TAGUE.

Law Reform, 1800-1885.

counties went against the Government. The final result was: Liberals 335, Conservatives 249, Home Rulers, 86. Thus the Irish held the balance of parties-a result which Mr. Gladstone had in anticipation deprecated. But the events to which it immediately or ultimately led-the advent to power, in January, 1886, of a Liberal Ministry, the introduction of Mr. Gladstone's Home Rule Bill, and the consequent split in the Liberal partyopen a new era in English political warfare which lies beyond the chronological limits assigned, for this among other reasons, to the present work.

F. C. MON- IN our legal history the nineteenth century is pre-eminently the period of direct legislation. The development of custom or of a traditional equity by judicial decision is at best a slow and irregular process, and it has its limits. A time comes when all the important deductions which can be drawn from an accepted principle have been exhausted. Further growth will then involve a transformation of the principle itself to which judicial authority is inadequate. The main outlines of our Common Law have been settled for some hundreds of years. The main outlines of Equity were settled before the end of the last century. The critical spirit of modern times necessarily restricts the latitude of interpretation enjoyed by judges. Yet the circumstances of our age have necessitated immense Growth of changes in the law. The writings of Bentham and his school and the example of foreign nations have called forth the desire for comprehensive and symmetrical legislation. The reformed Parliaments, at least before the recent unprecedented growth of loquacity, have been eager for work and fairly capable of doing business. Thus every year has produced a volume of statutes. Some of these statutes exceed in bulk the whole legislation of a medieval reign. It would be impossible in our limits to give even a curt analysis of one or two of these statutes, such as the Merchant Shipping Act of 1894, or the Conveyancing Act of 1881. We can only indicate the subjects with which legislation has been chiefly conversant, and the tendencies which legislation has displayed.

Statute

Law.

A great part of our modern statutes has been concerned with what it is convenient to call public law. Not only has the governing authority in the State been remodelled by Reform Acts

Law and

and Acts for the Redistribution of Seats, but old departments of Public administration have been reorganised, new departments have been Procedure. established, and the entire system of local government has been recast. Most of the enactments of this class, such as the New Poor Law (p. 300), the Municipal Corporations Acts (p. 157), the Public Health Acts (p. 267), and so forth, are touched upon in other chapters of the present volume. Here we need consider only those enactments which have altered the constitution of the courts of justice and the forms of procedure. There have been

many such enactments in the nineteenth century. The whole administration of justice has been revised more than once; ancient courts have been transformed, new courts have been multiplied, and the rules of procedure have been amended again and again. We may consider first the civil and then the criminal courts, and in each case we may consider the superior courts first.

Law

Courts.

With regard to the Courts of Common Law the first notable Common change in this century was the suppression of the separate Welsh judicature. Formerly there had been eight Welsh judges, inferior in dignity to the judges of the courts at Westminster, but discharging similar functions within the Principality. These judgeships were abolished by an Act of 1830, which added one. puisne judge to each of the three superior Courts of Common Law. The procedure of the Courts of Common Law was amended and simplified by statutes of 1852, 1854, and 1860, which are known as the Common Law Procedure Acts. In the Court of Courts of Chancery, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, justice Equity. was dispensed by the Chancellor and the Master of the Rolls acting as judges of first instance, and an appeal lay only to the House of Lords. The increase of business led to the appointment of a Vice-Chancellor in 1813. Two more Vice-Chancellors were appointed in 1841 on the suppression of the equity side of the Common Law Court of Exchequer. In the year 1851 there was interposed between the House of Lords and the Court of Chancery the Court of the Lords Justices of Appeal in Chancery. Down to the passing of the first Judicature Act the procedure of the Courts of Equity had not been much modified by legislation.

The jurisdiction in testamentary and matrimonial causes had remained to the Ecclesiastical Courts until the year 1857, when it was transferred to the lay courts, newly estab

Probate

and Divorce.

The Judicature Act, 1873.

Courts before the Act.

lished. Power to pronounce a total divorce between man and wife was now first given to a court of justice. The new Court of Probate and the new Court for Divorce and Matrimonial Causes inherited much of the substantive law and procedure in use with their predecessors, and derived from the canon or the civil law. Although secular, they, with the older Court of Admiralty, formed a group apart from the Courts of Common Law and the Courts of Equity.

Thus in spite of many considerable modifications the superior courts of justice preserved down to the year 1873 the same general outline which they had received in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. In that year was passed the first and most important of the Judicature Acts, which have transformed our courts and our procedure. The Judicature Act of 1873 was intended to effect three objects. It was to combine in one system the superior courts already existing; to compound a new procedure out of all that was best in the old procedure, whether of the Courts of Common Law or of the Courts of Equity, and to effect a fusion of the substantive rules of equity with those of the Common Law.

At the passing of this Act the list of the superior courts was as follows. There were three superior Courts of Common Law-the Queen's Bench, the Common Pleas, and the Exchequer. From each of these courts an appeal lay to the Court of Exchequer Chamber, composed of all the Common Law judges except those belonging to the court where the case had been heard in the first instance. From the Court of Exchequer Chamber a final appeal lay to the House of Lords. There was, strictly speaking, but one Court of Chancery, though there were several Chancery judges. From the Court of Chancery an appeal lay to the Lords Justices of Appeal, and thence to the House of Lords. Distinct from the Courts of Common Law and of Chancery, alike in their history, in their jurisdiction, and in their procedure, stood the Court of Admiralty, the Court of Probate, and the Court for Matrimonial Causes. Appeals from the Court of Admiralty were carried to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council. Appeals from the Courts of Probate and Divorce were carried to the House of Lords. For judicial purposes the House of Lords consisted of the Chancellor and the " law lords," that is to say, peers who had held high judicial office. These were men

Courts after the Act.

eminent in their profession, but often unfitted by years and infirmities for the task of judges of appeal.

All these courts were concentrated in London. To them we must add the superior courts of the Palatine Counties, the Chancery Court and Court of Common Pleas of Lancaster and the Court of Pleas at Durham.

The Judicature Act of 1873 created a Supreme Court of Judicature, which was to consist of two parts, a High Court of Justice and a Court of Appeal. In the High Court were to be consolidated all the existing superior courts of first instance. Each of the three Courts of Common Law was to become a division of the High Court, and ultimately all were to be merged in the Queen's Bench Division. The Court of Chancery was to form another division; the Courts of Admiralty, Probate, and Divorce were combined to form a third. The London Court of Bankruptcy, the Court of Common Pleas at Lancaster, and the Court of Pleas at Durham, were also merged in the High Court. The Court of Appeal was to take the place of the Court of Exchequer Chamber and of the Lords Justices of Appeal in Chancery, and also (as originally contrived) of the House of Lords and the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council. By the Appellate Jurisdiction Act of 1876, the former jurisdiction of the House of Lords and of the Judicial Committee has been maintained, with the Court of Appeal as an intermediate tribunal between the High Court and the House of Lords.

Now that the Common Pleas Division and the Exchequer Division have ceased to exist, the distribution of judges is as follows. The Queen's Bench Division consists of fourteen. puisne judges, with the Lord Chief Justice as President. The Chancery Division consists of the Lord Chancellor, as President, and five puisne judges. The Admiralty, Probate, and Divorce Division contains two judges, of whom one is styled President. The Court of Appeal consists of the Master of the Rolls, who no longer acts as a judge of the first instance, five Lords Justices of Appeal, and the presidents of the several divisions of the High Court.

The House of Lords as a court of appeal was remodelled by the Act of 1876. It now includes, besides the Chancellor and the persons formerly known as the law lords, four Lords of Appeal in Ordinary. These are appointed by the Crown