crops in place of fit crops; and so working their land at a relative loss. In all cases where, by restrictive duties, a trade has been upheld that would otherwise not have existed, capital has been turned into a channel less productive than some other into which it would naturally have flowed. In the absence of these restrictions, the article made would have been fetched from some place where it was more cheaply made; and in exchange for it we should have given some article in which aptitude and local circumstances enabled us to excel those with whom we thus exchanged. And so, to pursue certain Statepatronized occupations, men have been drawn from more advantageous occupations.

Is it not, then, as above alleged, that the same oversight runs through all these interferences; be they with commerce, or be they with other things? Is it not that in employing people to achieve this or that desideratum, legislators have not perceived that they were thereby preventing the achievement of some other desideratum ? Has it not been constantly assumed that each proposed good would, if secured, be a pure good; instead of being a good purchasable only by submission to some evil that would else have been remedied? And may we not rationally believe that, as in trade, so in other things, labour will spontaneously find out, better than any government can find out for it, the things on which it may best expend itself? Undoubtedly we may. Rightly regarded, the two propositions are identical. This division into commercial and non-commercial affairs is quite a superficial one. All the actions going on in society come under the generalization-human effort administering to human de sire. Whether the administration be effected through a process of buying and selling, or whether in any other way, matters not so far as the general law of it is concerned. In all cases it will be true that the stronger

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desires will get themselves satisfied before the weaker ones; and in all cases it will be true that to get satisfaction for the weaker ones before they would naturally have it, is to deny satisfaction to the stronger ones.

To the immense positive evils entailed by over-legisla tion have to be added the equally great negative evilsevils which, notwithstanding their greatness, are scarcely at all recognized, even by the far-seeing. It is not simply that the State does those things which it ought not to do, but that, as an inevitable consequence, it leaves undone those things which it ought to do. Time and human activity being limited, it necessarily follows that legisla tors' sins of commission entail corresponding sins of omission. The injury is unavoidably doubled. Mischievous meddling involves disastrous neglect; and until statesmen are ubiquitous and omnipotent, must ever do so. It is in the very nature of things that an agency employed for two purposes must fulfil both imperfectly; partly because while fulfilling the one it cannot be fulfilling the other, and partly because its adaptation to both ends implies incomplete fitness for either. As has been well said apropos of this point-"A blade which is designed both to shave and to carve, will certainly not shave so well as a razor or carve so well as a carving-knife. An academy of painting, which should also be a bank, would in all probability exhibit very bad pictures and discount very bad bills. A gas company, which should also be an infant-school society, would, we apprehend, light the streets ill, and teach the children ill."*

And if an institution undertakes, not two functions, but a score—if a government, whose office it is to defend citizens against aggressors, foreign and domestic, engages

* Edinburgh Review, April, 1839.

also to disseminate Christianity, to administer charity, to teach children their lessons, to adjust prices of food, to inspect coal-mines, to regulate railways, to superintend house-building, to arrange cab-fares, to look into people's stink-traps, to vaccinate their children, to send out emigrants, to prescribe hours of labour, to examine lodginghouses, to test the knowledge of mercantile captains, to provide public libraries, to read and authorize dramas, to inspect passenger-ships, to see that small dwellings are supplied with water, to regulate endless things from a banker's issues down to the boat-fares on the Serpentineis it not manifest that its primary duty must be ill discharged in proportion to the multiplicity of affairs it busies itself with? Is it not manifest that its time and energies must be frittered away in schemes, and inquiries, and amendments, in proposals, and debates, and divisions, to the utter neglect of its essential office? And does not a glance over the debates make it manifest that this is the fact? and that, while parliament and public are alike occupied with these chimerical projects, these mischievous interferences, these utopian hopes, the one thing needful is left almost undone ?

See here, then, the proximate cause of all our legal abominations. We drop the substance in our efforts to catch shadows. While our firesides, and clubs, and taverns are filled with talk about corn-law questions, and church questions, and education questions, and sanitary questions-all of them raised by over-legislation-the justice question gets scarcely any attention; and we daily submit to be oppressed, cheated, robbed. This institution, which should succour the man who has fallen among thieves, turns him over to solicitors, barristers, and a legion of law-officers; drains his purse for writs, briefs, affidavits, subpoenas, fees of all kinds and expenses innumera ble; involves him in the intricacies of common courts

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chancery courts, suits, counter-suits, and appeals; and often ruins where it should aid. Meanwhile, meetings are called, and leading articles written, and votes asked, and societies formed, and agitations carried on, not to rectify these gigantic evils, but partly to abolish our ancestors' mischievous meddlings, and partly to establish meddlings of our own. Is it not obvious that this fatal neglect is a result of this mistaken officiousness? Suppose that external and internal protection had been the sole recognized functions of the legislature. Is it conceivable that our administration of justice would have been as corrupt as now? Can any one believe that had parliamentary elec tions been habitually contested on questions of legal reform, our judicial system would still have been what Sir John Romilly calls it "a technical system invented for the creation of costs"? Does any one suppose that, if the efficient defence of person and property had been the constant subject-matter of hustings pledges, we should yet be waylaid by a Chancery Court which has now more than two hundred millions of property in its clutches-which keeps suits pending fifty years, until all the funds are gone in fees-which swallows in costs two millions annually? Dare any one assert that had constituencies been always canvassed on principles of law-reform versus law-conservatism, Ecclesiastical Courts would have continued for centuries fattening on the goods of widows and orphans? The questions are next to absurd.

A child may see that with the general knowledge peo ple have of legal corruptions and the universal detestation of legal atrocities, an end would long since have been put to them, had the administration of justice always been the political topic. Iad not the public mind been constantly preoccupied, it could never have been tolerated that a man, neglecting to file an answer to a bill in due course, should be imprisoned fifteen years for contempt of court,

as Mr. James Taylor was. It would have been impossible that on the abolition of their sinecures the sworn-clerks should have been compensated by the continuance of their exhorbitant incomes, not only till death, but for seven years after, at a total estimated cost of £700,000. Were the State confined to its defensive and judicial functions, not only the people but legislators themselves would agitate against abuses. The sphere of activity and the opportunities for distinction being narrowed, all the thought, and industry, and eloquence which members of Parliament now expend on countless impracticable schemes and countless artificial grievances, would be expended in rendering justice pure, certain, prompt, and cheap. The complicated follies of our legal verbiage, which the uninitiated cannot understand, and which the initiated interpret in various senses, would be quickly put an end to. We should no longer constantly hear of Acts of Parliament so bunglingly drawn up that it requires half a dozen actions and judges' decisions under them, before even lawyers can say how they apply. There would be no such stupidlydesigned measures as the Railway Winding-up Act; which though passed in 1846 to close the accounts of the bubble schemes of the mania, leaves them still unsettled in 1854 —which, even with funds in hand, withholds payment from creditors whose claims have been years since admitted. Lawyers would no longer be suffered to maintain and to complicate the present absurd system of land titles; which, besides the litigation and ruin it perpetually causes, lowers the value of estates, prevents the ready application of capital to them, checks the development of agriculture, and so, seriously hinders the improvement of the peasantry and the prosperity of the country. In short, the follies, terrors, and abominations which now environ law would cease; and that which men now shrink from as an enemy they would come to regard as what it ports to be a friend.

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