both plaintiff and defendants, and was eventually settled by a compromise.

The English people have a very great regard for old laws, customs, and institutions. The mere demonstration of an existing grievance is not sufficient to ensure its removal. In order to effect that, its mischief has to be shown over and over again.

To remedy the evil which is so much felt by merchants and shipowners, a Bill was introduced into Parliament towards the close of the last session, by the Hon. G. Denman, intituled the "Merchant Shipping Disputes' Bill," having for its object the hearing and determining of all differences arising out of freight agreements, demurrage, losses and accidents at sea, salvage, and all other matters connected with the navigating, buying or selling of ships, and cargoes laden or intended to be laden therein. It was intended to establish by such Bill, in all important seaport towns, local courts to be every day available, a consideration of the greatest importance in shipping matters, and the absence of which courts compels persons in most instances of dispute to submit to injustice, rather than invoke the slow and expensive aid of the existing legal machinery. The proposed courts were to be applied to England only, and to be presided over by a legal functionary in the person of a county court judge, a commissioner of bankruptcy, or a stipendiary magistrate, assisted by not less than two assessors. The number of assessors attached to the court was to be determined according to the importance of the town, and to be nominated by the town council, of which not more than one third of their own body was to be elected, and the appointment to be confirmed by the Government.

The qualification for the office of assessor to be a merchant shipowner, or manufacturer. The term of office to be three years, and to be honorary.

Appeal to lie in all cases above £50 to the Court of Admiralty, or other courts of Westminster.

The Government having promised that during the recess they would give the subject their fullest consideration, the Bill was withdrawn.

The importance attached to this Bill by the shipping community is shown by the numerous petitions from the leading seaport towns in England, which have been presented to Parliament in its favour, and the opinion entertained of mercantile courts by Her Majesty's judges may be inferred from the following remark made during a trial in the court of Queen's Bench, on the 9th of June last, when the Lord Chief Justice said that, "generally speaking, the ambiguous language of these mercantile documents makes them so doubtful that it perhaps would be better if they were referred to a mercantile tribunal. No doubt they are very intelligible to mercantile men, but to lawyers they are full of ambiguities.'

An objection has been raised in our leading journal to the principle of creating special courts for special branches. The able writer in the Times must have overlooked the existence of the

M

Admiralty Court, the Court of Probate and Divorce, and the Bankruptcy Court, each expressly constituted for a special purpose. "That plenty of persons," observes the same writer, are found anxious to be justices of the peace, is true. But the same anxiety has never been remarked to fill the honourable office of special juror, which that of assessor more closely resembles."

The illustration is by no means felicitous. Let the office of magistrate be divested of the influence and prestige surrounding it, and how few would be found to take upon themselves the discharge of magisterial duties. But clothe it with the dignity of State, and you command the services of the best and ablest. So long as there are candidates for magisterial honours, there will never be a lack of able men to fill the important and responsible functions of assessor to these courts.

The urgent want of a tribunal to meet the requirements of the commercial community is universally admitted, and I could forcibly illustrate the statement by cases lying within my own experience.

The principle upon which mercantile courts is based is approved by the associated chambers of commerce. At their annual meeting, held in Londen in February last, their approval was then, as on a previous occasion, embodied in a recommendation to Government on the subject. The establishment of such courts in England would entail no additional expenditure, or if any, but a very trifling one, upon the country. They are eminently adapted to facilitate the adjustment of differences in a satisfactory and inexpensive manner, and to secure decisions founded upon commercial usage as well as commercial law. In conjunction with other commercial associations and corporate bodies, the Newcastle and Gateshead Chamber of Commerce has recently memorialised the Government to impress upon it the importance of introducing next session, a measure similar to the "Merchant Shipping Disputes Bill," which was promoted by that chamber, and which would give such valuable relief to the mercantile aud shipping community.

Let us hope that their earnest efforts may ultimately be crowned with success. In the eloquent language of your noble president, I would repeat

"It was the boast of Augustus that he found Rome of brick and left it of marble. But how much nobler will be the Sovereign's boast when he shall have it to say, that he found law dear and left it cheap; found it a sealed book, and left it a living letter; found it the patrimony of the rich, left it the inheritance of the poor; found it the two-edged sword of oppression, left it the staff of honesty and the shield of innocence."

163

On the Frame of a Bill for Enabling Parliamentary Electors Voluntarily to Withdraw their Names from the Local Registry, and form Unanimous Constituencies. By THOMAS HARE.

THE

HE heads of a new law of electoral association which I now lay before you, are but a modification of a larger scheme, in which the powers I now propose to give to those electors only who may make a special effort to obtain them, are extended to all the electors of the kingdom as a part of the ordinary conditions of the franchise, carefully preserving all legitimate local and territorial influences. The discussions to which that scheme has given rise, suggest that a tentative measure, offering the wider powers first to those only who are able to appreciate them, will serve to prepare the public mind for the full development of the more perfect representation principle.

Among the first objects of representative government, no doubt, are wise legislation, fair and equal laws, and the appointment of upright and impartial administrators, the most perfect enjoyment by everyone of the fruits of his industry, and the best means of making that industry fruitful. These are summed up in the words, "good government," as the expression is commonly understood.

"If you are well governed," says a large school of politicians, "what does it matter how few of you have anything to do with the choice of your governors, or how small your part may be in public affairs?" This, you will have observed, is the substance of all the arguments against any great extension of the suffrage. The public attention is directed to the commercial activity and prosperity, to the freedom of action and of thought, the unrestricted and cheap press, and the contrast of all these advantages with the distrust of the people manifested in some other countries, and the condition of things in former and not very distant times, amongst ourselves. "Why," we are asked, "disturb or endanger so much prosperity and security by inviting or admitting the political interference of large bodies and classes who are submitting patiently to the absence of a privilege which they have never learnt either to regard as a right, or appreciate as valuable?" It has not been uncommon, at all times, to find men of great talent who thus reason. It is, perhaps, prompted by the natural instincts of those who are at ease in their possessions, receiving from large numbers of their countrymen respect and deference, and who have all the resources of wealth and civilisation at their command. I will not stop to inquire whether history has ever shown that "good government," even in this sense, can exist where large classes have no direct political influence. The discussions of this Society, on education, on crime, on reformation, on poor laws, on the influence of early and excessive toil in noxious

atmospheres, on the health and growth and well-being of those who are at the mercy of others, or in penury and ignorance-show that in this country, with its great activity and wealth, its vast material resources, with rich and leisured classes, more numerous than in any former time or other nation-vast masses of the population owe little to the Government, or to the society, of the arrangements of which no small number of them are certainly the victims. But suppose this good government, in its external and material sense, to have been attained. To say that this is enough, is but another form of the old fallacy, expressed in the common saying, that "if a good despot could be ensured, a despotism would be the best form of government." I meet this in language other than my own. Mr. Mill, in the third chapter of his work on "Representative Government," says "I look upon this as a radical and most pernicious misconception of what good goverment is; which, until it can be got rid of, will fatally vitiate all our speculations on Government." I extract a few passages in which he exposes this fallacy. If all the difficulties in the existence of such a ruler were vanquished, what should we have? "One man, of superhuman activity, managing the entire affairs of a mentally-passive people. . . . What sort of human beings can be formed under such a regimen? What development can either their thinking or their active faculties attain under it? . . . Nor is it only in their intelligence that they suffer. Their moral capacities are equally stunted. Whenever the sphere of action of human beings is artificially circumscribed their sentiments are narrowed and dwarfed in the same proportion. The food of feeling is action: even domestic affection lives upon voluntary good offices. Let a person have nothing to do for his country, and he will not care for it. . . . Leaving things to Government, like leaving them to Providence, is synonymous with caring nothing about them; and accepting their results, when disagreeable, as visitations of nature. . . . With the exception, therefore, of a few studious men who take an intellectual interest in speculation for its own sake; the intelligence and sentiments of the people are given up to their material interests; and when these are provided for, to the amusement and ornamentation of private life. But to say this is to say, if the whole testimony of history is worth anything, that the era of national decline has arrived." *

As the absence of any participation in the functions of government leaves those who are excluded more or less destitute of the great and salutary inducements which they afford to the study and promotion of the common welfare, and therefore without the beneficial tendencies of thought and disposition which such considerations inspire; let us see, on the other hand, how the possession of such powers, in their largest measure, would gradually tend to raise the individual character, and, with it, the whole tone of social and political life. Let us remember that in political science it is only

* "Considerations on Representative Government," p. 49, 3rd ed.

with tendencies that we can deal. Under what conditions of the franchise would the higher qualities of the mind be most fully and perfectly called into exercise? The act of voting, intelligently performed, is an intellectual operation, which will be influenced by the moral susceptibilities, or controlled by the moral sanctions which prevail amongst the electors. Now, I do not hesitate to say that the present electoral system is, to a very large extent, more suited to degrade than to raise the individual character of the voters. It has become a work, for the most part, as little as possible fitted to the development of the intellect, and as dangerous as it can be made to the morals. In some constituencies we find the numbers so vast that the value of a single vote is next to nothing, whilst the utmost choice given to the voters is between two or three candidates, none of whom, perhaps, are in the smallest degree above mediocrity; and multitudes of thinking men, who stand without the vortex of party, can take no interest in a contest, to the result of which, from their estimation of the candidates, they cannot attach the smallest importance. In other constituencies, the numbers are so small, and the majority of the electors of such classes, as to make the elections inevitably corrupt, however more or less gross the form of the corruption may be; and in all constituencies, how small is the individual power-how little any elector, however earnest and thoughtful he may be, can do; how much is he at the mercy of others, and oftentimes of the managers, or small cliques, who manipulate the body of electors for their own purposes. All those who discourse on the suffrage and its consequences should reflect on the observation quoted by the President of this Department in his opening address-that we should consider men, as separate individuals, each with his own feelings, sentiments, and powers, and not as the pieces on a chess-board, to be made the instruments in the hands of the most skilful player. As education cannot be given, or health restored, except the teacher or the physician tender his instruction and his medicine to the individual, so the true and only method for giving their full virtue, and force, and efficacy, to representative institutions, is to extend, to the utmost possible degree, the power of individual thought and action. This can be done by enlarging the means of voluntary association— that union and co-operation of divers persons in a common object, which has enabled the British people to achieve so much,-for which nothing is too great or too small; by means of which a company of merchants effected the conquest of India, and associations of working men conduct with a wise economy the shops of retail trades for the supply of the wants of their families-a principle which, from its daily and rapid growth, seems even now but in its infancy.

The choice of a representative, as I have said, is an intellectual operation; it is an appeal to the intellectual powers, whether it be or be not successful in awakening them. In determining on the fitness and the worth of the candidates, the legitimate pro