ing a
severe drain upon the Bank of England for gold. For the present,
however, the critics of the measure were less concerned in forecasting
such remote consequences than in protesting against the charge to be
made by the bank for managing the public debt. This charge was, in fact,
to be reduced by L120,000 a year, but one-fourth part of the advances
made by the bank to the public (or L3,671,700) was to be paid off, and
the proposed remuneration was denounced as exorbitant. Althorp hardly
denied that it was a good bargain for the bank, though he persuaded the
house of commons to endorse the arrangement, rather than incur the
dislocation of national finance and commercial business certain to ensue
if the bank should withdraw from its connexion with the government and
use its vast influence for its own interest alone.

[Pageheading: _LEGAL REFORMS._]

Two great law reforms close the series of important remedial measures
passed in the first session of the reformed parliament--a session, be it
remembered, which embraced all the furious and protracted debates on the
Irish coercion act and the Irish Church temporalities act. The first of
these was Brougham's valuable bill constituting a permanent "judicial
committee of the privy council," and transferring to it the judicial
functions theoretically belonging to "the king in council," but
practically exercised by committees selected _ad hoc_ on each occasion.
Charles Greville, to whose memoirs all historians of this period are
greatly indebted, and who in 1833 was clerk of the council, was inclined
to disparage the proposed change as one of Brougham's fanciful projects,
designed to gratify his own self-importance.[116] Even Greville,
however, saw reason to modify his view, and the new court has ever since
commanded general respect, except from those high Churchmen who resented
its assumption of the appellate jurisdiction in ecclesiastical causes,
formerly vested, along with a similar jurisdiction in admiralty causes,
in the king in chancery, and exercised by a "court of delegates,"
usually consisting of three common law judges and three or four
civilians selected _ad hoc_.

The essential defects of such a court were fully stated in the report of
a very strong commission, including six bishops, appointed in 1830.
Probably the expediency of reforming the jurisdiction of the privy
council for the purpose of hearing these ecclesiastical appeals may have
suggested to Brougham th