sable to the taming of the bear man, and to the steadfastness of his allegiance to constituted authorities. Mr. Cornish's gallantry is evidenced by the zest with which he quotes Behrengius:—

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Behrengius, in his "Institutes of Natural and Political Law," gives it his opinion, that men who remained unmarried after forty, should be placed under guardianship by the Government. They are guilty," says he, "of a species of treason, and show so little regard to the good of their country, that they are not to be trusted. Besides, they are so ignorant, or so indifferent, with regard to their own happiness, that it may be doubted if they have the entire use of their reason.

We cite in conclusion two or three sentences of a graver cast, and breathing a sound liberality well adapted to the times in which we live. First, with regard to religious sects:

Sects, in many points, are beneficial to religion. As the members of each are critics of the doctrine and practice of all the rest, a species of mutual responsibility is created, by which all (though it is a truth few are willing to own) are in some degree controlled. Many excesses are prevented by the dread of active malevolence and honest indignation, strengthened by the spirit of religious partizanship. Sectarianism has done for Protestantism what Monasticism did for Popery—has kept it alive, and extended it.

British freedom and the British heart.

British freedom is civil and religious liberty, unrestrained by any undue stretch of ministerial authority. This is a sweet and holy attribute of a holy and, for the most part, sensible people, whence the heart of the nation comes; and it must appear to what most awful obligations and duty are held those from whom this heart takes it texture and shape :-our queen, our princes of the blood royal, all who wear the badge of office or honour; all priests, judges, senators, pleaders, interpreters of the law; all instructors of youth, all seminaries of education, all parents, all learned men, all professors of science and art, all teachers of manners, upon them depend the fashions of a nation's heart; by them it is to be chastened, refined, and purified; by them is the state to lose the character and title of the beast of prey; by them are the iron scales to fall off, and a skin of youth, beauty, freshness, and polish to come upon it; by them it is to be made so tame and gentle, as that a stripling youth" may lead it with safety and honour.

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The true and main support of governments and society.

Governments depend far more than is generally supposed upon the opinion of the people, and the spirit and the age of the nation. It sometimes happens that a "gigantic mind" possesses supreme power, and rises superior to the age in which he is born; such was Alfred in England and Peter in Russia; but such instances are very rare; and, in general, it is neither amongst sovereigns nor the higher classes of society that the great imrprovers or benefactors of mankind are to be found.

We have not deemed it necessary to distinguish what is properly Mr. Cornish's own matter, and what are the borrowed and compiled parts in any of our extracts. Neither have we gone into the particular directions on any one point of practice and law relative to the duties of jurymen. These directions, we presume, are correct in law. They are, at any rate, perspicuous and plain; the digest being also compact yet precise. Nowhere does the compiler pretend to philosophical analysis, although as we have seen, he speculates upon certain occasions, seldom losing an opportunity to inculcate a moral principle, or to suggest such an improvement as the scope of the little work affords.

In relation to one subject particularly-viz., that of Grand Juries, we think Mr. Cornish would do well, in the future editions of his manual, to turn his attention with some degree of decidedness with regard to the benefits or the reverse connected with this branch of our legal institutions. It is not, certainly, absolutely necessary, in a work for the general reader of the present kind, that the author should philosophize and speculate, or be disquisitional to any extent. Still, considering the somewhat erratic tendencies of our barrister, the grasp of his mind, and the opportunity of addressing himself to numerous readers, it might not be amiss to discuss the point mentioned, and thus, perhaps, lead to a wholesome change in legal practice.

An Edinburgh Reviewer many years ago handled this subject with great ability, and, to our thinking, to excellent purpose, in the following manner:-The use of a grand jury, many would say, was to find an indictment before a man, suspected merely of guilt, should be subjected to the hardship of imprisonment at the discretion of an individual. Now, we might argue, that instead of it being an advantage to save an innocent man from the hardship of a public trial, it is a cruel denial, after he has been publicly accused; and that the first thing to be desired is a searching investigation in an open court, if conducted in a mode as little troublesome and expensive as it ought to be. But to pass from this view, it is remarked that at a period when trials came round only once in seven years, and when the powers of law were wielded by fierce, impatient, and arbitrary barons, or the ministers of an arbitrary king, a security like that furnished by a grand jury against the hardship of imprisonment, of any length up to seven years, was of no light importance. Since, however, the Act of the 2d of Philip and Mary, c. 30, which conferred on justices of the peace the power of imprisoning before trial, the grand jury which now sits only at the time when the court sits, at which the alleged offence may be tried, has evidently lost all power to save any man from the evil mentioned, and seems really to serve no purpose whatsoever, but that of furnishing to actual delinquents an additional chance of escape. The court appointed to try the man in

the best way, is ready to try him. Then, why try him twice, first in a bad and insufficient way, and only after that in a good and final

Way.

:

It is well said by the Reviewer that a Grand Jury must do one of two things it must send a man to trial or discharge him; it must find a true bill, or the contrary. In all cases in which it sends the man to his trial, it does neither good nor evil; for the man is tried and sustains the consequences of his trial exactly as if no such thing as a grand jury had been in existence. In the cases where the grand jury discharge, the man must be either innocent or guilty: if innocent, the grand jury is useless again; for in a very short space the man would have received the same discharge from the court that would have tried him. The only case therefore in which a grand jury can do anything which would not be done without it, is the case in which it discharges a man really guilty, whose guilt would have been ascertained by the court. There is only one case then in which it can be anything but useless, and that is when it is purely mischievous.

The open trial by equals indifferently chosen, where the law is publicly laid down on both sides by a responsible judge, and the fact decided by a full hearing of the evidence on both sides, is beyond all doubt one of the best and noblest securities for all the rights of social man. No wonder then that the word jury is so musical to English ears. But the generous institution here characterized corresponds in no single feature with that anomalous excrescence attached to courts of Criminal Law in England under the name of Grand Jury, -that is, not an open, but a secret tribunal. The accused has no voice in its formation, no challenge against his worst enemy, who may possibly direct its unwitnessed deliberations. The legal points that may arise are clandestinely debated and decided, without the assistance of any known minister of the law. In their private chamber, the grand jury hear the testimony on behalf of the accusation only, subject to no cross-examination or contradiction. In a spirit directly hostile to the most fondly cherished principles of English law, everything takes place with closed doors, and in the absence of the party most interested in the issue. Finally, as if to complete the contrast, the verdict need not be unanimous, or even the opinion of two-thirds, for a bare majority, twelve to eleven, is sufficient either to put the party on his trial, or to stifle the most important investigation.

The books leave the duties of grand juries extremely indefinite. The judge often exhorts them not to try the cases that come up stairs to them, but merely to inquire whether there is ground for ulterior inquiry. Yet they present upon their oaths positively that A stole the goods of B. &c.; and Lord Somers wrote a tract to prove that they were bound to sift minutely the whole evidence before they could be justified in returning a true bill. The effect and use of

their functions it is still more difficult to collect. When they find the bill, they only express the opinion already adopted and acted on by the committing magistrate, after a much more satisfactory proceeding. Is not this superfluous? They can hardly clear the suspected character, but may do irreparable injury to public justice.

It would often serve an important purpose were grand juries dispensed with, were it merely for lightening the burden of attendance of witnesses as well as jurors. But a more serious point for consideration, is the facility of escape afforded by this stage. The many accidents that may conspire in favour of the criminal,-in themselves a great inconvenience,-furnish an excuse for the corrupt compromises that are daily defeating justice. Witnesses are not at hand when called; the stolen goods have been mistakenly conveyed to the wrong place; the persons upon whose evidence the jury are to find a verdict are plied with liquor, and forget all the material circumstances which they disclosed to the magistrate. The effect must be an encouragement to crime; for "no bills found," and "not prosecuted" may at all times be the return, amounting to a considerable percentage out of a number of committals.

Before dismissing the Juryman's Hand-Book, we have to state, that it is in appropriate terms dedicated "by especial permission," to Lord Denman, who has felt himself called on to acknowledge the honour in language complimentary to the author, and becoming the Chief Justice of the Queen's Bench. His Lordship has said not merely that he has detected no error in the work, but declares that it appears to him "very likely to diffuse, not only valuable knowledge among the middle classes, but to inspire them with sentiments of justice and humanity highly conducive to the general advantage and happiness." In these words, feelings and principles are evinced worthy of the person who has uttered them, of his exalted station as a judge, and of him who in an Inaugural Discourse pronounced on the occasion of opening the theatre of the City of London Literary and Scientific Institution, in Aldersgate Street, April 24th, 1828, while Common-Sergeant of London, used towards the close of the address, the language which we are about to quote. He stated that he spoke to men of the order from which both Lawyers and Jurors are taken :

"To this class," said he, "to whose advantage your exertions have been devoted, belongs the profession of the law-a profession so much interwoven in all the affairs of men, and on whose integrity such absolute reliance must be placed, that in them the elevation of character produced by literary habits is a positive gain to the public. From the same class also those juries are drawn, who form the only real safeguard of all our rights. The truth can never be too often repeated. But if juries are deficient either in intelligence or independence, if their minds are unenlightened, or their spirit servile, farewell to the blessings of that boasted ordinance! it will then be,

as it has often already been, but an engine for effecting crooked designs, and a cloak for disguising them! Farewell to the hopes of legal and judicial reformation; of short, and cheap, and simple methods of procedure, which, it is now apparent can only be expected from the practical good sense of a vigilant, a well-informed, and a considerate public."

ART. XIII.-Turning and Mechanical Manipulation. By CHARLES HOLTZAPFFEL, Associate of the Institution of Civil Engineers, Published for the Author by Holtzapffel and Co.

WE return to this curious and elaborate work, in order to place before our readers some few passages of its contents, and to support the opinion when we pronounce the subject of the book to be one of far greater compass, and to be filled up with a far greater variety of interesting particulars, than the uninitiated into its realm and its mysteries can have ever imagined. Not only the art but the literature of Turning, presents a rich abundance. And yet we are led to believe that Mr. Holtzapffel's publication will supply a want, as a general treatise, at least for the guidance of the amateur, and even for the instruction of the professional manipulator; the preceding works of highest authority being necessarily deficient in reference to the present state of the art, and the science that bears upon its advancement.

The greatest difficulty, says the author, that he has encountered in his task, has been that of selection and arrangement, where the field is so broad as to embrace an immense number of materials, and which are often vastly dissimilar. The difficulty, however, has been in a great measure obviated by the division of the work, not only into five volumes, each volume treating of parts of the subject that are broadly distinguished, but by carrying out the plan in the subdivision of the volumes into chapters, which may be considered severally to include all that was deemed necessary to be stated upon the respective subjects.

It will not be expected that persons in our situation, and who neither lay claim to the taste of the amateur, nor the knowledge of the professional artist, can enter critically into the merits of the volume before us, or do more than express a judgment with regard to the manner in which the author appears to have followed up the conception and plan of the work, in the process of execution. Still, without going beyond our depth among the technicalities of the subject, it is clear that these must be numerous where so many tools are employed, as well as such a variety of materials, derived from the several kingdoms of nature,-vegetable, mineral, and animal.

Well, then, the general reader will find no difficulty in going along with our anthor, so far as this first volume extends. But,