sort of
feeling which many readers entertain of wishing to know 'how it
ends.'"
* * * * *
MR. DAVID DUDLEY FIELD, of this city, one of the three commissioners who
prepared the amended Code of the State of New-York, abolishing the
distinction in procedure between law and equity, being in England for a
brief visit, was invited by the leading members of the Law Amendment
Society to give some account of the great changes effected here in the
administration of justice. He complied, and a meeting of the Society was
summoned specially to hear him. The result is much remarked upon in
nearly all the London journals. Mr. Field is a clear headed man, master
of his subject, perspicuous in his rhetoric, and distinct in his
elocution, so that our new constitution was most advantageously
displayed before his learned and critical hearers. The _Spectator_ says
of the subject:
"The visit of Mr. Dudley Field to England, and his interesting
statements to the members of our Law Amendment Society, are
real events in the progress of law reform in this country. The
injustice which the English people submit to in the revered
name of Law, and in the sacred but in their case profaned name
of Equity, is more enormous than the future historian will be
able remotely to conceive. The keystone of the barbarous Gothic
portal to Justice in our common-law procedure was struck out
some twenty years ago, when the logical forms of legal contest
were reduced to their now moderate number; other heavy blows
have further undermined the ruin, and almost cleared away
whatever was feudal in that portion of the edifice; and then
came the raising of the new and noble portal of the County
Courts. Still, in all but the most trivial litigation the delay
and expense are such that justice can only be had at a
percentage utterly disgraceful to a nation either honest or
merely clearheaded and commercial. We still preserve a
diversity of tribunals, to administer laws that ought not to be
inharmonious; and we are prevented from making the laws
harmonious by the difficulties of finding tribunals able to
rule the concord and administer the whole field of law as a
single empire. In this case, as in a multitude of others, our
young relations across the Atlantic have done that which we
only longed to do. In this r
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