to advance Roman Catholics to office, as a safe object for such promotion. Fortune was obviously much his friend; for, born some ten or a dozen years earlier, he must have died without a taste of the emoluments which he actually shared, and without the lustre of having filled high judicial office that now belongs to his name. Such a life is certainly of the class which strongly tempts to agreement with the poet's conclusion; for in contemplating it one can hardly fail, running though it be into some exaggeration,

"To deem there's scarce a one in dangerous times
Who wins the race of glory, but than him

A thousand men more gloriously endowed

Have fallen upon the course; a thousand others
Have had their fortunes foundered by a chance."

Appended to the above sketch, Mr. Curran prints some notes of conversations which he had with Chief Justice Bushe, during a three days' visit at the Chief's family place of Kilmurry in the county of Kilkenny, in the autumn of 1826. Of these fragments it may be said, that being specimens of the conversational powers of a man who was reputed to be singularly gifted in that respect, they will be read with avidity, but probably with more interest than satisfaction on that score. They contain, however, some amusing anecdotes of some celebrated Englishmen, as well as of several Irish notorieties. In the following remark, Bushe has hit, we suspect, the secret of the popularity which Boswell's Life of Johnson has so long maintained: “It was to him," he said, "the most delightful of books: first, because he found everything in it so charming in itself; and, next, because he no sooner finished it than he forgot it all, and so could return to it toties quoties, and be sure to find it all as charming as before and almost as new." Bushe occupied some hours during the early part of the day in preparing certain judgments against the ensuing term. In reference to his researches for this purpose, he says, "I was working this morning at a judgment of Lord Coke's, reported in Bulstrode. It took me two hours to discover its meaning. I would rather have sat down to as much Greek. All the difficulty arose from the absurd mystery of the style. The moment I caught the reasoning, I, without any trouble, condensed the whole into six or

eight lines." Here is a passable mot by Chief Baron O'Grady. Some persons were questioning, at Plunket's table, Lord Castlereagh's sincerity on the Catholic question. Plunket warmly defended him, saying that on that subject he had lately made a great deal of character for himself. "He has," said the Chief Baron; "and, depend upon it, he'll lose no time in spending it all like a gentleman." The following is told in proof of Curran's extraordinary retentiveness of memory: "I," said Bushe, once casually observed to him that I thought it a common error to suppose that men did not know their own characters. Twenty years afterwards, he said to me, I quite agree with you in one observation I remember to have heard you make. The truth is, every man knows his real character; but, as he has come by his knowledge of it confidentially, he makes it a point of honour not to admit the fact-even to himself."" An anecdote is recounted respecting what is termed Lord Mansfield's "gallantry in his youth," consisting of a detection of him by his wife in an act of adultery, for which, we believe, there is no other authority whatever. Grattan, it seems, as Erskine is known to have done, made the speeches in "Paradise Lost" his chief subjects of rhetorical study. Grattan is to be added to the number of those who persuade themselves they have discovered the author of "Junius" in Burke, wilfully overlooking the extreme improbability of any sane man's engaging in an undertaking which, if discovered, would have been the certain ruin of all his hopes and prospects with his party, to whose principles those of "Junius" are, in many vital points, wholly opposed, and that, too, at the very time when he (Burke) was publishing pamphlets and making speeches in support of the Rockingham Whigs, being, in truth, the soul and main reliance of their body. The charge, in fact, implies that he was writing down his own interests anonymously, whilst he was writing them up ostensibly, and surely therefore is quite idle and inadmissible.

The rest of the sketches may be dismissed at once, as depicting persons whose fame, for the most part, never reached much beyond the shores of their native isle, and who, even there, only occupied a moderate share of professional eminence-for

temque Gyan, fortemque Cloanthum. To this there are two exceptions-Lord Plunket, of whom the memoir seems to us well worthy of preservation, being, we believe, the fullest and most elaborate record of what he was and had been up to 1822, whilst still at the bar, that is to be found of that illustrious and highly-celebrated man-and Mr. O'Connell, whilst also a practising barrister, in the 48th year of his age, and before he had fallen on the evil days of the rint and mischievous agitation, unvaried by the production of a single specific measure for the remedy of the evils he spent his latter years at once in denouncing and aggravating. Saving some excellent touches of delineation in the matters of personal demeanour, gesture, and peculiarity, which are true to the life, it must, we think, be pronounced of this sketch of O'Connell, that it falls below its subject, seeing that he had already attained, at the time it was taken, the position of by far the most remarkable man at the Irish Bar, being then in the three-and-twentieth year of his career. For the reason above intimated, our readers will not desire, we apprehend, that we should place before them any of the details of this portraiture, especially as-unlike the case of Woulfe, who, in fact, was as unlike O'Connell in most points as one barrister can be unlike another-this account of him has been long before the public; whilst quite as little, if not less, can be derived from the consideration of it for professional purposes, whether of imitation or study. Looking at O'Connell, however, as a whole, and considering his wonderful power with Irish juries, his wide practice while at the Bar, and his enormous practical power over his countrymen in general after he left the Bar, as evinced by the number of members his fiat returned to the Imperial Parliament, his sway over those most wonderful civil phenomena of our times, the monster meetings; and remembering his influence with the Governments of his day, his talents, his singularities, contradictions, foibles, and follies-we may be allowed to express a hope that the life of such a man may be properly written by some one, or by several acting in conjunction, who have known him while living. It will not be disputed that by such persons only can such a life be properly written, whilst early anecdotes and traditions, and

later facts, may be supposed not yet to have faded away; and we trust it will be done in such a style that the next generation and all posterity may not be left without an adequate record of one of, perhaps, the most eloquent and able and successful lawyers, and certainly the most multifarious and voluminous public speaker and most powerful politician, not invested with office, that Ireland ever produced.

ART. VII.-THE COUNTY COURTS COMMISSION.

First Report of the Commissioners appointed to inquire into the State of the County Courts, and the course of Practice therein, &c.

AVING advocated the establishment of local courts in

HA

this country long antecedent to the date of the original County Courts Act (9 & 10 Vict. c. 95), having watched with much interest the great experiment in legislation which during the preceding nine years has been in progress, having always entertained a conviction, despite the sneers of those whose interests possibly were adverse, that the theory of "bringing home justice to a man's threshold" might, to some considerable extent at all events, successfully be reduced to practice, we avail ourselves of the very first opportunity which presents itself of calling attention to the recently issued Report of the County Court Commissioners, of discussing its suggestions, analysing, so far as may here be practicable,1 the evidence contained in it -indicating what we conceive to be its shortcomings, and supplying its deficiencies.

That the principle on which County Courts were originally established is sound we never doubted-the principle is that of affording to the poor man a means of "righting" himself by proceedings at

1 The remarks offered in the present paper will be found to apply exclusively to those portions of the Report of the Commissioners which concern the jurisdiction of the County Courts.

VOL. LIV. NO. CVIII.

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once "simple, cheap, speedy, and final." "The object," remark the Commissioners,1 "which the Legislature had in view when it established the County Court evidently was to secure to the public the benefit of a local tribunal in which claims of a moderate amount, and not complicated in their nature, might be enforced with cheapness and rapidity." That the principle thus expounded has worked well we may assume from the same testimony, which says that during the period which has elapsed since the establishment of local courts, "the experiment has been eminently successful, and benefits have been conferred on the community by means of those courts which it is perhaps difficult to exaggerate. Honest claims have been enforced, and injuries have been redressed which the expense, distance, and delay incident to the proceedings of the Superior Courts placed in effect beyond the power of the law. Facility to enforce rights has checked the commission of wrongs, and thus a more desirable state of credit and morality has been produced." The preceding allegation is so important that it behoves us to inquire somewhat as to the evidence on which it may be founded. Turning then to page 77 of the Appendix to the Report before us, we find the following observations of Mr. Furner, judge of the Sussex district of County Courts, pertinent to the point in question :

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"The moral influence," says this witness, "of the County Court has been such, that it has very much improved the condition of the agricultural labourers. They used formerly to get hopelessly in debt to the country shopkeepers, and, being reckless of the consequences, they spent their money on the Saturday night at the public-house; but now, I am told, and I believe it is the fact, that the agricultural labourers, being emancipated from the thraldom in which they were held by the shopkeepers before, take their money home to their wives, who go with that money in their hands to the shops, and get much better served, and in every way more advantageously to the family. In fact, that result is so fully confirmed, that I am told the country brewers begin to complain of it. I have heard as a fact, that the brewers in the country complain that the agricultural labourers do not spend so much money at the beershops as they used to do; and I have no doubt that it is in a great measure to be attributed to the moral influence of the County Courts."

That much odium has unduly been brought upon our local Courts by the unfortunate selection which has in some instances