visable to try the northern part of Cockburn Island, the most eligible way would be across Davis's Strait, for the James was fifty miles up an inlet (qu. Pond's?) on the western coast, free of ice as far as the eye could reach, with a strong adverse current, and in a direction which induced the Master to suppose it would ultimately join Prince Regent's Inlet. There is no doubt of its joining Fox's Channel.

6

This then is obviously the route which is most desirable to be taken. The view,' says Captain Parry, which we obtained from the southern part of Prince Regent's Inlet, in 1819, was not, indeed, very encouraging as to the state of the ice at that particular time; but our business at that time lying in a different direction, we remained only a few hours on the spot. The ice was, however, detached from the shores, and in motion; in which case a hope may always be cherished of occasional openings in our favour.' All experience proves this. In a deep and open sea where the ice floats, it is absolute nonsense to talk of impenetrable fields of ice;' they are the sport of winds, tides, and currents. Of the sudden and extraordinary changes which take place in this respect, Captain Parry has afforded numerous instances. Thus, in proceeding up Fox's wide channel: 'at this time,' says he, the prospect to the westward appeared from the crow's nest as unpromising, ou account of the closeness and extent of the ice, as I ever remember to have seen it. Shortly afterwards, however, the sea became gradually, or rather suddenly, navigable; the ice separating, and, in fact, disappearing in so rapid and extraordinary a manner, as to astonish even those among us who had been accustomed to this sort of navigation, and affording a striking example of those sudden changes which, in icy seas, almost teach us never to despair of making progress, even under circumstances apparently the most unfavourable. Again, when nothing was to be seen from the ships but one wide sea, uninterruptedly covered with ice as far as the eye can reach,' he observes, a prospect like this would naturally convey to the mind of a person little acquainted with this navigation, an idea of utter hopelessness;' yet the following day the ships had drifted in the ice and out of the ice, not less than forty or fifty miles.

It is certainly true, as Captain Parry observes, with regard to crossing the Polar Sea, that to enter a body of heavy ice, of great and uncertain extent, without any known land stretching in the desired direction, is an enterprize differing in character from almost any hitherto attended with success;' but he thinks it not improbable, that some intervening land may be discovered to assist his progress to the south-westward; or, should it prove one vast expanse of sea, 'channels of open water may occur to assist a ship's

progress

progress to the westward.' We are disposed to hope, that the latter may be the case. Proving, as we have done, that floating ice on a wide sea can never be permanently stationary, we conceive that less difficulty will be found, than among an archipelago of islands, where it firmly attaches itself to the narrow passages between them, as at Melville and Cockburn islands. In further proof of this, we might mention the voyage of William Barentz round the northern extremity of Nova Zembla; of a Russian ship having passed the same point in 1822; of the Russian corvette round Icy Cape in the same year; and the extraordinary journey from the mouth of the Kolyma to the northward over the ice, by Baron Wrangel, who was stopped by an open sea, on which neither ice nor land was visible in any direction, as far as the eye could reach, to the east, north, and west. These and many other instances prove the absurdity of fixed and impenetrable ice on the surface of a spacious

sea.

Another circumstance not noticed by Captain Parry induces us to augur favourably of a practicable passage across the Polar Sea to the coast of America. It is that of the rapid tide (independent of the permanent current) which sets through the Strait of the Fury and Hecla, and which, on the former voyage, was also found to set up Prince Regent's Inlet, and to rise to the height of twelve feet. Now these two tides must have their origin in the Polar Sea; and it is a question, which we presume not to decide, what amount of influence, if any, the moon may exert on the surface of a sea covered or nearly so with ice? but we are induced to think that a very considerable surface of water would be required to cause a regular tide to the extent mentioned.

Once upon the American coast, we consider the object in a great degree accomplished. So many points of that coast are now known, the low parallel of latitude in which it generally runs, the resources it affords in fish and game, the known communications with the Hudson's Bay Company's posts, from Cape Turnagain to Mackenzie's River, and the thickly inhabited country which lies between the rocky mountains and Behring's Strait, as recently explored by the Americo-Russian Trading Company, must give a confidence to those employed on the Enterprize, and set their minds at ease in the event of any accident befalling the ships. In this we apprehend we have Captain Parry's concurrence, who thus termi

This excellent officer had nearly perished on a second attempt in the month of March last. He had scarcely advanced fifty werst, when a gale of wind broke up the ice all around him, and he found himself on an open sea tossed about on a floe of ice about eighty fathoms long, and forty broad, floated about at the mercy of the wind and current, which fortunately drove him at length, half dead with cold and hunger, to the Asiatic shore, not far from Behring's Strait.

nates

nates his narrative. For my own part, I never felt more sanguine of ultimate success in the enterprize in which I have lately been engaged, than at the present moment; and I cannot but entertain a confident hope that England may yet be destined to succeed in an attempt which has for centuries past engaged her attention, and interested the whole civilized world.'*

We have little to observe as to the style and character of the Narrative of the late voyage; the first is plain, unaffected, and perspicuous; the latter such precisely as might have been expected by those who have perused the account of the former voyage; full and precise in all the descriptions of objects, and minute in all the transactions and events of the Expedition-rather too minute, we should say, for the general reader; but Captain Parry, like his predecessor, Vancouver, leaves nothing behind him for another to do. The detail of astronomical and meteorological observations, with various phenomena connected with them, the description of objects of natural history, and other scientific researches, he has, wisely we think, omitted in this account of the voyage, reserving them for a future publication as an Appendix; but the volume is illustrated

We shall ere long be in possession of the geography of the northern coast of Ame rica, which ought not to have remained a blank on the charts of the nineteenth century. Even Siberia, which stretches to a higher latitude, has long been known and described, though not, perhaps, with accuracy, while two points only of the wide extended coast of America were ever visited, and one of these placed several degrees of latitude beyond its proper position, and the other, in all probability, not placed correctly. To ascertain this latter point, and to explore the coast from thence to Icy Cape, is an enterprize which we understand Captain Franklin has volunteered to undertake, while his friend and former associate, Dr. Richardson, intends to accompany him as far as the mouth of Mackenzie River, and to examine the interjacent coast between it and the Copper Mine River, returning by the Copper Mountains, and the field of coal which has been described to crop out along the bank of the Bear Lake; and, in short, to complete the collection and description of the natural history of North America. It is also understood, that Captain Lyon has volunteered to proceed in the Griper gun-brig to Repulse Bay, to cross over from thence to the Polar Sea, and to carry on the survey of the coast to Cape Turnagain, where Captain Franklin was obliged to stop. These discoveries are worthy of the enlightened age, and the rapid strides that are making in arts and sciences, and redound to the honour of the government under whose patronage they are carried on. We do not despair of seeing the day when this spirit of enterprize will have conducted some adventurous Englishman to the very northern extremity of the earth's axis. To reach the North Pole from the north part of Spitzbergen, with the united aid of a couple of boats, half decked, and sledges, to carry each other in turns as ice or water may occur, would, as we conceive, neither be so difficult nor so dangerous an enterprize as that which was undertaken and performed by the Russian officer, Baron Wrangel, on sledges alone. From Hackluyt's Headland to the Pole is only 600 geographical miles. Allowing a speed only of fifteen miles a day (of twentyfour hours, always light) it would only require forty days; so that if a little vessel, like the Griper, which has already been at Spitzbergen, should arrive there in the beginning of June, the boats might reach the Pole, and return to her with ease by the end of August. So little is this of a visionary project, that Captain Franklin proposed to undertake it; and indeed there is not a naval officer who has seen the ice, and knows what it is, but will admit of its being feasible, and who would not cheerfully volunteer to make the attempt.

and

and embellished with a number of well executed and characteristic prints from the pencil of Captain Lyon, who, we perceive by a note of Captain Parry, is about to publish his account of the voyage, which will probably contain a more free and familiar description of the Esquimaux, their domestic habits and character, than was perhaps thought consistent with the gravity of the authentic and historical Narrative.

ART. XII.-Observations on the Judges of the Court of Chancery, and the Practice and Delays complained of in that Court. London. 1823. pp. 68.

THE Law's delay has been a complaint ever since England has

had law. Poets, play-writers and novellists have made it the subject of facetious allusion; disappointed litigants and disgraced practitioners have used it as a peg on which to hang their individual malignity; theorists, who have never weighed the difficulty of adjusting conflicting claims, balancing contradictory statements, and unravelling complicated rights, have reprobated, a delay the causes of which they did not understand; and many wise and able men have admitted that the delay does sometimes amount to an evil, although they are unable to devise any plan by which suits can be accelerated without endangering the security of individual rights, and the general confidence in the law.

Nor is it in England alone that this problem has been jocularly or seriously treated. Every nation which enjoys a free and impartial administration of law, also suffers the inseparable inconvenience of delay, and that inconvenience is generally in proportion to the merits (in other points) of its legal system. We hear little complaint of delay in Russia; in Turkey, we apprehend, there is none at all. Frederic of Prussia, when he was modelling his institutions, attempted to give rapidity to justice-he might as well have attempted to make round square;-and there are some well known instances in which his desire to do right speedily, led to substantial and permanent wrong. France, whose system of civil justice was excellent, complained, as we do, of the delays of the law, and the chicanery of practitioners; but this was set right at the revolution and during the reigns of Robespierre and Tallien, all processes, both criminal and civil, advanced with a rapidity that at first delighted, and soon after astonished the reformers themselves,

"Whose heads fell headlong, wondering why they fell.' In short, it is the infirmity of human nature that falsehood, violence and wrong are prompt and sudden; while the elucidation of

truth, the proportioning of reparation, and the development of justice, are difficult, complicated and slow.

But it has been reserved for our days to see this popular complaint assume a more commanding tone, and receive a degree of countenance which (to our knowledge at least) it never had before. Individual legislators, as well as committees of both houses of parliament, have, for some years past, been occasionally employed on this subject; and even the government itself has, by the appointment of an additional judge in equity, admitted the necessity of doing something to remedy this inconvenience, and seems thereby to have given encouragement to propositions for doing more. We have always doubted the constitutional propriety of the creation of the office of Vice-Chancellor, and we more than doubt its expediency and advantage. Notwithstanding the zeal and ability of the learned person appointed to that office, it has not (whatever other good it may have done) accomplished the object for which it was specifically instituted; and there even seems reason to apprehend that it has had a tendency to increase rather than dimînish the quantity of equity business: but one useful effect this experiment will have had, if it teaches us how little we ought to rely on the most plausible propositions ;-how slow we ought to be in admitting expedients into our legal system ;-how uncertain it is that any alteration of that system will produce the presumed advantages; and how certain it is to produce some inconveniences which never were contemplated.

Let it not be supposed that we deny that the administration of our law, like all other human institutions, must be affected— that is, altered in its practical details-by time and circumstances; or that the internal situation of this country has been, within the last century, so essentially changed as to vary, in a most important degree, the proportion which existed between the legal business to be done and the means of doing it. It will be seen in the progress of this Article that we are fully convinced of this change, and that the views we take of the case are mainly directed by such conviction; but we wish in the first instance to warn the public against imputing to our legal system as a fault, that which is really its merit-the diffusion of wealth and the extension of rights which have grown up under its protection, and the confidence which it universally inspires as a real, impartial, and substantial measure of equity and justice. We also wish to warn the country against such a supposition as, that the inconveniencies which are occasioned by an increase of business. are to be remedied by an increase of judges, and that, because there may be twice as much business as in Lord Thurlow's time,

VOL. XXX. NO. LIX.

S