his style, and but for a little fastidiousness, there is no doubt that he has succeeded, and that his work is to be admired as much for its elegance as for its ability and completeness. We cannot, on a fuller perusal of Mr. Clark's book, withdraw our objection to his constant use of quoting stereotyped Latin law phrases. In pleading, this is often very effective, but in composition it has always struck us as an ungraceful ornament. Upon the whole, we have no hesitation in expressing our highest approval of Mr Clark's work, and we hope that it will find its way into every public and private law library. We cannot conclude without a word of recognition of the handsome and enterprising manner in which the publishers have performed their share of the work.

THE SUMMARY PROCEDURE BILL.

THIS Bill has been much canvassed, and met with little favour at the county meetings. We give below the best defence of the bill and the fullest discussion of its principle, which we have seen, in the speech of Mr. Fraser, Sheriff of Renfrewshire, at the county meeting on 30th April-when it was resolved to send back for reconsideration the recommendation of the Standing Committee to petition parliament against the bill. Reconsideration did not alter the views of the Standing Committee.

The following are the material portions of the speech :

"The bill has been very greatly misunderstood. Its object is merely to simplify procedure, and to abolish a system of process which is at once expensive, cumbrous, and technical. In various of the petitions which have been industriously communicated to the Commissioners of Supply, it is said that at the present moment there is no right of review on the part of the Supreme Court of any judgment of the Justices of the Peace. That statement is inaccurate. Under the existing law, the judgment of a Justice can be reviewed, if not to the same extent, at least to nearly the same extent, as it is proposed to give that right under the Summary Procedure Bill. His judgment cannot be reviewed upon facts; and it is not proposed to give any right of review upon facts; but if a Justice of the Peace admits incompetent evidence, or rejects competent evidence, or does not observe the forms pointed out by the special statute under which he is acting, or if he misconstrue the Act which he professes to administer, then in every one of these cases the Court of Session or the Court of Justiciary (according as the case may be civil or criminal), may quash his judgment. £50 frequently are required to liquidate the accounts in obtaining a decision under our present cumbrous mode

of procedure in the Justiciary Court. But that expense and that procedure are simple as compared with what takes place in the Court of Session. In that Court you may have to run the gauntlet of the Outer House, then of the Inner House, upon an appeal, and at last the House of Lords (for every civil case may be appealed); and a record must be made up before a judgment can be given upon a simple question as to whether a Justice of the Peace has construed rightly an Act of Parliament, whether he has exceeded his jurisdiction, or whether he has admitted incompetent evidence, or refused competent evidence. The object of the new bill is merely to get rid of this obsolete system of pleading, and to substitute in its place one short paper which states the point to be decided, and upon which there shall be one decision, and no more, by a Supreme Court. Its main purpose is to get rid of the note of suspension in the Court of Justiciary, of the summons of reduction and of the record in the Court of Session, and to substitute a simple case, embodying nothing more than the question of law which has been stated to the Justice, and upon which he may have had difficulty. Such a case could be stated upon the face of a sheet of paper, not occupying twenty lines, whereas, according to the present procedure the matter is expanded into a long record. The whole of the clauses in the Act of Parliament are intended to do nothing more than effect that rational reform. The only other question is in reference to the 19th clause, which gives for the first time a clear and intelligible definition of what is to be held as criminal, and what is to held as civil. The procedure allowed by the bill has been in existence in Scotland for the last thirty-six years; and that which is now denounced as a measure intended for no other purpose than to put money into the pockets of Edinburgh lawyers has been worked since the year 1827, and with every advantage to the public. The Revenue Act of Parliament of that year (7 and 8 Geo. IV., c. 53 and 84), authorised the Justices of the Peace to state a case for the opinion of the Court of Exchequer in any question of law. The point was stated in about twenty lines, and the judgment of the Court of Exchequer was easily obtained. I refer to one case as an example of the working of this law where on a difficult question they were puzzled, and themselves desired to be guided by better opinions than their own, (Watson v. Simpson, 19 D. 380). The form of procedure of stating a case is the form for the opinion of a superior court, is the form allowed by the Assessed Taxes Acts; by the Valuation Acts; by the Adulteration of Food Act (1860); by the Herring Fisheries Act (1860), and other Acts. short, it is a form at once simple, inexpensive, and easily worked, and has been gradually superseding our old wordy form of pleading. That this was an admirable reform was at last set at rest by the success which has attended the "Act to improve the administration of the law, in so far as respects summary proceedings before Justices of the Peace," (20 and 21 Vict., c. 43), which is now the law of England and Ireland. The present Summary Procedure Bill is just a transcript of this Act, with such necessary alterations as are required in consequence of the difference of our legal terminology from that of the law of England. That this Act has been a great success in England and Ireland, I need scarcely tell you. I find one of the most experienced writers on the law of summary proceedings before Justices of the Peace thus writing of it. I refer to Mr Oke, the clerk to the Lord Mayor of London, and who has had as much experience of the English Act as any man living. He says:-"Previous to this Act,

In

which has been found most beneficial, it was always felt as a great blemish in our law, that there is no such power as is given by this statute, and no means of getting at the merits of a case, or of reviewing the decisions and proceedings of justices acting within their jurisdiction." Now, in the year 1864, it was thought that what had proved good in Scotland for thirty-six years in revenue cases, and had proved good in England in general summary proceedings would prove good in Scotland also in general prosecutions. With the concurrence of the Bar, the Lord Advocate introduced a bill to give us in Scotland the benefit of this English law. I cannot tell by what grievous blunder it was, that the clauses of the present bill, which were part of the law of England, were omitted from that act, as it was introduced into the House of Commons. But so it was. And when the attention of the Lord Advocate was called to the subject, the omission was immediately remedied by the insertion of the clauses in committee. Then uprose a great noise and clamour. The eleven clauses that were added were immediately denounced, notwithstanding that they were then the existing law of England and Ireland. It soon appeared through whose instrumentality this was effected. Three or four Justice of Peace clerks appeared in London, besieging the doors of Scotch members of Parliament. The Duke of Buccleuch is all-potent in the House of Lords, and apparently some persons who thought their interests would be affected by the new clauses converted the Duke, who intimated to the Lord Advocate that he would oppose the bill if these clauses remained. I regret much that the Lord Advocate did not at once decide to throw the bill overboard. Without these clauses it was an abortion, and has been the source of needless litigation. At the same time I am glad to say that the authors of the stratagem have been defeated. In some of the first questions which arose under it, it was pleaded that there was no remedy, however erroneous the Justice might be in point of law; and thus, if this view were correct, we would have law administered to the lieges in every county according to the views taken by each particular Justice in each county of poachers and teetotallers. This condition of things could not be tolerated in a civilised country; and the Court of Justiciary have fortunately been able to see their way to set aside (although under a cumbrous form of process) judgments of the Justices of Peace which were manifestly erroneous in point of law. Now, all that the Summary Procedure Bill professes to do, is simply to enact that a case may be demanded from the Justice of the Peace upon a question of law; which case is to be laid, not before a Judge in the outer House of the Court of Session, from which it has to run the whole course of appeal to the Inner House,--and from thence to the House of Lords; but it is at once to be laid upon the table of one of the divisions of the Court of Session, or upon the table of the Court of Justiciary, according as the case may be civil or criminal, and the judgment of each of those two Courts is to be final. The right of appeal to the House of Lords is absolutely taken away. It is said, however, that the bill imposes a great hardship on Magistrates, who, if they refuse a case, may be found liable in costs. Now the man who wrote that must have been unfit for his profession as a lawyer through gross ignorance, or he must be unfit for it because of an incapacity to state the matter truthfully. The award of cost to be made by the Lord Ordinary, if he sees proper to order a case where the Justice of Peace has refused it, is not against the Justice, but against the respondent—the other party in the

case. This is no new law. It is merely copied from the English and Irish Act. It is a gross misrepresentation to say that the bill authorises the Court to award expenses against Justices. In some of the petitions, it is stated that no complaints whatever have been made against tho Summary Procedure Act of 1864, and that it has worked beneficially. Now, that Act, so far as it goes, is a very good statute, and it is not proposed to repeal it. It is only proposed to add to it clauses which were originally in it when it passed the House of Commons, and were only withdrawn in the House of Lords in consequence of the opposition got up by a combination of clerks to the Justices of the Peace, who have used-in the petitions which they have got country gentlemen to sign-language towards the members of the Bar in Scotland, at once 'disgraceful and discreditable, and which I will not demean myself by replying to."

THE MONTH.

The Case of Charlotte Winsor-The final determination of the fate of this unfortunate woman, who has for the last twelvemonth been made the subject of an experimentum in corpore vili, will be a great relief and satisfaction to the public mind. The circumstances of the case will be still fresh in the recollection of our readers. She was, nearly a year ago, indicted on a charge of child-murder, committed under circumstances of unprecedented and unnatural depravity; and although additional evidence was obtained at the second trial, there is no doubt whatever that the proof led at the first was amply sufficient to warrant a conviction. The jury, however, to whom she was remitted do not appear to have had the same clear opinion, and they deliberated for five hours without being able to arrive at the unanimous result which the law requires. At the end of that time, they were discharged by the Judge, there being reasons, in his opinion, requiring that step-in the first place, the fact that the proceedings of the Court were entering upon Sunday morning; and secondly, that he had to open the Assizes at Bodmin on the following Monday. After a lapse of many months, the prisoner was again put upon trial, and the evidence of the mother of the child, who was arraigned on the same indictment, having been admitted, a conviction followed. Execution of the sentence was then attempted to be averted, on the ground that she had, according to our phrase in Scotland, "tholed her assize," and that, having done so at the first trial, she was illegally tried a second time. This objection was brought before the Lord Chief Justice

and three other Judges sitting in banco, by means of a writ of error, which was issued, as is required by law, with the consent of the Crown. After a very full argument the Court, without any difficulty, repelled the objection; and the Home Secretary having declined to commute the sentence of death which had formerly been passed, the unhappy woman was again drawn, after the interval of many months, into the contemplation of her approaching doom. Again, at the last moment, on the ground that the Irish Judges in a recent case had arrived at a different result from the judgment of the Queen's Bench, the convict was a second time respited, and the satisfaction of the extreme penalty of the law was made contingent on the fate of a writ of error to the Exchequer Chamber, for which the Attorney-General granted his fiat.

The interest of the case for our pages lies, of course, in the discussion which followed upon the writ of error. But we do not hesitate to express our opinion that the idea of putting the convict to death at the close of the deliberations in the Queen's Bench was simply barbarous. The objection to the validity of the second trial was either a good or a bad one. If it was bad, and we think as the Court held that it was clearly and obviously so, the Crown should have withheld its consent from the writ of error; and it was anything but mercy to yield to the most anxious solicitations of the prisoner, assuming these to have been put forward. If it was a good objection, that is to say, in the form in which the question here rises, if there were reasonable grounds for the opinion that it might prevail, it was right that the Crown should provide every facility for the determination of a question of the greatest practical concern to the whole community. No doubt the step taken was at the instigation of the prisoner herself; and she need not have done so. But who will so strictly construe a struggle made for life? And it must not be forgotten that the act upon which the writ of error was based, was not an act of the prisoner's own doing, or of those who were acting for her. No one is allowed to profit by his own wrong, and, in the circumstances, the maxim does not seem to be improperly extended by being applied to a case where the wrong consists in a false view of the law. But whether right or wrong of the second trial, the Judge was the cause, and not the prisoner. Independently, however, of all such considerations, we hold the opinion in full consciousness of the views which we have in a previous number