ulers of the nation. Look at the criminal law, at the civil law, at the
modes of conveying lands, at the modes of conducting actions. It is by
these things that we must judge of our legislators, just as we judge
of our manufacturers by the cotton goods and the cutlery which they
produce, just as we judge of our engineers by the suspension bridges,
the tunnels, the steam carriages which they construct. Is, then,
the machinery by which justice is administered framed with the same
exquisite skill which is found in other kinds of machinery? Can there
be a stronger contrast than that which exists between the beauty, the
completeness, the speed, the precision with which every process is
performed in our factories, and the awkwardness, the rudeness, the
slowness, the uncertainty of the apparatus by which offences are
punished and rights vindicated? Look at the series of penal statutes,
the most bloody and the most inefficient in the world, at the puerile
fictions which make every declaration and every plea unintelligible both
to plaintiff and defendant, at the mummery of fines and recoveries, at
the chaos of precedents, at the bottomless pit of Chancery. Surely we
see the barbarism of the thirteenth century and the highest civilisation
of the nineteenth century side by side; and we see that the barbarism
belongs to the government, and the civilisation to the people.

This is a state of things which cannot last. If it be not terminated by
wisdom, it will be terminated by violence. A time has come at which it
is not merely desirable, but indispensable to the public safety, that
the government should be brought into harmony with the people; and it
is because this bill seems to me likely to bring the government into
harmony with the people, that I feel it to be my duty to give my hearty
support to His Majesty's Ministers.

We have been told, indeed, that this is not the plan of Reform which the
nation asked for. Be it so. But you cannot deny that it is the plan of
Reform which the nation has accepted. That, though differing in many
respects from what was asked, it has been accepted with transports
of joy and gratitude, is a decisive proof of the wisdom of timely
concession. Never in the history of the world was there so signal an
example of that true statesmanship, which, at once animating and gently
curbing the honest enthusiasm of millions, guides it safely and steadily
to a happy goal. It is not strange, that when men are refus