The Sun.
London, England, 1866-10-05 00:00:00

SOCIAL

GRESS.

MANCHESTER, Oct. 4.
The attendance at the Assize courts this morning
was exceedingly large. The business was to be
opened by an address from Lord Brougham in the
civil court, and long before 10 o'clock, the hour
appointed, the court became very crowded. His
lordship did not enter until nearly half an hour
after the appointed time. He delivered his address
in a tolerably audible voice, but appeared at times
to be troubled with its management. His lordship
laidgreat emphasis on certain passages in his speech,
and particularly those characterising the English
and French modes of criminal procedure, and the
subsequent passage recommending the treadmill as
punishment for bribers as well as the bribed at
elections. The recommendation itself was received
with applause by the audience.
His LORDSHIP said—The painful duty once more
devolves upon me of opening the address of the
Council with a notice of our losses since the last
Congress. Of these the latest is also a severe one,
in Sir C. Hastings, who, beside his relation to our
worthy secretary, was one of our most eminent
colleagues. His great position, his distinguished
fame in the medical world, and his rare kindness
and humanity in the exercise of his profession, are
lost in the service he rendered the medical body by
founding and conducting the British Medical Asso-
ciation, which has placed medical and surgical prac-
titioners in their just position, and given rise to the
most important provisions for the extinction of
irregular and pernicious practice. Bat his labours
in the investigation of physical science, and his
foundation of the Natural History Society of Wor-
cestershire, showed how little his studies were con-
fined to the profession of which he was so great an
ornament. The world, and social science especially,
has sustained a great loss in the death, though at an
advanced age, last April, of Lord Glenelg. After an
• intimate acquaintance of 65 years, I can truly say I
never knew a better man, and very few abler.
He was a most accomplished scholar, a learned
man in all respects, a distinguished orator, a Mi-
nister whose sound views and most able administra-
tion were thankfully acknowledged, even by the
colleagues whose treatment of him was so unjust,
and to themselves so disgraceful. Above all, he was
a man of spotless integrity, both in his public and
private capacity, of deep and well-considered reli-
gious opinions and strong religious feelings, but
never for an instant sharing the intolerance of others
towards those with whom he differed most widely,
and firmly resisting all the aggressions of bigotry,
whether ecclesiastical or political. His public vir-
tues and the entire unselfishness of his nature were
strikingly displayed when dismissed from high office
in a manner as inexcusable as was Lord Plunket's
and Lord Wellesley's, by being suddenly told that
his place was wanted for some other arrangement ;
he yet never showed his just resentment by a single
vote, or by any remark, but persevered to the last
in his honest course, nor ever uttered a word against
those colleagues by whom he had been praised, and
thanked, and betrayed. He departed from us in
extreme old age with all the powers of his mind en-
tire ; and of him it may be truly said :—" Non yiri-
bus ant celeritate corporum magnat res geruntur, sed
consilio, auctoritate, sententia, quibus non mono non
orbari sed etiam augeri senectus solet." We had, the
last time I saw him, been discussing a subject that
had often before occupied our attention, the greater
pleasure which arises from a recollection of the past,
its persons, and events and scenes, whether gratify-
ing or not at the tiine,-than in the prospect of the
unknown future, and on which I had, many years
ago, urged the greatest of our living poets (Crabbe)
to turn his matchless descriptive song. It gives
me great pleasure to announce the publication of
that great orator and lawyer, Lord Plunket's
speeches, which we have so long been expecting.
His grandson, of the Irish bar, has now, as far as
was possible, completed his task of collecting and
preparing them for the press, and I am happy to add
he attends the Congress. The introduction has been
furnishedby me as was that to Lord Erskine's speeches.
But it must be observed that there is this difference
between the two great ornaments of the bar, that
Lord Plunket, like M. Berryer, was greater in the
senate than ever in his professional character. To
all friends of the law, as well as of social reform, this
publication is an event of singular interest, and our
obligation to Mr. Plunket is great. The last session
has certainly been most unfruitful in measures of
law amendment, and, indeed, has been in all re-
spects most disappointing to the friends of social
science. This was no doubt chiefly owing to the
lengthy debates on reform, which led to no measure;
and it is to be regretted that attention was not given
to the acceptance by the Whigs, at the private
meeting in December, 1829, of the proposed house-
hold suffrage with a year's residence, which might
have been extended to all inhabitants of each house,
and occasioned the admission to the suffrage of the
better class of working men, as well as the middle
classes. The reform debates ended in the dissolution
of the Liberal Ministry, whose resignation was
wholly unexpected, and must be admitted to have
been quite unnecessary. It is, however, manifest
that as long as there is no judicial department no-
thing effectual will ever be undertaken for the great
matter of law amendment. What is everybody's
business is proverbially nobody's business ; and the
heads of the law are quite enough occupied in ad-
ministering it as at present constituted, beside that
they are unfortunately for the most part averse to
any change. Many years have now elapsed since our
eminent colleague, Mr. Napier, after he had ceased
to be Chancellor of Ireland, carried in the House of
Commons an address for the establishment of a judi-
cial department which received a favourable answer
from the Crown ; and, if the promises then given had
been performed, the institution would, beside many
other advantages (among the rest, the affording an
efficient council to the Home Secretary in the dis-
charge of his most delicate and difficult duty of ad-
vising the Crown on the remission of punishment),
have assured the undertaking of the needful im-
provements in our legal system. Our learned and
excellent colleague, Sir E. Wilmot, has prepared
a plan for aLaw Amendment Department, the par-
ticulars of which, it is to be hoped, he will transmit
should his judicial duties unfortunately prevent his
attendanee at the Congress. The same negative
which applies to formation of a judicial department
must unhappily be given as to almost all other law
amendments. Among others the important subject
of reconcilement has been once more passed over,
although an admirable plan was suggested, and its
details proposed by Mr. Kerr, the able and learned
Sheriff's Court Judge, and so framed as to meet the
principal objections by providing that in all cases
reconcilement should be optional to the parties. The
great success of conciliation in other countries, espe-
cially in Denmark and Danish colonies, renders this
repeated postponement truly vexatious. Thepreven-
tion of useless, and in many instances oppressive,
ltirtiiegsa; many
ticasn hasbeen truly remarkable in those casual:
as 29,000 out of 30,000 suits com-
menced were in Denmark thus settled without being
brought to trial. The
set reporte of the Commission for
inquiry into the great
of capital punishment
has been printed,
and is most important from the
great body of information which it contains
this and other countries, and it offered an
both on
almost
solitary exception to the blank of the late
session—
forthe material recommendation of the report
against public executions has been adopted by Par-
liament after a somewhat warm opposition in the
Upper House. The more this subject is considered,
the expediency of the change thus introduced into
the execution of the criminal law will be more fully
admitted. The great defects in the law of evidence,
so often pointed out, still remain not only without
remedy, but without any real defence. The exclu-
sion of parties in cases before the Divorce Court, of ter
the impressive argument of the learned and enlight-
ened Judge, still continues. Their exclusion in such
cases was a provision forced upon me in passing the
great act for the examination of parties in all suits,
and this was repeatedly stated on my authority by
the present Chief Baron, Sir F. *Kelly, when a mem-
ber of the House of Commons. The other decision
which he strenuously urged, of the right to a jury of
all parties in suits for divorce and legitimation also,
was not, perhaps, sanctioned by the same judicial
approval, but was most ably maintained by him.
Another most important extension of my Evidence