where, to use Gray's more than classical description of Westminster Hall, togatum Estuat agmen,—— is a perpetual check upon the intemperance of the judges; whereas, at the colonial bars, a restricted number of practitioners, and a most scanty attendance of auditors, suffer them to play their pranks with impunity. Nothing destroys the equilibrium of weak minds so much as judicial authority. In that office, insolence is sure to keep due pace with ignorance;-nor is there a moral axiom more certain, than that the two qualities are always found to be in equal quantities. What stupid squabbles with the local governments, about jurisdiction and its boundaries, have been bubbling and boiling in the supreme courts, from time to time, since their first institution! The case of Moro Ragonath, in the Bombay court, was a fac-simile of a quarrel in the Calcutta court in 1776. Sir Edward West bequeathed his share in the dissension to Sir John Grant, whose notions of the omnipotence of his court were to the full as inflated as those of his predecessor. Grant was removed from his office, after long discussions in the Privy Council. But Sir Edward West was a thorn in the side of the Company's civil servants, with about a score of court. whom he had contrived to quarrel,-four grand juries in succession, consisting of European residents as respectable as himself-the editors of all the newspapers, and all the barristers of his own This person became Recorder in 1823. In his first charge, he flung out the most virulent censures upon his predecessors-arbitrarily dismissed from a high office in his court, an individual of the most unsullied integrity and splendid talents, the son-in-law of Sir James Mackintosh—and silenced the whole bar, the Company's Advocate-general included, for six months, because they presented a respectful memorial to him upon a case in which their own rights and the established practice of the court had been violated. He was a most indefatigable and accomplished scold, and richly deserved the cucking-stool awarded by the good old commonlaw of England to women of ungovernable tongues. The spiritless demeanour of the barristers on the occasion just mentioned was not very creditable to the profession, whose independence was wounded by that shameful abuse of authority.* * This paragraph produced a warm defence of Sir Edward West, in the publication from whence these papers are taken, which provoked an assailant of the judge to vindicate the justice of the above description. The controversy is too long for inser tion. In England, a hot-headed judge of this kind would be soon brought down to a cooler temperature. Not only is there the salutary restraint of a numerous bar, tinctured with the same learning, and tremblingly alive to their common professional honour, but there is a public out of doors, sitting as a court of review upon the conduct and opinions of the judges. In India, there is no public. Some half-dozen voices, faintly querulous, like the chirping of grasshoppers in the fern, may be heard if any thing flagitious is done or attempted. But what is this to the roar of censure from the press, echoed from paper to paper, as thunder from hill to hill? It is this hourly cognizance of all that passes in our courts that keeps the judges to their good behaviour, and the wigs of five hundred barristers would bristle with indignation at such antics as were played by Sir Edward West upon his little bar at Bombay. In India, a barrister must lead an indifferent life of it, if the bench make what is called a dead set at him. It is true that instances of this kind have happened in Westminster Hall, though very rarely. Lord Kenyon had conceived a strong antipathy to Law (afterwards Lord Ellenborough), and Law made a most happy application of a passage in Virgil to this circumstance. Replying to a smart speech of Erskine. he perceived that Kenyon and the rest of the court manifested strong symptoms of being adverse to his client. “I fear not," he said, "the artful sophistries of my friend, Mr. Erskine." Then, turning first to the counsel, and next to the judges, he exclaimed, with great emphasis, Non me tua fervida terrent Dicta, ferox; Di me terrent, et (looking at Kenyon) JUPITER hostis. It is incalculable what mischief an insolent judge may do to an advocate in India. It matters little, in Westminster Hall, whether a man in full business be a favourite with the court or not. For many years, the whole court of King's Bench set their faces against Marryat, and treated him almost with personal contumely; yet he accumulated a vast fortune, and is supposed to have died the richest lawyer that England has known. Now, a hundredth part of the same systematic illiberality towards a member of the bar in India, would be death to him. The natives have a remarkably keen scent in these matters, and would not confide in him. They would act in conformity to a brief syllogism:-"Judge not give master sugar-words; judge give sugar-words to court-lawyer on other side; therefore master will lose cause." And a more helpless being than an unemployed counsel in India cannot be imagined. Let this be duly weighed by the English barrister before he pays his passagemoney or bespeaks his outfit; for, if he sits with his hands before him, at Calcutta or Madras, with nothing to do but to gaze with listless vacancy on the figures of the lion and unicorn in the king's arms that hang over the bench, there is no other department into which he can thrust himself. In the mean time, he must live,-though many would readily answer him, as Cardinal Richelieu answered the poet that satirized him, je ne vois pas la necessité; --and in that country, a mere subsistence absorbs what would be deemed a tolerable income at home. What then is to be done? Interea pereunt res et vadimonia fiunt. He must run over head and ears in debt; and, in that climate, the anxieties of being in debt will bring him to the grave sooner than if the whole tribe of European maladies had beset him. Death has not prompter ministers in India than grief and despondency. It is no uncommon thing, and physiologists may explain it, for an individual there to sink under a twenty-four hours' fit of vexation. Ponder this well, you that, stung with disappointment or sick with protracted hope, give from the back bench of the court, to the daily-recurring question of the chief justice, "Any thing to move |