in the first of the instances we have just mentioned, the reverend grammarian really submits to the drudgery of flogging five hundred boys out of false quantities at less than two shillings perhead per annum; or whether, in the other instance, he believes the head-waiter to be an injured individual, from whom the proprietor of the London Coffee-house, not content with withholding all remuneration for his services, exacts 100l. a-year as a premium upon his own injustice. The fact is, that the office of Coroner is eagerly sought after by professional men, even in the obscurest counties of the kingdom, not on account of the direct emoluments attached to it, but on account of the power and the distinction which it confers. It is in these collateral advantages, to say nothing of less legitimate sources of profit, which ought undoubtedly to be rejected from the argument, that Coroners find an ample remuneration for their services. Power is remuneration; distinction is remuneration; increase of business, the necessary consequence of increased power and distinction, is remune

ration.

If the numerous instances of competition for the office, and the large sums frequently expended in contested elections by a class of men who have generally rather a keen eye to their own interests, and who are seldom chargeable with an improvident outlay of capital, prove incontestably that the office is worth possessing, and consequently not underpaid; it is scarcely necessary to advert to other considerations which tend to prove the inexpediency of increasing the fees and salaries of Coroners. If the fees for taking inquisitions were doubled, the temptation to holding unnecessary and vexatious inquisitions would be proportionally increased. Burthened too as the landed interest is, in common with all classes of the community, the increase of the county rates which would be occasioned by raising the salaries of Coroners is a consideration of no light importance; nor is it any answer to this argument against an augmentation of their fees, to maintain, as one of the Coroners has done, in a letter addressed to a public journal, that the sums now paid by parishes towards defraying this charge are so inconsiderable, that the proposed increase would not be felt; for if a tax be unnecessary, it is not the less unjustifiable because it can be shown to be but a trifling addition to the burthens under which the country is already labouring.

It has been said that, if Coroners be underpaid, they will be tempted to seek remuneration by indirect means, against which, if they were adequately remunerated by, law, their moral principles would revolt. We doubt whether any Coroner, whose moral principles are in a condition to be affected by the difference between an allowance of 40s. and 20s. for holding an inquest.

or between an allowance of 9d. and 44d. a mile for travelling expenses, would be greatly shocked at any favourable opportunity of enlarging his pecuniary resources, or, as the gentlemen closeted at the Exchequer Coffee-house would say, of improving the Lex Coronatoria. We cannot help thinking, that the sound principle in legislating on this subject would be, not to consent to a compromise with the cupidity or immoral propensities of individuals, who are unworthy of holding an important and honourable office, but to obviate the necessity of such a compromise by raising the qualifications of the officers, and thereby removing, as far as legislative provisions can remove, the temptation to abuses. The eagerness with which the office is sought shows that this experiment may be safely made, and it will be a far more salutary as well as a cheaper course, to endeavour to raise the office to its ancient respectability, than to aim at reconciling the honourable discharge of its duties with the interests of men who are unworthy of holding it.

The office of Coroner was originally one of co-ordinate dignity and importance with that of Sheriff, and even, at this day, where just exception can be taken to the Sheriff, either from suspicion of partiality, or on the ground of his having an interest in the suit, process should, by law, be awarded to the Coroner instead of the Sheriff, for the execution of the King's writs. In the writ at common law de coronatore eligendo, says Mr. Justice Blackstone, it is expressly commanded the Sheriff-" Quod talem eligi faciat, qui melius et sciat, et velit, et possit, officio illi intendere." And, in order to effect this the more surely, it was enacted by the statute of Westminster 1, that none but lawful and discreet knights should be chosen; and there was an instance in the 5 Edw. III. of a man being removed from this office, because he was only a merchant.' By this statute Coroners were expressly forbidden to take any reward under pain of forfeiture to the King, and Mr. Justice Blackstone seems to attribute in a great measure to the allowance of fees, by the statute 3 Hen. VII. c. 1, and subsequent enactments, the disrepute into which the office of Coroner had fallen. On this subject Sir E. Coke, in his commentary on that part of the statute of Westminster 1, which prohibits Sheriffs, Coroners, &c. from taking any fee or reward for discharging the duties of their offices, has the following remarks:"It is a certain and true observation that the alteration of the common law is most dangerous, whereof you shall elsewhere read some instances; whereunto you may add this ancient maxim, affirmed by our Act of Parliament; for while Sheriffs, Escheators, Coroners, and other ministers of the King, whose offices any way did concern the administration or execution of justice, or the good of the commonweal, could take no fee at all for doing their office,

but of the King, then had they no colour to exact any thing of the subject, who knew that they ought to take nothing of them. But when some Acts of Parliament, changing the rule of the common law, gave to the said ministers of the King fees in some particular cases to be taken of the subject, whereas before without any taking at all their office was done, now no office at all was done without taking."

It is not necessary in this place to enter upon the question, whether public services are likely to be better discharged by paid or unpaid functionaries, because we contend that Coroners are in effect amply remunerated for their services; that the frequent instances of competition for the office furnish decisive evidence of its value even under the existing law; and that this fact is of itself an answer to any application that may be made to the legislature for an increase of their salaries. Blackstone complains of the culpable negligence of the country gentlemen, who had suffered the office to fall into the hands of low and indigent men, who desired to be chosen solely for the sake of their perquisites, but we believe that in the present day candidates for this office are in general stimulated by higher objects of ambition than the direct emoluments attached to it, and that an improvement has been gradually taking place, in respect to the character of Coroners, partly in consequence of the office being more generally filled by professional men, than it was in the time of Blackstone, and partly in consequence of the increased respectability of the profession itself. These causes have been slowly working a spontaneous cure of some of the evils arising from the ignorance or venality of Coroners; but it must be acknowledged that much still remains to be done, and that an effectual remedy can only be expected at the hands of the legislature.

The objects to which the attention of the legislature may, perhaps, be most usefully directed in revising the laws affecting the office of Coroner are, first, the establishment of adequate securities for the competency and responsibility of persons holding the office; and, secondly, the establishment of sufficient checks against abuses of the power with which Coroners are invested. To effect both these objects little more would be necessary than to revive the spirit of the old law by raising the qualifications of Coroners, as far as may be practicable, to the standard of the statute of Westminster 1, without touching existing provisions as to fees and emoluments, and also to remove all doubts as to the nature of the jurisdiction of Coroners, and the illegality of the power frequently assumed by these officers of excluding the public from their Courts. The Coroner's Court, though it has lost much of its ancient dignity, is in reality an institution of greater utility than many of the institutions for which we are in the habit of extolling the

wisdom of our ancestors. It is not commonly classed among the blessings which distinguish us from surrounding nations; it is not toasted in taverns, nor called a palladium of the Constitution; but, in a country where the system of police is acknowledged to be most defective, it has been a more powerful instrument towards securing the detection and punishment of great crimes, than the most rigorous systems of police unaided by similar institutions in other countries. In the capital of France, for instance, where there is no institution similar to that of the Coroner's inquisition, not a week passes in which the bodies of persons, bearing evident marks of assassination, are not exposed at the Morgue, and regarded with perfect indifference by the public, no inquiry being ever made into the circumstances by which such unfortunate persons came to their death, unless the relations of the deceased are sufficiently wealthy to put the law in motion. The holding of inquests in cases of felonia de se may also be regarded as a useful branch of the duties of Coroners, in so far as inquiries into cases of suicide, considered as a crime against the state, may be supposed to have the effect of checking the commission of the offence. In this point of view, however, little benefit would seem to have accrued from the institution, if there were any ground for the belief very generally entertained by foreigners, that suicide is of more frequent occurrence in England than in any other country; (a) but the bability is that the very institution of Coroners' inquests, by giving publicity and attracting attention to every case of selfmurder that occurs in this country, has also given rise to the erroneous opinion that suicide prevails here to a greater extent than in other parts of Europe. The provision which enjoins the holding of inquests in all cases of death occurring in prisons is also founded in wise and benevolent considerations, though the ignorance and partiality of Coroners have done much towards rendering it nugatory. The cases of Mr. Devenish and others, who have fallen victims to that barbarous system which consigns insolvent debtors to misery and death in prisons, of which the internal regulations are more inhuman than those of gaols appropriated to the reception of the worst criminals, have attracted so much of

(a) Holberg, a Danish writer, pleasantly assures his readers that the taste for hanging, and particularly auto-suspension is so prevalent in England, that criminals to whom the law prescribes the time at which this taste is to be gratified, go with alacrity to the place of execution, and, in the absence of executioners, frequently hang them

pro

selves! Quæ gens Anglicâ ditior, ac in quâ simul gente suspendia frequentiora? Ad loca supplicii non ducuntur Angli, sed currunt, ridendoque, cantando, facetias spargendo,

et circumstantibus insultando moriuntur; et, ubi desunt carnifices, se ipsos sæpe suspendunt.-Holbergii Opusc. tom. 2, p. 118.

the public attention, that the recent conduct of Coroners at the inquests held on the bodies of those unfortunate persons will fall more properly under our notice in a distinct article, which it is our intention to devote to the subject of prison police.

The abuses to which the power, with which Coroners are invested is liable, are the holding of unnecessary and frivolous inquisitions for the sake of enhancing their fees, and the smuggling of juries, or the total suppression of inquests in cases where sufficient inducements can be held out by wealthy relatives of the deceased. Cases have also occurred in which money has been extorted by Coroners for not holding inquests: (See East, P. C. 382, King v. Harrison); cases of bribery, however, for the suppression of inquests are probably of more frequent occurrence than those of extortion; and this abuse can only be adequately guarded against by electing men to the office whose respectability may place them above temptation. Some years ago the daughter of a man of rank and title, co-heiress with a younger sister to property of a considerable amount, was charged with having wilfully poisoned her sister, under pretence of administering some medicine which had been prescribed for her. The sister died suddenly after a short illness apparently insufficient to produce death; the charge was made, not indeed publicly, but so unreservedly as to be sufficiently notorious at the time to a number of persons connected or acquainted with the parties, and to be capable, in all probability, of easy recognition, at this day, by many readers of these pages. The great respectability of the persons who made the accusation seemed to negative the possibility of its having originated in malicious motives, and it was even affirmed that there were appearances on the body of the deceased tending to confirm the suspicion of her death having been produced by poison. No inquest was held, whether from the fault of the Coroner after notice given, or of the accusers, who, if they believed that so atrocious a crime had been perpetrated, were bound to see that it did not pass unpunished, we know not, but the case is calculated to show the necessity of electing none but men of high character and inflexible integrity to the office of Coroner-men who would be prepared, under such circumstances, to discharge their duty without regard to the rank of the parties, and either to bring the guilty to punishment on the one hand, or to establish by strict investigation the malice of the accusation on the other; for such an accusation could scarcely have been made by persons, moving in the same rank of life with the party accused, upon light grounds; and if not true, it was in all probability maliIt may be observed here, that the searchers appointed by parishes commonly receive a consideration for the non-performance of their duty; and, where strong reasons exist for preventing the inspection of the bodies of deceased persons, the amount of the

cious.