The administration of justice and the law is a work on behalf of the people, not exclusively that of the functionary. It is their interests which are involved; the interests of the people in all their natural states, whether of the person generally, or of man or woman,-from the cradle to the grave, and even beyond the grave,—whether singly or collectively,—whether subject of the State or inhabitant in the realm,-his personal integrity, his safety, his property, his liberty, his action in all

ways.

Justice and law are actualities; they do not depend wholly upon the form in which the law consists, whether written or unwritten, confused or unconfused, but chiefly upon the relations of the members of the body politic, and the organization and administration of the State, especially of the tribunals through which the sanction of the law may be obtained. We may consolidate and codify, but our work is only half done, if we have not able administrators of the law. The code, or consolidation, is the declaration or definition of our rights, and of the authorities and powers of the tribunals by which these rights are to be administered; it presupposes the existence of the subjects of the law, and the tribunals, administrators of the law.

Let us, then, before we proceed further in our task, summon before us every person whom the law affects,-every officer by whom the law is to be administered, whether ministerially or judicially, whether in the sphere of administration (or the depositary of discretion and will), or of assistance in aid of the administrator.

Let us have before us, in short, the State,-the People and all the combinations of persons composing the communities of which the people consists, and the Sovereign and all the officers of state who make up in action the sovereign power, whether these officers be appointed by the Sovereign or her ministers and their subordinates, or by the people and their repre

sentatives.

Having before us the whole State, the whole people, the whole sovereign power, and every other collective force of the realm of which they are severally composed, let us ask in

regard to each, what is his purpose? what his dominion or jurisdiction? what his powers, personal, or proprietary, or commercial, or official, or judicial? and whether administrative or ministerial, recording or inquiring, judicial or legislative, local or superintending, special or financial?

Having, by no stretch of imagination, but by statistical industry, ascertained the personages just enumerated, and duly classed them according to the categories under which they fall, and found out their designations, and defined their incident properties, and described them in appropriate terms, we have before us all the objects of justice, all the objects of law.

Let it be stated at once, in relation to each person, to what tribunal, or branch of tribunal, he is to have recourse, if he suffer wrong, to what law he is to appeal in vindication of his claims.

This is the clue to the right administration of the law; each individual should be our test, or witness, of the efficiency of the method. As he finds out in a dictionary the meaning of a word, so he should be able to find, with reasonable exertion, in a body of law, his rights, and the means of vindicating these rights.

It is material, for simplicity's sake, and for comprehensiveness' sake, to keep in view this individuality. Those who desire to withhold the reformations which the nation seeks, will labour to preserve the muddling confusion of multitudinous notions, scattered here and there, in sundry places throughout our statute-books, and our reports, and other receptacles of the law. But let us speak to the thirty millions of people of these realms each in his individual capacity, and let the law be so expressed, in reference to each capacity, that each may know readily his own predicament; and let each tribunal be so placed, by its local ramifications and agencies, that each individual may have ready access thereto; and we have the whole matter brought down to the apprehension of the most simple understanding.

Nor is it presumptuous to demand such a thing. It is the office and duty of the Sovereign to give the law, and to keep the law, to do justice according to law; and the Lord High

Chancellor of England is that officer of state by whom this branch of the sovereign power is wielded. Each individual subject is entitled constitutionally to pray the Sovereign by the Lord High Chancellor for justice, where the law fails,-for a clear enunciation of the law, and for its needful amendment.

The two parties who, by the individual characteristic of our constitutional system, are at issue in this matter, are the Sovereign by her minister (the Lord Chancellor), on the one hand, the subject individual, by his lawful representative, on the other; and with all respect to the powers that be, let it be said that this is the true constitutional reading of the matter. The minister is under obligation to all and each for the clear definition of their respective rights, and the ready administration of these rights. Having made our law accessible to the Subject by convenient consolidation, we have to provide for him accessible tribunals competent to administer, in subjection to appeal, all his affairs of justice.

Nor is this difficult. We have, it is said, 1,500 stations for the Petty Sessions, 400 stations for County Courts, 100 stations for Assizes. By so ordering these that the land may be covered with stations of justice, as it is covered with stations for the collection of the revenue, and other civil purposes, we may complete this branch of our subject, the provision for the administration of justice.

The work to be done is to provide for the administration of justice and law, by giving to each subject accessible tribunals

and accessible law.

It is for this work that we need a Minister of Justice. To organize tribunals, and superintend and control them when organized; to collect the scattered fragments of our law, and embody them in an accessible form,-consolidated law or code,and to propound the necessary measures in Parliament, are the subjects of his jurisdiction.

What manner of man is qualified for such a task? How must the limited qualities of any man be supplemented, so as to give wholeness, and promptness, and energy, and completeness to the execution of the work?

Of what sort of persons should his establishment be composed, and how should that establishment be organized?

We have spoken of the department of the administration of justice and law as one of the five great powers of the State. We claim for it a rank, a force, a fund alike and equal to those given to the other great powers of the State; alike and equal to that given to the Privy Council, which is the department of advice and information, or public instruction; alike and equal to that given to the Treasury; alike and equal to those given to the Secretaries of State, commonly so called,-the Home Secretary, the Foreign Secretary, the Colonial Secretary; and alike and equal to those given to the Secretary of State Minister of War. The minister should be of the first rank in personal qualities and powers; endowed with the courage and prowess of a man; of good physique, of intellectual vigour equal to any; energetic and industrious; of good social position; in short, a man of the first order, accepted by his fellows and the people as such, and submitted to from a sense of his superiority in most things.

If the Legal Profession be so fallen that it cannot produce such a man, let him be sought elsewhere, till the law regain its pretensions in this matter.

At all events, let the man be equal to his work ;—what the work is, we have shown. Let the country recognize the work, and among our ambitious men there will be found, even in this idle lackadaisical age, competitors for the office.

Of the details of the office we will not speak now; but if we are to have a Minister of Justice, let us also have a Ministry of Justice, a local habitation, a place where our minister may be seen. The dwarfish character of the position is due to the denial of its fit accessories. The reception of the judges should not take place in a moderate house in a by-street, but at the Chancellerie. Whatever-according to the notions of mankind-is necessary to lend dignity to the office should be given. All that should be expected from the Chancellor himself are the personal qualities befitting the office. The mansion of his office -enough officers having real functions-should be given him; and with the sense of the grand purpose of his office, and of the 2 T

VOL. I. NO. II.

power, will come a sense of responsibility, that will go far to make men who fill the office rouse themselves to exertion in the performance of their high vocation.

We have dealt with the people's wants in the administration of justice and law, the immediate means of realizing them, the means of supplying those wants by a pervading system of tribunals and by a consolidated body of law, and the executive means in a well-appointed Minister of Justice, or Chancellor.

But we have to consider out of what family or stock this man may come; how to rear future Chancellors; how to direct the aspirations of the individual lawyer, and thus make the whole body of lawyers-if not fit to take the post-worthy to be its supporters through every gradation of rank, from the Chancellor downwards.

The body of the Profession, as everybody knows, consists of the judiciary, the law officers of the Crown, the Queen's counsel, the serjeants-at-law, barristers, pleaders, conveyancers, and equity and parliamentary draftsmen, superior judicial officers, attorneys and solicitors, students and pupils, besides a multitude of inferior judicial officers, stationers, clerks, messengers, and ushers.

A vast body, receiving vast revenues, but wanting in qualities to make them harmonize with other branches of the community, yet every day, by the progress of the social changes, becoming more and more in harmony with the people at large.

This is emphatically a free class. Everybody by his own choice may belong to the order (except the very exceptionable). The problem is to make the lawyers what they have hitherto been-the palladium of our liberties; for law in this country is the element of stability upon which our institutions depend, and by which our ambitious orders are kept in due bounds. Hitherto its excessive technicality has restrained its uses in every direction, and made of lawyers a body, as we have said, in too slight a degree in harmony with the people. That technicality is broken down, and, its support wanting, a laxity of principle, of thought, and of action, is taking its place, and robbing the Profession of somewhat of its utility.

To intercept the downward course ought to be the work of