500
LAW REFORM.
and recognised as such by the unanimous admission of all persons of all ranks, who have observed others suffering from its effects, or experienced it themselves, somewhat exposes himself, and gives an opponent a decided advantage; he is always more or less in the predicament of an inventor; he always seems to be a person who sets his wits above other men, and affects to be wiser than those who have gone before him; and I therefore unfeignedly avow, that I feel much distrust of myself, in bringing forward that which appears to me a remedy. In doing so, it is necessary to examine into the causes of the evil. Here I may say, I am perfectly sensible that something will be done when the recommendations of the Commissioners are carried into effect; I know, and I rejoice to know, that some of the great evils will be removed, as the result of their inquiries; but I am equally certain that still much will remain to be done, and I trust the kind of remedy I propose will be one which, while it carries further the design of the Commissioners themselves, will be found most accurately and nicely to chime in and harmonize with, instead of being repugnant to, their principles. I have stated the principal causes of the evils we all see and suffer; and I shall by-and-by proceed to the remedy. The great evil arises out of the distance to which parties are necessarily dragged, in order to obtain a decision upon their rights. For many, many ages it has been the system of English jurisprudence, that justice should originate and be to a great extent administered in the centre of the kingdom, or what is politically, though not geographically, its centre. The metropolis has been made as it were the great mart of justice, from whence all processes issue, and to which all processes are returned. It has been fixed, that all litigants should more or less