the first to call the attention of the scientific world, to this singular, and fatal mistake of the early explorers, and every one wonders why no one thought of it before. Mr. Bent's theory was first confirmed by a conversation he had with a whaler in the Sandwich Islands, who informed him, that he had passed in his ship to a very high degree of latitude, to the eastward of Spitzbergen, and still found an open sea before him. The testimony of Captain (now Commodore) John Rodgers, of the U. S. North Pacific Exploring Expedition, is to the same effect. This officer penetrated to the mouth of Behring's Strait, in search of Herald Island, reported by a British officer as lying to the northward and westward of that Strait. The island was not found, but Captain Rodgers, in a conversation with Mr. Bent, informed him, that although he found an icy barrier barring his farther progress in that direction-the northwest-yet as far as he proceeded to the northward and eastward, beyond the Strait, he found an open sea, with a gentle current setting to the northward. The facts are meagre, it is true, but as far as they go, they sustain the theory of Mr. Bent. It may not be true, that there is a clear pathway open in this direction to the poles, as Mr. Bent thinks, but from the foregoing data it appears pretty plain, that if there be any approach open to the pole at all, it is in this direction.

ART. VII.-The Practice in Courts of Justice in England and the United States. By Conway Robinson. Vol. V. 1868. Richmond: Woodhouse & Parkham; Baltimore: Cushings & Bailey; Philadelphia: T. & J. W. Johnson & Co. The production of a work like the one whose title we have placed at the head of this article is a credit to the country as great as it is to the profession. To demonstrate that the innumerable decisions of the English Courts and of our several

State Courts may be reduced to a system, and that an established practice may be derived from them is to accomplish a great work. The learned author of the Practice, of which the fifth volume is now presented to the public, has adopted a modest title, which does not at all describe the character or scope of the work. Instead of being a mere book of Practice, indicating the peculiar modes of procedure in certain courts, or in certain actions, it is a complete digest of the law on the matters treated of and as it now exists in England and this country. These volumes bear no resemblance to the books ordinarily known as books of Practice, and can be so called only as embodying all that is necessary to be known in order to conduct a cause from the impetration of the writ to the defences pointed out in this volume,—that is, to practise the law. In the sister science of medicine, the knowledge of the human frame, its anatomical structure, its physiology, and its pathology are first studied; then the properties of the various substances contained in the materia medica are mastered; and, lastly, the great object of the science is unfolded in the books of practice, that is to say, the proper application of the remedial agents to the diseased condition of the system. In this higher sense alone can these volumes, full of learning, of industrious research, and of careful reflection, be called books of practice.

Law-municipal law-may doubtless be ranked among the experimental sciences. In theory, it is considered a system by which a general rule of action is established, 'commanding what is right and prohibiting what is wrong,' indicating therefore, in advance, the rights to which Man, as a member of the social system, is entitled, the duties he is required to perform, the remedies by which those rights may be enforced and the consequences resulting from a breach of those duties. Adapted, as the laws are intended to be, to the condition of man at the time the system is formed, they must of necessity change or be changed, according as society and civilization advance. Such laws as would have been ample to have protected the rights of our rude forefathers in the days of William the Conqueror, when each feudal baron was an autocrat, when the tenures of land were by knight service, or plough service, or sarjeanty, or

cornage, and when commerce was utterly unknown, would have been but little adapted to the social system in the days of the Cavaliers and of Cromwell. The laws which were suited to the condition of Englishmen in the reign of the Stuarts, would be as utterly inadequate to the condition of their descendants in this country at the present time, as the education and habits. of the Squires of the seventeenth century would be unsuited to the position and duties of the American gentleman of the nineteenth century.

It is manifest, therefore, that the laws of a country are not and cannot be framed after a pattern, but that they grow up as they are required by some public necessity, or demanded by some private interest, that all their parts, instead of being constructed at one time, and with regard to symmetry of proportion or unity of design, are passed from time to time, in order to remedy some supposed evil, or to meet some urgent requirement of the governors or the governed. The laws of a country, then, instead of being constructed, like the dome of St. Peter's, according to a prepared model, perfect in all its proportions, and gaining strength, and beauty, and utility from every timber, are built up, as the pioneer constructs his dwelling, rude, and narrow, and inadequate at first,-increasing with his increasing wants and his newly-discovered means, so that, by adding one room to another, a required wing here, and a necessary story there, his building changes with his need and gradually becomes equal to his own progress and to the development of society around him. The result will depend on the skill and judgment of the architect. If he be thoughtful, he will adapt his improvements to his wants; if he be judicious, he will not be compelled to be constantly tearing down and building anew; if he have skill and taste, his structure, though erected piecemeal, will give evidence of unity of design. It is in this sense that law must be placed among the experimental sciences. The enactments of the law-making power require to be tested by experience, in order that their nature may be ascertained, and the necessity for change or amendment determined on. If such necessity is found to exist, the success with which the error will be corrected will depend on the skill of the

legislator, his knowledge of the state of the law as it exists, his experience of its application and failure, his ability to adopt the best mode of correcting the evil, his familiarity with the language of the law, his singleness of purpose, his judgment and his forethought. No man can successfully undertake to amend a law already in existence, unless he is familiar with the provisions of the existing law; no man can legislate on a subject requiring the intervention of the legislature, unless he fully understands the deficiency to be supplied, and the evils flowing from the absence of proper legislation. He should have studied the previous enactments on the subject; he should have ascertained from experience or observation the practical working of those enactments, and having thus ascertained that the law, as it stood, was inadequate to effect the objects designed, he should apply himself, with honesty of purpose, to frame the proper substitute. Not only must he have knowledge rendered practical by experience, and an honest desire to remedy the ascertained evil, but he must bring to his work a thorough acquaintance with apt expressions and technical language; he must be a man capable of anticipating, to a certain extent, the working of the new legislation. He requires, therefore, learning, ability, experience, and honesty. Is it strange, then, that, looking to the qualifications required of a legislator, we should, in this country, have such a mass of worthless legislation; that onehalf of the sessions of our too busy and too frequent assemblies should be occupied in repealing and in amending the sad work of their immediate predecessors? Men, without knowledge, without learning, without experience, are suddenly elevated to the position of legislators. The honest among them soon fall a prey to the more astute and interested, and the whole legislative body is warped and controlled by a set of stipendiaries, hovering around the halls like birds of prey. The consequence is, either that the new law bears on its face the impress of ignorance, and cannot be made to harmonize with the previous legislation in pari materia, or, under the guise of some general amendment, is soon found to have been procured in order to accomplish some private end merely. To deduce from such legislation a system, to bring order out of chaos, to reconcile

conflicting laws, to ascertain, (and that in a number of States,) a general practice, is of itself no easy task. It requires extended learning, unwearied patience, and great industry.

How different the course of legislation in England! Devotion to their ancient laws carries the inhabitants of Great Britain to the other extreme. Reforms, instead of following the example of the too hasty action of our own law-producing country, drag their slow length along from one reign to another. Even in the days of that greatest of princes, Alfred, his reverence for the established laws of his forefathers is seen in his noteworthy preamble to the collection sanctioned by him. Hence I, King Alfred,' says this lawgiver, 'gathered them together, and commanded many of those to be written down which our forefathers observed those which I liked— and those which I did not like, by the advice of my Witan, I threw aside. For I durst not venture to set down in writing over many of my own, since I knew not which among them would please those who should come after us. But those which I met with either of the days of me, my kinsman, or of Offa, King of Mercia, or of Athelbert, who was the first of the English who received baptism-those which appeared to me to be the justest-I have here collected. Then I, Alfred, King of the West Saxons, showed these to all my Witan, and they then said that they were all willing to observe them.' Throw aside he might, by the advice of his National Council, some of the ancient laws of the kingdom, which were unjust, or had grown obselete, and were no longer suited to his day, but even Alfred 'durst not venture to add many of his own.' Having collected, not decreed, the laws which appeared to him "the justest,' he carefully submitted the digested code again to his Witanagemote, and adopted those only which were unanimously sanctioned.

Modern enlightenment and modern progress have in no degree weakened the affection of the English for their common law. They cling with fond tenacity to the form, even when the substance has departed. The influence of the feudal system which has gradually disappeared in point of fact from the island, still lingers, in a thousand ways, in their land tenures,