London Legal Letter. Chapel, Windsor. Impressive memorial services were held between the hours of three and four in the afternoon, both in the Temple Church and Lin coln's Inn Chapel. Both buildings were thronged by immense audiences, composed of judges, queen's counsel, barristers, and their friends. The service in the Temple Church was read by Dr. Vaughan, the Master of the Temple, and Canon Ainger, the preacher; while at Lincoln's Inn Dr. Wace, the preacher, and the Rev. C. I. Ball, the chaplain, offi ciated. Both services were prefaced with Chopin's magnificent Funeral March, and closed with the Dead March in Saul; while the special anthems and hymns were very carefully and effectively rendered. The late Duke of Clarence was a "Bencher " of the Middle Temple. We are in the throes of an agitation for what is called Legal Reform. Even here on the spot it is by no means easy to determine whether the griev ances alleged are substantial, or are not rather the difficulties which would, in one form or another, be met with under any possible system. In no department of human affairs is perpetual and un interrupted motion possible; friction and its results assert themselves everywhere. The most obvious point for criticism in our legal system consists in the very large arrears of causes which await trial. In the Chancery Division of the High Court it is said that existing arrears could be overtaken, and similar accumulations for the future averted by the appointment of an additional judge; while at Common Law the reformers put their fingers on the circuit system and say, " Mend or end that, and all will be well." There can be no doubt that the circuit system requires at least investigation. Sev eral times in the course of the year the greater number of the Common Law judges set out for all parts of the country, and with their dignified state and retinue impose upon the provincial imagination a due conception of the majesty of English Justice. Unfortunately, it is not infre quently the case that there are no causes for a judge to try when he arrives at his destination; this is what is called a 11 maiden " circuit, entitling the judges to receive a pair of white gloves, as a symbol of the prevailing innocency of the neigh borhood, which also gives his lordship the oppor tunity of ventilating some pleasant rhetoric, in which he compliments the lieges on their immunity from crime. A graceful ceremony enough, and fully consonant with the mellow and traditional
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ease of our constitutional usages, but one not so obviously defensible on modern commercial prin ciples, when the austere critics step forward to in veigh against the unnecessary waste of public time and public money. One of the suggestions is that the judges of the Queen's Bench should be re lieved by extending the criminal jurisdiction of recorders and Courts of Quarter Sessions, and by concentrating the provincial business, criminal and civil, in a few large centres, while the effective disposal of Common Law cases would be secured by continuous sittings in London and Middlesex in never less than six Nisi Prius courts : such is part of the scheme formulated in the "Law Times," a weekly paper which, under the able and ener getic editorship of Mr. Crump, Q. C, has for long prominently identified itself, if it has not to some extent even initiated, the reform movement. If for no more practical purpose than to intimate their respect for public opinion, the judges held a solemn conclave the other day under the presidency of the Lord Chancellor, as they are entitled to do in accordance with the provisions of the Judicature Act of 1873, to consider the procedure and ad ministration of the courts and the general working of the legal system. 'The judges' meeting was thus wittily caricatured in the columns of the "Pall Mall Gazette " : — JUDGES IN COUNCIL. An Unreported Meeting. The proceedings of the Council of Judges, through their lordships' natural diffidence, not having been made public, the following realistic notes of what actually occurred may be of national interest : — The meeting having been summoned for eleven o'clock, all the Chancery judges were in attendance at the stroke of the clock. They were closely fol lowed by Mr. Justice Wright, who promptly com plained of the Lord Chancellor's unpunctuality, and cited a case to show that a judge who was non est had been held to be a nonentity. Mr. Justice Chitty was suggesting that the Chancellor should make an affidavit to that effect, when Lord Halsbury entered and promptly took the chair. Some of the other common law judges having strolled in, the proceedings commenced Lord Halsbury said that in the few moments he could spare from attendance at the House of Lords he had called this meeting to discuss what they had done which they ought not to have done, or not done which they ought to have done. Mr. Justice Wright here ob jected to any ecclesiastical phraseology. The Chan
