torted, or exaggerated, or fabricated, when wanted to serve the purpose of the general and indiscriminate attack upon all persons and all things. In declaring against the use of influence by the Government, not the least regard is ever had to the similar means adopted by all administrations in every country for retaining their power; and to read the expression of virtuous indignation which break forth at each turn against the giving places to the friends of peers or deputies, one would think that in England, pure from all stain, no such thing had ever been heard of as a member of either House obtaining a place for a connexion, or a voter; that our Customs, Excise, Stamps, Post Office, were filled with persons recommended by their strong merits alone, and that all Downing Street and Whitehall, overflowing with generous zeal, burning with patriotic fire, was solely occupied with search after the brightest talents and purest virtue, wherewithal to fill each department of the Navy, Admiralty, Horse Guards, Ordnance, at home, and to send forth upon every foreign mission, not the nobles of the land and their sons, but the men most thoroughly qualified by capacity and by conduct to represent the nation in foreign courts. Nor is the attack confined to the present system. The men of most spotless purity in their public conduct are represented as the authors or the instruments of the most unprincipled practices reduced to a system of gross abuse; and when by some accident there occurs the name of one, like the Duc de Broglie, whom to charge with corruption would be certain to bring down on the audacious calumniator the scorn and execration of all men and all parties, he is immediately treated as a poor drivelling creature, wholly below contempt. The judicial system is among other departments the object of invective; and to show with how much judgment and how large a knowledge of the subject this work is composed, not the least notice is taken of by very far the worst abuse to be found in the whole system and practice of French judicature; while things are fancied, or perverted, or grossly exaggerated, to serve the writer's purpose. To comment further on such a work would manifestly be superfluous. It may be enough to note as among the marks of the author's fairness the fact of no copy of his work having been found at Paris, when search was everywhere made for it, —at Paris to which the appeal, if worth any thing, should plainly have been made. We here insert a letter from a correspondent at Paris on this important subject. To the Editors of the Law Review. "GENTLEMEN, "Paris, Jan 1. 1845. "I have read with the greatest satisfaction the first Number of your Work. Its plan is most excellent, and no one can well overrate the importance of the objects which it has in view - the promotion of candid and learned and liberal discussion upon all subjects of Jurisprudence and all events that happen in the legal world. The execution of this plan, as far as your commencement goes, appears to be admirable, and I trust, with all friends whether of law or of literature generally, (whereof I indeed consider Law as one great branch,) that its fame will increase, while its composition maintains the character it has already acquired.' I observe with pleasure that you do not confine yourselves to the jurisprudence of England, but extend your views over the countries of the Dupins and the Berryers, the Savignys and the Storys, the Jeffreys and the Moncrieffs. Permit me, therefore, to offer you a very small contribution, a New Year's Gift, or, to speak the language of the profession, " in the nature of" a New Year's Gift, as I send it on the first day of the year. I wish to aid you in the "reciprocation," as the French term it, of good offices, the interchange of lights between the two countries, my native land and the place of my residence for many late years. The subject is an abuse of the most flagrant nature, inflicted by the present Minister of Justice, whom I name to distinguish him from the able and honest men his colleagues, M. Martin, who takes the title of Nord, calling himself du Nord, I presume for dignity sake and to make him known from conjurors, actors, notaries, et id genus omne, who bear the name of the old bishop and the old reformer. But I intend to give him other marks whereby he may be known, and if any one will call him the kakonomist, or the paranomist, or the misonomist, or the ecthronomist, or any other term of opprobrium whereby the author of the law of June 2. 1841 may be designated, he will supersede the necessity of the mummery whereby this third-rate provincial advocate has pompously inflated his appellation. In England You can little conceive such a law as the one I have referred to. such a proposition as he had the boldness to make and the legislature the weak ness to let him pass, no man, no party, no government durst have even mentioned. It is the law which requires all the courts of justice in France yearly to reward the newspapers of whose conduct the Judges approve, that is the Ministry, and punish all those whose conduct they dislike, by giving those 1 We insert thus much of this letter for the purpose of begging our correspondents to spare our blushes. The fact of taking the trouble to write to us is quite sufficient proof of their opinion of our merits and influence. — ED. favoured journals, or taking away from these disfavoured ones, the monopoly of all judicial advertisements or notices, (annonces or affiches judiciaires).. (Our correspondent here enters into the subject at length; but the preceding article makes it unnecessary to insert his statement, which in the main agrees with our own. We add, however, his remarks on the author of this law.) It is quite impossible that M. Martin's colleagues could be aware of the offence against all principle which they were committing in giving their sanction to this vile scheme for bribing the press and corrupting the Bench; for making the newspapers servile and the Judges factious and servile too; for using the ermine to procure and pander to the Ministry and the Court. It is equally impossible that the Chambers should have been aware of what they were sanctioning when they passed this statute. But so much for placing at the head of the law as well as of religion (for this man is both ministre de justice and des cultes), such a person as M. Martin. Instead of a great lawyer, a man of high reputation, a man of powerful understanding like the Dupins and the Berryers, we have had for three critical years a third-rate provincial barrister who had no reputation even at Douai, and whose only recommendation was his devotion to the Jesuits' party! Why of all merits this was the very worst! And a more Jesuitical measure than this of the Annonces never was in vented at St. Omer for any bad purpose. While he remains in his present state, adieu all hopes of even tolerably good conduct in either the judicial or the ecclesiastical administration of France- much less can we look for any one measure of the least improvement in her jurisprudence. But what is more; the present ministry is doomed, if they retain such a man among them. The law we have been discussing must, and that speedily, be abandoned, else no honest man can stand by the Government. But the author of it, the perpetrator of the vile fraud upon his colleagues and the Chambers must be extracted from the Government, else no one can wish for its continuance or lament its downfall. "I have the honour to be, "Your humble Servant, 438 ART. XII. - ON THE CONSOLIDATION OF THE CRIMINAL LAW. A Bill intituled, " An Act to amend and consolidate the Criminal Law of England so far as relates to the Definition of Indictable Offences and the Punishment thereof." (Ordered to be printed by the House of Lords, 1844.) BEFORE we proceed to observe upon the subject of this bill, we propose to premise some general observations on the Criminal Law and upon the present state of that branch of the law in this country. This branch of the law is in one sense the most important of all, for upon its vigour and efficacy the wholesome operation of all other, including remedial, laws depends. Its principle is of the most plain and simple character, that is, of prevention; consequently its construction is not encumbered with the consideration of a multitude of laboured distinctions such as are necessarily incident to branches of the system accommodated to the numerous and complicated exigencies of an advanced state of civilisation. Considering the simplicity of this branch of the law as regards its principle, and its vast importance as regards society, the long-continued neglect of it by the legislature may seem remarkable. It may, however, safely be asserted that till lately the Criminal Law of England was more sanguinary in its penalties, and more unjust in its processes, than that of any other code or system of law throughout Europe. The causes which have conduced to such evil results may be told in a few words. The foundations of this branch of the law were laid in times of barbarity, superstition, and ignorance, when life and liberty were held in small estimation, and when crimes of outrageous, and often open violence, required restraints of great severity, when commercial dealings were few, and criminal frauds comparatively rare. Laws adapted to the exigencies of such times could, it is obvious, be little suited to an improved state of civilisation; yet it might reasonably have been expected that at some time or other a general revision of this branch of the law would have taken place, for the sake of rejecting what was barbarous, obsolete, or useless, and substituting rules better accommodated to the exigencies of an advanced stage of society. Century after century has, expired, but no such amendment on any considerable scale has, till very recent times, been effected. Many of the most cruel and oppressive laws were long, it is to be feared, preserved for the sake of their tempting fruits confiscations, forfeitures, and fines. It exceeds the bounds of charity to suppose that the harsh restraints imposed on persons whose conviction would produce profit, and which made a trial but an unmeaning form and a cruel mockery, were so long retained from any other motive. Be this as it may, ages were suffered to elapse without any general reformation of the criminal law, although from time to time, as particular grievances pressed hard, or some act of great atrocity excited public feeling, and the legislature was stimulated to extraordinary exertion. Laws were passed to suit present exigencies. These, however, were usually of a desultory, isolated character, ill-penned, as Lord Coke observes, "being hastily made on the spur of the occasion." One great error was common to most of these: the legislature seem in former times to have been constantly impressed with the notion that the efficacy of a penal law was directly proportioned to the severity of the punishment. An extraordinary instance illustrative at once of the resort to this principle, and of its fallacy, is afforded by the statute 22 Hen. 8. c. 9., which was founded on a most atrocious offence committed by a cook in poisoning broth, by which a great number of persons lost their lives. Sir E. Coke, in speaking of the offence, says, "This offence was so odious that by Act of Parliament it was made high treason, and a more grievous and lingering death inflicted than the common law prescribeth, viz. that the offender should be boiled to death in hot water; upon which statute Margaret Davy, a young woman, was attainted of high treason for poisoning her mistress, and some others were boyled to death in Smith |