that his political services had entitled him), in which position he would have had the control of the whole magistracy of Ireland! While Baron of the Exchequer it fell to the lot of Lefroy to be the first of the judges to administer the Treason Felony Act. He was the presiding judge at the great trial of John Mitchell, at the City Commission Court, in May, 1818. His charge to the Grand Jury was a lucid exposition of the New Act and the general law on the subject. It is quoted nearly in extenso in the memoir, as also the speech (which was of an unusual length and of an impressive character) in which he passed sentence on the prisoner. On Lord Derby's accession to office in 1852, and the transfer of the Irish seals to Chief Justice Blackburne, Baron Lefroy was promoted to the Chief Justiceship. This post he held-despite the efforts to dislodge him we have alluded to-until Lord Derby's return to office in July, 1866, when he placed his resignation in the hands of the new premier, making way for the eminent orator (The Rt. Hon. James Whiteside), who now fills the post of Head of the Common Law in Ireland. Lord Derby offered the retired Chief Justice a Baronetcy, an offer which was renewed by Mr. D'Israeli on succeeding Lord Derby, but on both occasions the proffered honour was declined. Rumour hinted at the time that the veteran chief expected elevation to the peerage, to which there were obstacles, it was said, of a private nature. How this may have been we do not pretend to know. The subject is naturally not alluded to in the volume before us. Chief Justice Lefroy's conduct on the Bench was impartial, calm, dignified and firm; his judgments were lucid, forcible, precise and clear; in criminal cases he held the balance fairly between the Crown and the prisoner; and throughout his long judicial life he manifested a rare mastery of Crown and Constitutional Law. A favourable specimen of his power of grappling with legal principles, and courageously and logically applying them-as of his luminous exposition is to be found in the judgment he delivere in the case of Ward v. Freeman (reported 2 Ir. C. L. Rep., 460) in the Exchequer Chamber, in which he differed from the majority of the Court. If not one of the most brilliant or remarkable, he was at least one of the most unexceptionable, judges on the English or Irish Bench in the present generation. The knowledge, skill, and acumen with which he discharged his judicial functions may be best judged of by the fact that during the quarter of a century during which he sat upon the Bench not a single decision of his was ever reversed in the Court of Ultimate Appeal-his vigour and industry, by the fact that he did not ever miss a single circuit, or town on any circuit.

The late Chief Justice's political opinions we have already

indicated, as also his rather demonstrative, though deep and sincere, religiousness. He was courteous, amiable, charitable; very domestic, simple in his tastes and habits; fond of the country and of gardening. Even to his Dublin residence, which he built for himself in Lower Leeson Street, he had a good garden attached; and in the county of Longford he delighted to spend his vacations, both long and short, at a much loved retreat, called Carrig-glas, the manor house of which he rebuilt. His letter to his wife is quite touching, in which he speaks of the "anguish" he felt at the mischief that had been done to this place-especially in the uprooting of a grove of magnificent Cedars of Lebanon-by the great hurricane of January 6, 1839.

The Chief Justice survived his retirement from his judicial labours nearly three years. On May 4, 1869, at Newcourt, a villa he had rented near Bray, in the ninety-fourth year of age, surrounded by his family, and with a text of Scripture on his lips, the old man tranquilly passed away.

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IV. TRIBUNALS OF COMMERCE.

OT long since a legal journal, in reviewing the legal events of the past year, remarked on the increased trade of the country, and the growing confidence in commercial speculation, but observed at the same time that the legal trade had not increased in the same proportion. Although merchants were filling their pockets, barristers' fee-books showed a depressed trade in Lincoln's Inn and Westminster Hall; and though speculation was rife again in the City, solicitors' costs showed no revival of life. To the lawyers, 1871 had been as dull as previous years, and they alone seem to have been left out in the cold, while others were beginning to rejoice in the growing warmth of commercial activity. How is this? Usually life in the City gives work to the lawyers. When business is brisk, it has been generally considered that employment is being provided for the courts. When contracts are numerous, breaches of contract will be numerous also. When money is plentiful the costs of litigation do not appear so formidable as when money is tight; when transactions are multiplied, unforseen combinations of circumstances arise, the effects of which require legal explanation and solution, and thus in a busy world the lawyers are generally busy also. How comes it, then, that 1871 is an exception to this general rule? Perhaps the

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answer may be found in the evidence given before the Select Committee appointed last year to inquire into the expediency of establishing tribunals of commerce. This evidence shows pretty clearly why legal business, to some extent at any rate, has been standing still, while business of every other description has been advancing. The mercantile community is thoroughly dissatisfied with our whole judicial system; the costs of procuring a decision in one of our superior courts are so enormous, the delay in the progress of a cause is so great, that a merchant shrinks from any attempt to recover a small sum of money, however unjustly withheld from him. writes it off rather as a bad debt than undergo the expense and anxiety of prosecuting an action, which, after all, may leave him worse off at the end than he was in the beginning. That litigation is costly, and that our machinery for the administration of justice tends to make litigation lengthy, also cannot be denied, whatever may be thought as to the proper remedy to be applied to the evil, and it is obvious what an injurious effect such a state of things as this must have on commercial morality. It is a soil for rogues to thrive in. "Bring your action," says the fraudulent debtor, and he knows that he is safe in his defiance; dishonesty goes unpunished, and our judicial system is thus responsible for much of the commercial immorality we hear of now-a-days. But to cost and delay are added two further complaints. It is said that it is difficult to bring the real question in dispute before the court in a satisfactory manner, and that when brought, the court is often unable to try the cause, and refers it to arbitration. These complaints are not only made by individual merchants and others in their evidence before the Committee, but they are adopted by the Committee itself, and made the basis of the proposals they afterwards recommend. If true, no charges of more condemnatory character than these could be brought against any system of judicature, and it only remains to be seen whether they are so peculiarly applicable to the mercantile community that they can be remedied only by a special tribunal, and not by the threatened general reform of the whole judicial system. The Committee have felt the difficulty of advising on a matter which is only part of the more general subject under the consideration of the Judicature Commission, but they have nevertheless assented to what they believe to be the general demand of merchants, and recommend :

"That a tribunal of commerce should be established in such of the large towns throughout the country as might be selected as centres of surrounding districts, having regard to the population and commercial activity of each district, and that the court should be composed of one member of the legal profession as the president, and of two members selected from the commercial classes for the office of

commercial judge, with a registrar to carry out the routine business of the court."

They further recommend that if the business of the court so to be constituted is so extensive as not to admit of the County Court judge and registrar conducting the business of the court, the president and registrar should be appointed by the Crown. The jurisdiction of the tribunals, the Committee recommends, should be compulsory and exclusive over all causes which might be classified as commercial, and it considers it essential that the procedure should be of the simplest and most summary character, like that before the Tribunal of Commerce in France, or before justices of the peace in this country. The intervention of professional legal agents is not to be excluded as it is in France, but it is expected that the character of the tribunal will enable their services to be generally dispensed with. If this last expectation is realized, the public will have just reason to rejoice, while the lawyer will have no more ground for complaint than the artizan would have, whose labour is supplied by an improved machinery. If the new machinery is to be so effective as is promised, it is not, we think, from lawyers, on this last-mentioned ground, at any rate, that its establishment will receive obstruction. Finally, the Committee recognises a right to appeal, and recommends that in every case under £500, the appeal should be allowed with the sanction of the court, and above that amount it should be allowed on the demand of the party.

Such is the tribunal which is to remedy the grievances of the mercantile class. Now it is to be observed that in the proposed courts the position of each judge, so far as regards the decision to be pronounced, is equal; the voice of each mercantile member is as potent as that of the legal president. It is not proposed that the merchants shall fill a position similar to that of the nautical assessors of the Admiralty, in which they might advise the judge on the technical matters comprised in the subject of dispute; but while their special knowledge will certainly be useful in that respect, they will have equal power with the president of declaring the law in every instance. The jurisdiction of the court, moreover, is to be compulsory, and with regard to amount unlimited.

Now, the possible conflict between the constituent elements of such a court appears to us a very serious objection to its establishment. How it might be if we had a code of mercantile law to start from, we will not now stop to inquire; but if it be remembered how almost entirely our law depends at present on precedent, how all arguments in contention and in judgment are based on previous decisions, it must seem absurd that a layman, however acute, can be expected to grasp the

meaning and bearing of legal decisions in which he is wholly unversed, so that his voice in judgment may be of any value. In any case, therefore, in which legal principles are involved, it seems to follow that the merchant judge will be useless, or legal principles must be set aside, and judgment given on what some people are pleased to call common-sense views, that is, views which may vary from day to day and hour to hour, and the glorious uncertainty of law will, we venture to think, be soon outdone by the glorious uncertainty of commercial tribunals. The function of every tribunal of justice, as understood in this country at any rate, is to declare the law; and it is a condemnation of any tribunal, to our minds, if it is formed of persons who cannot be expected to have any knowledge of law whatever. It may be said, indeed, that mercantile judges will have knowledge of the customs of their trade, and that knowing custom is knowing law. There is some truth in this, but not the whole truth. Custom, when established, is law. But it is the law which says what is custom. The merchant may well think that the habits of his particular trade, with which he is himself familiar, have the characteristics of custom; but the law, standing outside the trade, has to consider the uniformity, the generality, and the reasonableness of a habit, before it can be advanced to the dignity of a custom. In this sense, and in view of this distinction, we think we are right in say ing that a merchant, though well versed in the habits of his trade, has no knowledge of law.

The advocates of these special tribunals of course point to the satisfaction with which they are regarded on the Continent. On the Continent, mercantile tribunals arc cheap, speedy, and always at hand-great advantages we admit: advantages which ought to be attainable under every system of judicature, and all of which may be obtained, we believe, without altering the established constitution of our courts. On the Continent it must be remembered the judges have to deal with a code which is supposed accurately to define the law; and the authority of previous decisions goes for little or nothing. The decisions may, indeed, be satisfactory for the moment, but it is hopeless to expect that any scientific system could be formed, or a code scientifically improved, by the decisions of a court propounded in this manner.

Now, the general idea which gives birth to this wish for mercantile members to sit in judgment seems to be that there is something in mercantile transactions which cannot be made intelligible to the outside public. It may be admitted that a merchant will appreciate more quickly the terms of a mercantile contract and the customary implications involved in it, than a non-trader, but how there can be any fact or custom, necessary