to the law founded on policy, declares that, as he does not find any case prior to that of Walton v. Shelley against the opinion he holds, he cannot give way to that authority, great as it is;" (d) and thus overturns a decision, the result of the maturest deliberation. Lord Kenyon was not treated with greater ceremony by his successor. In 1801, he pronounced a decision (e) against the validity of an order of removal, expressing his regret at the same time, but yielding to the force of the authorities. In 1818, Lord Ellenborough says, (f) "If this Court is put under the painful necessity of overruling the case of the King v. Moor Critchell, in order to do justice in this case, I have no hesitation in so doing; and I wish that the very able and very learned judge who decided that case, instead of lamenting that such an objection had then been taken, had applied his powerful mind to the objection itself, and I have no doubt that it would have vanished before that mind exerting its proper vigour on the subject." And who will secure the public against the infliction of a chief justice in 1838, who shall have no hesitation in overruling the King v. St. Mary's, Leicester, and shall express a wish that Lord Ellenborough, instead of criticising the decision of his predecessor, had applied his powerful mind to the reasons upon which that decision was grounded?

We have seen that the Court of King's Bench could set aside all the old cases upon the plea that they had " gone upon very subtle grounds." Let us now see with what marvellous facility the same Court can, upon occasions, dispense with the clearest rules of law." There is a rule of positive law," says Lord Mansfield; (g) "by this general rule a married woman can have no property real or personal. This is the general rule. But then it has been properly said, that as the times alter, new customs and new manners arise: these occasion exceptions, and justice and convenience require different applications of these exceptions within the principle of the general rule." Upon the strength of this broad proposition, which would certainly have staggered the Medes and Persians, the Court acted for nearly twenty years, permitting actions to be brought against married women, separated from their husbands; until the ancient rule was restored to its pristine dignity by the determination of all the judges. (h) Again,

(d) Jordaine v. Lashbrooke, 7 T. R. 603-4.

(e) The King v. Moor Critchell. 2 East, 68.

(f) Rex v. St. Mary's, Leicester. 1 B. & Ald. 329.

(g) Corbett v. Poelnitz. 1 T. R. 8. (h) Marshall v. Rutton. 8 T. R.

545. It is to be observed that Lord Kenyon, before this determination, yielded a very .reluctant obedience to the decisions of his predecessor upon the point; and omitted no opportunity of expressing his dissent from the doctrine in the text. On one occasion (Clayton v. Adams.

when the Court set at defiance the rule of law called "The Rule in Shelley's case," the same learned lord said, "I do not doubt but there are, and have been always, lawyers of a different bent of genius, and different course of education, (alluding to his brother judge, Yates) who have chosen to adhere to the strict letter of law, and they will say that Shelley's case is uncontrollable authority. And if courts of law will adhere to the mere letter of law, &c." (i) The long parliament was wise in its generation. It resisted, and fought, and conquered the king, in the king's name. The idea has not been thrown away upon the courts of law; to combat authority with authority is one of the most approved methods of shaking off an embarrassing decision:-"Without questioning, however," says Lord Ellenborough,(k)" the report of Randall Eeley, and admitting the decision to have been as Carter reports, it is clearly inconsistent with France's case, &c.; and the reason of the thing is so decidedly with those cases, that we have no hesitation in abiding by them, and holding Randall v. Eeley not to be law." Should there be no case in print, by which the obnoxious decision or train of decisions may be assailed, there is possibly a manuscript note of a case, which will do good service upon an emergency.(1) Or, perhaps, it may be advisable to shake the credit of the reporter, and question his exactness. "It is a

6 T. R. 605,) he said, evidently alluding to it:-"We must not by. any whimsical conceits, supposed to be adapted to the altering fashions of the times, overturn the established law of the land."

(i) Perrin v. Blake. Collectanea Juridica, 1. p. 321.

(k) Doe v. Beauclerk. 11 East, 666. (1) "But supposing," says Mr. Watkins, "that a person should be so fortunate as to be able to extract something comprehensible out of printed contradiction, yet other contradictions may make their appearance in munuscript; and, overthrowing all his hard-earned knowledge, remind him once again of the glorious uncertainty of the law. Is the law of England to depend upon the private note of an individual, and to which an individual can only have access? Is a judge to say-Lo! I have the law of England, on this point, in my pocket. Here is a note of the case, which contains an exact statement of the whole facts, and the decision of

my Lord A. or my Lord B. upon them. He was a great-a very great man. I am bound by his decision. All you have been reading was erroneous. The printed books are inaccurate. I cannot go into principle. The point is settled by this case.' Under such circumstances who is to know when he is right or when he is wrong? If conclusions from unquestionable principles are to be overthrown in the last stage of a suit by private memoranda, who can hope to become acquainted with the laws of England? And who, that retains any portion of rationality, would waste his time and his talents in so fruitless an attempt ?"--Principles of Conveyancing. Introd. pp. 13, 14.

We cannot immediately call to mind the case to which Mr. Watkins thus indignantly and eloquently alludes. But there is in the 3d Term Reports, p. 749, (Doe v. Perkins) an unrivalled illustration of the practice. There Lord Kenyon, in order to set

loose note, by a bad reporter;"(m)-" It is a short note taken by Lord Raymond when he was very young ;"(n)—" The case in Lord Raymond is a very loose and inaccurate case." (0) Should the decision in question have been pronounced, or quoted on a former occasion by the judge who is desirous of setting it aside, that circumstance is not, if we are to believe Lord Mansfield, an insurmountable obstacle. "Lord Hardwicke," he says,(p)" shook the authority of Rex v. Whiting, which he thus, in effect, contradicts, though with guarded decency of expression, notwithstanding his having before followed it in the case of Nunez."

But we must desist, as we are not anxious to transfer the entire Term Reports to the pages of the "Jurist." One word as to our author's assertion, that "there are and must be many present, who know as well as the judge, what must be the decision.” Now, we confidently appeal to those who are professionally conversant in the courts, whether it is not, in cases of importance, eternally a matter of doubt, and vague conjecture; and whether a judicial nod, a shake of the head, an encouraging smile, or a gesture of impatience, during the argument, are not far better indexes to the approaching decision, than Moore, or Hammond, or Harrison.

Let not our continental neighbours, then, be seduced by the winning rhetoric of "The Author of Waverley," to covet a system of laws, if system it can be called-which "spreads through a multiplicity of volumes, and embraces an immense collection of precedents." We unfeignedly wish them every civil and political blessing, that the fondest heart amongst them can desire. We wish them all that we prize in our institutions, superadded to all that is valuable in their own. We wish them a habeas corpus act, without the liability to arbitrary suspension:-publicity of procedure, carried to its utmost limits:-an unshackled press, with an intelligible and rational law of libel:-and the free circulation of public opinion in all its healthful vigour. But we do not wish them the blessings of case-law. Let them wait with patience. Soon enough in the natural course of events, will their own law exchange its present fair proportions, its order and perspicuity, for unwieldy bulk, confusion,

tle a point of evidence, produced from his pocket a note from a MS. of Lord Ashburton of an anonymous case that had occurred at Lincoln's-Inn Hall, before the Chancellor, thirty-seven years before; and on the following day Mr. Justice Bullen, not to be behind-hand, read another MS. note of a case at the Hereford Spring Assizes, 1756, which was

only thirty-four years old.-See Bentham's Rationale of Evidence. 2. 21, for a dissection of the main case, and its MS. supporters.

(m) Lord Mansfield. Douglas. 305. (n) Lord Kenyon. 3 T. R. 261. (0) Mr. J. Buller, 3 T. R. 263. (p) Abrahams v. Bunn. 4 Burrow. 2254.

and darkness. Ignorance will mistake, chicanary will misinterpret, sophistry will perplex, pedantry encumber, authority will strain, caprice distort, and sinister influence suppress; exposition will rise upon exposition, and gloss upon gloss; until the plain intent and letter of the law will sink under the mass of superincumbent commentary, stifled like the Roman Emperor Tiberius, "injectu multæ vestis." All this will come upon them in the fullness of time. But let them not long for premature decay; let them not envy us the certainty of a system, which must have been powerfully present to the mind of the poet, when he wrote :—

ART. V.-CIVIL AND CRIMINAL JUSTICE IN THE WEST INDIES.

1. First Report of the Commissioner of Inquiry into the Administration of Civil and Criminal Justice in the West Indies. (Barbadoes, Tobago, Grenada.) Dated the 16th Day of May, 1825. Ordered, by the House of Commons to be printed 5th July, 1825. Folio pp. 310.

2. Second Report, &c. (St. Vincent, Dominica.) Dated 6th March, 1826. Ordered by the House of Commons to be printed 18th April, 1826. pp. 287.

3. Third Report, &c. (Antigua, Montserrat, Nevis, St. Christopher, and the Virgin Islands.) Dated October 5th, 1826. Ordered by the House of Commons to be printed 11th December, 1826. pp. 283.

4. Substance of the Three Reports of the Commissioner of Inquiry into the Administration of Civil and Criminal Justice in the West Indies. Extracted from the Parliamentary Papers, with the General Conclusions, and the Commissioner's Scheme of Improvement, complete and in full. London; Butterworth and Son. 1827. 8vo.

IN Europe, particularly in some northern islands, it is held that there is one law for the rich and another for the poor. The valuable reports which introduce this article prove that the colour of the human species in our West India islands determines the claim of the colonists to the benefits of that precious commodity-justice. The whites have one measure of law. the

free people of colour another, and the blacks none! The administration of justice in such a state of society must needs be grossly defective, especially when it is considered that a group of islands imported their laws and judicial establishments with the first settlers two hundred years since; that their anomalous and corrupt system of jurisprudence consequently labours under the evils of barbarous origin, and that all the improvements it has received have been the occasional and partial alterations demanded by absolute necessity.

The crying evils of the colonial administration of justice at last reached the mother country. The British legislature and the public press of England excited attention to the misrule which had so long and hopelessly prevailed in these distant dependencies of the empire; and under the colonial dominion of Lord Bathurst, a Royal Commission was appointed in 1822, of two Commissioners, with certain instructions, and a subsequent extension of their original powers, to inquire into the administration of justice, as well civil, as criminal, in all the islands named in the Commission, viz. Barbadoes, Tobago, Grenada, St. Vincent, Dominica, Antigua, Montserrat, Nevis, St. Christopher, and Tortola.

The gentlemen selected for the important duties of this commission were barristers; Mr. HENRY MADDOCK, well known at the Equity Bar for an original and logical treatise on the principles and practice of the Court of Chancery, and Mr FORTUNATOS DWARRIS, a member of the midland circuit. Mr. Maddock early fell a sacrifice to the dire effects of the climate on a feeble European constitution; and the Reports we believe, or rather, their composition, are nearly the sole production of Mr. Dwarris. It is, however, due to the memory of Mr. Maddock to record the valuable assistance he rendered to the objects of the Commission, and the increased aptitude his co-operation must have given to Mr. Dwarris. We think that a little more testimony might have have been afforded to the merits of the deceased Commissioner: he may be truly said to have fallen in the service of his country, and to have equally merited a national monument with the naval aud military heroes who first aggrandised their native land by the discovery or conquest of the colonies.

From such bulky reports, comprising one thousand folio pages, the reader must not expect any minute details of the separate laws of each island, or the different courts of judicature. The reports enter with great particularity into the state of the colonial jurisprudence; what portion of it was derived from the mother countries and what is simply local; detailing the editions, manuscripts, history, and duration of the laws of each island. The slave laws engaged the especial attention and inquiry of the Commissioners, and humanity shudders at the disclosures of the hor