planations of the parties will be practically excluded by the expense, inconvenience, and loss of time attendant on journeys; for in order to adjust accounts by the aid of personal. discussion between the suitors, there must (as previously intimated), generally speaking, be many successive meetings; and if they can only be held in a distant town, there must be several journeys. Hence, whether the accounts be taken in London or by the Country Bankruptcy Courts, the parties will commonly be obliged to make use of written evidence and of the assistance of agents, which will cost the same whether employed in London on the one hand, or in Bristol, Liverpool, or Leeds, on the other. The suggested change will thus destroy the few advantages without curing any of the vices of the Metropolitan system of taking accounts. I may repeat my previous remark that reductions in the expenses attendant on legal proceedings must prove nugatory for good, so long as those expenses continue to be sufficiently high to retain the character of a prohibition a prohibition applying to all cases of moderate amount in Chancery which can never be removed in such cases excepting through the instrumentality of Local Courts held in the immediate neighbourhood of the parties, and endowed, not merely with an auxiliary, but with an original jurisdiction. I have the honour to be, December, 1852. Your Lordship's obedient Servant, Postscript. The importance of Legislative enactments, rendering the aid of the inferior Officers of the County Courts available as auxiliaries in any plan that may be devised for providing a more convenient mode of taking Chancery accounts, has been touched upon by the author of this communication, in a Letter addressed to Mr. James Stewart, the Treasurer of the Law Amendment Society; from which he may be permitted to extract the following statements: "A large number of the cases involving accounts, which have come before me as Judge of the County Courts, have been decided in the following manner. "The account has been referred by me for investigation either to one of the officers of the Court—or (in difficult cases), to a commercial man, or other competent person, on the understanding that the individual selected was to act, not as a referee having a power of decision, but merely as an assistant to the Court, whose duty it was to investigate the accounts and report to the Judge on the nature of the accounts, and more especially to report, in what items the parties agreed, and in what items they differed, and the grounds of difference. "In the great majority of cases referred in this manner one of the two following results has occurred :—either it has turned out that there were only one or two items really in dispute; these points of difference have consequently been brought before the Court, and decided, either on questions of law, or on an investigation of facts (according to the nature of the case), -or the referee has come back to the Judge with a statement that when the parties met face to face, and went over their accounts, item by item, there was no difference between them, there having been either some absurd confusion of ideas on one side, or on both,or dishonesty on the part of plaintiff or defendant—which had led to an attempt at mystification, which had broken down at once, so soon as a close investigation of details commenced. In nearly all the cases, disposed of in this way, there has been no adjournment from Court to Court, the parties having retired for perhaps half an hour with the referee, and returned to the Judge with a clear statement of the points in difference, which were almost uniformly decided at the same sitting. Where any question has arisen involving the peculiar knowledge of particular trades, information has been obtained from competent persons in a manner suggested by the Judge, and agreed upon by the parties, who are generally willing to adopt suggestions from the Judge, which they might not have acquiesced in if offered by an opponent. Moreover, the Judge, by experience, is enabled to suggest modes of investigation that would, generally speaking, not occur to the parties.” 1 Where an account is too voluminous to be disposed of at the first sitting of the Court, I have commonly referred it to the County Clerk, either in the qualified manner above described, or left it (when such was the wish of the parties) absolutely to him, as an arbitrator, to dispose of the matter finally. I have frequently had long protracted partnership accounts settled in this manner to the satisfaction of the suitors; which, had they been brought before the Court of Chancery, or any Court established at a distance from their residence, would, in all probability have ruined both plaintiff and defendant, as well as made them enemies for life. of the worst consequences of forcing suitors into Courts, in which they cannot meet personally, is to exclude the opportunity of mutual explanation; and thus to afford (in those 1 One 1 See Observations on the Combination in the County Courts of the Common Law and Equity Jurisdictions. In a Letter to James Stewart, Esq. cases in which the practitioners employed may not be men of the best or highest stamp) facilities of inflaming their differences by artful misrepresentations. The County Clerks, who are required to be Attornies by profession, and who are compelled, by the nature of their official duties as Clerks, to keep a very minute and complicated set of books of account subject to the inspection of the Authorities of the Treasury, are thus peculiarly qualified, by habit and education, for the task of taking accounts in Chancery suits. A large number of very troublesome cases have in the manner above described been disposed of by the County Clerks of my circuit; but they have uniformly undertaken and cheerfully completed these investigations without any remuneration, influenced by the honourable desire to make the working of the County Courts conducive to the satisfaction of the suitors and to the welfare of the community. ART. VII.-FRENCH AFFAIRS AND JURISPRUDENCE. WE recur to this important subject, deriving but little satisfaction from finding that what we foretold last autumn has come to pass, and a greater numerical force been ranged in favour of the Empire than had attended the preceding acts of usurpation. That no calm observer can feel otherwise than anxious, if not alarmed, in the present circumstances of France, and indeed of Europe, is certain enough; that there are gleams in the generally dark prospect is however equally undeniable; and among the favourable appearances is to be placed first and foremost the continued display of independent spirit among the members of the legal profession. To obtain their presence as a body upon the late occasion of imperial exhibition was found impossible. The man who had degraded himself to the lowest pitch by pronouncing a laboured and dull panegyric of despotism, accompanied with classical references at once puerile and inaccurate, and who has since been rewarded by promotion to the highest judicial office, is well known to be looked down upon almost universally, by his learned brethren, under the influence of feelings of shame at belonging to the same Order with him, rather than of indignation at his efforts to bring it into general contempt. A general impression prevails, that no prospect of professional advancement can make up for the loss of public respect, and a most just estimate is made of the utter worthlessness of all expressions affecting to represent the opinion of the community through the medium of a press in a state of absolute slavery more complete, and which ought to be more galling than that under which the other parts of society are laid! While a most servile clergy has become the ready tool of the Government, almost rivalling the subserviency of the army itself, it is hoped that the sacred fire of liberty may be kept alive by the ministers of justice, the unbought, unpromoted professors of the law. Another indication, which we deem also very favourable, is the difficulty, found quite insuperable, of prevailing upon persons of real eminence, whether from personal character or from high rank, to hold any relations of an official kind with the new dynasty, and more especially in places about court. The very few exceptions are of men so despised in society, that they have rather done harm than good to the imperial cause. Society pronounces against it; and no potentate who rules over Paris can long be easy under this sentence. It is far from unlikely that this may lead to some relaxation of the rigour (more severe than ever since the late change) with which the whole functions of the mock legislature were reduced to a mere shadow. Some portion of discussion may be allowed; yet we cannot conceal from ourselves the consequence of such a concession. The Chambers would always use any freedom thus given, with the same fear and trembling which the press shows after a first warning. They would dread some fresh act of violence not merely retracting what had been granted, but possibly extinguishing even the name of legislature. The celebrated sect of the Economistes held that a despotic government was beneficial chiefly because it could, by its absolute decrees, effect useful improvements in national po lity, which popular ignorance made it so difficult to carry under a constitutional system. Jurisprudence is not without chapters of a like description; and it is possible that the slavery under which France now lies prostrate may receive some mitigation from certain changes in the judicial system not at present enjoying any portion of popular favour. In some instances this is owing to ignorance of the subject. For example, the glaring defects in the law of evidence, more than once pointed out by us, render all judicial investigations most uncertain in their results, making it a matter of chance whether the truth shall be ascertained or not. But these defects would by no means prove so mischievous were the evidence only to be sifted and weighed by the Judge; it is the tendency of the evidence so improperly admitted by the law as it now stands to mislead the Jury, that produces the great uncertainty of all judicial proceedings. We refer, of course, to the allowing all manner of hearsay to be given in evidence. If any one in France objects to this, or rather denounces it as wholly incompatible with trial by jury, he is met by the vulgar and ignorant assertion that jury trial being the best method of inquiry, it is impossible to have too many facts (as they are called) brought to the knowledge of the jury; whereas the rumours which every witness is suffered to tell, and which he has heard from persons whom he needs not name, are all so many sources of deception instead of information to the jury. Again, the allowing the jury to apportion the offender's punishment as well as to decide on his guilt by letting the verdict find "extenuating circumstances," though all rational men must disapprove of it, yet could not be given up without much objection by the public at large. Jurors even are attached to it, for one of the main reasons which prescribe its abandonment. In very many, perhaps in most cases, the finding results from a kind of compromise either among the jurors whose opinions differ on the question of guilty or not guilty, or between the conflicting feelings of the jurors themselves, who are uncertain as to the bearings of the evidence on that question, or are averse to the punishment which the law has awarded. No one can observe the kind of cases in which |