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JOURNAL OF JURISPRUDENCE

1873

VOL. XVII.

EDINBURGII :

T. & T. CLARK, LAW BOOKSELLERS, GEORGE STREET.

GLASGOW: THOMAS MURRAY & SON; AND J. SMITH & SON.

ABERDEEN: WYLLIE & SON.

MDCCCLXXIII.

LONDON, STEVENS & SONS.

MUIR AND PATERSON, PRINTERS, EDINBURGH.

92396

LIBRARY OF THE

LELAND STANFORD, JR., UNIVERSITY

LAW DEPARTMENT.

CONTENTS.

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Amos' Systematic View of the Science of

Jurisprudence, 76

Appeals 1873, Scotch, 484

Appointments, 207, 426, 656

Apportionment Act 1870, 136

Ballot Act (Scotland), Analysis of, 65, 122
Bankers' Responsibility for Information
about Customers, 322
Bankruptcy Act 1869, English, 482
Bar, The Junior, 86

Bar, Junior, in Ireland, 425

Bar, Present Condition of, 317
Bastiat's Economic Sophisms, 304
Bayley, Isaac, Esq., 323
Bellasis, Mr. Serjeant, 325
Bills in Parliament, 252

Blair, William, Advocate, 542
Blasphemy, 582

Bovill, Lord Chief Justice, 660
Brabrook's Tidd Pratt's Friendly So-

cieties, 411

Bugs, 258

Campbell, David, 600

Carrier's Responsibility for Negligence,

146

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Destination to Granter's Heirs, whom

failing to person named, 465

D'Olivecrona's Causes of Relapse into

Tod, Esq., 12

tiquities, 80

657

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THE

JOURNAL OF JURISPRUDENCE.

SOME THOUGHTS ON LAW REFORM—1822 AND 1872.

HALF a century of Law embraces as a rule the legal lifetime of even a long-lived lawyer, and twice the parliamentary lifetime of an averagely long-lived legislator. The progress of anything for so long a period cannot fail to be somewhat interesting, and the progress of the Law for the last half-century must, we should think, be specially so. We do not propose to trace this progress with any minuteness, but a glance at it may not be quite unprofitable at present.

There is an aspect of the commencement of this epoch to which we may for a moment recall attention. It was a time when men lived at peace with all our national institutions; when there were no grievances to be redressed, or at least no person to redress them; when Law reform, at least in Scotland, was almost unheard of, and when laymen and lawyers alike were satisfied with doing as their forefathers had done. Though the Court of Session had been remodelled, and a Jury Court transplanted from England, many in those days would have uplifted their hands in simple horror if a ravisher, a robber, or a reiver had escaped unhanged, and the criminal classes had under force of circumstances to hold their lives under the very precarious tenure afforded by a most bloodthirsty criminal code; whilst in other departments of our Law we find the possessors of landed property, under an unreformed feudal system, compelled to contribute enormously to the support of parchment-manufacturers and notaries-public, and our law of evidence still founded on the principle of preferring darkness to light. The Sheriff-Courts were blessed with a procedure so tedious and so expensive that men preferred to litigate before the Bailies of Royal burghs rather than appeal for justice to tribunals which were so hopelessly and helplessly impeded by costly shams. Nay, more, so intricate and refined had the science of procedure become in the Supreme Court, that no practising lawyer seemed to know anything about it, and a fifth of the judgments in the Inner House VOL. XVII. NO. CXCIII. JAN. 1873.

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