The case was actually ten years dragging itself through the various Courts! The proceedings commenced in 1810, final judgment was given in the Court of Session in 1815, and in five years after, in 1820, it was reversed by the House of Lords; and all this on matters of fact and evidence!-fact and evidence, too, relating to some 557., the price of a cask of whisky! About six months after the Court of Session had given its judgment, the new Jury Court for the trial of issues in civil causes was opened, and there, as it soon was made to appear by its successful procedure, this edifying case of Dunbar v. Harvie might have been tried, heard, and determined in as many hours as it had occupied years.

We do not mention this case in any marked way, as a reproach to the learning and professional acumen of the Scotch Bench and Bar of the time; but as an instance of judicial miscarriage, arising from an erroneous procedure, and the want of clearly defined rules of evidence. In fact, there were no means then, within the Scottish civil judicature, of determining what evidence was, the matter was left to a "Commissioner," who was generally a young advocate, with private claims on the friendly consideration of the Court; and the "act before answer" got rid of every difficulty. The judges longed to grapple with the law of their cases, and for that purpose were willing to take the facts as they might be most conveniently discovered. The consequence of all this was, that the Scottish Forum in those days contained more eminent professors of the science of jurisprudence than practical lawyers, and the theory of legal justice was more considered than the means of its actual and certain attainment. The principles of pleading were unknown, because contemptuously ignored; juries were sincerely and cordially despised; and as for evidence, it was left to shift for itself. The popular sneer respecting the difference between law and justice, had then a meaning; and it must ever be so with an artificial system of legal administration, which is incapable of advancing with the age, and of adapting itself to the growing wants of society. Nor, perhaps, it may be said, could it be shown that the history of the Scotch law is worse, in this respect, than the annals of our own.

Common-law pleading, as practised within the memory of these very days; the delays and costliness of that "roguish thing," equity; and the gross abuses of our Ecclesiastical Courts, could, we fear, tell sad and harrowing tales of injustice and wrong. But we have no invidious object; and if we apply a severe candour to the times of awkwardness and error, it is chiefly with the view of exhibiting and contrasting the happier state of things that now prevails in the Courts of the North, and congratulating the Bar and the people of Scotland on the change.

And that we may do so, Mr. Dickson is our surety. Whether as respects the liberal and enlightened spirit in which he writes, or the law he lays down, the change is indeed remarkable; and the transition from Dunbar v. Harvie to his pages is really the passing from darkness to light. That his work contains a full statement of the Scotch Law of Evidence may be assumed from the fact that it consists of two large volumes, and 1030 large and full pages, exclusive of addenda, appendix, and index. The size of the work will indeed surprise the English practitioner; but the comprehensive principles of the Scotch law, the great accumulation of matter since the publication of Mr. Tait's treatise, the contributions on the general subject by English writers in the meanwhile, and the completeness and scope of Mr. Dickson's labours, sufficiently account for his very ample exposition. And it is eminently practical. It is a book for use, and not merely for reading and musing over. In truth, so considerate is the learned gentleman, and so conscious is he of one's natural impatience of dialectical preaching on general principles, that he mercifully inflicts upon us a very brief "Introduction ;" and yet, brief as it is, we would have been content with the last paragraph, in which he informs the reader what his book is about, and which, we venture to suggest, would have been quite sufficient. However, we do not quarrel with the Introduction, for it is very short; nor shall we wait to discuss some of its "canny" dicta, about which we are rather sceptical. We are better pleased with the Preface, preceded as it is by a wellexpressed dedication "to the Dean and Faculty of Advocates," which considerably increases the authority of the work; for it

is there stated that the "treatise is inscribed as a tribute of sincere esteem, and in acknowledgment of much kind and valuable assistance received by the author from many of his brethren of the Bar during its preparation." The Preface, which is conceived in a spirit very different from the narrow and strange views of Mr. Tait, begins thus:

"For several years, the want of a treatise on the modern Rules of Evidence in Scotland has occasioned much inconvenience and difficulty, both in the study and in the practice of this branch of the law. The object of the following pages is to supply the desideratum. With this view the author has endeavoured to collect and analyze all the Scotch authorities on the subject. He has also borrowed whatever light could be thrown upon it from other systems of jurisprudence, especially those of England and America; and that not merely by examination of the corresponding chapters in the best English treatises, and in the comprehensive and philosophical work of Professor Greenleaf, but also by constant reference to the decisions and other original authorities in English and American law. Care has, at the same time, been taken to point out any peculiarities in the law of Scotland which destroy or impair the applicability of illustrations from the systems of other countries."

This we are bound to say, after an attentive perusal, is a faithful account of the book, which, throughout, goes largely and fairly into the English Law of Evidence. It begins with the elucidation of "the general rules applicable to all kinds of evidence," and under this we have a clear explanation of the law relating to "the burden of proof;" of the "relevancy of evidence ;" "of the verdict;" of "proving the substance of the issue;" "of the rule which requires the best evidence ;" and so on in logical order, and in very sound law.

We had marked a number of extracts from the work, but we are here obliged to break off. In our next number we propose to continue the subject, and among other topics to direct attention to "hearsay” evidence, the rule of admissibility in regard to which, in the Scotch system, appears to go farther than with us; with a few remarks on circumstantial evidence. In connection with the subject of documentary evidence, we shall explain and compare the English and Scotch respective methods of proving the contents of a lost instrument. In the Scotch law the remedy appears to be more precise in form, and more complete in substance, than with us. And we shall conclude with the

mode of proving foreign law, on which interesting subject Mr. Dickson offers some very important suggestions.

For the present we recommend his work to the Profession. Its literary and juridical merits justify us in doing so; and it is, we may add, the latest work on evidence. It brings the cases, English and American, as well as Scotch, and the statutes, almost down to the present hour; and it does this not in the form of notes, but in the body of the text will be found the latest authorities and illustrations. To the Scotch lawyer such a work must be invaluable, while it may with benefit be consulted by the English practitioner.

T

IT

ART. XII.-JUDICIAL STATISTICS.

His

is probable that many of those who heard Lord Brougham address the House of Lords some weeks since on the subject of Judicial Statistics, or perused his speech in the imperfect reports of the daily newspapers, or the authorized pages of the Law Amendment Journal, expected neither more nor less result than has followed from his other efforts in the cause of Law Reform. Less they would not look for, because the speech in question was in no wise inferior to the numerous harangues on which his fame as an orator has been built. eye has not grown dim, nor his bodily force abated; and the generation which has grown up since his reputation attained its zenith, under sovereigns whose names belong to history, can find no man yet to match with him, or with Lord Lyndhurst, his venerable compeer, in that pith and sinew of oratory, the power which can grapple with a large subject, and bring its salient points in culminating succession before the audience. But when men recollect the long intervals which have always elapsed before the improvements he has advocated have been carried out by a cautious-we will not say a timid or a slothful -Legislature, they may be forgiven for anticipating a like

interval between this admirable enunciation of what must be done to give us a good system of judicial statistics, and the fortunate hour when the plan thus enunciated shall have been transformed from a theory into a fact. This is, at first sight, a not unreasonable supposition; but we ourselves believe that it is one which will prove to be erroneous; and we will proceed to give our reasons for this conviction.

It is true that the progress of Law Amendment, though immensely accelerated of late, has been, during the last thirty years, laborious and slow. It is true that our legislation in this direction has been fragmentary in its nature, and that even the numerous and great improvements made in recent years are only bits out of the great whole which Lord Brougham, in glowing eloquence, sketched out to a former generation. But with respect to the chances of future legislation-and it is this we are speaking of-it is impossible to exaggerate the change. The public mind has been so thoroughly imbued with the idea of Law Reform, that it is no longer startled with any proposed innovation. Nor has the professional feeling on the subject been less inverted. Lawyers, as a body, are no longer wedded to the fashion of the past, but are desirous of weighing the utility of everything that comes before them in their daily practice, and of lending an impartial ear to any suggestion for improvement. There is now little prestige of ancient days attached to our legal proceedings. The idols of the Forum have been thrown down; and it would be as difficult to persuade the men who have risen into practice contemporaneously with County Courts and Procedure Acts, that there was any glory in a special traverse, as it would have been to have convinced the Hellenized Egyptians who read Plato in the court of the Ptolemies, that the god Apis was other than a brute. Rash innovations, fanciful theories, are still justly rejected by a Bar which loves to have a solid reason for everything; but no rational proposal for practical improvement is likely to die stillborn for want of a hearing. How certain, then, it is, that a plan which so commends itself to our common sense,—which, from the very nature of things, is so obviously desirable, as that of acquiring accurate information as to the personnel,