ng began and nearly finished a
memorandum on the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court for the Chancellor.
Cabinet at 2. Conversation respecting the abolition of the Welsh
judgeships, and the addition of a judge to the Courts of King's Bench and
Common Pleas, or Exchequer. The two new judges would be Circuit Judges of
Wales. The Welsh gentlemen seem to be favourable to the change. The
attornies, who are numerous and powerful, very hostile. The Chancellor
introduces again his Bill of last Session. The Equity is to be separated
from the Common Law Jurisdiction of the Court of Exchequer. The subject was
only talked of, and decision deferred till Sunday next.
We then talked of Ireland. The Grand Jury Presentment Bill is not yet
prepared. The plan for a police is to place the nominations in the hands of
the Lord-Lieutenant. To send stipendiary magistrates when and where they
are wanted.
Peel's suggestions went much further; but Lord F. Gower seems to me to be
only a clever boy. He has as yet proposed _nothing_ worthy of adoption, and
he has often been near the commission of errors from which he has been
saved only by Peel's advice.
He wished to establish stipendiary magistrates in every county, the effect
of which would have been to disgust all the gentlemen magistrates, and to
lead them to the abandonment of their duty. He wished too to unite in all
cases the inspectorships of police with the office of stipendiary
magistrate, to avoid collision; but the duties of inspector are of a mere
ministerial and inferior character, and would not agree well with those of
a magistrate.
I must read to-morrow all the late protocols and despatches. The Russians
and French have agreed to make Leopold Prince of Greece, but the King
cannot endure the idea. Aberdeen thinks he has made a great conquest in
carrying the point of Leopold's election. I confess I cannot understand the
great advantage we derive from it. What an extraordinary scene! Those
monarchical states, the most adverse to revolution, combine to assist the
rebellion of a people against its sovereign, a rebellion commenced by
murder and continued by treachery, stained with every crime that ever
disgraced human nature! [Footnote: The massacres by the Greeks at
Tripolitza and Athens, the latter in direct breach of a capitulation, had,
according to a not unfavourable historian, cast a dark stain on the Greek
cause and diminished the interest felt for it in foreign countries.
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