appeal, as is done in the case of an ordinary action. The expense of bringing attesting witnesses to prove apprenticeship indentures, leases, agreements, &c. &c. &c. at the trial of appeals, is most onerous and unnecessary; and there can be no doubt but that all the facilities for cheapening proof given to individuals in their lawsuits are doubly proper to be given to parishes.

Three valuable statutes (for the fourth is a mere amendment of one of the three) have been brought in and carried by the exertions of the present Chief of the Poor Law Commission. We give a partial epitome of their contents from Mr. Archbold's preface, who has edited these statutes also in his customary lucid, succinct, and sensible manner : —

"The first of these statutes, as here inserted (11 & 12 Vict. c.91.), relates to the debts of a parish, and to the audit of accounts relating to parishes and unions. It gives to persons contracting with overseers a remedy against their successors in office upon all such contracts as shall be made within the last three months of the overseers' year of office. An exception to a certain extent is made as to the bill of costs of the parish solicitor. The statute also allows of unions or parishes paying sums which may have been expended for their benefit, although, according to the strict rules upon the subject, such payment could not have been allowed in any audit of the accounts of such parish or union. It regulates the manner in which auditors shall certify disallowances or balances in the accounts they audit, and also any surcharges they may make in the course of their audit. This statute also enables the overseers of several parishes to join in the expenses of appeals against poor-rates in certain cases.

"The second of those statutes (11 & 12 Vict. c. 114.) is merely an amendment of the first, although passed in the same session.

"The third (11 & 12 Vict. c. 110.) relates to the mode of charging the relief given in certain cases in unions: the cost of the relief of wanderers, wayfarers, and foundlings in unions, shall be charged to the common fund of the union; and, upon the application of such wanderers or wayfarers for relief, they may be searched, and any money found upon them shall be applied to the common fund of the union. So the cost of relieving paupers rendered irremoveable by stat. 9 & 10 Vict. c. 66. shall be payable out of the common fund. On the other hand, the cost of relieving

casual poor, that is to say, persons becoming chargeable to a strange parish by reason of some accident, casualty, or sudden illness there, shall be paid by the parish, or (if irrecoverable under 9 & 10 Vict. c. 66.) by the union in which he resides, or by the parish or union to which he may happen at the time to be actually chargeable, and not by the parish in which he has met with the accident, &c., as formerly. As to the poor persons who are irremoveable, and therefore chargeable to the union fund, as above mentioned, this statute gives the guardians the same power that overseers have, of proceeding against the relations of such poor persons, to compel them to contribute to their maintenance, and also enables the guardians to assist them in emigrating. The statute contains one other regulation, which promises to be most salutary, and was much wanted, namely, punishing persons as vagrants who apply for relief, having at the same time money or other property in their possession, or under their immediate controul, with which they may provide for their own maintenance, without the aid of the parish, and which they do not disclose to the overseer or other officer to whom they make their application. Also the regulation above mentioned as to the search of wanderers and wayfarers applying for relief, although perhaps an overstrong measure, is likely to be very beneficial.

"The fourth Act merely makes some alteration in the statute relating to the district schools for the education of the infant poor."

It ought also to be mentioned, that one of these Acts (11 & 12 Vict. c. 110.) contains the important provision (sect. 4.), that parishes in the same union between which any question arises as to the irremoveability of any pauper by reason of five years' residence, may refer their dispute to the Poor Law Board, whose decision is to be conclusive.

Another statute of this session (11 & 12 Vict. c. 111.), amends one of the numerous difficulties that have arisen out of the absurdly worded and clumsily constructed Act, by which irremoveability was conferred on paupers under certain conditions (9 & 10 Vict. c. 66.). In future a parish is to have the clear right of removing a family to the place of its proper settlement, though the man, who is the head of it, may have run away, or, from some other cause, not be resident with his wife and children. Under one of the bungling pro

visoes of the former Act, wives and children so circumstanced were generally supposed to be irremoveable.

IV. The acts relating to Criminal Law do not require very particular notice, and our space obliges us to postpone the observations we had to make upon them. We are glad to find that the Attorney-General has come forward as a law reformer, although it would seem that in one of the Acts relating to magistrates he has shown more zeal than discretion. It would be premature to express any opinion as to the alleged imperfections of the Act relating to actions against magistrates. All that we wish to say respecting it is, that there was a bill having the same title, which was drawn in pursuance of a report of the Law Amendment Society, which twice passed the House of Lords, with the unanimous consent of all the Law Lords, but was twice stopped in the House of Commons, and which circumstance we noticed at the time (5 L. R. 471.) All, then, that we wish to say is, that the Act which has passed is not the bill which was so recommended and approved. We are desirous that the AttorneyGeneral should have the whole credit of the Act of last session.

Taking all these Acts together, we cannot but think they augur well for the future labours of the new Parliament; and we would hope that A NEW ERA IN THE HISTORY OF

LAW REFORM HAS COMMENCED.

ART. XII. — LORD BROUGHAM ON THE FRENCH

REVOLUTION.

A Letter to the Marquis of Lansdowne, K.G., on the late Revolution in France. By Lord BROUGHAM, F.R. S., Member of the National Institute of France. Fourth edition. Ridgway: 1848. pp. 165.

THIS work, which has occupied so much of the public attention since it was published, is brought within our jurisdiction, not only by the remarks on several interesting constitutional points which it contains, but also by its advocacy of many of those measures of law reform which we

Lave frequently recommended our French neighbours to adopt. Every reflecting mind must value the deliberate opinions of one who has passed so long and eventful a political life as the noble and learned author before us; and at the present moment, when all Europe is strewed with the fragments of constitutions, reflections, which are the results of his Lordship's great experience, are not only seasonable, but highly important. We shall hasten to enrich our own pages with some of these. Speaking of the present Government in France, Lord Brougham says,

"It is equally impossible that men should care about the form which such a Government may assume, for all feel convinced that it can only be temporary. Their representatives may go through the farce of deliberating upon a new constitution; who cares about the result of their debate? Who gives himself the trouble to reflect whether a wise or a foolish system has been formed - whether knowledge, drawn from calm observation of other people's experience, from learned comparison of various schemes actually tried, or presumptuous ignorance, or vain, futile, visionary speculation, guides or inspires those who now profess to be engaged in by far the most difficult work that mortals can undertake—a work indeed hardly possible to be executed, because no man can foresee things that are afterwards to happen and few men can even exercise full and accurate circumspection of those things that actually exist around them.

"Such thoughts naturally occur to any one considering what is now going on in the National Assembly; but who in France gives himself the trouble to consider those proceedings otherwise than as an uninterested spectator? As we at a distance, and having little to do with it, look on and wonder at these constitutionmakers, and note with amazement the hallucinations of clever men led astray by theories, and resolved to profit in no one particular, by the costly, but precious experience, or the instructive example of their neighbours; so their own countrymen, for whom, or it may be against whom, they are labouring, seem to look on as if the work doing were no concern of theirs, and feel no kind of interest in its progress. They gaze as on a stage-play, and care about as little for the result of this drama as for the catastrophe of that. They look as on the soap-bubbles which are blown out by children in their sport, and are to vanish immediately those which the philosopher forms, in order to teach him the properties of light, and the nature of colours. Indeed, some political VOL. IX.

P

not as on

lessons might be learnt from the blunders of these men; but the successful wisdom of others is far richer in the instruction which its happy results convey. Be that, however, as it may, the fact is incontestable, that the debates on the constitution excite no interest among the people for whom it is now framing. France has had so many within a few somewhere about ten, including years one or two which fell still-born from the womb of the anarchy they were conceived in - that the eleventh could hope for little attention, even had its plan been sketched out in a less turbulent season. But coming as it does, after an extempore Revolution and subversion of Monarchy had made way for an extempore Republic, the most devoted friend to the present order of things cannot affect any concern about a form of government which, in all likelihood, will have the kind of permanence with the kind of merit which may be allowed to the voluntary that a third-rate artist executes upon the organ." (Pp. 35-37.)

Again, what can be more true and practical than the following remarks?

"I have already said that the framing a constitution for a long settled and densely peopled country, is a work which, well to execute, passes the powers of human genius. Even in the establishment of their new government, the Americans who had a nation of recent formation to deal with, and a people scattered over a boundless expanse of fertile land, did little more than change the names of their old constituted authorities. They had been used to a Governor in each province, with two Houses, on the model of the mother country. They appointed a President, a Senate, a House of Representatives in each state, and the principal change which they effected was by the Federal Union, which again was administered by the same three powers, bearing the same names. So, when a century earlier, and at a time more favourable for trying political experiments, because in the infancy of the colonies, no less a man than Mr. Locke was employed to form a constitution for the Carolinas, and thought he might give a loose to his speculative views, a plan was struck out materially differing from any form of government then known, and founded upon purely theoretical principles. But it would not work, and, after a trial of two years, was abandoned altogether.

"In truth, by far the most difficult tasks that man ever set to himself, are the making of a new constitution and a new code of laws; but the former by much the more difficult of the two, because if there be sufficient powers possessed by the ruler, obedience to