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2. The dissolution of the present Commission.

3. One paid keeper, or Board of no more than three persons, to be invested by the legislature with control over all the records, and powers to methodize, &c.

4. For the purpose of publication of records, other persons to be united with this Board in a separate Commission.

We have no space to discuss fully these proposals, or the modifications which appear necessary in Mr. Allen's scheme for a fresh Commission.' Our own opinion is, that the first business to be done, that of universal arrangement, is not one requiring any Commission at all, but the services of an efficient salaried inspector, invested with the custody.

We would pass an act for a general repository—and at the same time appoint a paid general keeper. He should

'The first sentence of Mr. Allen's scheme is as follows:-"I consider the "Record Commission to be a Board of Commissioners nominated by His Majesty, "for the purpose of inspecting and inquiring into the state and management of the "record offices, and other repositories for public records and papers, throughout "the kingdom; for reforming the same as far as their powers extend, and where

their power is deficient to report thereon to the King in Council; and to recom"mend such alterations and improvements as to them shall seem necessary or expedient."

Suppose the Commissioners to have done these things--"reformed as far as their powers extend, reported their deficiencies, and recommended alterations"will not Mr. Allen admit the necessity of the reforms going a little farther, seeing the little extent of their powers; and likewise the importance of acting on their recommendations? But the fact is, Mr. Allen stops here, and does not point out how ulterior measures are to be accomplished. After thirty-six years they have effected no reforms, and recommended no alterations. Would Mr. Allen still wish to proceed in the same course as heretofore, at an expense of 10,000l. a-year?

2 The Commission prepared a bill of a most extraordinary nature to establish a general Record Repository. The idea of it was stolen from Mr. Illingworth,—-(Ev. 845, &c.) The bill invested the Commissioners with certain powers, but omitted to constitute the Commissioners a permanent body. It attempted to abstract funds for the building from the Suitors' Fund in Chancery. The Accountant General thus remonstrated against this proposal.—(p. 76, Papers, General Record Office.) "I "cannot see why the Suitors in Chancery are to pay for these public purposes " rather than any other class of the king's subjects; nor why a Record Office is to "be established at their expense more than any other public institution. If the public requires this accommodation, why is not the public to pay for it?" In this opinion, Lord Langdale fully concurs.— -(Ev. 4515). "One clause (p. 64, ut

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suprà) enacted that the records, of what nature or kind soever, contained in the Augmentation Office and Chapter House, shall be considered as records of the "Court of Chancery." Acts of parliament are omnipotent, certainly:-Exchequer, King's Bench, Parliamentary and Star Chamber Records, all in an instant metamorphosed into " Records of the Court of Chancery."

have the custody of all records of a certain date, and, with the sanction of the Treasury, should be enabled to obtain proper assistants to produce good order among the records. The judges should periodically inspect and report upon the state and progress of the arrangement. Until this was effected all printing should be suspended. The sinecures of the ChapterHouse, Rolls Chapel, &c., to be immediately abolished: compensation or employment to be given to the present incumbents.

We have ample experience that the superintendence of the operations of arrangement and calendaring will not be performed by a gratuitous agency. If the public pay Sir F. Palgrave 4007. a year, he claiming the right to render no services in return, and Mr. Leach 7001. a year for doing nothing, no complaint on the score of economy could be raised against providing efficient guardians over all the records, with the funds now devoted to these sinecures.

A general repository, though it should cost 100,0007., would be a measure of economy. Thirty thousand pounds have been expended in bad and temporary repositories for the Exchequer Records alone, since 1800. The government has no option about the immediate necessity of providing repositories for the Records in Carlton Ride, Somerset House, and the Rolls House. These records require 11,290 feet of space; whilst the space required for all the records would not exceed 24,000 feet.'

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The Report of the Committee states: "Projects for the erection of a General Record Office have been at various times considered by the Board. No such plan has, however been carried into effect. A great many meetings were held "and reports made, and a bill was prepared, which Mr. Allen teils your Committee was either not brought into parliament or not persevered in; and the matter, as " he stated, was allowed to drop; not, it would appear, on account of the opposi❝tion justly excited against it, by reason of its proposed misappropriation of the Suitors' Fund, but owing, as Mr. Allen says, to a mere accident,' of which the nature has not been explained." Lord Brougham was so pleased with this scheme, that he said he would make it a "cabinet measure.""-(Ev. 848). The best authorities Lords Lyndhurst, Langdale, Mr. Baron Alderson, &c., quite agree in favour of such a measure; though not of such an abortion as that proposed by the Commission.

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ART. VI. THE REVISING BARRISTERS AND THE NEW COURT OF REVISION.

1. A Letter to H. Warburton, Esq. M.P. on his Proposed Alteration in The Registration of Voters. London. 1836. 2. The New Bills for The Registration of Electors critically Examined, &c. By John David Chambers, Esq. M.A. of the Inner Temple, Barrister at Law. London. 1836. A BILL passed the House of Commons late in the last session of Parliament, having for its principal objects the settlement of sundry doubts that had arisen on the construction of the Reform Act, and the replacing of the present floating body of revising barristers by a permanent tribunal,-to consist of ten constantly perambulating the country, and a chief residing in town, who, from his central position, like the governor in Jeremy Bentham's Panopticon, was to exercise. unlimited control over the movements of the others, and decide all questions of appeal. The Lords, on the motion of Lord Wharncliffe, struck out so much of the bill as related to the new tribunal, and made some judicious improvements in the rest. The Commons, consequently, refused to pass it, and it failed. The object of the following remarks is to show that, as usual in late cases of difference, the Lords were entirely in the right and the Commons entirely in the wrong.

The supposed necessity for a new tribunal appears to have originated in complaints brought against the revising barristers, who were ferociously attacked in the newspapers upon charges, most of which would probably have been adduced with equal justice against any body of judges (not excepting the highest) on whom the duty of interpreting any new Bill of equal extent and importance, much less a Bill containing so many ill-drawn and perplexing provisions as the Reform Bill, had devolved. Be this as it may, we are quite sure that Lord John Russell's new Council of Ten, placed in precisely similar circumstances, must have made themselves obnoxious to precisely similar objections, besides sundry others peculiar to themselves. But it was not Lord John Russell's intention to place them in similar circumstances. They were to have the benefit of a declaratory law, and an appeal court; and they were to be invested with powers of summoning witnesses, compelling the production of documents, fining over

seers, awarding costs, &c. Lord Wharncliffe, however, was equally ready to pass the declaratory clauses, to provide a better appellate jurisdiction,' and to invest the revising barristers with the powers intended for their substitutes by the ministry. In comparing the respective schemes, therefore, the principal question for consideration is, whether a permanent body appointed by the government would be likely to do the work better and more to the satisfaction of the public than a floating body appointed by the judges.

In the first place, it stands beyond a doubt, that the advantages of cotemporaneous registration would be lost.

"To estimate the amount of these advantages (says the author of the able Letter to Mr. Warburton,) " we have but to look at the evils of the contrary practice. It is, I doubt not, known to you, that as far as the experience of four years can guide us, we must assume that, during periods of political tranquillity, neither the Conservative, nor the Liberal party, more especially the latter, is inclined to undertake watching and checking the electoral lists. It is only when agitation runs high, and the prospect of a change of government, or dissolution, is vivid and immediate, that men will incur the toil, the expense, and the personal offence of such a task. Let us suppose, then, that a certain temporary repose has succeeded past excitement,-the registers have, in consequence, been neglected, and are become inaccurate. In one place, a tory; in another, a radical attorney, of more energy and impudence than his fellows,-each aided, perhaps, by a sympathizing overseer, has succeeded in turning the scale to his wishes, by expunging good, and foisting in bad votes. In most places, however, the current of events alone has materially vitiated the lists. Suddenly a great measure of reform is introduced the Lords, as usual, rebel, and there is to be another trial for a Tory Ministry, backed by a Tory Parliament. Your Revisors, at the moment, are revolving in their several orbits. The lists thenceforth submitted to them, until the general election takes place, are anatomized with such skill and care on both sides, that the fortunate places they belong to are enabled to return Members to Parliament

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1 By the amended Bill, the appeal was to be by way of special case, to be signed on application by the barrister, to the judges of the superior Courts of Law at Westminster. Questions of law were to be the only subjects of appeal.

representing the true sense of their electors. But how dif ferently fares it with those places the Revisors have left behind them. In many of them a member is returned obnoxious to the real majority. In all there is a prevalent opinion, that had the real sense of the constituency been ascertainable, the result might have been different. They curse the accident which made their next registration so distant, and abuse the law which enables such an accident to place them in so much worse a position than their equally negligent neighbours in this county or that borough."

But then the work is to be done in so superior a style as fully to compensate for these disadvantages. We entertain no expectations of the kind, and the slightest knowledge of the state of the profession might have saved other persons from the folly of entertaining such. The period of the year appointed for the revision of the lists under the present system is fortunately one when there is a good deal of legal talent and experience unemployed. The consequence has been that barristers of a much higher class than could reasonably have been anticipated from the amount of pay, have been induced to accept revisorships. But no inference can be drawn from this circumstance in favour of the supposition, that ten barristers of tried ability can be procured at the rate specified in the Bill. The prospects of a man of tried ability at the bar are worth more than a thousand a year in hard cash, to say nothing of the chances of distinction he is to surrender, and the dull, dreary, harassing, uninteresting, unsocial, unambitious course of life he is to adopt—without any prospect of promotion or ulterior advantage of any kind, without so much as a retiring pension to console him in the evening of his days. This point, again, is strikingly put in the Letter:

"It is not to be forgotten that the Registration, as now conducted, takes place in the latter part of the long Vacation, at a time when there is no other field open for gaining professional emolument or professional reputation. A revisor under the present system makes therefore no sacrifice, save of his leisure. But a revisor under yours must sacrifice all other prospects. You will, therefore, be unable to command the two sorts of men who make at present the best revising barristers. Even supposing the usual precaution of

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