ment wisely declined to allow further disturbance of the law until next session, when it will be probably wholly remodelled. Apropos to the 9 & 10 Vict. c. 66, it appears that that act never applied to Wales, according to the following opinion, which we extract from the newspapers :

66 POOR REMOVAL ACT.

"A question of very great importance has just been raised upon the Poor Removal Act, namely, whether it extends to Wales. We believe that the magistrates of the principality have hitherto universally accepted it as compulsory upon them. It was certainly a strange oversight in the drawing of the act, already so famous for its manifold blunders.

"The following opinion upon the question has been given by Mr. J. C. Symons:

"Non-extension of the last Poor Law Removal Act to WalesOpinion.

"I am of opinion that this act (9 & 10 Vict. c. 66) does not apply to Wales, and that every order made under its provisions is null and void which affects any parish in the principality.

"The 9th section is as follows-" And be it enacted, that this act shall extend only to England."

"In the previous section (8) reference is made to the 4 & 5 Will. IV. c. 76, as an Act for amending the Poor Laws of England and Wales, which renders it very improbable that no distinction was intended in the 9th section, where the act is limited to England only. Moreover, in the 7 & 8 Vict. c. 101, on the same subject, the limitation clause, section 75, is thus worded-" This act shall extend only to England and Wales." Thus where it has been intended to extend an act to Wales, it has been the custom to name it. The word "only" coupled to England in a clause of limitation must, I think, be held to exclude Wales.

"There is a section in an old statute passed one hundred years ago, which, at first sight, favours the contrary view. I refer to the 20 Geo. II. c. 42, s. 3, which declares that "in all cases where the kingdom of England, or that part of Great Britain called England, hath been or shall be mentioned in any act of parliament, the same has been and shall from henceforth be deemed and taken to comprehend and include the dominion of Wales and town of Berwick-uponTweed." This was an act for levying house-rates, and the section quoted is strangely introduced; but even admitting it to have a general operation, it obviously applies to the incidental mention of England in statutes intended to include Wales; and it can have no bearing upon a clause designed to limit the operation of an act. The courts construe statutes according to their literal meaning; and for these various reasons, I am of opinion that the order for the removal of the pauper may be forthwith made, his removability being nowise affected by the 9 & 10 Vict. c. 66.

(Signed)

"JELINGER C. SYMONS.

"1, Harcourt Buildings, Temple, June 23, 1847."

The Attorney-General, in reply to some question put to Mr. Collett on another subject in the House of Commons, remarked, that generally the term England, in statutes, included Wales. So it certainly does when used in any enacting clause, according to the old statute cited by Mr. Symons; but scarcely in a limitation clause; or it would follow, that the only possible way of confining an act exclusively to England would be to exclude Wales by an express negative thus, "This Act shall extend to England and not to Wales." This would sound strangely. Moreover exclusio unius est inclusio alterius. And it would be necessary to extend the express negative to Scotland and the Channel Islands, for in the ordinary meaning of the term, England no more includes Wales than it includes Scotland or the Isle of Man. The constant practice, however, of specifically naming Wales with England in all clauses intended to limit the scope of an act to both countries, makes its omission in a clause limiting an act "to England only" apparently fatal to the presumption that Wales is nevertheless included. If it be so, no paupers in Wales are irremovable to their parishes on the score of residence, and a vast deal of money has been needlessly expended in maintaining them where they are.

The next act on the subject, which has struggled into existence, is that of levying the expenses incurred in the "maintenance, relief or burial" of any pauper rendered irremovable by the 9 & 10 Vict. c. 66, on the whole union in which he is chargeable. The object is to relieve individual parishes from an undue burden caused by having a body of paupers charged upon them, whom they are no longer able to remove to their settlements. To these cases the new act is confined. It does not extend to any other charges or class of paupers. It appears to us to be a beneficial provision, but not one of any material importance, except so far as it forms a quasi precedent for the rating of unions instead of parishes, and the commensurate enlargement of settlements, which we think upon the whole advisable. This question will, however, be amply discussed hereafter. Another act just passed is to solve the doubt created by the opinion of the Attorney and Solicitor General, as to the retrospective bearing of the exceptions in the last irremovability act, 9 & & 10 Victoria, c. 66. The exceptions are therefore to be made in the computation of the five years alike when they have preceded as when they have followed the passing of the act; as we remarked in a former article, there never was any rational ground for the doubts which it is the object of this act to remove.

A change is to take immediate effect in the administration of

the entire economy of Poor Laws, which we cannot but think highly advisable.

A new board is to be immediately created, comprising the Lord President and Secretaries of State, with one chief commissioner, who is to have a seat in parliament, with two secretaries, one of whom is to be in parliament. The whole of the old staff are to go out of office, and an unlimited number of inspectors are to be appointed, with precisely the same duties and powers as the present assistant commissioners.

It will be a very great benefit thus to render the administrators of this almost necessarily unpopular law thoroughly responsible in parliament. It is to be hoped that the blunders in legislation, and perpetual teasing and mischievous vacillation which have tended to prejudice the people and embarrass parish officers, will cease and determine. The practical administration of laws of which the effect must be to curb the largesses of one of the best feelings of human nature, in deference to the far less popular requirements of physical economy, can never be an office congenial with the sympathies of the English people. It can never be palatable, but it may at least be tolerable in its operation, and systematic in its application. That its hardships have been greatly exaggerated, and its utility to the poor themselves underrated, we are most ready to admit. But the conviction is universal that its administration has been seriously imperfect. There has been a want of uniformity in its execution and an untowardness in its management, which, though far from purposely intended, have materially affected the benefits derivable from a really well matured and evenly administered system of poor laws. We know not to whom the authorship of the various statutes on this vexed and complicated subject has been entrusted, but we earnestly hope that a discreeter choice may be made for the future. The new board cannot but share largely in the direction which the inevitable reforms of the system shall take. May they be circumspect in the very onerous and essential duty of carefully maturing any fresh legislative measures. Much of their credit and utility will depend on this.

The country is anxiously looking forward to the entire abolition of the whole system of removals. We trust that a matured plan will shortly be introduced for this most beneficial purposeone on the desirability of which opinion is unanimous.

ART. VII. SPECIAL PLEADING AND SPECIAL

PLEADERS.

1. Letter to the Lord Chancellor on the Reform of the Law. By John George Phillimore. Second Edition. London: Ridgway. 1847.

2. Thoughts on Law Reform. By the same.

R. PHILLIMORE bids fair to become a formidable foe to those cumbrous and exuberant technicalities of Pleading which our greatest judges have denounced and all enlightened lawyers deplore without adequate power of remedying. Great praise is due to this vigorous gladiator for his energy and courage. We are nevertheless disposed to agree with a contemporary that it is meet that he be "counselled as well as commended, in order that he may not do harm to the cause he takes in hand."

The great feature of Mr. Phillimore's pamphlets is hostility to that ancient system of procedure in actions at common law, whose praises have been sung by antiquated sages under the name of special pleading, and which the great oracle of English law, in direct opposition to our author, is so far from thinking the greatest evil, that he extols it as among the brightest ornaments of our judicial system,-" quia bene placitare super omnia placet," Co. Litt. 17 a-a system which, despite of traducers as violent if not as learned as Mr. Phillimore, has continued to exist to this day the subject of veneration and deliberate regard by the judges of the land, even in cases where, on an objection of a purely technical nature, parties are deprived of rights they were otherwise justly entitled to. For, as observed by the Court of Common Pleas in one of the cases quoted by Mr. Phillimore, (Letter, &c. p. 35,) "much as we regret this circumstance, it would be a matter of still greater regret, if, in order to give effect to the supposed justice of this demand, and to remedy this particular mischief, we had done any thing to unsettle the established rules of pleading, and to introduce laxity and uncertainty into this branch of the law." Jackson v. Galloway, 3 Com. Bench Rep. 753. Notwithstanding this, it is undeniable that Mr. Phillimore's pamphlets are crowded with cases illustrating most unquestionably his argument that, under the present system of special pleading, great practical injustice is effected. The judges, as in the case just cited, have frequently formally expressed their regret at the judgments they were compelled to give, from the pleadings not being properly drawn. From these

inconveniences, however, our author, though he disowns the intention imputed to him of wishing to abolish written pleadings altogether (Thoughts, &c. p. 7), stoutly argues for the total demolition of the present system of special pleading.

"That special pleading is the great and prominent evil of our present system, that it makes the clearest right precarious, and the most dishonest pretensions plausible; that so far from bringing the facts really in dispute between the parties to a clear, short, intelligible and satisfactory issue (on which grounds its champions assert the necessity of its continuance), it is obvious that the purpose of its inventors was to involve the simplest and easiest subjects in the thickest obscurity, and confusion the most hopeless; these are facts which any one who will take the trouble of turning over a volume of Reports may satisfy himself as incontrovertible. This is the system which drew down the vituperation of Bolingbroke, which edged the sarcasm of Swift, and which bears out the sayings of two men thoroughly conversant with its effects-sayings which, simple as they appear, convey to a reflecting mind as bitter a censure on the law to which they are applied, as it is in the power of man to utter. I mean the one of Lord Loughborough, that no cause was desperate: the other of Lord Abinger, which he first stated at the Bar, and afterwards repeated on the Bench, that he had never known any case decided on every point from beginning to end on its merits. This system it is that Mr. Brougham denounced, and Lord Brougham did not sacrifice his power to destroy; this system it is which the judges might have destroyed, but chose rather to contract and fortify; this system it is, the effects of which, pernicious as it is to society, are exemplified no where more signally and more disastrously than in the character of those concerned, no matter how, in its administration. To me, I confess, the mere fact that the forms which now regulate our proceedings, and which are applied by perverted ingenuity to the complicated transactions of a society such as ours, were invented in a rude age, and contrived by English lawyers in the fourteenth century, appears decisive of the question-Is law not within the province of experience?"-Thoughts, &c. pp. 3, 4.

Unsparing as this language is of the character of the inventors, the professors and the reformers of special pleading, and of the judges who uphold it, it is not more severe than that uniformly adopted by Mr. Phillimore, who observes, "The man who would waste a moment in arguing with the advocates of special demurrers, is unworthy of all leisure." (Thoughts, &c. p. 6.)

We must, whilst agreeing in substance with Mr. Phillimore's views, enter our protest against this unnecessary vehemence of language and intolerance of antagonism. Every lawyer who conscientiously dissents from his views and adheres to usages at least time honoured, is well worthy not only of Mr. Phillimore's leisure, but of his patient consideration.