The case was in the Court of Exchequer, and Mr. Brougham was counsel for the defendant. It became his duty to examine a witness for the crown, who exhibited strong indications of perjury; but the verdict went against him, notwithstanding. On a new trial, however, the suspicion of perjury before entertained was turned into certainty, and the defendant was acquitted. A prosecution for perjury was instituted against that witness and seventeen others connected with him. Eighteen indictments were found, and the Crown removed the whole into the King's Bench. The Attorney-General conducted the prosecution. On the first indictment, Meade, the perjured witness already mentioned, was clearly convicted. The other seventeen were then to have been tried, but the Crown had made them all special jury cases, and, of course, there was not a sufficient number of jurors present. A warrant was prayed, as is usual, we believe, in such cases, that the jury box should be filled from the by-standers; but the Crown refused the warrant. Thus an expense of near fifty thousand dollars was incurred, and a hundred witnesses were brought from a great distance to London, all for nothing, except after the vexation, and trouble, and delay he had endured, to work the ruin of the prosecutor, who had at first been harrassed on the testimony of the perjured witnesses. These poor farmers had no more money to spend in law; all the other prosecutions were dropped. Even the wretch who had been convicted, obtained a rule for a new trial; but funds were wanting to meet him again, and he too escaped; so that public justice was utterly frustrated, as well as the most grievous wrong inflicted on individuals. Nor did it end here. The poor farmer was fated to lose his life by the transaction. He lived in the same village with Meade, the false witness; and, one evening, in consequence, as was alleged, of some song sung by him in the streets, this man, Meade, seized a gun and shot him dead on the spot. He was acquitted of murder on the ground of provocation; but found guilty of man-slaughter, and sentenced to an imprisonment of two years. A case of more complicated and enormous hardship, one fraught with more cruel injustice to the parties, can scarcely be imagined to have occurred in any country. Nor is this a very uncommon case. We have not sought through many volumes to find it. Such cases occur frequently. The Courts are familiar with them. The Reports are full of them. They have almost ceased to

be shocking to the administrators of the law. So anxious,'we quote from Blackstone by way of commentary, so anxious is the law of England to maintain and restore to every individual the enjoyment of his civil rights, without intrenching upon those of any other individual in the nation; so parentally solicitous is our whole legal Constitution to preserve that spirit of equal liberty which is the singular felicity of the British nation!'

Strange that Mr. Brougham should desire to interfere with such striking manifestations of parental solicitude! Strange that the people of England should desire to rid themselves of the guardianship and tender care of so kind a parent! Yet strange though it be, it is not the less true. The people and their great advocate, influenced, doubtless, by some singular obliquity of moral vision, thought they saw great and grievous defects and vices in that system, which, to the clearer eye of Sir William Blackstone, seemed so perfect and so goodly. And Mr. Brougham set himself strenuously to the work of reform. He began by a speech in the House of Commons, the report of which fills one hundred and thirty-nine closely printed pages. It is, perhaps, not saying too much of this speech to affirm, that there is not one either ancient or modern, that contains a larger amount of information, all bearing with admirable adaptedness and resistless effect, upon the very question under consideration. In this speech, he brought before the House the whole condition of the common law. No nook of the immense field had escaped his observation. He went into every dark corner and hidden recess, as into familiar and frequented haunts. And to this great knowledge of what the law was, he added a clear and sound understanding of what the law should be. While he pointed to the evil, he did not omit to indicate the remedy. All that he said was said with so much distinctness and simplicity, that no idea could be misunderstood; yet with such force and energy, that no mind could remain unimpressed. He concluded with his celebrated motion for the Reform of the Law; That an humble address be presented to his Majesty, praying that he will be graciously pleased to issue a commission for inquiring into the defects occasioned by time, or otherwise, in the laws of this realm, and into the measures necessary for removing the same.' He afterwards, for the sake of conciliation, made this motion less broad, by substituting the administration of VOL. XXXIII.-NO. 72.

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justice in the Superior Courts, and the Law of Real Property, as objects of inquiry, instead of the Laws of the Realm generally. Thus modified, the motion was carried unanimously. Two commissions were issued by the crown, and the Reports of the Commissioners have been elaborate and valuable. There is a spirit now awake on this subject, that will not slumber again, until, instead of the present cumbrous and unintelligible system of law, and courts like that far-famed labyrinth, into which if a man once entered he never found his way out again, England shall have a simple and intelligible code of laws, and a cheap and prompt administration of justice. Mr. Brougham has already done much. He well understood what was to be done, and how it was to be done; and he went to work cautiously, as a man should, who is dealing with the veins and arteries of the social system. Last June, he brought before the House the result of his labors. His bill proposes to divide England into judicial districts of a convenient size. He would have only one Judge, who should have power to try and determine, with the aid of a jury, all causes of a certain importance. If the parties desire it, the Judge may hear and determine any cause without a jury. When required, the Judge must also act as an arbitrator, and his award will have the force of a judgment. But the most remarkable feature of the plan is this. Any party may cite another against whom he has any claim or complaint, or from whom he apprehends any claim or complaint, before the Judge. When there, they are to state their case in their own way, without any lawyer, and the Judge, having heard them both, is to give them his advice like a friend. If they agree to abide by it, this advice acquires the force of a regular adjudication. This part of the plan seems admirable in theory, and has worked well wherever it has been reduced to practice.

We see no reason why such a plan might not be introduced into the courts of our country to great advantage. While we have great and just cause of grateful triumph, that so much of the absurdity and evil, pointed out by Mr. Brougham in the system of English law, has been purged from our jurisprudence, we have also reason to be ashamed that so much remains. Our modes of distributing justice, especially, are far from perfect. And we may hope that it is not very presumptuous to imagine, nor an unpardonable irreverence of antiquity to suggest, that the present generation may improve what a former generation

has left susceptible of improvement. If our laws and courts should be so improved, that Justice could no longer be represented, and truly represented, as limping tardily along after a nimble rogue, and only catching him, if she catch him at all, when he can get no farther, in the last court of appellate jurisdiction, we may hope, also, that no lawyer would be found. weeping in secret over shrunk fees and a lean docket.

But let us return to Mr. Brougham. We have already adverted to his efforts in Parliament in behalf of popular education. We shall now give some account of his more successful, and, as it seems to us, more important labors, out of Parliament, in the same cause. His views on the subject of education, as, indeed, on every other subject, are exceedingly broad and comprehensive. He fixes the period of commencement at the dawn of the intellect, and looks upon an education as complete only when life is ended. He would have the infant go to school, the boy go to school, and the man go to school. He would have established, every where, infant schools, elementary schools, and adult schools. Of the first, he has been from the beginning a zealous, constant, and efficient friend; to his exertions in behalf of the second, the Journals of Parliament bear witness; of what he has done for the third, we are now to speak. And to begin, we will explain what we understand by an adult school. We understand, then, any association of grown-up persons for the purpose of acquiring knowledge. The Lyceums and Mechanics' Institutes, which, within these five years, have begun to be established in our country, are adult schools; and there are adult schools under other names, which we cannot now stop to enumerate. Mr. Brougham thought that the best thing he could do, was to publish some plain account of such associations, proving their great utility, feasibility, and cheapness, with some directions for the management of their concerns. This he did in a pamphlet entitled 'Practical Observations on Popular Education; a work unadorned and simple in its diction, as it is powerful in its argument, and beneficial in its tendency. Nearly the same course is recommended, that has been generally pursued in the American Lyceums; to establish a course of lectures, make a beginning, and then to get a library and apparatus, the best that can be afforded, as soon as possible. In England, the great difficulty was to get books. There was, and perhaps is now, a heavy tax on paper, greatly increasing

their price; and this tax is as heavy on the coarsest as on the finest sorts. To get rid of this difficulty as far as possible, a society was formed, having for its grand object the circulation of cheap publications, containing a large amount of information, compressed into a small space, by crowding the page. This society, the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge,' owes its origin to the sole suggestion of Mr. Brougham; a suggestion, that may justly be ranked among those great conceptions, which shed unfading glory upon a noble band of deeply thinking men of all ages, and have influenced, do now influence, and will continue to influence the condition of man forever. That this praise may not seem extravagant, let us attend to what the society has done. Immediately after its formation, it commenced the publication of the Library of Useful Knowledge.' This series of treatises is published on good paper, with a handsome type, and has reached the eighty-second number. Each number contains about as much matter as a common octavo volume of twice the number of pages and costing five times ast much. Each treatise is complete. Some require one number only; some two, and some more. The biographies are generally complete in one number, though that of Galileo extends through nearly four. The subject of hydraulics is treated in one number; the American Revolution in two; arithmetic and algebra in four; and the history of Greece in nine. These are a few only of the subjects treated. When a volume is complete, an excellent Glossary, containing a neat explanation of every phrase, likely to be at all unintelligible, is published, together with an Index to the whole volume. Such a Glossary and Index have been published to the volumes on Natural Philosophy and Geometry, and an Index to the History of Greece. These treatises are admirable on account of their concise fulness, and the ability and vigor with which the several subjects are handled. Nor are they less worthy of admiration on account of their cheapness. In London they can be had for sixpence a number, containing thirty-two pages, with double columns and small print; and in our country, for fourteen or fifteen cents. It has sometimes been objected to these works, that they are not intelligible enough. The objection serves only to expose the shallowness of the objector; and may be completely refuted by the bare statement of the fact, that in the single city of Glasgow, more than five hundred copies of the work are circulated, principally among the mechanics. Those, however, who do not relish