T. & T. CLARK, LAW BOOKSELLERS, GEORGE STREET. LONDON: STEVENS AND SONS. MDCCCLX. 92383 LIBRARY OF THE LELAND STANFORD, JR., UNIVERSITY MURRAY AND GIBB, PRINTERS, EDINBURGH. THE JOURNAL OF JURISPRUDENCE. THE BUSINESS OF THE COURT OF SESSION. AFTER the Commons House of Parliament, the Court of Session is certainly the best abused institution in the kingdom. Everybody that professes to know anything about it, insists that there is something wrong; and the severest critics of the existing system are those of the class most interested in its preservation. For our lawyers are, as Lord Brougham has testified, men of large and liberal ideas, friends to Law Reform, with a decided propensity for self-immolation on the altar of public duty. It would be idle to protest against the prevalence of such an amiable weakness amongst some of our professional brethren; and we only advert to it as illustrative of that diversity in matters of taste, which has become proverbial. We are content to fall in with the humour of the time. A legal functionary, of dramatic celebrity, begged that somebody would have the goodness to write him down an ass. To oblige the members of the College of Justice, we are resolved, at whatever sacrifice of personal feeling, to "write down" that venerated incorporation. The business of the Court, it is said, has diminished, is diminishing, and ought to be increased. This inversion of the famed historical protest does not, however, exactly represent the grievance of which we have to complain. In one view, the business might even be supposed to be increasing. For example, the Rolls of the last Summer Session show that a larger number of Reclaiming Notes were presented during that term than in any corresponding period since the establishment of the Inner House on its present footing. During the current Winter Session, at least 70 Reclaiming Notes VOL. IV.-NO. XXXVII. JANUARY 1860. A |