of the whole, or nearly the whole ultimate appeal courts of Europe. After diligent inquiry I have not heard of a single court of ultimate appeal in any part of the continent, where any of its judges at the same time exercise original jurisdiction in a separate court. If there are any such instances, they are extremely rare. I believe there is no instance of such an usage to be found in Austria, Prussia, France, Holland, or Naples. Should it prove to be the fact, that the judges who sit in appellate courts on the continent, seldom if ever exercise original jurisdiction, it affords ground for hesitating to adınit a principle as certain, which has not been acted upon in the rest of the civilized world."-Miller, p. 132-134.

It has not yet, he adds, been recognised as a settled principle even in our own country, for ever since 1813 the Lord Chancellor has been little else than a judge of appeal. The same considerations were pointedly urged by Lord Langdale in the House of Lords.

But although we lay little stress upon the objections alleged to lie against Lord Cottenham's proposal in principle, we quite agree with Mr. Spence that, under existing circumstances, Lord Lyndhurst's is the most practicable and the most likely to be adopted of the two. This, therefore, we gladly join with him in recommending to the immediate notice of the legislature. The bare appointment of an additional judge, however, would do comparatively little towards the reduction of arrears, unless it be provided that the ViceChancellors shall exercise a co-ordinate jurisdiction, in such matters as may be confided to them, with the Chancellor, and the appeal lie directly to the Lords.

It

may probably be asked whether the grounds on which the appointment of a new judge was opposed by Mr. Spence and others in 1830, do not exist still; the principal being that it was useless to accelerate the hearing of causes, when they Were sure to be blocked up and detained during an equal space of time in the offices. Mr. Spence's answer is, that, though the offices have not been completely set to rights, a good deal has been done towards clearing away the obstrucA better answer would be, that, whatever was the case in 1830 (and we suspect that party feeling had more to do with the throwing out of the bill than Mr. Spence may be quite willing to admit) there can be no doubt that at the present moment a large amount of positive independent delay is occasioned by the inadequacy of the judicial establishment,

tion.

Mr. Spence suggests to Lord Abinger the propriety of bringing in a bill to remove some technical difficulties which impede the efficiency of the equitable jurisdiction of his Court; and Mr. Miller recommends a variety of useful improvements, which some time or other we shall be glad to examine in detail. For the present, we confine ourselves to making known the full amount of the evil, and pointing out a safe and easy palliative; for we cannot conscientiously term so very limited an alteration a cure.

H.

ART. VII. LIFE OF LORD ELDON-(concluded.)

THOUGH his impressive warnings were too slightly heeded, Lord Eldon, the Nestor of the House in age, and the Scævola of his profession in experience, still persisted for a few years subsequent to the passing of the Reform Bill in urging appeals upon the assembled peers against a too facile compliance with popular demands, or any surrender of their undoubted privileges. "The high in rank," he said, "the high in mind, the high in opulence, ought to unite in securing the independent powers of the House of Lords." He denounced with patriotic firmness the unconstitutional scheme, which a majority of the Grey cabinet had advocated to their shame, of stifling the expression of opinion in that branch of the legislature by a large creation of unilateral peers.

"He would fearlessly affirm that any of the acts of James the Second were as excusable as would be the act of that monarch, who should give his sanction to such a measure." A bold but memorable declaration. "His life," he declared,

was of little value, and his property might be transferred to fructify in the pocket of some otherwise pennyless financier. He could not think with satisfaction on the effect of a system which might send the sovereign of a country abroad to provide for himself as a teacher of music, or mathematics, and import him back as a Citizen King. Bred as he had been in loyalty, living under the law, and revering the constitution of his country, now that he had arrived at the age of eighty he would solemnly declare that he would rather die in his

place than not state, that the proposition that the Peers of England had no interest in these popular questions, was the most absurd one that had ever been propounded there or elsewhere. He would not belie every act of his former life." At the age of eighty it was not in the course of nature that he could long vex the dull ear of the House,' or lag, superfluous veteran, on the stage.' His voice had become too feeble to be audible beyond the verge of the peers who sat immediately around him. He was listened to indeed with grateful assent, or respectful silence, for none could refuse their tribute of admiration to the vigorous spirit and unswerving sincerity of the octogenarian statesman. They could even forgive the testiness natural to his time of life, into which these perpetual innovations betrayed him. "Their lordships lived in times in which nothing surprised him. He should not be surprised if a north-west passage were discovered to-morrow: he should not be surprised if the discovery of the longitude, that desideratum through so many ages, should immediately follow the former discovery; but if any thing could surprise him, he should be surprised at hearing that any man could sit in either house of parliament without taking the oaths which by law were required." The startled peer was soon exposed to a surprise still more unpleasant, the agitation of legislative measures, then first openly avowed by men in authority, for alienating the revenues of the Church of England established in Ireland. "He would solemnly deny that the State had any right to appropriate the property of the Church at all. He now left behind him as his most solemn and deliberate declaration that no lawyer on earth could prove that, according to any known principle of law, the surplus in question could be appropriated to any other than Church purposes." In 1834-5, as the infirmities of age stole upon him, he began to relax in the punctuality of his attendance, and to withdraw from consultations over which he exercised a waning influence, and which, in his opinion, neither tended to the good of his Church, nor the safety of his King and Country. The last legislative proceeding in which he took a part was the Liverpool Freemen's Disfranchisement Bill, a vindictive party measure and opposed to his sense of political justice. True to himself he resisted this as he had every

former attempt of a similar nature, and to his great content succeeded. Against the Municipal Corporation Bill, though too much enfeebled to attend the discussion, he protested loudly in private, with feverish alarm, as leading directly to confusion. Its interference with vested rights shocked his sense of equity even more than the sweeping clauses of the Reform Act. To set at nought ancient charters as so many bits of decayed parchment, and destroy the archives of town-halls, seemed in the eyes of the old Magistrate, for so many years the guardian of corporate rights, a crowning iniquity. He would have gladly voted a special commission, according to Sir Charles Wetherall's joke, though far from sharing in his merry humour, to try the Cabinet for corporation-breaking. Pale as a marble statue and confined to his house in Hamilton Place by infirmity, he would deprecate equally the temerity of ministers and the madness of the people; and his vaticinations, like the prophet's scroll, were full to overflowing with lamentations and woe. His correspondence for some years previously had borne marks of the troubled gloom with which he viewed the changes gradually darkening over all he had loved and venerated, till he felt almost a stranger to the institutions of his native land. We have been favoured by his friend Sir Robert Vaughan, the hospitable Tory baronet of North Wales, who happily survives to see the restoration of sound Conservative opinions, with the following letters highly characteristic at once of the old Earl's urbanity and depression. "DEAR SIR ROBERT,

"I owe to your kindness and I beg you to accept my best thanks for some moor game which I received here yesterday. You cannot conceive how this token of long-continued kindness to me exhilarates the old man, who has through life esteemed you.

"The House of Lords seems at last to have thought that it ought to do its duty.

"I think the Houses will be involved in collision when they meet. "I trust the cause of my country to that Great Being, who alone can say to the madness of the people as he can to the raging waves of the ocean, 'Hither shall you come and no further.'

"Let us begin to do, and persevere in doing our duty, and then, discouraging as the prospect is, we may hope for better days. "Your much obliged,

The letter of a later date is marked by a tone of equal despondency.

"DEAR SIR,

brance of me.

Many, many thanks to you for your kind remem

"Your kindness gives a support to my constitution almost worn out by age, and which nevertheless will survive I fear, if it has not already survived, the constitution of my country.

The times were out of joint, and men of the firmest minds looked with alarm at the troubled aspect of political affairs, but the nerves of the ex-chancellor were unstrung by domestic bereavements. He had now in his reverence and his chair days,' according to the sad but common lot of those who live very far into years, a comparatively solitary home. The first severe domestic affliction of Lord Eldon was so far back as the 24th of December, 1805, on the death of his eldest son John, who had only a year and a half previously married the daughter of Sir Matthew Ridley, and had become but ten days before the father of the present Earl. The Hon. John Scott was of an amiable disposition and graceful mind, full of jest and frolic in society, but too convivial for a delicate and asthmatic constitution. He had then been suffering from a slight indisposition and from much anxiety, but his death was very sudden, and shocked his father the more as he might have been present at the time. In the morning no apprehensions of his being in danger were entertained, and Lord Eldon had left home to attend to some pressing business, but in the course of the day a communication of an alarming nature was forwarded to him, requesting his immediate attendance on his son. Accustomed to hear of his ailments, and unfortunately supposing that the danger was exaggerated by the natural fears of a mother, he continued his occupation, and when he arrived, his son had just expired. He was a man of excellent abilities, but neglected and suffered to run to waste, from an excessive addiction to society. With an overweening fondness (similar to that displayed by Burke) Lord Eldon formed an undue estimate of his talents, and