728 V. BENCH AND BAR was asserted, " has been in the highest degree satisfactory, and has resulted in flexibiUty, simphcity, uniformity, and economy of judicial time." The final result of the legislation is said by Lord Bowen to be, " that it is not possible in the year 1887 for an honest Htigant in her Majesty's Supreme Court to be defeated by any mere technicality, any slip, any mistaken step, in his litigation." It is curious to note that the learned F'oss mournfully recorded the Judicature Act. He deplored it as a restoration of the old Norman Aula Regis. Thus we see that practically the whole of the Benthamite series of reforms has been carried out. In the course of a century, step by step, the whole face of the formal portion of the English law has been changed. And yet, as one looks back on the history of the law, he is compelled to admit that at any given time the system of law was fully as good as was merited by the people whom It governed. The highest and best Index to the steady progression of the race Is the continued improvement in jurisprudence. To the formalism of the old law we owe it that our substantive law is what it is. The growing rigidity of the common law procedure produced that equity system which borrowed so heavily from the Roman jurisprudence. To the differing jurisdictions of law and equity we are Indebted for a progress which was achieved by the careful weighing of the one system against the other. Even the rules of evidence which excluded the testimony of Interested witnesses and of parties to the litiga- tion have borne their full fruit in assisting in the growing veracity of our race. The cruelties of the criminal law did their work in making our criminal law the most mercifully administered system of public punishment. It is more than a coincidence that the reorganized pro- cedure should begin Its career In a new home. In 1882 West- minster Hall was finally abandoned for the new Courts of Justice. The lawyer who loves the traditions of his profes- sion cannot refrain from regret when he parts with West- minster Hall, or wheft he sees the extinction of that ancient Order of the Coif which had endured for seven hundred years. Appropriately enough the new Courts stand in the
