them is neither more nor less than a sheer impossibility. . . . The time of the judges is known to be more than fully occupied. Attention has been of late directed towards devising means for relieving them from a• portion of their labors, so as to enable them, without the addition of more judges, to perform their more important duties with out the delays which the accumulation of unavoidable arrears entails upon suitors. Whether even this will be accomplished re mains extremely doubtful. Can it be wise under such circumstances to scatter the judges over the country to try election petitions? We would venture to ask which court is to be suspended in order to furnish judges even for occasional petitions, to say nothing of the trial of petitions after a gen eral election, when, if any material portion of the work of trying petitions is to be done by the judges, Westminster Hall would have to be shut up altogether? Assuming even that a judge or two could be spared in term-time,. . . what is to be done after term? Are the sittings in error or the post-terminal sittings of the different courts to be sus pended, or the nisi prius trials to be put off? And what as regards the circuits? Is a judge to set aside Her Majesty's commission and leave the gaols undelivered and cases untried while he is occupied in investigating the unclean doings of a corrupt borough?" In conclusion Sir Alexander Cockburn suggested the appointment of a commission of barristers in lieu of the judges. " Every one knows," he said, " that owing to the accidents which determine professional suc cess and business at the Bar, there are al ways a certain number of counsel whose business is not proportioned to their known abilities and learning and whose sound judg ment and judicial aptitude are recognized by the references which are frequently submitted to them as arbitrators. Many of these would probably be willing to undertake the employment in question, and it might safely and conveniently be entrusted to them;
while to put such duties upon the judges would be a most fatal mistake." At first the government seemed disposed to accept Sir Alexander Cockburn's sugges tion, and a new tribunal, consisting of three legal commissioners, each with a salary of £2000 a year, was to have been constituted for the trial of election petitions and the hearing of appeals from the Revising Barris ters who preside over the adjustment of the lists of parliamentary voters. But other counsels ultimately prevailed, and Mr. Dis raeli's " Hustings Court," as it was con temptuously styled by some of his political opponents, was established pretty much in its original form. It cannot be said that the Lord Chief-Justice's ominous prophecies have been fulfilled. No imputation has ever been cast on the impartiality of the Elections Petitions Judges; and serious as is the pres ent delay in the disposal of litigious business in England, no portion of it can with any pretense to fairness be attributed to the act of 1868. The principle of giving the judica ture control over the corrupt or ultra vires conduct of political organizations and muni cipal bodies is familiar to all citizens of the United States, and has in recent years re ceived some remarkable extensions in Eng land. Of this tendency the Parnell Com mission is the most glaring and the most questionable example. Curiously enough, Sir Alexander Cockburn's arguments have in the present year been borrowed — without acknowledgment — by the opponents of Mr. Balfour's Local Government Bill for Ireland. THE PATENT OFFICE.
Under the early procedure for taking out letters patent for inventions, there were six offi ces through which an application for a patent passed before the grant was issued under the great seal. The policy of this multiplication of offices is thus stated by Lord Coke : "Such was the wisdom of prudent antiquity that whatsoever should pass the great seal should come through so many hands to the
