The Sun.
London, England, 1848-05-13 00:00:00

IMPERIAL PARLIAMENT.
HOUSE OF LORDS, May 12.

Their Lordships met at Five o'clock.
Earl Fl I ZLIARDINGE presented several petitions
in favour of legallzing the society of Odd Fellows.
Petilions with a similar prayer were presented by Earl
FITZWILLIAM and Lord STANLEY.

The Earl of GALLOWAY presented a petition from
the Synod of Lothian and Tweeddale against the Diplo-
matic Relations with Rome Bill. _ .

Lord BEAUMONT presented several petitions in
favour of the leeal,zation of the Odd Fellows' Society.
The Earl of EGLINTON presented a petition from
Lanark against the Registration (Scotland) Bill.
LAW REFORM.
Lord BROUGHAM, in bringing under the considera-
tion of the House the state of the law, legislative and
judicial, said it was almost 20 years since, in the other
House of Parliament, he brought forward the whole sub-
ject of the civil law of this country, with the exception
of equity and the law of real property ; and then com-
missions were issued. He had now to call attention to
what had been done in consequence of those commis-
sions, and what remained still to be done. He thought
that much encouragement had arisen from what had
then been done, and he was gratified to see so many
of their Lordships now present to listen to so dry
a subject ; it was unconnected with party ; it belonged
not to that class of questions which interested everybody;
nevertheless, he hoped for the indulgence of their Lord-
ships whilst he called their attention—first, to the
makers of the law ; secondly, to the way in which it was
made; thirdly, to its fabric ; fourthly, to its promul-
gation ; and fifthly, to the administration of the law.
He must avow that a great change bad taken place in
the makers of the law. Much of the fear he once enter-
tained as to throwing the franchise open tomankind had
been taken away by the extraordinary results of the re-
cent elections is France. No doubt much reform was
required in our own House of Commons, as affecting
bribery and corruption, and a more perfect representation
of the people. There was also a great flaw in the
qualification of Members. Bankrupts could not sit in
Parliament; then why should insolvents who were not
traders? Ought not this law of exclusion to apply to
the gambler, the spendthrift, and the horse-jockey ?
Why should we make laws to bind the honest trader
more than the bankrupt ? He thought there should
be an Act to prevent persons who did not pay their
debts in full—who squandered their fortunes on their
mistresses, on the dice-table, and on the race-
course, and cheated their tradesmen—from sitting in Par-
liament. He would now consider how the Legislature, as
at present constituted, performed its duty of law-making.
Statutes were made without reference to former Acts—
nay, parts of statutes were made without reference to
other parts, and they often became such a mass of con-
tradiction that nobody could understand them. The
Noble and Learned Lord pointed out several instances
of legal anomalies arising from the present mode of law-
making. The same canons which were observed in
drawing other legal documents should be regarded in
preparing Acts of Parliament, and no one term should
be used which had not been previously explained.
General references should not be made to previous Acts
of Parliament, but the precise words should be quoted.
It was said that Parliament was magnas inter opes ; but,
with all the care that was taken, the intot pretation
clauses in modern Acts were always full of mistakes.
They were sometimes bodily cut out of previous Acts,
without reference to the Act to which they were made to
sdu r
sdei
at iveese
y whichbe beexl ii se tveedd inA Actst n cte
.f
P applyar i m e nirt hsw
osuhl
tion, for instance, was taken between unground and
unpolished glass; but every one knew that if the
glass was ungrcund it must be unpolished. The Act,
however, went on to provide that the annealling oven
should be made of a rectangular form, with the sides
perpendicular and parallel to each other. Why, if it
was rectangular, it must be perpendicular and parallel;
and yet the Legislature imposed a fine of 1001. in case
of the doing of that which it was mathematically im-
possible anybody could do.—(Laughter.)
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Par-
liamentand all Jurisdiction on
that there should be
understood aatt.ers of fact, and recom-
mendat.d Commons (as we uncle
asLo undertrod)t,hetofafientds,asuvcehrdveiertdiet jdutrbye cNoombpleosaenddoLef Lordsarntd
the direction of a judge
which both Houses of Parliament to be special, and upon
would now proceed to consider what should legislate. He
wreform
laws were made.
Sir Samuel Romilly's plans for la
when he proposed them, but man
been adopted. He had himself complained %riled since
urt
of Delegates and the compoiition of the Privyt Council,'
and the Bills which he bad brought forward on thesei
subjects had effected very great improvement. These
things gave him great hope. The criminal law, too, had
eo rtmh e
mwoefr e rejected
been much mitigated, and he believed sufficiently so. Ile
did not think the punishment of death should be taken
away from any of the offences to which it at present ap-
plied. He approved of that alteration in the law which
had given to prisoners the benefit of counsel. He con-
sidered that, in the imposition of fines, there was too
much latitude in the administration of our criminal jus-
tice—a latitude which enabled many a rich offender to
escape with what was to him practical impunity. The
next point to which he would advert was the present
anomalies in our legal system, in reference to marriage
and legitimacy. He could not but think that these ano-
malies required to be removed, so that the subjects
of the realm might have a clear knowledge whether
they were married or not married, legitimate
or bastards, which could not be the case while the
laws of marriage and of legitimacy remained so entirely
discrepant as they now were, as among the various
courts of law in England and Scotland, and even among
the various courts in England. It was preposterous
that a man who bad married in Scotland might come to
England and there throw aside the bonds which he had
legally contracted across the border, but which the Jaw
of England enabled him here to disavow as illegal and
invalid, and to treat his wife as a concubine—his chil-
dren as bastards. The law of partnership, again, was
a subject which needed immediate and close revision, in
reference, more especially to the question of bankruptcy.
The law of real property, particularly as to transfers,
called for thorough amendment. There were in England
only about 200,000 landholders in fee, and in Ireland
about 8,000, whereas in France there were 11,000,000 of
such proprietors. He did not advocate the system by
which land in France was thus minutely subdivided, a
system most injurious in very many respects; but
he certainly considered that much good would arise in
this country from giving greater facilities to the transfer
of landed property. Any change in this respect under
an intensely artificial system must, however, be placed
on a most comprehensive basis. Our system of convey-
ancing was of the most complicated nature, and required
for its revision a large and comprehensive grasp. The
great principle to be aimed at was the establisfAment of
a public registry of title deeds of estates, with the exten-
sion to this country of the Scotch process of a declara-
tory action, by which the ownership of an estate was
ascertained and permanently fixed, without the some-
times interminable, and always expensive suits, which
were necessary for such a purpose in this country. He
would next ask why we should retain that crotchet of
law, so pregnant with litigation. which placed a different
construction upon words in a will and upon words in a.
deed, the result of which had been in thousands of cases,
the btquest, not of property, but of a lawsuit. With
respect to the mode of framing conveyances, though much
had been done in the way of simplifying these forms,
much still remained to be done. He admitted the
difficulty of this task, but he considered the difficulty
quite removable. One very ready means towards this
end would be the adoption of the principle in force in
Scotland, of paying the solicitor according to the value
of the property conveyed, and not indeficite costs, ac-
cording to the length of the conveying document. He
next came to a most important subject—the digesting
the whole of our criminal law into one code, so that the
people who were called upon to obey the law might have
some chance of knowing what the law was. Here did
our statute law extend over no fewer than 40 quarto
volumes, comprising 30,000 pages, whereas Napoleon
put his whole code into a volume of 750 12mo. pages.
It was his intention to conclude his address by placing
on their Lordships' table a Bill for consolidating into
one statute the whole law of crimes and punishm enta,
separating therefrom the law of procedure for another
measure. He would next say one word as to the ad-
ministration of justice, and that word should be in re-
ference to the local courts of justice. For these he would
suggest the appointment of a professional man of tried
competence, to act as salaried chairman, so as to give
increased efficiency to these tribunals, and to pr event
those offences, which under non-professional direction,
however well intentioned, were sure, from time to I time,
to occur, and as often as they occurred, to weaken: the
authority of the law throughout the locality. He was
most anxious to introduce into England the office o
t)ioniatour
results towtehuelde
be
ffean
public prosecutor, which, in Scotland, was found to
attended with such beneficial commut
cif
The institution of suchrkaedn o_
tally
un
o
grand juries occasionally f
guard against those mafall.b der
ser fr se
rnn ct t o whichc
he out of
that he thought th eta as
underpaid;sa considered it quite .
em should act well which sal p-
posed jaurduglees
altogether w u l would simplys
the question that a system
leave wet it-
p
to go abroad, perhaps to an u
minster Ilall
d that competent men would
healthy climate, for 1,200/. a year, equivalent, as a g 'e-
neral rule, to no more than 6001. in this coun tr y.
Adverting to the Masters'-office' he would ally
that he thought his department was susceptible of s ery
great improvement. He entirely objected to the sys tem
under which matters of fact, about which there was , no
dispute, were sent before the Master, and made the t ab-
ject of expensive inquiry; and he objected also to the
sending before the Masters matters of law or eq• aity,
which should be decided by the Judge in c ourt.
The delays which resulted from this system wree, in
infinite cases, absolutely ruinous. He knew of one in-
stance of a mortgagee's suit, commenced in ISO 7, which
in 1847, forty years atter, occupied the Court for eight
days in discussing some new phase of it; and there was
another case he knew of, a case in bankrup try, which
begun in 1828, was still unsettled, with this feature
about it, that whereas the assets were, in 1825, 3,7004
they had now been reduced by law expenses to 383 L; so
that the creditors, even by the settlement of tE e matter
at once, if they did get any oyster at all, would find it a
very small fish indeed. In relation to the Court of
Chancery be had one great improvement to suggest.
That Court had at the present moment the administration
of sixty millions of personal property, and of scarcely a
less amount of real property; and for the administration
of this enormous wealth its officers, legal men, were sup-
posed to be endowed also with the qualities of farming,
trading, fishing, mining, managing theatres, and doing
all sorts of non-professional things. What was the cone
sequence of this? Why, that whenever any one saw ft
house or an estate going to w reek and ruin, he at once
t,ccounteti for the desolation by saying to himself, " Oh,
that place is in chancery I" One remedy which he would
propose for this evil was the appointment of othcial
assignees or managers, appointed by the Court, and