Destitute Juveniles; together with the Proceedings of the Committee, Minutes of Evidence, &c. Ordered by the House of Commons to be printed the 24th of ART. VIII.-CRIME AND ITS REMEDIES. Crime: its Amount, Causes, and Remedies. By FRE- - 126 ART. X.-SELF-CRIMINATION-OPTION OF JURY TRIAL. A Bill entitled "An Act for further amending the Law A Letter to the Right Honourable Robert Monsey Baron Cranworth, Lord High Chancellor of Great Britain, on the Constitution of the Ecclesiastical Courts; with an Appendix containing proposed Bills for the Estab- lishment of Ecclesiastical Courts throughout England, Ireland, and Wales, and to establish Courts of Probate and Administration throughout England and Wales. FUSION OF LAW AND EQUITY IN ENGLAND AND 1. Copy of the Second Report of Her Majesty's Commis- sioners for inquiring into the Process, Practice, and System of Pleading in the Superior Courts of Common 2. Report of the Commissioners on Practice and Plead- ings.-Code of Civil Procedure. Printed by order of ART. III.-TREATISE ON THE CONTRACT OF PARTNERSHIP BY THE LAW REVIEW. ART. I.—THE LORD CHANCELLOR AS MINISTER OF JUSTICE. Speech of the Lord Chancellor, 14th February, 1853. Hansard's Debates. A CHANGE is now taking place with respect to the office and duties of the Great Seal, which is of equal importance in a legal as in a constitutional point of view. This will be best shown by referring to familiar authorities on this subject, and observing the general description given by them of the office of Lord Chancellor. Of these it will be necessary to mention only two. Blackstone' says, " By the delivery of the Great Seal, the Lord Chancellor becomes, without writ or patent, an officer of the greatest weight and power of any now subsisting in the kingdom, and superior in point of precedency to every temporal lord. He is a privy councillor by his office, and, according to Lord Chancellor Ellesmere, prolocutor of the House of Lords by prescription. To him belongs the appointment of all justices of peace throughout the kingdom. He becomes keeper of the king's conscience, visitor, in right of the king, of all hospitals and colleges of the king's foundation, and patron of all the king's livings under the value of twenty marks per annum in the king's books. He is the general guardian of all infants, idiots, and lunatics, and has the general superintendence of all charitable uses in the kingdom. And all this over and above the vast and exclusive jurisdiction which he exercises in his judicial 13 Com. 48. capacity in the Court of Chancery." This was written about seventy years ago. Let us next see what the present Chief Justice says as to the duties of the Lord Chancellor. Lord Campbell devotes the first chapter of his "Lives of the Chancellors" to "the origin, functions, and jurisdiction of the office of Lord Chancellor;" but although he enters fully into his common-law, equitable, and criminal jurisdiction, and alludes to all the other functions mentioned by Blackstone, no mention is made of any duty devolving on the Lord Chancellor, as holder of the Great Seal, to superintend the administration of Justice. We find indeed no allusion whatever made to this subject, unless it be that, in discussing what his lordship calls "the great controversy whether Cancellarius be derived from cancellare or cancelli," two verses are cited from John of Salisbury, prefixed to his " Polycraticon," in allusion to the Chancellor Hic est qui leges regni cancellat iniquas which may seem to point to some duty of this nature. Down, therefore, to the present time, it does not appear to have been generally considered that the Lord Chancellor was bound to undertake the conduct of the amendment of the law as a part of his official duty; and this is expressly so stated by the present Lord Chancellor in his speech in the House of Lords on the 14th of February last. "My lords," said Lord Cranworth, on that occasion, "My lords, turning back my recollection to the period when I first became at all acquainted with the law, I think I may say that the distinguished lawyer who then filled the woolsack, Lord Eldon, as well as the distinguished men who preceded him, scarcely seemed to have considered that the introducing and maturing measures of legal reform constituted any very distinct or essential branch of the duties which devolved upon them. Practically, at least, they so conducted themselves as if they had no such duties. Very few measures on the subject originated with them, and it was rather thought to be their duty to watch against the introduction of hasty and ill-considered measures by others than to introduce any on the part of the servants of the Crown." They were thus expected to thwart rather than propose; |