ship and inconvenience would occur; but, on the other hand, the practitioner would find that by the concentration of business in particular places he could both curtail his expenditure and economise his time.

I am not unaware that many arguments, into which no pecuniary considerations enter, may be advanced in favour of the present circuit system. Some of them are in their nature rather sentimental than solid, but they certainly deserve our attention. It will be said that the circuit mess is an important Council of Discipline, and that circuit associations, ties, and traditions are valuable aids to the maintenance of a high tone of professional honour, and to the encouragement of that confidential intercourse which is so necessary to the due discharge of the often difficult and delicate duties of advocacy.

To this it may be replied that these advantages, the importance of which we all admit, are not inseparable from our present system, nor dependent upon it. Nay, it may be fairly assumed, that members of the Bar practising in the same district would meet there in larger numbers at the Bar-mess than they do in the present circuit towns, nor is there the slightest ground for assuming that they would display less zeal in upholding the character of their order by enforcing reasonable rules of etiquette, and by excluding from their society dishonest and unfair practitioners.

It would be a grave misfortune, let me add, if in a period of change and transition, the members of the Bar, for any supposed advantage to themselves, or from timidity and a scrupulous regard for their social and professional status, should endeavour to maintain obsolete institutions, after they have ceased to be serviceable to the community at large. They cannot ignore the altered circumstances which are notorious and patent to all classes. Our circuits are still retained, but has not more than one revolution taken place in the mode of travelling them? When the circuit Bar rode through the country with the judges, the stately cavalcade

was doubtless much admired, as it resolutely faced the winds of March, or swept over the green sward in summer time beneath the shade of English oaks. Yet in process of time when highway roads improved, and ceased to be impassable half the year, barristers took advantage of them, like other people, for greater ease and facility of locomotion, though they still endeavoured to preserve their exclusive character by avoiding public vehicles, and by travelling in private carriages and post-chaises.* When the rail began to supersede the road, another revolution was at hand. Very timidly at first, but from sheer necessity, the circuit Bars trusted themselves to public conveyances. I do not believe and have never heard that any mischief has resulted even from this last innovation. Under the former systems the needy circuit barrister had frequently to encounter serious difficulties. In the old time he was often sorely pinched to pay for his horse. As late as the year 1741, Pratt, afterwards Earl of Camden, thus writes from the Western Circuit to a friend: "Alas! my horse is lamer than ever; no sooner cured of one shoulder than the other began to halt. My losses in horse-flesh ruin me, and keep me so poor that I have scarce money enough to bear me out in a summer's ramble; yet ramble I must if I starve to pay for it." When, again, post-chaises were in vogue and public carriages prohibited, necessitous barristers not unfrequently walked their circuit-Lord Campbell, when

*At the latter end of the 18th century, it was the custom, according to Lord Campbell, for the judges to go all the way round their circuits in their coaches and four, while the counsel journeyed on horseback. (Sec Campbell's lives of the Chief Justices, vol. 3, p. 273). In carlier times, the judges in their "progresses" seem to have adopted some quaint and eccentric customs. "Some of the judges," says Mr. Foss [tem. Jac. I.] "when they went the circuit, adopted the ridiculous fashion of carrying a large fan with a handle at least half a yard long. Sir William Dugdale (who, however, could not have been above 10 years old), saw Sir Edward Coke with such a fan; and the Earl of Manchester (Sir Edward Montague), also used one." (Foss's Judges of England, vol. vi., p. 10.)

a junior member of the Oxford circuit, is reported to have done so for three or four years.

I have now arrived at the last topic on which I shall trouble the society this evening, that of the barrister's circuit expenses. These fall very unequally on the members of the present circuits. To leaders and juniors in large practice the cost of travelling and lodging in the assize towns is hardly a matter worthy of consideration. But these expenses press very heavily upon tife resources of the young and struggling practitioner. For the privilege of "going circuit" he is now taxed very heavily, and has to endure much discomfort. In small assize towns lodgings are often both dear and bad, and twice as much is demanded of the barrister for the use of a mean and miserable apartment, as would ensure the most luxurious accommodation at a first-class hotel.

By substituting the district for the circuit town, the Bar would be left to greater liberty; better accommodation would be obtainable, and expenses considerably lightened. The money expended by the junior barrister might be made to bear a fair proportion to his moderate share of country business; nor would the reduced expenditure, it is submitted, in any way impair the dignity, influence, and usefulness of

the Bar.

745

XXXVI.-ON LEGAL REPORTING.
By J. WESTLAKE, Esq., BARRISTER-AT-LAW.

(Read, June 15th, 1863.)

My paper might be styled, "a plea for official reporting." The foremost reason for official reporting is that reporting is in fact a part of the business of law-making, and that no part of the business of law-making ought to be left to private enterprise. This is a reason of principle, and all the other reasons which may be given may be considered as working it out in detail, and illustrating the mischievous effects which arise from entrusting the selection and authentication of case law to private enterprise. As a principle, the essentially public nature of an employment, which selects and authenticates the precedents that are to be incorporated in our case law, will hardly be denied. I have only to guard the principle from being supposed to involve any particular theory about the more or less binding authority of precedents. If, indeed, the authority of single precedents be put so high as it has practically been of late years, especially in the Court of Chancery, the truth of the principle I assert will appear in the strongest light; but if precedents should even be reduced to the level at which they stand on the Continent, a level below that at which they have ever stood in this country, that is, if they should be deemed to be absolutely devoid of binding authority, and only to carry weight as expressing the individual opinions of the learned judges who decided them, still the weight which they would so carry is so great that they could not practically be disregarded in enumerating the sources of the law. We see, in fact, that in the countries where precedents, as such, have no authority, any extensive and tolerably uniform line of them becomes really binding, under the name of jurisprudence. Independently then of any theory as to the legal worth of cases, reporting them is inevit

ably a part of the business of law-making, therefore a public business, therefore a business to be done under public authority, unless some strong reason can be shown to the contrary. But all the other reasons come to reinforce this great one, not to weaken it.

The crying evil which has attracted so much attention to the subject is the multiplication of reports. This is exceedingly costly to the profession, both in time, money, and learning. The expense of buying all the reports is so great that few buy them all. Those who do so find the multiplication of reports costly in money: to those who do not, it costs the learning which they miss in not having all the reports at hand for easy reference. To all it costs time. The emulation of reporters crowds the pages of reports with cases which illustrate no principle, but which must be read to establish the fact that they are not worth reading; and because many a case not worth reading is, or seems to be thought, worth citing if there is no other to cite, provided only it can be got at, which ought not to be possible. The really valuable cases are not to be all conveniently found in one set of reports, but must be painfully winnowed out of many sets of reports, in all of which they are mixed with more or less of chaff; and the same case as reported in different books sometimes presents discrepancies, to be reconciled by the expenditure of time, thought, and research, or not to be reconciled at all; while very often, though there is no discrepancy, important facts, or suggestive remarks of the judge, are to be found in one only of the books, and others only in another, so that the complete precedent has to be painfully constructed by a collation of them all. The multiplicity of reports is, in my opinion, incurable, so long as reporting is left to private enterprise. Nay, farther, as long as there is no official report, I do not desire to cure the multiplicity of private reports, because competition is the sole condition of excellence in private workmanship.