate both. The
frontier tribes will not face the man who for five
years kept the bit so strongly within their teeth
that every raid cost them more than they _
distrust
gisatirnueil
in money as well as lives, and Sikhs will d
the dangerous prophecies which requirc for their
fu fitment that the " forehead" of their hero should
pass under a cloud. They
feee Engh
nets sooner than his fortune, end
faithful the disaffected
Th ie in itse
tharcul while they are
hout North India
must perforce remain inaon .
equal in value to a great vic.ory at
but Sir Johnlf

Lawrence meets also the requirements of internal
administration. The new organisation must be
completed by a man on the spot, who shall possess
the confidence of the advceates both of the new and
the ancient eyetems. Sir John Lawrence is himself
their very point of agreement. A civilian of civi-
lians, he was the one man on whom the " settlers"
relied for a comprehension of their claims, and
though he never bore a commission, and maintained
haughtily the supremacy of civil rule, he was
obeyed by generals older than himself. A strong
governor in the old sense of the word, with a lull
sense of the necessity of maintaining the absolute
power of the Government, and fully persuaded that
India can as yet be held only by the sword, he is,
nevertheless, a man who believes in justice and
progress, in railways, and canals, and free trade, in
better education and swifter justice, in fresh careers
for natives and more ample means of acquiring weait h.
Familiar with the old ideas, he has, curing his resi-
dence at home, comprehended those upon which the
Government must now be based, and though he re-
sisted the new organisation, he will now that it
is accomplished devote himself to the task of
making it work more perfectly than the old. The
natives know him of old as one who right or wrong
is, at all events, irresistible; the Europeans will
accept at his hands the compromise in which their
claims must end ; the civilians will feel his appoint-
ment an omen of a new future for themselves ; and
the army has for years studied his opinion as that
of a general made by commission higher than the
Queen's. The administration,_ painfully working its
way through heaps of the debris of rotten systems,
needs an accession of force, and Sir John Lawrence
is to all other rulers what a locomotive is to a cart.
His single temptation wil lbe to crowd the work of a
life into his term of rule, but the obstacles are so
many that the only result of This foible will be a
slightly swifter advance. The locomotive will bet
steadied by the weight of the train behind.
LONDON REVIEW.—A meeting of the English bar
to consider a question of law reform is so unprece-
dented an event that the grievance which brought
it to pass must be considered as beyond measure
serious. Indeed, we may measure the burden in
tome sense by a pecuniary test. The hours of a well
employed barrister are golden, his very minutes are
silver; and so when some 500 members of the pro-
fession, including a large proportion of its leaders,
spend, as they did on Wednesday, a couple of hours
in affirming a statement of the need of reform, and
in taking the preliminary steps for securing it, we
may consider they have testified their sincerity by a
subscription of 1,000 guineas to the cause. Nor,
certainly, is the cause undeserving of the sacrifice.
It is not an amendment in any one special branch of
law that is sought,it is an amendment of the system
by which the whole law is established and promul-
gated. For a great deal more of our law is made by
our judges than by the Legislature ; and whet the
Legislature does is, in fact, only supplementary or
corrective to what the judges have already done.
But between the huge mass of judge-made law and
the far smaller bulk of statutory law there is this
important distinction, that while the latter, what-
ever its faults, is at least immediately printed and
published by authority, the former, whatever its
perfections, is only printed at uncertain intervals, as
a more commercial speculation, and without receiv
ing the sanction of authority at all. So the result
is that there are above half-a-dozen different re-
cords of every point, all possibly, and frequently, at
variance in some essential particular. No lawyer,
therefore, can be sure of the law as adjudged at any
time unless he peruses all the different reports, and
their actual cost is not less than £45. But even
when he has perused them all he cannot be certain,
when they disagree, which will be adopted by the
judge before whom they are cited. The consequence,
then, is a very heavy personal outlay and enormous
additional labour, with the result of uncertainty and
confusion. And as whatever thus affects the bar-
rister recoils upon the public, it is very evident that
the subject of which the profession now stands
pledged to attempt the reform is one in which the
public is greatly interested, and is bound to lend
the aid of its intelligent consideration. The ques-
tion is very slightly technical, it depends ohiefly
upon maxims of common sense, and we may there-
fore fairly invite our readers to review with us the
several schemes proposed. There are in the first
place some inveterate Free Traders, who maintain
the superiority of the present system to any that can
be, or at least has yet been, devised. They urge
that in competition is to be found the only security
for obtaining the best articles, that the attendance of
skilled legal reporters is the only practicable check
upon the judges, at once deterring them from pro-
nouncing bad law, and preventing them from doc-
toring for publication the bad law they may
have uttered, and that these advantages
more than counterbalance the gain which would
ensue from possessing only a single authoritative
report,whether prepared or not under the judge's eye
Then there are those, headed by Mr. Daniel, the
leader in the 'present movement, who maintainthat
the business of reporting io properly the business of
the State, inasmuch as the law which is thus made
public binds all her Majesty's subjects, and who
consequently call on the State to appoint officers to
perform the duty. They would make the duty a
monopoly, by forbidding the courts to admit
any rival report, and they would make
the proper performance of the duty im-
perative by placing the actual reporters
under the immediate supervision of a committee of
the bar or the judges. Next there are some, whom
Mr. Pulling may be taken as representing, who
would have the duty in some respects subdivided,
by appointing an officer in each court whose busi-
ness should be to preserve a sufficient record of every
ease, while an official reporter should extract from
the record such cases as were proper for publication,
and edit them with that view. There are others
again who would have the work taken in hand by
an incorporated body of barristers, who should come
in the place of the bookseller as bearing the profit
and loss of the work, and by these means be urged
to expedition and accuracy, enjoying some degree
of favour, but not excluding competition. The first
objection which occurs to every one of these pro-
posals is, that they contain no element which would
effectually and permanently cure the existing evils.
The official reports would still be liable to imperfec-
tion, and imperfection would invite competition, It
is idle to say that competition could be excluded by
a formal rule that none save the official reports
should be of authority 'or be allowed to be cited.
Supposing the official report to be unintelligible, or
to contain evidently bad law, it would be impossible
to prevent a judge from referring to a rival series
which might explain or correct it. To do so would
be in teed to enthrone injustice and error. The rale
would be at first indirectly infringed, the judge
would surreptitiously look at the unauthorised re-
port, but soon what was done in darkness would
come to the light, and the rule would be a dead
letter. Here, then, in a few months or years, we
should find ourselves brought back to our present
position, with merely the addition of one now series
to the present supply. Or if, again, we were to try
to obviate the danger of any official reporter thus
misunderstanding or misstating the import of
a case, by requiring the judge who has decided
it to revise and certify the report, we come into
the danger to which the bar showed itself at
the meeting very sensitive, that the judge may
on reconsideration alter the statement and the
argument so as better to support his own opinion.
Human nature seems to be supposed by the bar
not to become impeccable even when clothed
with ermine. Finally, all these schemes are cer-
tainly open to the objection that they contain no
security for making official persons punctual in the
despatch of their business, and consequently might
leave the profession and the public in arrear of months
or years in regard to the decisions of the courts,
save in so far as the void might be supplied by the
competition of private enterprise. Another proposi-
tion, however, was made the other day in the
columns of a contemporary by Mr. Boyd Kinnear,
a member both of the English and Scottish bar,
which, as distinct in principle both from the exist-
ing and any proposed plan, deserves to be noticed.
This gentleman argues that the real cause of the
existing evil is the want of authoritativeness in any
of the reports; that the reporters, being unable to
say which of the facts were considered material by
the judge, are obliged to state them all; that the
desire to omit nothing which may have in-
fluenced him leads to a rivalry in prolixity, while
the wish to give every word which drops from
his lips leads to a verbatim record of his speech, con-
taining all its incidental, as well as its pertinent
observations. He would call in, for remedy of this
state of things, the principle of requiring theoju judge
himself to make, in every case, a talon note
f
facts which in his opinion are material, .and. to
and
of the
authorities which were cited before
append to this note his judgment in
writing : the
whole being issued at the time of giving
so that there would be no opportunity
adapting the facts to the opinion. These
annetrewsaarndds
t r
tothe printer, a
be transmitted by the
merelynot
whether whether thteh
e judg-
mentcfjudgments, according to his scheme,
teh,
eare at once to
proof is to be sent next day to o
judges,who
tty a majority would decide,
igb°e°idngrpbuabdlilsahwedb,uant d on this bing settled it
is
worth
would at once be published, so that in no case would
there be occasion for more than a week's delay. Mr.
Boyd Kinnear anticipates in the carrying oat of this
system no great delay or difficulty , as he urges
that the judge's note-book at present,coutainsr,goers
ought to contain, such a note of the relevant facts as
is all that would be requited a report; while the
judgments
prectice of writing the
greater brevity and accuracy;
and he observes that cora wouldconduce,
he thinks, to their
petition would be effectu-
a y excluded, for no other reporter could expect to
explain the
judge's meaning better than himself, or