PREFACE.
It has been remarked to me, that if there were no other reason why a very reluctant attention should be granted to this Pamphlet, there would be "no time" to notice a discussion of the Law, arising out of affairs purely personal, at a period when subjects of momentous public importance occupy the minds of all men. In answer to that remark, I can only say, that I have never yet seen the public mind in a state of such undivided attention. I have no doubt, that in the present Session, as in all others, there will be "time" for all usual employments; time for assemblies, operas, and balls; time for races, club-dinners, and fêtes; time for reading works of science, and works of fiction; for the most abstract study, and for the most frivolous gossip; time to discuss whether the arms of Scotland are properly quartered with the arms of England, as well as to debate whether the Emperor of Russia is to make war upon the world. It would be paying Englishmen a poor compliment to suppose that the one subject they are determined not to find time for, is the reform of some of their own laws; a reform confidently alluded to by the Lord Chancellor, in his speech of the 14th February last year; and formally introduced as one of the topics of the Queen's Speech at the opening of Parliament.
Lord Campbell—in his brilliant and interesting work, "The Lives of the Chancellors"—tells us that in the session of 1758
