may be said of Ariosto, and, with all his classic elegance and accuracy, of Tasso too. Their subjects alone are full of poetry. They are such as address themselves most powerfully to the feelings of a modern reader. They are connected with all that we have been taught to consider as most venerable and captivating and imposing in the history of modern society: with the Holy Land and the Holy Cross, with the knight and the priest, with palmers and pilgrims, and paladins and peers, with "the fierce wars and the faithful loves," and the thousand other incidents, consequences and associations, direct or remote, of chivalry and the crusades. There is something like enchantment in the very names of those who are supposed to have figured in this heroic age of the modern world-the heroes and heroines of Turpin's Chronicle. Nor is this altogether due, as some may think, to the elegant fictions into which these rude materials have been wrought up in latter times. The simplest old romaunt or fabliau, has, we confess a secret charm for us as an image, however imperfect, of that interesting state of society, the gentis cunabula nostræ. Imagine Dante and Ariosto to have confined themselves to a bare translation of the celebrated poems of antiquity, or to have attempted the same subjects in a close and studied imitation. With what different feelings would they have been regarded by us! and how much less interest would have been excited by the literary history of that period!'

The American periodicals, which we have rapidly noticed, present us with few favourable specimens of original works published in the United States, particularly in works of imagination. Our Southern reviewer is inclined to be sufficiently severe upon his poetical brethren -and not without justice.

The interchange of literature between nations is like the reciprocity of commerce;-each party must profit by it. Although, for many years, England will supply America with books-for the more civilized country will have greater leisure to attend to the luxuries of life, while the settlers, the creators of fresh channels of commerce, the inventors and adapters of machinery must be busy for a century or so, getting their new house in order—it is not therefore to be concluded that we shall derive no advantage from the literature of America. We apprehend that the writers of the United States, with occasional exceptions, will for some time put forth their strength in periodical papers rather than in bulky volumes. They have no literature to create. The wide extent of our common storehouse is open to them; -and they may range, fully and freely, amongst our plenteous garners. They were born in a happy time for the rapid attainment of knowledge. They live in an age of Encyclopædias-and all they have to do is to adapt the great mass of information to the leisure and temper of their own people. Science, and literature must, in the United States, be for a long time elementary and popular. They have to enclose all the old, fat, blossoming, and fruit-bearing common-fields, before. they have occasion to break-up the wastes of knowledge. They will, therefore, reprint all our old glorious writers-the Shakspeares, and Bacons, and Miltons, and Popes, and Swifts, and Burkes-their inheritance es well as ours. For modern novelties, have they not the Murrays, and Longmans, and Colburns of England, to set their presses going? And, therefore, they will review, for half a century at least. But we shall still be gainers by this process. We shall see how our factitious modes of thought, growing out of our over-refinement in manners, and our intricate system of compromises in politics,

will look in the eyes of individual and communities who are inclined to err in the other excess-who sometimes mistake rudeness for strength, and are too apt to apply the standard of utility to matters which have neither heighth nor breadth, and cannot be guaged by all the algebra in the world. We have seen that one of their reviewers-and we think the most talented of them-reproaches his fellow-citizens, that they begin from the beginning and take nothing for granted. We, on the other hand, are mightily inclined to pride ourselves upon taking most things for granted, beginning at the practical point, according to our notions of that really ideal halting-place. Now, in our hatred of appearing ignorant, and of being suspected of moving in our leading-strings, both in learning and politics, we sometimes utterly forget those general principles-of liberty and all that, for instance,which no refinement, real or imaginary, ought to allow us to neglect. The mirror of American literature may sometimes very happily show us, what a prim, affected, strait-laced, effeminate and powerless thing is that public mind, "which goes on refining," till it has lost all relish for the plain food from which it must derive its strength-and minces along, the shadow of a shade, "powdered as for a feast," but "rank and foul within," amidst all its perfumes. American literature will be for many years to the English, as the bold, sometimes rude, but honest and substantial yeoman, is to the polite, perchance sarcastic, but elegant and accomplished favourite of the opera-box. The one tells a plain tale in homely and vigorous language-does not repress his natural curiosity when he sees any thing wonderful or new-and is often abundantly provoking with his rather ignorant boasting upon the subject of his own imperfect acquaintance with men and books, and most matters of taste. The other disdains to mention any single thing by its right name-remains in ignorance of any unfamiliar object rather than request to be informed-and is most contemptuously loud in his abomination of all those persons and matters which conduce to the ordinary comforts and satisfactions of life. Now these two individuals might learn a great deal of each other-if each would abate a little of exclusiveness and arrogance ;-and just in the same way, two na. tions like England and the United States, might abundantly profit by an intellectual interchange, if they would agree to cast aside the prejudices which occasionally render each odious in the eyes of the other. As with individuals, the natural course will be that the less cultivated nation will imitate the more polished; and for this reason, in letters especially, a sort of preternatural refinement may become the object of ambition in America. With all its knowledge and cleverness we think we can perceive a little of this spirit in the "Southern Review." The inhabitants of the Slave-states have always had great notions of refinement; and they really are, according to the best accounts, a very intelligent and cultivated body of men. But America is large enough to neutralize this spirit; and we shall thus occasionally look to all her more dignified periodical publications, such as the reviews before us, for an honest exhibition of the feelings and acquirements of the aggregate people of the great divisions of that extraordinary republic.

THE

LONDON MAGAZINE.

No. VII.-OCTOBER, 1828.

REFORMS IN THE LAW.

NO. III. THE MAGISTRACY,

THE Magistrates form the lowest grade of those who act as judges in this country; but, perhaps from this very reason, they come more immediately home to the "business" if not the "bosoms of men" in general than those of higher, though we think not more important station. The magistrates are dispersed in great numbers throughout the country, and their extensive and most multifarious jurisdiction brings them, in one shape or another, into contact with almost every permanent resident, in turn. To attempt to give anything like even a list of the matters which come under their cognizance would be endless we shall dwell only on their more prominent occupations; and consider how far they are calculated to perform their duties,— how some of them are in fact performed-and what remedy may, in some instances, be proposed for the evils which we shall point out.

The magistrates consist chiefly of the gentlemen of landed property in the county for which they act, and of clergymen. Any peer may act as a magistrate merely on taking out his dedimus. The others are appointed, nominally by the Lord Chancellor, but in fact by the Lord lieutenant of the county. Their services are unpaid; and there is no redress for any misconduct in their office, unless the most directly and wilfully corrupt motives are proved.

First, as to whether the persons selected are the fittest which could be found to fill the office of justice of the peace :-Who are these persons? They are gentlemen, for the most part, bred with all the prejudices of their rank, and wholly without any knowledge of law, They are influenced by all the ties and feelings of locality; and, in one very considerable branch of their duties-the administration of the Game Laws-by passions of a degree of intensity and power such as no one but an Englishman can conceive to arise from a matter of mere amusement-but which every Englishman does know to exist

We should, in strictness, term them the Justices of Peace-who form, in fact, only one denomination of magistrates: but the latter is the more popular designation, and above all things, in these articles, we desire to abstain from being technical.

to an extent which it would be difficult to overstate. Others are country clergymen ;-gentlemen who, with an equal ignorance of the law, possess a much greater ignorance of the world-and more narrow views and feelings, generally. It is observed also-Mr. Brougham mention sit in his Speech on the State of the Law, and every one who has looked into the subject must agree with him-that overactivity, one of the most baleful properties which a magistrate can possess, is chiefly remarkable among the clerical justices. In addition to these objections as regards the magistracy, it may be observed (though not strictly part of our present subject) that many of the duties of the magisterial office are little in consonance with what ought to be the feelings and pursuits of a parish-priest. Without being in the very least puritanically strict, we cannot but think that the stirring, jobbing, worldly doings of "an active magistrate" must impair that pure and peaceful character of mind by which a clergyman should ever be distinguished. Some Lords-lieutenant coincide sufficiently with these ideas, never to appoint clerical magistrates-but the very general practice is the other way.

We confess we could wish clergymen to be declared incompetent to fill this office. Every objection,-of legal ignorance, of local prejudice, and of interested motives arising from local circumstances-applies to them equally with the country gentlemen, some of them in a superior degree and there are many objections to which they are open from which the others are free. Of these, therefore, we would undoubtedly have the commission purged.

With regard to the country gentlemen, it is not, we think, very difficult to come to the conclusion that, as at present regulated, they are most unfit persons to exercise the functions which are entrusted to them but the difficulties in the way of supplying their place with more qualified men are so great, that we think all we can hope for is to make such alterations in the responsibility of the magistracy, and above all, in the constitution of the Court of Quarter Sessions, as would ensure the subject against the more crying of the evils to which he is now exposed.

It

The chief alteration with regard to the appointment of magistrates, that has been proposed, is, in lieu of the present members of the commission, to appoint paid magistrates, throughout the country, selected from the profession of the Law. This, we think, is open to two objections, so great as to be fatal. The first is the expense. certainly would not be necessary to have so many justices as there are now: for paid officers would be expected to be more constantly at their post than gentlemen whose movements are regulated entirely by their own pleasure. But still, to furnish a sufficient number to answer readily the ends of justice, and at a salary sufficient to ensure proper people to fill the office, would require a sum which it would be next to impossible to devote to such a purpose. The second objection is that, as such an office would, of course, require constant residence, its acceptance by a member of the bar would involve the abandonment of his profession. Those, therefore, who accepted it would be either persons who had already failed, or those who, dreading failure, chose this small certainty in preference to the trial-which class would,

necessarily, consist chiefly of young men. These two evils, taken together, would, we think, prevent the realization of this plan.

It is, undoubtedly, a great relief to the country that the magistrates should be unpaid; but we do not think that the gentlemen who now fill the office deserve the least thanks on that score,-still less that it should confer upon them immunities which render it doubtful whether their services be not a positive evil, instead of a benefit, to the country. We say we think the country gentlemen deserve no thanks for serving gratuitously as magistrates, inasmuch as we are thoroughly convinced that not one in fifty, in an hundred, would serve, for the public good, if so doing were unpleasing or distasteful to himself. We say this, with considerable knowledge of the parties of whom we speak and we are confident that any person who considers the subject candidly will be of our opinion. And it is natural they should like the office. Without taking into consideration any of the indirect means of making money through clerks and other jobs, mentioned by Mr. Brougham,—and which, we confess, we think that learned gentleman has been too ready to generalize from the instances, which we really believe to be most rare, that he mentions-setting this, which as a practice we do not believe to exist, totally on one side, there is still an abundance of motives to render the office of Justice of the Peace desirable to a gentleman residing in the country. It gives him influence, importance, power: he has a thousand means of favouring a friend, or disobliging an enemy-he may refuse the licence of an obnoxious publican, or join in turning a foot-path which came uncomfortably near his friend's drawing-room windows-he may commit the poachers of his own game, and help to sentence them at the sessions (and he does it, constantly) :—in a word, it gives him, at the expense of almost as little trouble as he may choose to take, the opportunity of being the little great man of the district in which he lives. We are far from saying that there are not many magistrates who go through their duty most uprightly-but even these are, beyond question, repaid for their labour by the importance it gives them in the county. On this point, we cannot but repeat our conviction, that not one magistrate in an hundred would serve, from public motives alone, if it were personally disagreeable to him. We do not urge this invidiously: it is human nature; and, granting a few rare aves of exceptions, it is undoubtedly true. Even these are morally re warded for their services: and, moreover, if a person accept an office, let the motives be what they may, he should incur the responsibility which is necessary to ensure its due execution.

Why, then, should the magistrates be more protected in the execution of their duty than any other description of public officer that ever was invented? Why are we, whenever instances of gross oppression are brought forward in the Court of King's Bench-and

*The late increase of salary of the Police Magistrates in London has been made, with the view of enforcing a new regulation, which restricts the appointments in future to members of the bar: and, probably, it will have to be increased again before, generally, such members as are wished for will accept the office. There are some highly respectable persons in those situations now; but there are others whose conduct betrays most visibly that they have never enjoyed the advantages of a liberal education,