more effectual the weapon which is put into the hands of the oppressor or the rogue. If trivial litigation is to be discouraged, then, the smaller the demand the heavier the court charges should be; the cheap tribunals should be for large and not small demands. It is not the man who has the misfortune to be driven to a court of justice that benefits by it; he is the very man who benefits least by it; it is the thousands whose rights are acquiesced in and who are honestly dealt with, because courts exist, who benefit most from them. It has been truly said, that "to throw upon the suitor the expense of administering justice, in addition to the trouble and risk of sucing for it, is as if, in case of an invasion, you were to take the inhabitants of the frontier, and force them not only to serve for nothing, but also to defray the whole expenditure of the war.' The dispute is generally about some doubtful point; and every man whose rights are settled by the decision derives equal advantage from it, and this in addition, that he gains the advantage without the anxiety and risk which the litigant is exposed to. When the first case was decided as to the liability of provisional committeemen, it was not Mr. Reynell alone who should pay for settling a question affecting the thousands of committeemen and railway contractors over the whole kingdom, whose mutual rights were ascertained for them by the decision. He who is in the wrong does not, in any sense, always pay such taxes; each party advances his share of them, and ultimately bears a large proportion. The payment should at least not be enforced, on this ground, until it is ascertained who is in the wrong. If you make him who is in the wrong pay for instituting a suit, you make him who is in the right pay for defending it. But who is in the wrong? In ninety-nine out of a hundred litigated cases each party believes he is in the right; it can hardly be wrong to act on that belief. It is only when law is resorted to to compel a man to do what he admits he ought to do, that either litigant is really in fault. Most cases-all the expensive ones in which law taxes are most grievous-arise on doubtful rights; and when the law is

doubtful, the parties are made to pay for its defects, that is, for the fault of the state.

Authority and principle, then, are alike against imposts on justice, in whatever form they are levied, and under whatever pretext. The amount levied in the Four Courts, in stamp duties, in the last year (1850), one in which there was, from the circumstances of the country, a considerable decrease in litigation, was £60,791 7s. 8d; of which £42,548 7s. Id. was levied by the law fund duties, and the remainder by the chancery and exchequer fund duties. Yet these are only a portion of the compulsory pay. ments. There are other fees to the courts, not payable through the Stampoffice, which in Chancery are most oppressive and exorbitant, and, though abolished as a general rule in the law courts, are even there payable in a few instances. A guinea, or half-a-guinea, continues payable (according to cir cumstances) on every verdict at assizes to the judge's crier, usually his domestic servant. This is simple extortion.

The broad proposition is plain-to provide the means of deciding the disputes of the community is a duty of the state, and the burden, like that of other state duties, should be borne by the whole community. Abolish, then, all such charges. They alone are that which renders any one tribunal necessarily more expensive than another. It is, no doubt, the course, in our system of law, to make the defeated party bear a large portion of the other expenses incurred in litigation. If it is considered that the costs thus imposed bear too large a proportion to the demand, when the latter is small, it is easy to limit the amount, which is, in such cases, to be allowed against an adversary, leaving the litigant, who chooses to expend more for additional care bestowed on his case, to pay it himself. If the procedure by civil bill is sufficiently certain for com mon demands under £50, let such cases be heard without any pleadings, after simply issuing a writ of summons and serving a bill of particulars. No further expense need be incurred prior to the decision; and by allowing the party defeated a reasonable time after the

decision to pay, he need be put to no other expense, except for his wilful default; and even if further proceedings to judgment and execution are necessary, the costs might be exceedingly small, if stamp duties were removed.* Such a plan would be to make good law cheap; not, as is now proposed, to make bad law plenty. It would be to afford equal rights to all; not, as is proposed, to keep the good tribunal as a luxury for the rich, and have a bad one for the economical.

A clause is now first proposed to make it obligatory on plaintiffs to sue by civil bill when the demand is under £20, at the peril of losing all costs. Such provisions amount, in substance, to denying justice to the poor. £20 is as much to a poor man with £100 ayear income, as £200 to a man whose income is £1000. Have they equal ustice, when the one must peril the fifth of his income before Barrister Blunderhead, unaided, at some remote sessions, and the other has his fifth adjudicated on by the Queen's Bench, and advocated with adequate skill? What is a trifling demand depends on its proportion to the wealth of the individual, not on its intrinsic amount. Even though the selection of the worse tribunal is optional to a plaintiff, it is necessarily compulsory on the defendant. He cannot help himself. A plaintiff having a doubtful claim, and being advised that the law is against him, will, of course, select the most incompetent tribunal he can find as the one in which he will have the best chance of success. The defendant is dragged there without any power of choosing a better, though by the inefficiency of the court he may be literally robbed.

What is above suggested relates to suits which involve some questions of fact or law-in which courts are resorted to to decide rights. As to undefended suits, or cases in which courts are resorted to merely to enforce rights (the object in reference to which mercantile men are apt, almost exclusively, to regard them), it is still easier to suggest modes of lessening their expense. When a man is served with a writ, stating that a demand is made against him, if he does not sig

nify his intention of disputing it, why should any other form be gone through except the writ which compels him to pay? The entering of parliamentary appearances, filing declarations, &c., in such cases, being all done behind the defendant's back, serve no useful purpose, and merely accumulate trouble and expense. An affidavit, before execution issued, of the amount believed to be due, would be a far better protection against oppression, and cost as many pence as those useless forms cost pounds.

There is one objection to such changes, no doubt. The support of our tribunals must be paid for from some fund; and no man should ask the repeal of a tax until he can propose a better. It might, perhaps, be answered, that justice is a commodity more to be favoured than whiskey, or even soap or paper; and that among the rival interests squabbling for the benefits of the surplus revenue, creditors and litigants should be heard. But, so far as the proposed transfer of jurisdiction to the civil-bill courts is concerned, the question does not arise ; for the loss is to be incurred at all events. All we propose is, to cheapen the proceedings in the good tribunals by remitting the amount of extorted payments which is about to be abandoned by adopting the bad.

There is a popular phrase applied to petty courts, which many conceive to imply a commendation—viz., “local and expeditious." If by "local" is meant that the court is easily applied to, it is not more applicable, nor as applicable, to civil bill courts, than to the superior courts. Every attorney is, by law, obliged to have a registered office in Dublin; and it is easier to write for a writ, than travel to the county town for a process. But if by "local" is meant that the court sits where it is most convenient that the trial should be held, it is absolutely false when applied to petty, as distinguished from the superior, courts.

If

a defendant's residence be the most convenient locality in which a case can be tried, the superior court can have it tried there. But in many-perhaps, most cases of demands of £50-it is

not so.

If a Dublin merchant sells goods to a Donegal gentleman, all the materials required for the trial—his books, his clerks, his witnesses-are in Dublin. If the case is tried in Donegal, they must all be brought there at a vast increase of expense and inconvenience. The English County Courts Acts endeavour to provide against this difficulty, by allowing the plaintiff an option of not resorting to them when he resides at twenty miles distance, or the cause of action has arisen out of the district. But how are we to guard against similar inconveniences to a defendant? It is plain, therefore, that fixity of the place of trial is a positive defect in a

court.

So of the phrase "expedi tious." If it means that decisions at quarter sessions are hastily made, it may be true, but is by no means commendatory; but if it means that a less period elapses between the time when a suitor requires the aid of the court and can have his suit determined, it is absolutely untrue. Since the passing of the Process and Practice Act, a case is tried in the superior courts in three weeks or less. The civil bill court sits but once in as many months. If an appeal from the presiding judge is required, it is, in the superior courts, determined in the ensuing term: in the civil bill court it must wait, perhaps, six months, until the following assizes. The same ratio of expedition holds in undefended cases.

This question is one in which all men are interested. The mode in which the law is administered is of more general interest than almost any part of the code administered. Any particular unjust law is felt by the few individuals only to whose circumstances it applies, but every citizen is a sufferer by the incompetency or costliness of the tribunals to which all must resort. A member of parliament with £20,000 lent on securities, and £20,000 more in the foreign funds, may laugh at his creditors, who cannot enforce one penny of their demands; a technical special demurrer, at most, causes a loss of but a few pounds and a little delay; yet special demurrers are justly complained of as the greater hindrance to justice of the two, for every suitor is exposed to them, whereas but few are defrauded by wealthy members of parliament. There is no man who may not suffer from defects in the tribunals

of the country, for no man can be insured against the danger of disputed rights.

The proposed extension of the civil bill jurisdiction has been unequivocally condemned by almost every class in the community, at this side of the channel, capable of forming a correct opinion on the subject. In the last year a meeting of the bar, attended by almost every practising member of the profession, was unanimous in their disapproval of it. More recently, in the last month, meetings of the other branch of the profession, the attorneys and solicitors, concurred in the condemnation. The most eminent mercantile associations in Dublin discountenance it; and mercantile men throughout Ireland look on it with disfavour. A plan based upon our principles for cheapening suits for less than £50, would, no doubt, be an undertaking of some difficulty. It would need much practical knowledge, and extensive.communication with, and aid from, judges and professional men. It could not be hastily prepared by the ignorant, and sulkily supported by the idle; nor could it be successfully steeplechased through the house at two o'clock in the morning. But however unac ceptable to official incapacity or indolence, it would meet general approbation, and is quite practicable.

Among the popular frensies of the day, one is, that they who are least acquainted with a system are the most competent to improve it; and it follows, as a corollary, that lawyers are the worst of law reformers. Many do not yield to this absurdity, yet be lieve that lawyers are unwilling to see changes made in the law. This opinion is utterly unfounded. The most zealous law reformers, at all times, have been among the ablest lawyers. In the vast strides of improvement in our legal system, in the quarter of a century following 1820, did any lawyer raise his voice against the changes made?

We have abstained from criticising in detail the Attorney-General's bill. So far as it is what he stated it to be, a consolidation of former Acts, it is the humblest species of legislation, but unquestionably desirable. It has scarcely another feature which deserves commendation. It proposes, in civil bill trials, to extend to all cases the power (which at present exists in ejectment cases only) of summoning witnesses living out of the county. This is to be done

by a summons from the clerk of the peace at the peril of a £10 fine, to be sued for in the county where the witness resides. The policy of subjecting an inhabitant of Antrim to be summoned by the clerk of the peace, or the clerk of the clerk of the peace of Kerry, and any man to be summoned to thirty-three places simultaneously, with perhaps all his employer's books and accounts, may well be questioned; and the ludicrously cumbrous process by which obedience is to be enforced, is an illustration of the difficulty, or rather impossibility, before alluded to, of conferring on petty local tribunals the efficacy of central courts.

The

limit of £50 is adopted from the English County Courts' Act. Considering the relative wealth of the two kingdoms, £30 would be nearer the amount which should be fixed, applying the same standard to both. Even in England the amount of £50 has been justly objected to, as including a class of mercantile debts very different from the simple dealings out of which demands for £20 ordinarily arise, and a class wholly unfit for minor tribunals.

Another new principle in the AttorneyGeneral's measure is, the introduction of stamp duties in civil bill proceedings, taxing, as we have already shewn, the very worst subject of taxation.

But a lengthened criticism of the details of the measure is foreign to the purpose of these observations. We abstain even from alluding to the supposed ultimate object of withdrawing business from the Four Courts, or the general alarm which the suspicion of a design to remove them to Westminster has awakened. There are those who believe in a scheme to reduce the importance, and scatter the members of the legal professions, until they will be too insignificant, and too divided, to resist this great climax of centralisation. But we wish not to enter into a wider field, or to touch on any phase of the question but the one. Our object is to direct attention to the false principle on which the extension of these petty jurisdictions proceeds; to point out the true road to cheap justice, and to guard our readers against that worst of counterfeits low priced litigation.

THE popularity of the Waverley Novels, their animated dialogue, great variety of character, and, in many instances, their strong dramatic features, rendered them very eligible subjects for stage concoction, as Garrick used to call it ; and a mine of wealth they have proved in repeated instances. After two or three experiments, all attended with the most marked success, no sooner did a novel appear by the Great Unknown, than adaptations of it, at all the theatres, major and minor, in every conceivable form, were instantly put in preparation, announced, and presented, with incredible rapidity, and as if by the agency of steam pressure. Like every other favourite subject, they were pushed a little too far, and now and then became drugs in the market; but in the aggregate, no class of dramas have ever been so generally well received, or have produced such large sums of money to the speculators.

VOL. XXXVII.-NO. CCXXI.

The first in the field was Guy Mannering, brought out at Covent Garden, on the 12th March, 1816, as an operatic play in three acts; the music by Bishop, whose celebrated Gipsy Glee, "The Chough and Crow," will ever rank among his happiest efforts. The beautiful poetry of this glee is taken from one of Miss Baillie's tragedies, and the expressive language materially enhances the composition. The drama is put together, very skilfully, by the late Daniel Terry, with some assistance and contributions from the author, as has been often supposed. Terry was well known to be on very intimate terms with Sir Walter Scott, and one of the chosen band to whom the secret of his authorship was imparted at an early period. Guy Mannering was supported by a host of talent, both in the vocal and acting departments, including Miss Stephens, Miss Matthews, Mrs. Gibbs, Mrs. Davenport, Mrs. Egerton,

2 T

Abbott, Sinclair, Liston, Blanchard, Simmons, Tokely, and Emery. Such an array of names we shall never see again collected in one theatre. The free-trade principle has rendered it impossible. Genius is a close borough, with a very limited constituency. Theatres may be built by act of parliament, at the corner of every street, but actors are not producible through a similar fiat.

The play met with unbounded success, and still continues in favour with the public. Some years after, another version of Guy Mannering, under the title of the Witch of Derncleugh, was produced at the Lyceum Theatre. In this, a different series of incidents was selected of a more melodramatic cast, and Dirk Hatteraick, excellently well acted by T. P. Cooke, was rendered the prominent character. Some thought this the better play of the two, but time has decided differently. It has passed into oblivion, while the other retains its popularity. Sir Walter Scott was so much pleased with the first adaptation, that he christened it the art of Terryfying, and ever after spoke of similar attempts as Terryfications, even where his friend and confidant had no hand in their construction.

The next was Rob Roy Macgregor, by Pocock, an experienced dramatist; another operatic play, the suc cess of which even surpassed that of its precursor, and afforded to Mr. Macready, then a new actor, fighting his way on the London boards, one of the earliest opportunities of proving his original genius. This came out also at Covent Garden, on the 12th March, 1818. I have heard Pocock lament, when rich and independent, that Rob Roy was not subject to the author's fees, being antecedent to the provisions of the Dramatic Authors' Act, and by which he said he lost a handsome annuity. I dare say it has been repeated oftener than any play within the memory of the present generation. I have, in my own course of practice, enacted the bold outlaw 173 times.

Rob Roy was followed by Dibdin's version of the Heart of Mid Lothian, which appeared in the shape of a melodrama, at the Surrey Theatre, in 1819, and had an enormous run, principally owing to the excellent acting of Miss Taylor, Mrs. Brooks, and Mrs. Egerton. Terry's play on the same subject at Covent Garden, was a comparative

failure, chiefly because he departed from the materials before him, and drew on his own invention. His adaptation of the Antiquary (from the groundwork of Pocock), was more successful. This last was acted on the 25th Jan., 1820.

Then came the Children of the Mist, in which Liston was the Dugald Dalgetty; Kenilworth, where Mrs. Bunn appeared a living type of Queen Eliza beth; and The Maid of Judah, with Mrs. Wood, both in singing and acting, glorious as the high-souled Rebecca.

Innumerable others followed in suc cession, and almost keeping pace with the novels as they issued from the press; but it is unnecessary to notice all in detail. The most successful were invariably those which most closely embodied the characters and incidents of the tales they were compiled from, as, for instance, in the cases of Guy Mannering, Rob Roy, The Heart of Mid Lothian, and the drama of The Bride of Lammermoor. The libretto of the opera founded on the last named subject, with Donizetti's beautiful music, is a sad mistake. Except in the single scene of signing the contract, there is but a scant resemblance to the original, while the total omission of the mother, Lady Ashton, the controlling agent and presiding evil genius, weakens and changes the feeling of the entire story. If the names of the characters were not preserved, the interest so completely loses its identity that it would be difficult to connect this meagre outline with the power and depth of colouring in the mighty master.

While the dramas from the Waverley Novels pleased everywhere, and drew money to the managers throughout the kingdom, in Scotland, as was likely, they found their strongest hold. Rob Roy was produced in Edinburgh with great care, in February, 1819, and ran for forty-one nights without intermission. It was admirably acted throughout, and introduced to that most critical audience a performer who has never been equalled in his ticular line-Charles Mackay. His Bailie Jarvie was not acting, it was nature, the man personified in living identity, as if he had sat for the picture, and the author had held him in his eye while drawing it. Liston was the admired of the Londoners, and an admirable artist too. His humour was peculiarly his own, and his Dominie

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