countries, the happiest practical effects have resulted from this state of matters. Law is studied as a science; many eminent works on general jurisprudence, and on its special branches, have been lately published; and an accuracy and precision have been introduced into the practical working of French law especially, which is deserving

of imitation.

In fine, upon this head of our subject, we think it totally indispensable that there should be at least two additional Law Chairs instituted, one for General Jurisprudence and Public Law, and the other for International Law, both public and private. These chairs would necessarily require to be endowed, as at first they could scarcely be expected to be self-supporting.

A very great practical evil, resulting from the want of a Chair of Public Law, is, that no instruction is provided for persons who may be called upon to exercise the office of magistrate. Nowhere will a Scotch magistrate find, within anything like reasonable compass, an explanation either of the duties of his office or the jurisdiction of his court. Surely something ought to be done to rectify this. A course of public and international law ought to provide this, and would also form a most useful study to any person seeking to be employed officially abroad.

But, leaving for the present the scientific development of law, we would next inquire whether our system supplies the information requisite and desirable for the practitioner in this country. The practitioner requires especially two things. First, a knowledge of the principles of Scotch law, or that body of legal doctrine ruling and settling the private relations of men to each other and to property; second, the mode in which this system is practically administered.

As regards the first of these objects, the Law of Scotland is taught under the two Chairs of Scotch Law and Conveyancing. On what principle this division has been made it would be extremely difficult to say: certain it is, that one more artificial and incommodious it would be impossible to find. The two subjects perpetually clash. It is utterly impossible for the Professor of Conveyancing to confine himself merely to the written form in which obligations and rights. are constituted, transmitted, or extinguished, without encroaching largely on the kindred topics of the nature and effect of the rights conveyed by these written documents. As little can the Professor of Scotch Law help treating largely of all classes of writs, when explaining the doctrines either of feudal or commercial law. Indeed, we may remark in passing, that this want of systematic division has been all along a serious and important grievance in our law, and a great hindrance to the student and practitioner. The various titles in the Dictionary of Decisions, and in the more recent Digests, are almost all perfectly arbitrary. The rubrics of the Reports are worse; and, as a sort of climax to the whole, the first Scotch law book which is put into the hands of most students, "Bell's Law Principles," introduces the unfortunate tyro, on the third page, to all

the mysteries of reduction of contracts on the heads of error, force or fear, and fraud, followed up by a refreshing analysis of the testing clause and the stamp laws. But this by the way. What we want is a more philosophical division of our existing Law Chairs, and an increase in the number of the courses of lectures.

We cheerfully admit the merits of the present Professor of Scotch Law in Edinburgh; but however great his excellence and assiduity, it is physically impossible, in any course of lectures limited to one hour five days in the week, for five months and a half in the year, to go over adequately the whole wide field of law. Much must necessarily be left undone, and in selecting what is to be done, those portions will naturally be chosen which are the best adapted for abstract professorial prelections. Now, there is a very large and important body of law, comprising much of what we have mentioned as the second necessary requisite for every practitioner, which is not so well adapted for abstract lectures to a numerous audience. We refer here to the great subjects of pleading, evidence, constitution of courts, forms of process, both civil and criminal. No doubt, much valuable knowledge on these points can only be got by practice, and will naturally be acquired during the course of apprenticeship or of attendance in an office; but we think every lawyer will admit that great advantage would be derived from a course of lectures on such subjects, where they would be considered at once theoretically and practically. Such duty would fall naturally to the office of Law Tutor, and we think the institution of such a subordinate office is loudly called for.

Two Law Tutors, a better subdivision of the Law Chairs, and the institution of at least two new professorships, would remedy the leading defects of our law school, and furnish a pretty complete and methodical development of the science, where the student, along with the general study of the science, would find the means of acquiring the information absolutely necessary for the creditable practice of his profession in all its branches. But the question will be put, How are we to get all this? Is it not perfectly utopian to expect such an increase in the present state of matters? To this we would reply, that the matter is not so great or so difficult after all, and that in all our suggestions we have carefully kept in view what is really practicable. Some time ago, the matter of legal education was taken up by the Faculty of Advocates, and a committee of that body reported strongly in favour of two new chairs, being pretty nearly those we have recommended, and they set forth special reasons, in connection with the history of the Public Law Chair in the University of Edinburgh, which showed there was a very strong moral, if not absolutely legal, claim upon government for a suitable endowment. Then, the present movement for University Reform, which is growing stronger every day, and which will produce fruits at no distant period, furnishes a favourable oppor tunity. We would recommend the subject to the earnest considera

tion of the various legal incorporations in the country, and if they will support the Faculty of Advocates in their application for the new professorships, at the same time urging the more practical institution of tutors, we cannot doubt their success.

POLICE JURISDICTION.

WE wish to lay before our readers some considerations affecting the interests of the public and of the profession in our Police Courts. We pledge ourselves to all possible brevity.

1. Our first point relates to the time to be given to a person accused to prepare his defence. The law on this subject has received some elucidation—perhaps we might say some extension— by recent decisions of the Court of Justiciary. We refer to Williamson or Graham v. Linton, decided on 24th November last, and to O'Brien and others v. Linton, decided on 21st February last. In both these cases, the trial before the magistrate proceeded under a local act requiring all possible despatch, and excluding all review except on the ground of oppression. In the first of them, the Court held that time must be given to an accused party who does not ask for it, if good grounds of delay exist in point of fact, although not disclosed at the trial. In the second, it was ruled that an accused party is entitled to delay without stating any ground for delay, except that he is now called, for the first time, to plead to the complaint.

We think that the law, so laid down, whether or not it be justly liable to the objection of being "judge made," is eminently expedient for the ends of public justice. No inferior judge or magistrate must now try a prisoner on the day when the plea of not guilty is taken, unless time be expressly declined, and scarcely even then, if the forms of procedure do not allow the declinature to be recorded. There is obviously no guarantee more important to secure a fair trial than time to prepare a defence. We cannot therefore wonder that the Supreme Criminal Court did not, in the cases above cited, feel itself hampered by the usual statutory restrictions on its power of review. For we think that in its very constitution inheres that jurisdiction which Bacon considered as analogous to the equitable jurisdiction of civil tribunals, and to which he gave the name of the censorial power;-a power not merely nova delicta puniendi, but also subveniendi contra rigorem legis. Of the latter form of the censorial power, it is scarcely possible to imagine an abuse.

1 De Augm. Scient., Lib. viii. Aph. 32-35.

2 With regard to the Court of Justiciary's power nova delicta puniendi, or of declaring an act never punished before to be a crime at common law, see the case of Greenhuff and others, Dec. 19, 1838, ii. Swint. 237, and the article on Scottish Criminal Jurisprudence and Procedure, in the Edinburgh Review, vol. lxxxiii., p. 196, Jan. 1846, commonly attributed to the late Lord Cockburn.

2. The next point we propose to consider is one which was adverted to in the last number of this Journal (p. 62). Our readers are aware that in no case can the High Court of Justiciary review the criminal sentences of inferior tribunals upon their merits. It cannot try again the issue of fact which these tribunals have determined. The evidence may have utterly failed to substantiate the charge, or may even have been inconsistent with it, yet if the proceedings be otherwise regular, no superior Court of Law can interfere. The Home Office is the sole tribunal which can give redress. Whether this state of things be right we will not at present say. Taking our remedies against an unjust police conviction as we find them, we think that the public are entitled to one indispensable guarantee of a fair trial, which it is not within the powers of the Court of Justiciary to give, and for which we must therefore be indebted to the Legislature. We are strongly of opinion that in every case of crime, as contradistinguished from mere contravention of police regulations-a distinction which scarcely requires illustration-the judge at the trial should, with his own hand, take notes of the evidence for preservation. To this proposal we know of absolutely no objection save one, with which we will presently deal.

We can illustrate its urgency by an example. The case we are about to put closely resembles one which has been related to us as having actually happened. We care little for its authenticity. It is enough for our purpose to give it as a case which may happen at any time, and which we believe to have been by no means uncommon in the older annals of our Police Courts.

A. B., whom we shall call a small tradesman, living in a limited atmosphere of respectability, is accused of theft. The evidence, though not conclusive, is sufficient to perplex the police magistrate. He does not feel confident enough either for conviction or for acquittal. He thinks it hard to send the accused to jail, and wrong to give him a full acquittal. By a most illogical, though by no means uncommon, process of thought, he arrives at this result. A. B. must find security for his future good behaviour; and upon his doing so, he is set at liberty. It is not a very prominent circumstance in the mind either of the accused or of his judge, that a conviction of theft is then and there recorded as the only condition upon which this result can be attained. To make our instance complete, we assume that A. B. is, in point of fact, innocent; and that a written record of the evidence would at once demonstrate the insufficiency of the grounds on which the conviction proceeded.

If A. B., at any time during the remainder of his life, be a witness in a court of justice, he may be asked this question: "Have you, sir, been convicted of theft?" It will be of no use to evade the question the judge will tell him he must answer it. It will be of no use to protest that he was entirely innocent: he will be told that he is not asked whether he was innocent. The fact must come out -he is a convicted thief.

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How is he to rid himself of this intolerable burden, and get his conviction cancelled? He applies to the Home Secretary. An official letter is despatched from the Home Office to the judge who tried him, requesting his opinion on the case, together with a report of the evidence. The latter part of this official request cannot be complied with, for no such report exists. The magistrate must justify his decision by an appeal to his own recollections. He becomes counsel in support of his own sentence,-counsel, too, without a contradictor. The result is, that the conviction hanging about the neck of our anonymous victim is rivetted there more firmly than ever.

We by no means overlook the opposite case of a magistrate whose recollections of the case, thus submitted to his own review by an appeal to the Home Office, have become dim through lapse of time; and who, from over-scrupulousness perhaps, understates the case against an undoubtedly guilty prisoner. The sentence is then reversed; justice is defeated, and the public confidence in the magistrate is unjustly shaken.

We repeat our conviction, that the evidence upon which the conviction proceeded should be taken down at the time by the magistrate's own hand, to be laid before any tribunal of review to which the accused may appeal. Even in our processes of suspension before the Court of Justiciary, the expediency of placing before the eyes of the judges a written record, not merely of the evidence, but of the whole procedure-the objections sustained or repelled, the motions made and disallowed-is too obvious to require argument. It would save many an unseemly discussion at the bar of the High Court as to what did and what did not take place in the Court below. But many of our police judges are not professional men. impossible, or at least would be very burdensome, to require notes of evidence from unpaid and unprofessional judges, who are moreover liable to continual change.

3. This leads us to our third point. The question between the paid and professional magistrate on the one hand, and the unpaid and unprofessional magistrate on the other, lies necessarily in the way of any one who considers the possible amelioration of our police tribunals.

We purpose to treat this vexed question, as we have done the preceding divisions of our subject, in a public and professional point of view. If we fail to show that the true interests of the public, and the true interests of the profession, are here at one, we shall confess a signal and complete failure in our argument. We must, in that case, patiently suffer judgment to go against our plea.

It is no part of our design to utter anything that may be construed into a sneer against unpaid and unprofessional judges. We abstain from so doing, not merely as from an act of impropriety, but also as from an act of injustice. It is with the system alone that we have to do. Honourable and able men hold, and have held, the