The Sun.
London, England, 1853-02-15 00:00:00

IMPERIA L PARLIAMENT.

HOUSE OF LORDS—(YESTERDAY.)
The LORD CHANCELLOR took his seat on the woolsack
at five o'clock.

The Bishop of EXETER gave notice' that to-morrow
(this day) he should move for papers respecting the
clergy reserves.
Lord CLANCARTY complained that on the 14th of
February, 1853, the house was still not in possession of
the report of the Commissioners on National Education in
Ireland for the year 1851. One circumstance made this
especially worthy of notice, namely, that though their
lordships had not received this report, it had been irinted
and circulated and sold, and commented on by an Irish
newspaper he bad seen. He trusted that the 'parties,
whoever they were, to whom was entrusted the distribu-
tion of the blue-books, would not allow this to occur,
again. The information thus,withheld from them was
most important, as the noble lord, coming from the low-
lands of Scotland, would know the wealth and prosperity
of Scotland were owing to education, not to say scrip-
tural education. If Ireland had had the same advantages
she would not have been iu her present demoralised
state.

The Earl of ABERDEEN said he was ignorant as to
the department where the neglect arose, but he would
take care the report was immediately distributed.

LEGAL REFORM.
The LORD CHANCELLOR rose to state to their
lordships, and through their lordships to the country,
the intentions of her Majesty's Government on the sub-
ject of legal reform. When first he became connected
with the profession of the law, now more than thirty-
five years ago, that subject was one which certainty,
without the walls of Parliament, and certainly to a great
extent within the walls of Parliament, excited very little
interest, and in fact did not at all arrest public attention.
There was, indeed, Jeremy Bentham, who, in his amus-
ing, epigrammatic, and very often well-reasoned essays,
strove to awaken public attention on the question ; and
in the other house there was an individual whose name,
as connected with that subject, could never be remem-
bered without respect—l allude to Sir S. Romilly. After
him, there was his (the Lord Chancellor's) noble friend
who formerly filled the woolsack, but was not now pre-
sent, Lord Brougham. From that time to the present, this
important subject had been under consideration more or
less ; but he need not say how markedly different the
state of things was at the present day. The subject, so
far from being now one which did not arrest public at-
tention, might fairly be represented—putting more ex-
citing subjects aside—as one than which no question
more engrossed the thoughts of the community. The
whole people had come to desire to have the laws upon
such a footing that our rights might be clearly and well
defined ; the mode of enforcing them as simple, as cheap,
and as expeditiouslas the ingenuity of those who directed

their attention to the subject could devise. Carrying
back their lordships' attention to the period when ho
first became connected with the law, he might-say that
the distinguished lawyer—than whom there was none
more distinguished—who then filled the woolsack—and
he might say the same of those who preceded him—that
they scarcely seemed to have considered the introducing
or maturing of measures of legal reform constituted any
very distinct or essential branch of the duties which
devolved upon them. He did not mean to say that if

they had been asked they would have replied that they
had no such duties, but that practically they conducted
themselves as if they had not ; that very few measures
originated with them, and that they rather made it their
duty to watch against the introducing of hasty and ill-
considered measures on the part of others, than to prepare
and to propose proper and well-considered ones on the part
of the Government. That state of things also had been very
much altered in modern times, and no one filling the office
he now had the honour to fill could fail to feel that to him
the country looks, if not for the introduction of measures
of legal reform, at least for the general supervision of
the whole of our legal system—to introduce where the
introduction of new measures was necessary, to resist
where the measure proposed appeared to be ill-conceived,
and, in short, to exercise a general control over the legal
condition of the country, in order to keep it in the most
satisfactory state which the order of things will allow.
With these feelings, immediately after he had the honour
to receive the great seal from her Majesty, he thought it
his duty, without hesitation and without delay, to direct
attention to the existing state of the legal courts, the
great courts of this country, and in the first place to see
whether they were or were not in a satisfactory state.
to consider whether there were any measures that he
could safely, or ought to, introduce, or whether it was
right and desirable that he should 'pause before taking
any step in the matter. He felt that there might now
possibly be a danger, the opposite of that into which he
thought those who held the great seal half a century ago
wore too apt to fall—a danger lest from the great and
proper feeling that the law required reforming a dispo-
sition to mere change should arise, and measures be in-
troduced for the mere sake of introducing them—a danger
lest the holder of the great seal should fall into a course
like that sometimes practised by inferior medical practi-
tioners, who would prescribe physic for the patient when

he circumstances were such that to have left him alone

would possibly have been best. Under this impression,

and with these views, he directed his attention to the

state in which he found tho tribunals of this country ;
and first to those courts which, after all, are the most
important of the great courts, the courts of common
law in which the original rights of mankind are enforced