English law; and a foundation was further laid on which it was manifest a superstructure would almost immediately be reared, for rooting out all the remaining abuses in our system, and for finally digesting it in a general, accessible form, a Code of Civil and Criminal Jurisprudence. It may further be affirmed that no such wholesale changes had ever before been accomplished in tranquil times; they resembled rather a revolutionary movement of legislation than the progress of legislation during a period of peace, and in the ordinary course of an unchanged constitution. Such was the real and the final operation of the course pursued by Lord Eldon in resisting all improvement; in rejecting with horror all change regardless of its motive, its nature, its tendency, — in shrinking from all innovation as revolutionary, worshipping whatever had been done in less enlightened ages, and attempting, vainly attempting, to stop the march of Time, whom the wisest of men, the most illustrious of Lord Eldon's predecessors, had sagely described as the greatest innovator of all. But Lord Eldon must not be regarded as the only one of those shallow persons who thus by their unreflecting and ignorant efforts to combat nature, gave so striking an example of men frustrating their own designs, and bringing about, by their resistance, far more sweeping changes than any they set themselves to oppose. The fears excited by the excesses, the most guilty and most lamentable excesses, of the French Revolution, had so possessed the minds of men for some time in this country, that they had become averse to all improvement in our polity, and regarded every alteration of any established institution as a step towards anarchy. Instead of endeavouring wisely and honestly to moderate a feeling which had a real foundation and a rational origin, but was carried to an excess nearly as wild as the lust of change to which it was opposed, a party among us deemed it the wiser and the more honest course to use every means in their power for working upon it, exciting it to still greater extremes, and making it spurn all those bounds of temperate caution within which their duty clearly was to have confined it. Splendid parliamentary declamation, eloquent popular writing, gorgeous pulpit rhetoric, were all employed in boundless profusion, and with perfect success, to Lighter missiles same design and Then began to influence the public mind and make all ears deaf towards the more still voice of reason and common sense. were showered upon the people with the from similar magazines and allied batteries. flourish the Canning school, shining in the false glare of a sparkling, a clever, a pointed, a witty, but a meretricious eloquence; abounding in brilliancy, in solid wisdom as defective as in sound knowledge or pure and honest and conscientious principle. It was their rule to laugh at all improvement as childish and needless, to point the finger of contempt at all speculation as pedantry, to deride as vulgar all the refinements of science which were far above their comprehension ; and, sitting in the scorner's chair, to cry down all genius which was not in the hire and service of their patrons. The progress of the age in which they lived, these men never would deign to observe. At a time when every art and every science was making such rapid strides onward that the masters of one year had become the pupils of the next, it pleased them to fancy that the science of all others the most important to mankind's interests, the art of all others most calculated to be their blessing or their bane, the Science of Jurisprudence, the Art of Government, were to stand stock still amidst the rapid tide of universal improvement. They were made merry with those who, wiser than themselves, and content with a true philosophy as well as gifted with a more poetic fancy, foretold, strongly foretold, the future progress of the arts of life, and they have left upon record their elaborate ridicule of a great writer whose vaticinations they found it easier to parody than to warm themselves at the fire of his genius. Darwin was It may safely be affirmed that after all their laughing at Darwin these wits would have found it more difficult to write the magnificent passage of Camby ses' march, than he to write the sapphics upon Knifegrinders, or even the new Morality, with its reverent parodies on the Canticles. But we are now only referring to the fine and truly prophetic verses on Steam. Soon shall thy arm, unconquered Steam, afar So mighty Hercules o'er many a clime Botanic Garden, vol. i. p. 289., published in 1788. laughed at and parodied who predicted what to them seemed wild and senseless, the time when steam should be used to plow the ocean and traverse the highways. It would have seemed more senseless had any prophet in Jurisprudence foretold the time when the most abstruse lore of ancient lawgivers should be swept away, and the cruelty and the slavery of their enactments cease to deform our Statute Book; -the time when the ocean should become the scene of our unfettered commerce, and the felon who made the highway unsafe should no longer be hung in chains upon its margin. This legal revolution, which they so little dreamt of, when they so strongly resisted every little legal improvement, is in truth the work of their hands. These wits had their day; they have passed away; the feathers have flown; but they have left much to serve as a lesson how future politicians err by disregarding the signs of the times; and how violence ever proves most fatal to the cause which it is invoked to sustain. But for the Eldons, the Cannings, the Percevals, their successors never could have carried, never have hoped to carry, never would have ventured to propose the vast alterations in our jurisprudence which have been accomplished within a very few years. But it will be said that we who profess friendly feelings towards amendment of the law have little reason to complain of what has so greatly helped this cause. We make answer, that we are friends to temperate and well-conducted improvements in all systems already established, and among others most especially in the system of all others most important to society, and any mischance befalling which operates the widest mischief. We therefore would have greatly preferred a more slow and gradual alteration than has been made, being certain that if those changes had been spread over a greater number of years, they would have received more sifting scrutiny, and would have been made more safely and with more perfection. It is not to be denied, that when the former resistance to improvement had begotten a vehement impatience for it, a clamour arose for payment of the arrear so long delayed, and a kind of morbid anxiety to alter the legal system took possession of the public mind, even invading the more sober temper of the profession itself. When so much that is good decided by the court, and not by the jury. The last of these instances involves the consideration of a simple fact of a nature peculiarly fit for the consideration of a jury the belief of the declarant that his dissolution was impending. This, however, and such other facts as are usually for the decision of the courts in order to warrant their interlocutory judgments, are usually so simple as regards proof, and in their own nature so little subject to conflict, that they form no material exceptions to the general rule. The numerous decisions upon the question of reasonable time accord mainly with the general elementary rule, and with the positions above advanced: in the absence of any special rule applicable to particular cases, the conclusion is one of mere fact to be made by a jury. The law cannot prescribe in general what shall be a reasonable time by any defined combination of facts: so much must the question depend upon the situation of the parties, and the minute circumstances peculiar to individual cases, which, from their multitude and variety, are incapable of such a selection as is essential to a precise and particular law. If a man has a right by contract to cut and take crops from the land of another, it is obvious that the law can lay down no rule as to the precise time when they shall be cut and removed: all that can be done is to direct or imply that this is to be done in a reasonable and convenient time; and this must necessarily depend on the state of the weather and other circumstances, which cannot, from their nature and multiplicity, form the basis of any legal rule or definition. The question as to reasonable time was much considered in the case of Eaton v. Southby.1 The plaintiff in replevin pleaded to an avowry, justifying the taking of goods as a distress for rent in arrear, that he took the growing crops under an execution, and afterwards cut the wheat, and let the same lie on the premises until the same, in a course of husbandry, was fit to be carried away; and that the defendant distrained the same before it was fit to be carried away. It was objected by the defendant, on demurrer to this plea, that the plaintiff ought to have set forth how long the corn lay on the land after it 1 Willes, 131. was cut, that the court might see whether it was a reasonable time or not. But the court decided that the objection was untenable; for though in Co. Litt. 56 b. it is said that in some cases the court must judge whether a thing be reasonable or not, as in the case of a reasonable fine, a reasonable notice, or the like, it would be absurd to say that in a case like the present the court must judge of the reasonableness; for if so, it ought to have been stated in the plea not only how long the corn lay on the ground, but what weather it was during that time, and many other incidents which it would be ridiculous to insert in a plea. And the court was of opinion that the matter was sufficiently averred, and that the defendant might have traversed it if he had pleased, and then it would have come before a jury, who, upon hearing the evidence, would have been proper judges of it. In the case of Bell v. Wardell1, the defendant pleaded in justification, to a declaration in trespass, a custom for the inhabitants of a town to walk and ride over a close of arable land at all seasonable times: the plaintiff replied de injuriâ, and the defendant demurred. And the court held that seasonable time was partly a question of fact, and partly a question of law; and that as the custom was laid, if it were not a seasonable time, the justification was not within the custom; and that though the court may be the proper judges of this, yet, in many cases, it may be proper to join issue upon it, that is, in such cases where it does not sufficiently appear on the pleadings whether it were a scasonable time or not. Before a precise and definite rule had been established on the subject, the question as to reasonable notice of the dishonour of a bill of exchange, the question was held to be one of fact for the consideration of the jury. And the question whether a party has been guilty of laches in not presenting a bill payable at sight, or a certain time after, has been held to be a question for the jury where no established rule of law prevails; Fry v. Hill.2 So it has been held to be a question for the decision of a jury whether tithes have been removed within a reasonable time. I Willes, 202. 27 Taunt. 397. |