in view without being open to any of these objections, and without involving expense to the public, or any change in the business of the Chancery Division, and which would greatly diminish the expense of litigation. The plan is an extremely simple one. First, I would do away with the intricate phraseology which calls one court by many names, and enact that, for the future, there should be one court only-namely, the High Court, which for the distribution of business should be divided into three divisions, the Chancery Division, the Queen's Bench Division, and the Probate, Admiralty, and Divorce Divisions. I would also provide that the Chief Justice of England should be President of the Queen's Bench Division, and the other chiefs, if retained, be Vice-Presidents of it. The Lord Chancellor (who is President of the Chancery Division, though he never, or hardly ever, acts as such), the Master of the Rolis, the President of the Divorce Division, I would leave as they are. Subject to these exceptions, and subject to existing distinctions of rank, title, and pay, I would have all the judges called by the same title, receive the same pay, and take precedence according to their seniority. In the place of the Court of Appeal I would have appellate benches, consisting either of three or of two judges, according to the nature of the business to be disposed of. Appeals from hearings in the Chancery Division should be, as at present, to a bench of three judges. Motions for new trials in the Queen's Bench Division might be heard by benches of three judges; appeals from inferior courts or in interlocutory matters might be heard by benches of two judges, whose decision, or failure to decide owing to a difference of opinion, should be final, unless they gave leave to appeal, in which case there should be an appeal to a bench of three judges, whose decision should be final. The Lord Chancellor, the Master of the Rolls, and the three Chief Justices should decide from time to time how many appellate benches of three or two judges should sit, and how many courts should sit at Nisi Prius. The judges of each division should decide amongst themselves by a rota who should sit on appellate benches and who at Nisi Prius. It might, I think, be understood that the bench taking Equity appeals should have, if possible, one Common Law member, and that a certain number of members of the Chancery Division should sit on the Appellate Bench for cases from the Queen's Bench Division. The Chancery Division would have to consist of eight members, to correspond to the Master of the Rolls, three of the Lords Justices, the three Vice-Chancellors, and Mr. Justice Fry; and the Common Law Division of eighteen members, corresponding with the other three Lords Justices, and the fifteen members of the three Common Law Divisions. Of course, the existing Lords Justices would be called upon to sit only on Appellate Benches, so that the change I propose would come into force gradually as vacancies occurred amongst

the Lords Justices. I think it would be very desirable to provide that (circuits notwithstanding) four judges should sit continuously in the Chancery Division for the trial of causes, for when the three Vice-Chancellors who now sit vacate their offices, their successors will be bound to go circuit, and I have a strong impression that the public will be ill satisfied if the business in the Chancery Division is interrupted, and I have great doubts whether they will be well satisfied if the judges of the Common Law Divisions have to take their turn in trying equity cases. Such a course appears to me to imply a pedantic determination to overlook the convenience of arrangements for the division of labour which have been established by practice, in favour of an ill-founded expectation of giving the law a degree of simplicity which does not belong to it.

This plan, it will be observed, maintains the existing number of judges, but simplifies the constitution of the court, making the division between appeals and trials the foundation of the distribution of business between different benches of the same court, instead of being, as it is at present, a ground for a most intricate division of the court itself.

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The judges of the court so constituted would stand upon equality, except so far as the existing chief, the Master of the Rolls, constituted an exception, and thus promotion on the Bench would be practically at an end. The court would no longer be organised on the false supposition that appeals are necessarily or as a rule more important than trials. Each of the judges would take his part in the trial of causes and in the hearing of appeals, and each would thus be made familiar, not only with all matters of legal principle decided on appeal, but with the detailed application of those principles to actual litigation. The maintenance of the ancient offices of the Lord Chief Justice of the Common Pleas and the Lord Chief Baron of the Exchequer would be consistent with the scheme, and for the reasons already given I think this would be desirable; but it is not an essential part of it. If it were thought best, upon the whole, to abolish these offices, the only modification which the scheme would require would be the appointment in their place of two additional Puisne Judges in the Queen's Bench Division.

The scheme would cost nothing. It would ultimately save a little if, as the offices of the Lords Justices became vacant, they were filled by judges whose circuit expenses were not paid. I do not, however, think that the question of saving that small amount is one to which the public would attach much importance. My own feeling is that the dignity of a judge's office depends upon the importance of his duties, on the manner in which they are discharged, and on his independence of the executive and even of the legislative branches of the government. On the question of titles and money I have only to say

that I think it would be well if ultimately all the judges, with the exceptions I have explained and tried to justify, were to stand on the same footing.

The great practical importance of the adoption of my proposal would be that it would reduce the number of appeals and bring the procedure of the Chancery Division and the Queen's Bench Division as nearly into conformity in that particular as is possible, regard being had to the difference between trials by a judge alone and trials by a judge and jury. The scheme would leave the course of appeal in the Chancery Division just as it is.

Several persons to whom I have mentioned this scheme have asserted that it is a proposal to reinstate the old Court of Exchequer Chamber. The fact is that it is just the reverse. It is a proposal to reinstate the old Courts in Banc, and to do away with the unnecessary intervention of the Court of Exchequer Chamber, which has become permanent and active under the Judicature Act, instead of being hardly ever used, as was the case under the old system.

This change would greatly diminish the number of appeals and the cost of litigation, and it would in particular bring the appeals on interlocutory proceedings into a reasonable compass. This is a matter in which the public, and even the greater part of the profession, are much in the dark, and it was not fully considered in the Judicature Act. Before that Act passed, appeals from orders in chambers lay by way of motion to the Court in Banc, and could be carried no further; and as the power of the masters of the court to make interlocutory orders is of very recent date, the result was that upon no order at chambers, however important it might be, was there more than one appeal. The Judicature Act gave three appeals in respect of orders made by judges, and four appeals in respect of orders made by masters, however trifling the order might be.

It is very difficult for any one, except a judge accustomed to sit in chambers, to form an adequate notion of the nature of the business transacted there. It has a great deal to do both with the efficiency of the court and with the expense of litigation. About one-half of the work, or something between one-half and two-thirds, ought not, in my opinion, to be put upon the judges at all. I refer to the judgment debtor summonses, which I think might well be disposed of in other ways. The remaining half is of all imaginable degrees of importance. A large proportion of it represents the desire of quarrelsome people to keep each other at arm's length, and put each other to expense and trouble, and the desire of fraudulent people to put off as long as possible the evil day when they will be compelled to pay their debt or make amends for their wrongs. In such matters as these a single appeal is quite enough, but cases do occasionally come before judges at chambers which may turn upon

principles of the greatest importance, and practically involve the decision of actions in which character, or property, or personal liberty are at stake. These are, of course, an essential part of the business of the court, and in such cases I think the court appealed to would seldom refuse leave to appeal further in cases in which a further appeal was really required.

Such is my view of the changes which the constitution of the High Court requires. I hope they may be thought worthy of consideration before practically irrevocable steps are taken which would greatly alter, and as I think for the worse, perhaps the most popular and one of the soundest of all English institutions.

JAMES FITZJAMES STEPHEN.

A GLIMPSE AT NEWFOUNDLAND.

ONE fine August day a friend of mine and I, being anxious to explore the hunting-grounds of Newfoundland, embarked on board an Allan steamship, and after a somewhat boisterous passage, found ourselves deposited in the city of St. John's.

St. John's, the capital of Newfoundland, is remarkably well situated on the northern side of a magnificent harbour. The entrance to the harbour is through a very narrow passage between lofty, precipitous, rugged cliffs; but within, the haven expands and forms a perfectly secure, land-locked, and commodious shelter from the wild waves that lash those inhospitable shores. The most noticeable point about the city is that all the manufacturing energy of the population appears to be concentrated in the making of long fisherman's boots, and the keeping of public-houses. It produces seal oil and cod-fish, and consumes rum and tobacco. St. John's is a busy, thriving, moneymaking place, and the prosperity of the capital of the oldest colony of Great Britain is appreciated by the traveller long before he sets foot upon her classic shores; for one side of the harbour smells abominably of dried cod-fish, and the other of seal oil. Judging by the accent, there must be a large mixture of Irish blood in the population, a conjecture which is not confuted by the fact that the inhabitants of St. John's and of the outports-as all the other towns and settlements are called—and of the island in general, are a splendid set of tall, strong, active, healthy-looking men. Accustomed from childhood to brave the hardships of a most rigorous climate, drawing their sustenance from the teeming but treacherous bosom of a storm-vexed ocean, that rages in vain for ever round a rugged reef-bound coast; navigating their frail and ill-found schooners amid tempest, ice, and fog, the Newfoundlanders have developed into one of the finest seafaring populations on the face of the globe. Nowhere can better mariners be found than among the hardy, adventurous, self-reliant men who ply their precarious calling along the dangerous shores of their native island, or on the wintry coast of the neighbouring mainland of Labrador.

The principal industry of Newfoundland is the cod-fishery, and the chief centre of the trade is at St. John's, where the process of