Probably the public anticipated rather too much, and their disappointment has consequently been the greater, when, after the lapse of thirty-six years, many of the evils of the old Record system are still found to exist. The present volume proves, incidentally, how this has happened.

The offices in London for the deposit of documents of a Record character, of one kind or another, are probably, at the least fifty in number. Each of these has a keeper, full of most laudable notions upon the subject of vested rights, and the interests of his successors; impressed with the very clearest opinions respecting the sacred character of fees, and sensibly alive to any allusion to arrangement' or ' over-hours' indexes.' Over this Record phalanx the Commissioners have not had one atom of authority. The most insignificant amongst them may shut his door in the face of the Commissioners, reminding them that they are not Record Keepers, and that, although the King's Commission empowers them to calendar and sort, it leaves the right of custody, and all the real power, in the hands in which it found them. The Commissioners-who comprise some of the most dignified persons in the realm—may inquire, and assist, and, if they think proper, may beg, and pray, but as to the power of really setting the Record Offices in order, they have none of it.

Do we complain of this? Certainly not. It will be an evil day for England, when the meanest man amongst us (not to mention Record Keepers-" God save the mark!") can be disseised of his franchise, or frank tenement, by any other judgment than that of his peers, or by the law of the land.

The old Commissioners were too much in the hands of the Keepers to do, or even attempt, anything that was displeasing to them. The present Commissioners seem, from the commencement of their course, to have properly appreciated the evil, and to have endeavoured to remedy it. That remedy lies in the total subversion of the present state of things, by the erection of a General Record Office, and the introduction of an uniform system of management, custody, arrangement, and fees. This scheme, it appears from the papers in the Appendix to the present Report, has been matured for several years, and a Bill been prepared to carry it into effect. Various circumstances, such as the changes in the Government, the objection of the Accountant-General to the application of a part of the Suitors' Fund to this purpose; difficulties respecting the interest of the Master of the Rolls in the Rolls House, which is proposed as the site of a General Office; and last, but not least, the difficulty of persuading the Government to take up any scheme which cannot be put into execution without going to Parliament for money, have conspired to impede, and hitherto to prevent, its execution.

Under a

The recent Committee recommend this scheme to the House of Commons as if it were their own. This we trust will be decisive. The object is a national one. In one shape or another the country now pays for the custody of the Records. better system much of the present expenditure might be saved; much of the money voted to the Record Commission would be no longer needed; salaries might be reduced; fees lessened; and the public relieved from the inconveniences attendant upon a multitude of repositories; from the absurdities of over-hours' indexes,' and from the system of negligence and imposition which in some offices has prevailed time out of mind, setting all Record Commissions at defiance. The repairs of the ill-adapted edifices at present in use, and the perpetual removals of records from place to place, which are unavoidable under the present system, cost the country in a few years as large a sum as would be necessary for the erection of a proper repository. Surely we are not so poor, either in purse or in spirit, as that an object so eminently useful should be longer The Report would seem to throw blame upon the present Commissiones, on

account of the non-execution of their plan of a General Office, but it does not appear why. The Government, and not the Commissioners, are the parties to carry it into effect; and it is evident that the Commissioners have endeavoured to induce the Government to do so. If the Government would not consent to the grant of money for the purpose, the Commissioners could do nothing. Let us hope the time has come when this obstacle will no longer exist.

Equally unreasonable appears the censure which is endeavoured to be thrown upon the Commissioners, on account of the condition of the present buildings. Qught a man to expend his money in costly repairs of an old house which he is about to quit?

The hope of carrying into execution the scheme of a General Repository, does not appear to have prevented the Commissioners from exerting themselves to effect what good can be done under the present system, consistently with the notion that is shortly to be superseded by a better one. Besides a good many dry details of sorting, binding, arranging, and calendaring, the present volume contains the testimony of the Report, that the business of methodizing the Records and rendering them generally available, is in progress; and that the Commission has carried on useful and well-conducted operations of this nature in some of the Record offices. In some, calendars have been, or are in preparation under its direction; in others fees have been reduced, and inconvenient regulations reformed."-(Report, p. xxxvii.)

One thing which appears in the evidence, and which is probably traceable, either mediately or immediately, to the influence of the Commissioners, is the general permission of access to the more important Record Offices given to Literary Enquirers. This is a point of considerable importance to many of our readers, and one upon which there prevails much misconception. We find it here fully recognized. The utmost liberality upon this point is stated to prevail at the Tower, and the Rolls; and, with respect to the Chapter House, the following is the statement of Sir Francis Palgrave.

"Under the present arrangement, made in connection with the Record Commission, the office is kept open from nine till four or five, and there is generally some one person present during those hours. That is one of the facilities the public has obtained. They have obtained also full and free access for historical inquiry. No difficulty is raised and no fees taken; and any gentleman wishing to come and consult the records, is allowed to do so by making a previous appointment; this is required to prevent too many persons being assembled together, the room being very small.

4303. Are the facilities you have afforded such as to make any distinction between legal and historical searchers? In historical searchers, I consider the office entirely open to any respectable person that applies. With respect to legal inquiries, I use a discretionary power. If I find a person engaged in an inquiry, the fees of which would amount to a considerable sum in general searches, I remit a certain portion of them; so that if nothing is found, no fee, or only a small fee, is paid; and, in conformity with the wishes of the Record Commission, I have reduced such general fees to the lowest standard that I could with propriety. It would be my wish to reduce them lower; but according to the usage of the office, half the fees go to the clerks, and I felt I could not go that length. The fees are very trifling, but I could not reduce them on some occasions so low as I could wish, half the money being the money of the clerks, not mine; the money is divided amongst the clerks at the end of each year."

This is very creditable both to the Commission and to Sir Francis Palgrave; and especially to the former; the latter, it would seem, has no real interest in the fees, since his salary is to be made up to £1000 per annum, whatever may be the sum produced by fees. However, it is very obvious, from his own statement, that he is fulfilling 'the wishes of the Record Commission' with a liberality which becomes him. Sir Thomas Phillipps, who spoke of having been deprived of his facilities of access to

this office since the appointment of Sir Francis Palgrave, must evidently have been under some mistake.

II. The second object of the Record Commission, the publication of the more ancient and valuable of the Records, and the progress made in that very useful work, engaged a considerable share of the attention of the Committee. Some works of the old Commissions are praised; but those of the present Commission are stated to be greatly superior to them in the convenience of their form, the style of their execution, and the care with which they have been edited.

Upon this subject a point was raised before the Committee, and is presented to notice in the Report, as to the propriety of publishing calendars, or catalogues raisonnées, of all the Records, before any one entire Record publication is attempted. This is a scheme which is supported, inconsiderately as we think, by, at any event, one highly respectable name. In our estimation, its originator is mistaken, and we think we could easily prove that he is so, but we have not space to enter upon the subject at present. As the point affects the propriety of the publications, we may perhaps recur to it in our future papers.

One portion of the inquiry respecting the publications has pained us, and that is, the part which refers to the Select Rolls, and the Chancellor's Rolls; volumes which we have already sufficiently condemned. They are admitted on all hands to be failures; but, from the course of the inquiry, it would seem, that it was wished to do before the Committee what was attempted to be done in the infamous papers in the Literary Gazette, that is, to fix the disgrace of those failures upon Mr. Hunter (Vide Gent. Mag. for July 1836, p. 43). With a view to trump up something like a charge of incompetency against that gentleman, the former of these volumes, for which it is most evident he was not responsible, was subjected to a most rigid examination. The mistakes which he had noticed in the corrigenda, were corrected in the pages, as well as those which he had stated in the preface had not been altered, for reasons which he then gave. In this condition the volume was laid before the Commitee, and one of its most blotted pages was submitted to a witness as a specimen of the Record Commission printing and editing. This was most unjust; to the Commission, as the work selected was admitted on all hands to have been one of a peculiar character, and therefore was not a foundation either for general praise or censure; to Mr. Hunter, as leading to inferences which those who brought forward this work as a specimen knew could not be derived from his Pipe Roll, or his Fines, or any other work which may properly be said to have been edited by him. The attempt failed disgracefully, and so may every attempt which originates in the same spirit !*

The similarity of animus exhibited in the papers in the Literary Gazette, and in that portion of the recent inquiry which related to Mr. Hunter is very observable. In both of them, accusations against him were sought for in the same unscrupulous manner. One instance will exhibit the sort of "stuff" that almost all the charges investigated by the Committee are "made of."

A specimen of a certain Catalogue was submitted to Mr. Hunter by the Secretary to the Commission for his opinion. He gave it, considering "his compliance with such request as an act on his part due to the character of the officer who required his assistance." (Ev. 4625.) The first charge made against him on this account was, that in consequence of an opinion given in this, as it was represented, underhand manner, the Catalogue, which was proceeding at the press, was suspended. It turned out, however, that the Catalogue was suspended before the opinion was given.

The second charge affected the accuracy of the opinion. Mr. Hunter was called upon to restate it before the Committee. "He expressed his great reluctance and pain at being examined at all, and complained strongly of the almost breach of confidence under which he was required to give evidence." (Ev. 4622.) But, in compliance with the wishes of the Committee, he brought forward, upon the instant, various objections to the plan, and various seeming proofs of illiteracy in the com

III. The continuation of Rymer's Fœdera was, as everybody knows, suspended by the present Commissioners, and various searches and inquiries have been prosecuting at home and abroad, with a view to a completion of this important work in a more creditable manner. It is allowed that the suspension was a proper step; the searches will be noticed hereafter.

IV. It is a matter of great vexation to all historical inquirers, that after a period of thirteen years no portion of the materials for the History of Britain has been given to the public. The work having been entirely suspended for some years past in consequence of the ill-health of Mr. Petrie, it appears to have become ultimately necessary to take it out of his hands; which has been recently done by the Commissioners with the sanction of the Lords of the Treasury.

We desire to express our most unfeigned regret for this result, so far as it is calculated to lessen the fame which Mr. Petrie would have acquired by the completion of any portion of the work; but, under the circumstances, it may be doubted whether the Commissioners could have executed their painful duty with more delicacy than they appear to have shewn towards him.

We heartily concur in the recommendation of the Report—

"That the execution of this national undertaking should be resumed at once with renewed vigour, and with such increased number of editors and literary assistants as may be necessary, and that a special grant should be yearly voted by Parliament of such amount, as may suffice to insure its completion at the earliest period consistent with the correctness and completeness of its execution." (Report, p. xliii.)

Upon all these four points, it does not appear that the recent Committee has brought to light any thing in which the Commission may be fairly said to have failed in its duty. But the principal part of the inquiry had reference to the general

piler. Laying aside the enforced breach of confidence, we think he should not have given this evidence, without having first taken the opinion of the House of Commons, as to whether a British subject is compellable under such circumstances to give testimony before a Committee. In our courts of justice the evidence of a witness is not received respecting the contents of a written document which may be produced to tell its own tale. However, the testimony, being given, became capable of being replied to, and any one who takes the trouble to compare the objections with the reply, will be most fully satisfied that the former are well founded. They are indeed admitted to be so. That charge therefore failed like its predecessor.

Another charge was then got up out of the same circumstances, which was, that Mr. Hunter, being employed to edit a General Report from the Commissioners to His Majesty, expunged from the Appendix to that Report an explanation of the faults found in the Catalogue, which explanation was contained in a report written by the framer of the Catalogue. In other words, Mr. Hunter condemned the Catalogue, and then suppressed the defence of it. This was the charge as it was understood by the chairman of the Committee (Ev. 4623): but the witness, although he did not take the ⚫ trouble to rectify the chairman's mistake, proved that the portion expunged could not be a defence, inasmuch as it related to the plan of the Catalogue, and not to its faults, which are things evidently distinct. The same witness, in his evidence (4617,) gives the portion alluded to as having been expunged, and it may therefore be seen that it does not affect "the faults" in the slightest degree; nor indeed was it possible for it to do so, as the witness became aware of the nature of the faults complained of only from the evidence of Mr. Hunter given before the Committee, and this document was written long before the Committee was appointed. But it may be asked, why was any portion of it expunged? We can perceive two very obvious reasons: I. The passages are a fallacy from beginning to end, and therefore ought not to have been published. II. Even if correct, they would have been entirely out of place in the Appendix to the General Report to the King. We have no doubt that these were the reasons which induced Mr. Hunter to exercise a very proper editorial discretion in the omission of these and other passages; for it seems they were struck out in company with various others. The expunging' and 'the faults,' were evidently about as nearly connected as Macedon and Monmouth.

administration of the affairs of the Commission, and the complaints under that head assumed three shapes: first, that the Commissioners have abdicated in favour of the Secretary, who in his own person has exercised all the powers and duties of the Commissioners; second, that this state of things has created some very unseemly squabbling and confusion; and third, that it has led to the existence of a large debt. We shall not discuss these points separately, but it will appear, as we go along, that the Commissioners have exercised the description of authority which was to be expected from them; that the personal complaints are such as might exist under every public body, and do not prove any non-performance of duty; and that the debt is not fairly chargeable against the present Commission.

The personal complaints against the Secretary, rather than any public grounds of dissatisfaction, seem to have occasioned the inquiry, and are indeed the key to the whole of the recent proceedings.

The Commission consists of twenty-five gentlemen, of whom about one-half are public officers having the custody of Records, and the other half are gentlemen who have distinguished themselves as historical writers, or who are known to possess a taste for literature. They are all men of wealth and consideration, and are, of course, unpaid in any way. The Commissioners constitute the deliberative body of the Commission. They have also, by means of committees of their own body, exercised a superintending and directing authority over the works committed to their officers. From March 1831 to December 1835, there were 91 meetings of the Commissioners for the transaction of business; that is, 38 boards and 53 committees.

The Commissioners have a Secretary, who is not only the medium of communication between the Board and the persons employed under them, but who appears also to possess a good deal of actual executive authority, subject always to the control of the Board. This arises in the following manner :-That portion of the business of the Commission which relates to publication, is committed to various literary men appointed by the Board to the office of Sub-Commissioners, and to others, also appointed by the Board, who are termed Editors. The distinction between the two classes seems principally to consist in this: that a Sub-Commissioner may be appointed without any definite duties being assigned to him, and is considered to have an appointment of a permanent character; whilst the Editors are appointed to perform specific works, the pendency of which is the term of their connection with the Board. Whatever duties of execution, either literary or otherwise, are not assigned by the Board to Sub-Commissioners or Editors, seem to be universally considered to vest entirely in the Secretary, who is, to that extent, quasi a Sub-Commissioner, and, like all the Sub-Commissioners, is subject to the inspection and superintendence of the Commissioners.

In the execution of the duties thus left to the Secretary, he, like the Sub-Commissioners, employs persons under him; for the sorting, cleaning, and bindingworkmen; for the literary labour-clerks.

How far this arrangement is good or otherwise, depends principally upon the character of the service to be performed. If it be of a temporary nature, or of such a kind that a very effective check is necessary to be kept upon its expense, we cannot conceive anything so very objectionable in this mode of doing it as some persons imagine they discover. One thing is obvious, that as, in this manner, the Secretary takes upon himself additional duties without any additional remuneration, the public is benefited in a pecuniary point of view to the amount of the difference between the sums paid to persons to assist the Secretary, and the amount which would be paid to Sub-Commissioners appointed to perform these duties and to the persons employed under them.

GENT. MAG. VOL. VII.

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