The Sun.
London, England, 1854-06-06 00:00:00

LAW AMENDMENT SOCYETY.

I The usual meeting was held last night, the Right
1-Hon. Lord, Brougham in the chair, when a, discussion
1 took place on the printed report of the committee re
garding the expediency of establishing a .Minister sf
1 Justice.

The Noble CHAIRMAN thought that there v vas a little
exaggeration in the report as to the existing defective
system of promoting amendment of the law. The obser-
vation was continually being made that the present
session of Parliament would pass without doing any-
thing. That was a great mistake. If only a very few
of the measures introduced for law amendment would
pass that session, great benefits would be conferred on
the community. The Common Law Procedure Act which
had gone through the House of Lords, and which had
received unanimous sanction in almost all its details,
was one of the most valuable statutes that had been
brOught forward for many centuries. It embodied sub-
stantially his own propositions regarding the saw of evi-
dence and arbitration.
Mr. ELLIOT said it would be desirable to define the
,exact position and -specific duties of the_ contemplated
Minister of Justice.

Mr. R. CARR was unwilling to raise any vexatious ob-
jection against the able report submitted for their consi-
deration. He noticed that nothing was said as to whe-
ther the Minister of Justice should bo in the House of
Commons or Lords. Mr. Commissioner Farm, in his
pamphlet, had laid it down that such a high officer should
sit; in the lower house. The members in the House of
Peers were not so accessible to the public. Were all its
members as accessible as their noble chairman, there
would then be no necessity for withdrawing the Minister
of Justice from the upper house. He must be where
the grievances of the public would be best pleaded, lis-
tened to, and redressed. He did not approve of the
plan to have him in the Lords and an under-secretary in
the Commons. That would not work effectively. His
duties would be in particular to keep the law in its
proper channel, and to bring it back to such where it
had diverged from its native track. He regretted to
say that the law had been greatly deformed and distorted,
and by the very last men who should have done so, by
some of the judges who might be dexterous special
pleaders, and subtle at technicalities, but were extremely
deficient in the knowledge of jurisprudence, which was
based on good common sense.

Mr. Peeeneevekaid-there were tlaree,distinct heads in
the report, each of which required great attention. One
of them referred to the proper administration of the law
of the land, and that the prosecution should be steadily
conducted by some particular officer ; he reckoned that
a very valuable suggestion. There ought to be a public
prosecutor to see that justice should be uniform and
consistent. He would not advise that the Minister of
Justice should have the power to review or modify the
sentences of the judges, making him virtually a high
court of appeal. Much less could he agree to the sug-
gestion that such officer should be invested with the ar-
bitrary power of reprimanding or dismissing any of the
high public servants. No individual should ever wield
such irresponsiblie power, which amounted to tyranny.
Mr. ROGERS contended that law reform had emanated
largely, if not exclusively, from the legal body. The
late Sir Samuel Romilly had brought forward the great
reforms in the criminal code. Jeremy Bentham, a
lawyer also, was the prince of law reformers, and two of
the greatest law reformers now sitting in the House of
Peers adorned the legal profession. The Minister of
Justice should be a lawyer, in order to quickly under-
stand- all grievances submitted to his notice, and be
promptly prepared to apply suitable remedies.
Mr. ELLIOT saw no reason for the Minister of Justice
being „necessarily a great lawyer, provided he had a good
staff around him. He differed from Mr. Pulling as to
some supervision over the judges. There could be no
tyranny inflicted on the public, and the judges would
never be interfered with, except under extraordinary
circumstances. He knew of many individual cases of
tyrann'y, where unfortunate individuals had been heavily
punished for really no crbne at all but want of self-pos-
session and cool nerve in court. A. large portion of the
public were strongly of opinion that our judges were far
too independent, and that they required some salutary
check and closer supervision.
The CHAIRMAN deeply regretted that the discussion in
the House of Lords regarding a public prosecutor had
been so meagrely reported in the newspapers. On that
occasion Lord Campbeil had entered fully into the
merits of the question, and had made some admirable
remarks; which had never appeared in print. &Wm•
quently, he (Lord Brougham) had given the Chief Jus-
tice another opportunity of, expressing his opinion on
the subject by asking him a question. Lord Campbell
had in consequence again discussed the point, but not
nearly so fully as on the former occasion, Mr. Philli-
more had taken up the same subject, and had introduced
a bill still more extensive than his own. The country
was under. deep obligations to Mr. Phillimore, who,
however, was willing to leave it in the hands of Govern-
ment, provided they would give, reasonable hopes of
adopting the spirit of his measure. In 1834, previous
to the November of that year, he (Lord Brougham),
along with the then Home Secretary, Lord Besborough,
bad made every arrangement to institute a public pro-
secutor for the great and populous districts of Middlesex
and London. He had been then told that there had
existed for some time a similar officer for the West Rid-
ing of Yorkshire, Northumberland, Durham, and the
County Palatine of Chester. It was proposed to appoint—
one counsel to be always the prosecuting counsel to
superintend that peculiar jurisdiction, getting up the
case for trial, and also to exhibit the wisdom of giving
up betimes the prosecution.
Mr. HASTINGS was glad that no substantial opposition
had been shown towards the report. It had been stated
that reviewing the sentences of the judges would be a
strange innovation, if not a step towards tyranny. Be-
tween the judges and the mercy of the Crown. there was
at present no intermediate tribunal. It was most desira-
ble that something of the kind should be organised. If
any man, no matter his position, abused his office, he
was most properly liable to censure, and to be araigned
before public opinion. Why should judges be exempted
from thet salutary ordeal ? Then, looking at our county
and stiperiJiary magistracy, he need not say how much
their decisions required supervision and frequent alters.
tion. A minbt9r of Justice could manage these duties
much more effeotively than the Home Secretary. His
place should be in -the House of Commons, where there
was greater activity than in the upper house, and a
larger amount of Lib;eral members to support him. The
Common Law Procedure Act, now passing through
Parliament, might have been rendered much more effi-
cient had a Minister of .Tustice been in existence.
The CHAIRMAN asked what had been done during the
present session ? The Common Law Procedure Bill
would pass, and that was of immense importance. It
would not do to underrate the amount of fusion of law
and equity accomplished by its provisions, for some
most important equitable powers had been given to the
courts of common law, It had adopted almost all the
important parts of his arbitration bill, which had been
introduced last session. Again, it fundamentally em-
braced the Law of Evidence and Trial by Jury Bills, in-
troduced also by himself last year. And it provided for
compulsory arbitration, and gave power to judges to order
a reference. At one time he thought of inserting in the
Common Law Procedure Act his clauses about bills of
exchange and promissory notes. The committee, how-
ever, thought it better to keep his clauses separate.
Then there was Mr. Craufurd's excellent bill, and Lord
Harrowby's for the registration of Bills of Sale. He
must add Mr. Butt's process of snhpcena by leave of
the judges. extending equally throughout the United
Kingdem. Mr. Whiteside, too, had a bill
ptoreeexedteunrde
to Ireland many parts of the Common Law
Act. On the whole there were no grounds for dissatis-
faction at the proceedings of the present session.
Mr. CRAUFURD, M.P., complained of the treatment
of his bill in committee. It was ao changed, that he
could now hardly recognize it. All the members of his
committee were lawyers, and he had found them most
untractable and capricious. He considered the legal
body extremely Conservative, most unwilling to move
in advance, and only doing so when they saw that they
must be ridden over if they did not progress.
The report was then unanimously adopted.
A committee was then formed to oonsidenthe'suleiject
of private bill legislation, consisting of Messrs. Pulling,
Hastings, Bullen, Allan, and Tudor.
Mr. &LIAM moved for a committee to consider the
treatment of offences to persons committed under the
influence of intoxication, and the best mode of checking
or punishing them. He thought that this came pecu-
liarly under the cognizance of the Law Amendment
Society. A law should be framed making crime aggra-
vated, instead of being mitigated, by acts of drunken-
ness.
The CHAIRMAN asked Mr. Bullen if he thought the
magistrates acted under the conviction that drunkenness
was a mitigation in punishment 1
Mr. BoLLEN said no ; but most ignorant persona
brought up before magistrates were of that opinion, and
were alviays ready with that argument.
Mr. CRAUFURD objected to the motion as a censure
on the magistrates and judges of the land. They were
amenable to the Home Secretary. The motion was
virtually a fierce attack upon drunkenness, and was
akin to the Maine liquor law.
After some little discussion the motion wasindefinitely
postponed. The meeting then separated.

A. FEMALE PICKPOCKET.—The police have just ar-
rested the oldest and most experienced of Parisian fe-
male pickpockets—a woman nicknamed from her dex-
terity, the Main d'Or. A few days ago they received
intelligence that several pockets had been picked at railway
stations, and that the Main d'Or had just arrived in
Paris. Thinking that she must be the author of the
robberies they set a watch for her, and yesterday they
saw her in the bureau of the Passy omnibuses, near the
Palais Royal. She was finely dressed, but preserve
were in
d
an air of demure respectability. Several ladies
the office at the time ; and the police saw her slip her
hand into the pocket of a young lady
and draw from it
' a well-filled purse. They immediately in polite terms
asked her to accompany them, and they carried her off
to the Prefecture of Police. Main d'Or made no at-
tempt to deny her guilt, but said it v‘s•ahseherarafirrrsietdoffence,
e
and that she had only recently arrived from Holland
where her husband died a short time ago. The history
of this woman is very curious.
early age of fifteen, and immediately took to thieving.
pthaiives: most of
Her success was such that she and her husband lived
o tl
lived
ed withseveral eminentana
and ki
tep t a carriage
er-kfterhis
she
hotel
ev
now in gaol. Her age
sixty-seven, and for upwards of tat present is about
years she has Con-
-I,i idea a
whomt death
arei
stautly practised thieving. In the course of that time
y
she has frequently been condemned in France, and also
in Switzerland, Germany, Italy, Holland, bud other
i countries.—Galignoni.