reflecting upon the gentlemen who have been appointed, it must be allowed that very little regard has been paid to individual fitness. Few, if any, of them have had that description of practice which should have formed the training of a judge in bankruptcy, whilst the claims of many barristers, admirably suited to the office, have been overlooked. They are, however, in general men of sense and integrity, and will probably perform their duties to the satisfaction of the public. None of the present London commissioners were men of very high standing or of great practice at the bar, yet it is admitted on all hands that they have efficiently executed their duties, and in general their decisions seem to meet with the approval of the mercantile community. Since the above was written, the sudden death of Sir John Cross, the only remaining judge of the Court of Review, has opened the way to a further improvement of detail in the Bankruptcy Courts. Sir James Knight Bruce, one of the recently appointed Vicechancellors, has been nominated Chief Judge in Bankruptcy, to which he will allot a sufficient portion of his judicial time. Thus the more difficult cases have again been practically brought under the jurisdiction of the Court of Chancery, a circumstance that will be satisfactory to the legal profession, and, with the present increased number of Equity judges, will not interfere with the ordinary business of Chancery. Something like the present arrangement was suggested by Mr. Basil Montagu in his evidence before the Commission of Inquiry, and from two of the judges of the Court of Review having been removed to other situations, such a plan was obviously contemplated by the late government.

Upon a review of the gradual ameliorations of the law of debtor and creditor which have from time to time been made, from the age of Henry the Eighth down to the last session of parliament, it is plain, that though much has been done to bring that law into accordance with the spirit of the present day, much yet remains undone; and from the difficulty with which the legislature and the legal profession are brought to reconsider subjects of this class, and the reluctance with which the latter as a body are moved from their ancient ways, it is not unlikely that the actual state of the law as regards debtors and creditors a state which, notwithstanding, we must call it

transitional-may continue for a considerable period. Nevertheless, the degree in which the recent changes have fallen short of that point which sound principle would dictate is marked and obvious. In the case of traders, prompt and efficient means of testing the solvency of a debtor have been provided, whilst protection from ex parte and fraudulent adjudications of bankruptcy, previously the sources of so much evil, has been given; facilities are also offered to embarrassed traders to effect an early and equitable division of their assets amongst their creditors; and that powerful engine of oppression which the law placed in the hands of creditors, when it left them the discretion of granting or refusing a bankrupt's certificate, has been destroyed by the change which renders the grant a judicial act. So the establishment of a uniform system for the administration of the bankrupt-law throughout the country will undoubtedly be found an enduring benefit to the trading classes. Then a protection from personal imprisonment, which may be obtained by the smaller insolvent traders, and by insolvents not engaged in trade, under Lord Brougham's act, will not only lessen the amount of immorality and misery which the law permitting imprisonment for debt occasions, but will demonstrate practically how safely and wisely that barbarous law may be totally abrogated. We believe that at no very distant period the Insolvent Debtors' Court, with the cruel law which called it into being, will cease to exist.

These are no inconsiderable improvements, and will afford extensive relief both to debtors and creditors. Yet there will be numerous cases of wrong, in no way distinguishable upon principle from those remedied by the recent alterations, which will continue unredressed. There will still remain a large class of insolvents, who, though freed from personal arrest, will remain liable through life to be taken before the Bankrupt Court by any creditor who may suspect them of having acquired a modicum of property; they will have given up everything, and yet remain undischarged from their debts. That such persons will be comparatively useless members of society might be assumed from a consideration of the motives by which men are actuated; and such has been shown by the operation of the existing law to be the only effect of keeping a

cloud of hopeless debt hanging over the head of a man who has once failed. That such men are not likely to earn more than a bare subsistence, every day's experience proves. And this will be the condition of all insolvent persons who do not come under the still technical denomination of traders, or who being traders shall not be made bankrupts, as well under the new as the old law. Here is one glaring deficiency. Another will be found in the retention of the principle of a certificate in order to the discharge from debts. It is true creditors cannot now, from caprice or more sinister motives, absolutely prevent the bankrupt from obtaining his certificate, but the effect which a strenuous opposition before the commissioner, and subsequently before the Court of Review, must frequently have, will form a means of coercion little less stringent than the sic volo sic jubeo power formerly possessed by the creditors. If, in the absence of fraud, it is fit that an insolvent should be absolved from legal liability to perform his obligationsand the whole tenor of the bankrupt and insolvent law proves that society deems that it is fit-the distinction between fraud and misfortune or imprudence ought to be made plain and definite. This can only be attained by affixing a criminal character to that which the law shall declare to be fraud, and inflexibly enforcing punishment for every such offence, whilst the strictly civil process under which the insolvent's effects are divided should of itself operate as a discharge from his debts. Fraud upon creditors is as strictly a criminal offence as picking pockets, and ought to be dealt with in the same way; the accused debtor being entitled to the protection of a jury, and the accusing creditors being bound on behalf of the public to prosecute the offence. Creditors who have been actually defrauded should be no more permitted to compound the fraud, than he who has been robbed on the highway is allowed to compound the felony; but wherever fraud is not proved, debtors ought not to be visited with a civil disability so fertile in suffering and wrong as that which prevents any future acquisition of property.

The chief, nay the only substantial, obstacle to the total abolition of imprisonment for debt lies in the tenderness of the legislature towards those debtors who are not traders, in abstaining from subjecting them to personal examination as to the

validity of claims made against them. Such an examination would be a real equivalent to creditors for the surrender of the illusory power of imprisoning their non-trading debtors. There are numbers of rich men, or men who might be rich by simple abstinence from extravagant expenditure, setting their creditors at defiance in spite of the law of arrest, and of the various facilities for attaching property which have been given to creditors within the last ten or twelve years. To such men, a summons before a court of justice, to be followed in case of disobedience by a process of bankruptcy, would operate as a moral corrective, and its general effect would be, to prevent much of that inconsiderate acceptance of credit which is so mischievous to the morals and so destructive to the happiness of our aristocracy. If a gambler (of whom it is scarcely uncharitable to imagine that he has legitimate debts unpaid), or one who refuses to pay a just demand, in haughty reliance upon his weight of purse, or any one of the numberless other improvident poor-rich men whose cases will occur to the reader's mind, could be summoned to the Bankrupt Court and there compelled to deny or admit his fair debts, and on admitting them to make immediate provision for their discharge, or submit to a distribution of his effects under a process analogous to bankruptcy, with the obligation of accounting for past receipts and justifying past expenditure, does any one believe that with such a possibility the reckless improvidence of the one, or the unjust obstinacy of the other debtor would exist? In less extreme cases, where the credit tradesmen are but too willing to force upon the acceptance of persons of station and property is taken to an extent which neither prudence nor morality can justify, whilst a large portion of available income is spent luxuriously or wantonly, the knowledge that a general account may be enforced by a compulsory process would act as a most beneficial check. Thoughtlessness is the common origin of debt, and when the original position of a debtor was such as to make it difficult for him to avoid rather than to obtain credit, the most salutary state of the law is that which will render him cautious in incurring unnecessary obligations. That such would be the effect of extending the operation of the bankrupt-laws uniformly to all debtors, we have no doubt; and until that is in effect,

though perhaps not in name, accomplished, we do not expect the total eradication of that social evil-imprisonment for debt, which is the point upon which all future improvements in the law of debtor and creditor must depend.

ARTICLE V.

The Kirk of Scotland.

A Temperate Remonstrance respectfully addressed to the Legislature in relation to the Scottish Church Question. By JOHN HAMILTON, Esq. 8vo. Edinburgh, 1840.

IF the half of the clergy and people of one of the smallest dioceses in England were to secede from the Establishment, finding it impossible, after wrangling for three or four years, to agree with the other half on some point of discipline, we may be certain that all classes would eagerly endeavour to learn the causes of a controversy which produced such deplorable effects. The whole of one of the three kingdoms-Scotland-has been for several years agitated by a religious controversy, which has at last produced a secession of hundreds of its ministers (some of them distinguished above all their brethren for their talents and acquirements,-all of them for their piety and high principles) and of thousands of its lay members from the Established church; yet we in England generally know and care less about the origin, progress and present state of this controversy than we do about the success or failure of a favourite horse at Ascot, although what affects so important a part of the United Kingdom in so vital a point as religion concerns deeply the welfare of the whole of Great Britain, and may ultimately produce serious evils to its most distant provinces. The government, taking advantage of the general apathy of the English public, gets its usual English supporters to assent to any measure which an influential member of the cabinet thinks it expedient and politic for the good of his party to adopt; and then we bitterly complain if a Scotch