destruction of machinery, and outrage upon individuals which characterised the old Luddite combinations; but with every species of minor annoyance towards the masters who refused to submit, and the workmen who refused to combine. In other respects, the combinations, though general, were characterised by less intimidation than on former occasions; and with respect to one man who was killed in Dublin, it was offered to be proved before the committee of the House of Commons, that his death was not occasioned by the combination. In Liverpool where there had been many and long continued strikes, accompanied by most atrocious conduct and many murders, the combinations, since the repeal, have been perfectly tranquil. The Glasgow strike was not the strike of the men, but of the masters; and the conduct of the men was less violent than on any former occasion. Even the seamen at Newcastle, though three or four of them were shot, were less outrageous than they had ever been in former combinations. In the great strike of the stocking makers, which was only a repetition of that of 1823, no act was committed which called for punishment. As to oaths of a dangerous tendency which had formerly been extensively administered, no sooner was the act repealed than notice was given among those who had been bound by oaths, that oaths were at an end, and that the leaders of the union would denounce any who either gave or took oaths.

Whether these combinations were occasioned by an increased demand for labour, which about that time certainly took place in almost every species of employment, or by a misapprehension of the terms of the act of 1824, it is not now material to inquire, because the combinations have nearly all subsided without any extraordinary intervention of the civil power, and it is probable, that many of those who were engaged in them, have at length discovered their error.

The ministers of the Crown seem ta have conceived, that the word "intimi"dation" in Mr. Hume's statute, would extend only to such acts as excite fears for personal safety, and that acts of minor annoyance not productive of apprehensions on the score of personal safety, would not be holden to be acts of intimidation.

It is possible the courts might have so construed the statute, though in general it would be thought, that a man acted equally under intimidation, whether he were induced to do what he disliked, or not to do what he liked, from fear of personal violence, or from fear of grievous discomfort. However, to exclude all doubts, Mr. Wallace, last session, brought in a bill to repeal the act of 1824.

This bill also repeals all the acts which prohibit combinations of workmen, for the purpose of regulating their contracts respecting wages.

It further declares that no persons shall be liable to prosecution or penalty, who shall meet together for the sole purpose of consulting upon, and determining the rate of wages which such persons shall demand for their work, or the hours for which they shall work, or who shall enter into any agreement among themselves, for the purpose of fixing the rate of wages or hours during which they shall work.

There is a like declaration as to meetings of masters to regulate, wages of journeymen.

It then provides, that "if any person "shall by violence to person or property, or by threats or intimidation, or by mo" lesting or in any way obstructing ano

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ther, force or endeavour to force" any workman to leave his employment, or return work unfinished, or prevent him from hiring himself; or shall use the above means to force any workman to belong to clubs, or to pay fines for not having complied with regulations respecting wages; or shall use such means to force any manufacturer to alter his mode of carrying on business; the offender shall be im prisoned for any time not exceeding three months, with or without hard labour ac-cording to circumstances.

information must be laid within six months after the offence.

These two latter provisions were added by the Attorney General, and the bill passed in July.

The second act differs so slightly from the first, that it is difficult to account for the acrimony with which the debates on it were conducted. One cannot see why the advocates of the second act should have attacked Mr. Hume with such asperity, nor why those who voted for the first act should so strenuously have opposed the second. The difference between two and three months imprisonment can scarcely be esteemed very material. Judges from the same trade as the offender, are still excluded; and the difference between having them from masters in other trades, or from persons who associate with masters in other trades, seems to us not likely to affect the workman to any assignable extent; but even if the difference were considerable, it seems to us to be more than compensated by the appeal to the quarter-sessions, and the limitation of the prosecution to six mouths, neither of which provisions are contained in the former act. As to the permitting a conviction to take place on the oath of one witness, it is absolutely necessary for the purposes of justice. The more aggravated the of fence, the less likely is the offender to commit it in the presence of many witnesses; the testimony of one man of character is at least as satisfactory as that of a cloud of ordinary witnesses; and if the single witness be of bad character, it is not compulsory on the magistrate to believe his oath.

In fact the only substantial alteration in the second act, is the making persons answerable for obstruction and molestation, as well as for violence and intimidation.

That they ought to be so answerable, we have already shewn, and the only question remaining is, whether it should be left to the magistrate to determine what shall be deemed obstruction and molestation, or whether the act should enumerate every possible act of molestation that can be imagined.

It seems to us that the words are sufficiently general to include every possible act of the kind that could be imagined or enumerated, and sufficiently precise to restrain the magistrate from punishing for any act which it was not the intention of the legislature to visit with punishment. Let the law be framed in what language

it may, considerable discretion must always be left in the hands of those who carry it into execution, and the mischief of attempting to particularize all the acts which the legislature proposes to prohibit, is, that all the books which the world could hold, could not contain them, that all the imaginations that ever imagined could never imagine them, and that if one act only were omitted in the catalogue, the careful particularization of all the others would lead to the inference that that one had been omitted designedly. For the purpose therefore of precision as well as of brevity and clearness, it is absolutely necessary that the legislator should speak in the general terms appropriate to the subject of which he is treating.

LAW.

Courts at Westminster.

THE building of these courts has furnished a striking instance of that want of consideration for the pockets and conveniences of the people, which must always exist where they have no immediate check over their government. Our readers will recollect that about five years ago, the principal courts of justice were pulled down, to make room for the coronation dinner. However, to all who have business to transact in those courts, the annoyance occasioned by their being at a distance from each other, is so great, that it was hoped they would soon be restored to Westminster Hall. The quantity of building requisite was not great, and it was remembered that the largest theatre's had been reconstructed, for the purpose of mere amusement, within three months after their destruction by fire. Five years, however, have now elapsed (December 1825), and the Court of King's Bench is still relegated to the Sessions House, Westminster, the Court of Chancery to the precincts of Lincoln's Inn. Such is the speed at which public affairs travel in comparison with private. Next for a comparison of the expense. The new Court of King's Bench, adjoining Westminster Hall, was no sooner erected than certain gentlemen of taste denounced it in the House of Commons as an outrage upon what is called good taste in building. The matter was referred to a committee: by order of that committee, the nearly completed edifice was pulled down, in order to be recommenced, and stones which had cost ten shillings and sixpence

a foot in the erection, were sold, as we have been informed, at a shilling and at sixpence a foot, as old materials, upon the destruction of the building. After all this outlay upon the appearance, it might have been expected that some little attention would have been paid to the convenience of the structure. Instead of this, upon its second resurrection, it was found so small, and so little adapted to the purposes to which it was destined, that Mr. Scarlett made a public complaint, and threatened to make a motion on the subject in parliament. The chancellor of the Exchequer promised to investigate the matter himself, and to make the best arrangement he could. The architect, it seems, who had been employed in the business, had made a very natural blunder, which admitted, however, of a cheap and easy remedy. In taking his survey of the old courts, for the purpose of constructing new ones, he percieved that the Court of Exchequer occupied the greatest space, and not adverting to the fact, that that court is almost destitute of suitors, while neither time nor space sufficient can be found for those who throng the King's Bench, he determined to make the new Exchequer, like the old, the largest of all the courts. In order to effect this, he was obliged to encroach on the site destined for the King'a Bench, which was rendered, in consequence, so small and inadequate to its purpose as to call for Mr. Scarlett's complaint. The evil might have easily and cheaply have been remedied, if the architect, even then, would have assigned to the Exchequer the site appropriated to the King's Bench, and to the King's Bench the site appropriated to the Exchequer. Instead of this, he chose, as we have been informed, to pull down the interior of the King's Bench, a second time, and rebuild it a third. What the erection of the court has cost altogether, under these circumstances, and what has been the architect's per centage upon the expence, it is impossible for us to guess; but the court is, after all, dark, contracted, and inconvenient, to a degree scarcely credible by those who have not seen it. No separate approach for witnesses;-no separate approach for jurors; all who have business to transact, must fight their way through the crowd of persons who cover the floor at the two sides of the court. The whole space is so contracted for the numbers who have to breathe in it,

that in cold weather the most fetid air must be inhaled a thousand times over, or the persons present be exposed to draughts and intolerable cold.

We are satisfied that it will be difficult to carry on in this edifice the business of the chief tribunal in the land, and we trust some competent person will bring the subject before parliament early in the next session. The facts we have stated speak for themselves, and require no comment from us; we believe they cannot be denied or varied in substance.

We ought not to omit stating, that in the construction of the new Court of King's Bench, there is one good feature which has never existed in any of its predecessors- gallery for the accommodation of the public. It will hold from 60 to 90 persons, who may see and hear all that passes; and are at the same time so placed, as to offer no obstruction to the business of the court.

The importance of publicity, as a sanction for judicial integrity; the importance of familiarizing the people with the business of courts of justice; the convenience of finding a place for suitors and witnesses, whose turn is next on the list, are matters which have hitherto been strangely forgotten, in most of our metroplitan courts. Scarcely any of them afford any accommodation except for "gentlemen of the bar," and it is no small palliation of all the errors of the present architect, that he seems to have been the first who has had any consider. ation for the public. When we consider the instruction which may be obtained in our courts of justice, and the interest which every man has in learning whenever he can the latest exposition of that oral law which is said to reside in the judge's breast, it is obvious that the size of our principal courts of justice ought only to be limited by the space within which an ordinary speaker can conveniently be heard throughout. In the instance of the Opera House, it has been ascertained how ample a scope may be given, provided a building be constructed with any due regard to the principles of acoustics. There are, also, many provincial courts, from which our London architects might do well to take a lesson. In the West alone, at Winchester, Dorchester, Exeter, Bridgewater, Taunton, Wells, there is excellent accommodation, with seats for many hundred spectators; they have

tion, and are so placed as not in the least to interfere with the dispatch of business. We would also suggest, as a great improvement, the propriety of placing all the courts of justice in or near Lincoln's Inn Fields. The time lost, and the expense occasioned by daily journies to Westminster Hall, so far from the centre of all ordinary, as well as juridical business, is a serious and useless tax upon the profession and the public. We fear, however, we shall have few to support us in this proposal. The prestige of antiquity operates so powerfully upon mankind in general, that there are few who would sacrifice, even to their daily convenience, the superstition which attaches them to a Gothic building.

Salaries of the Judges and Police Magistrates.

As we approve, in the main, of the increase which has been made in the judges' salaries, it might be deemed superfluous on our parts to enter into any detailed exposition of the principles which ought to regulate the payment of public functionaries; but the importance of the subject, and the high respect we entertain for many of those who differ from us, demand at our hands something like an examination of the question.

The subject must be considered under two heads; the mode of payment and the amount; but the mode of payment involves by far the more difficult branch of the question.

As a general principle it may be assumed that the mode of payment ought, if possible, to be such as to make the interest of the functionary coincide with his duty; the application, however, of this principle in the present state of our judicial establishment, is by no means easy. Give a judge a fixed annual salary, and, like all other functionaries paid in the same manner, secure of his stipend at all events, he has an obvious interest in abridging the discharge of his duty pay him by fees on each suit, and he has an interest as decisive in the number and protraction of suits: on the other hand, let him receive a ticket for each day's attendance, and let the amount of his salary at the quarter's end depend upon the number of tickets he can produce; instead of taking his daily station with listlessness or disgust, and looking about

Be this as it may, the mode of paying a judge by fees on each suit or stage of a suit, or by the patronage of offices which are supported by similar fees, is clearly the worst that could be devised. It gives him an interest (almost irresistible) in the number and protraction of suits: it gives him an interest in overlooking the

extortion and other misconduct of his subordinates for if they have purchased their places it would be a kind of breach of contract to prevent them from profiting to the utmost-if they have received them gratuitously, they are generally friends or acquaintance, whom he would be loth to expose; it weakens the sanction of law in general, by inviting imputations on the integrity of those who are employed in the administration of justice: but above all by raising the price of justice, and virtually closing the doors of the court against the great mass of the community, it operates as a premium upon injustice, and as far as the absence of law can contribute to so sad a result, tends directly to the demoralization of society at large.

Upon whatever grounds, therefore, or from whatever motives the change may have been produced, we rejoice in the abolition of this mode of payment. It is at least one step towards a better distribution of justice.

But with a view to elucidate the nature of our system of government, it is curious and instructive to examine the reasons assigned for the alteration in question. In the view of those who think that the object of all government ought to be the greatest happiness of the greatest number, the paramount objection to paying judges or their officers by fees, is the consequent denial of justice to millions who are unable to pay the fees, and the torments occasioned by the success of injustice. Mr. Robinson, one of the ablest and most upright ministers this country has ever had, one who has already done more good than all