drug, that they cannot be sold; and the cause is, the flood of number-trash with which the country is inundated.

As to the Dictionary of Mechanical Science now before us, we shall throw what we have to say into the form of two or three distinct propositions.

1. This melange is not a new work; neither is it Dr. Jamieson's work, in any fair sense of the term. This needs no formal demonstration; for let any one collate the book, article by article, with the Encyclopædias, and he will find, that of the whole, Dr. Jamieson has not written (that is, composed) a line, and probably not altered a letter. He has, no doubt, cut and carved; but, as the parts that he has left out are just as necessary to the sense as those which he has retained, the whole has the same symmetry as if the trunk and thighs were cut out of a giant, and the head placed upon the two legs to make a dwarf. Take as an instance, the commencement of the article “arithmetic,” at page 58.

'Arithmetic, the science of numbers, whose several rules of addition, subtraction, &c., will be found under their respective heads. The marked superiority, indeed, of our numerical system over that of the ancients, is so conspicuous,' &c.

Now, without pausing to ask what the heads' of the rules of arithmetic are, or how any thing can be found in any other way than under its own head, except when a doctor turns it topsyturvy, we would desire any one to look at the word indeed, in the second sentence, and he will see that it refers to a description of the modern notation, which the doctor has omitted, retaining only this small portion of the tail.

2. This melange is not a Dictionary of Mechanical Science; and either the Doctor does not know what mechanical science is, or he has never read that which is here appropriated. It is not even an abridgment of the common quarry of the Encyclopædias: it is a gleaning, in which the gleaner has taken the first rubbish that came to hand. Aback,' the very first article, has nothing to do with mechanical science. As little has Abbess,' or 'Aborigines,' or 'Abortion,' or 'Abomination of Desolation,' (which is said to be the statue of Jupiter Olympus,' and the 'ensign of the Romans;' but which might with as much propriety have been described as the Dictionary of Mechanical Science). Even Dr. Kitchener, though he be superdoctate in these matters, would not refer acid for punch,' and apple sauce for a goose,' to the category of mechanical science.

3. This melange is not a Dictionary of Science of any sort; it is a huge heap of absurdities. As this is a more heavy charge than the former, we shall be a little more copious in the proof. Ace, the malple or sycamore tree.'

Page 5.

The deuce it is doctor!!!

Page 12. time.'

'Era, in Chronology, or Epocha, a certain fixed point of

Yes, just in the same way that the whole of a man's life is the moment of his birth, Dr. Jamieson !

Page 25.

Alkali, in Chemistry (a mechanical science, of course) a particular class of salts.'

Yes, very particular salts, indeed; and pray what do they become when they are mixed with acids ?

Page 33. Native Tribes, and unconquered countries (of America). These are Greenland, Labrador, the regions round Hudson's and Baffin's Bays; the central parts, and the western coast.'

Verily, these are a very particular class of 'tribes.'

Snowdon

is a native of Wales, and Bennevis of Scotland; but Snowdon, strange to Dr. Jamieson it must appear, is yet not counted in the genealogy of the tribes, nor Bennevis in that of the clans!

Page 53. Arbor, a tree, in Botany. In Mechanics, the principal part of a machine which serves to sustain the rest.'

And so the frame and cheeks of a turning-lathe, are the ‘Arbor,' are they, Doctor?

Page 60.

'China-This vast empire extends in an easterly direction 4200 geographical miles, and southerly 1740 miles.'

And how far does it extend westerly and northerly?

Ibid. 'The religion is polytheism; the government patriarchal; and hence the amazing population, and the general ease and happiness of the people.'

Here

The inference, therefore, is, that polytheism conduces more to the ease and happiness of its professors than christianity!! is, to be sure, a most excellent instructor of our mechanical population!

We will not say that there are many passages in the book so perfectly heterodox as this; but we have not met with an accurate definition, except one, and that is under the head Amulet,' a charm against witchcraft; and usually made of such stuff as the imagination of impostors and the credulity of simpletons can devise.'

We recommend the Doctor to adopt this definition as a motto for the next edition of his Dictionary of Mechanical Science.'

6

ART. III. The Report made to his Majesty by the Commissioners appointed to inquire into the Practice of Chancery. 8vo. pp. 164. London. Murray. 1826.

All men know the proceedings of the court to be plain "and familiar.

66

"The plaintiff prefers his bill, and the defendant is to make his answer within eight days after his appearance; unless upon "oath made of his age or incompetency, there be obtained a com"mission to take his answer in the country, or he appear and "make oath that he cannot answer without perusal of writings, or "conferences with persons remaining in a remote place, when he hath liberty till the next term following to answer. This once "made and returned, the plaintiff may instantly reply thereunto, " and the defendant, being served with process ad rejungendum, "must either rejoyne or lose the benefit of rejoining within other "eight days, and then examine witnesses, either by commission or in court; which being published, the cause is at a hearing. "This may be performed in most cases within two or three "terms, and within five at the utmost, be the adverse party never so perverse or refractory.

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66

66

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"How then cometh it to pass, that this honourable court should "be traduced as it is, and have so many foule aspersions thrown upon it, as to be termed a dilatory court, where a suit will last longer than a SUIT OF PERPETUANZA, or a SUIT OF BUFFE, "into which the poor suitors, coming like a flock of sheep to a bush for shelter, are there more wet than they were in the open field; 66 AND YET THE BUSH WILL NOT PART WITHOUT A FLEECE, 66 AND OUT OF WHICH THEY GO WITH THE SAME NOATE THEY CAME IN, PITTIFULLY COMPLAINING; and such other vile reproaches?'"*

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66

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WHEN, in the beginning of the seventeenth century, "a poor clerk of the chancery" asked, in his simplicity, this question of the lord keeper of his day, he little thought that two hundred years were to elapse before it would be answered. From the fall of Lord Bacon, to the present time, chancery has been a sort of byword, importing delay, perplexity, and chicane; and “abire in mulam rem," has been the phrase jocularly employed by judges, when they dismissed their suitors at law, and told them the only mode left for seeking relief, was, to go into a court "of equity. Yet, with the exception of two faint and abortive efforts, one by the commons during the usurpation, and the other by Lord Somers, in the beginning of the last century, the parliament and the nation have been content with loud complaints, perpetually answered by

* The abuses and remedies of Chancery, by Mr. George Norburie, and presented unto the lord keeper. Harl. MSS. No. 4265. Published in Hargrave's Lawm ts. 425.

assurances, either that there were no just reasons for dissatisfaction, or that occasional delay, expense, vexation, and individual ruin, were a cheap price for the blessings of English justice.

But we are fallen upon times, in which the public are contracting a growing habit of prying into grievous abuses, however enveloped in mystery, fostered by inveterate prejudice, or even upheld by power. The fate of this very question of abuses in Chancery, and the changes it has undergone within the last four years, signally demonstrate the impossibility of now maintaining, in this country, by any appeals to the wisdom of antiquity, or any denouncements of the dangers of innovation, institutions that work general mischief. When an inquiry into those abuses was first formally proposed, it was deemed by some, little better than an attack upon the frame of the British constitution; and by the more moderate opponents of all interference with the proper province of the chancellor, it was either derided as an impracticable project of needless amendment, or treated as one of the common manœuvres of party warfare. In the very highest quarter there seemed to be a soreness upon every attempt to probe the seat of the imputed disorders, which boded no good for the endeavours at a cure. Yet against every opposition, whether from a sluggish reluctance, or an avowed hostility to innovation, the public have succeeded in laying bare that absurd, perplexed, inconsistent, but most elaborate system of procedure, by which, under the semblance of provisions to secure justice, even in spite of law, the laws have been made the instruments of grievous and intolerable oppression. The exposure is, in itself, an important triumph. It may be imperfect; the amendment to which it leads may be tardy; but defective jurisprudence can never be maintained but by the ignorance of the community subjected to its miseries. The extent and complexity of the system of equitable jurisdiction in this country, its connection with the whole frame of our judicial polity, and the many and powerful interests engaged in its support, must make the remedy of its abuses the work of time; but the impulse once given, amendment must go forward, and must be hastened, in proportion as the mischiefs are more fully and extensively known. This publicity, unfortunately, is not always easily effected, even when there are not, and cannot be, any means of purposed concealment. It is one of the causes which, in all nations, have prevented the amendments in absurd and barbarous systems of jurisprudence, from keeping pace with the other improvements of society, that the language of the law is a jargon unknown to the public. In no country has this bar to sound improvement operated more powerfully than in England. "The common laws of England," says Sir Matthew Hale, "are more particular than other laws, and this, though it renders them more numerous, less methodical, and takes up longer time for their study, yet it recom

VOL. III.

R

penseth with greater advantages."*-Whatever be the "advantages" of multiplicity and minuteness in the rules of law, certain it is, that they have at least their alloy in the corresponding extent and complexity of its nomenclature. This will be felt even in the reading of the report, the title of which is prefixed to this article, although some pains seem to have been taken to make it intelligible to an ordinary reader.

This document is divided into three parts. The first, (styled by way of distinction, the report), contains a statement of the changes which the commissioners deem it expedient to make in the practice of the court of Chancery, with occasional references, not always the clearest, to the present system of procedure, and very brief discussions of certain proposed amendments, which they have not thought proper at present to advise. The second division consists of a series of propositions, in all one hundred and eighty-eight, in which the new regulations are formally set forth in technical language. And the third part is an explanatory paper drawn up by Mr. Beames, one of the commissioners, elucidating with some minuteness, though not with any tedious detail, the use of the proposed rules, by more particular references to the present practice of the court than were given in the first division. A large appendix is annexed, containing the evidence taken before the commission, with some official documents, illustrative of the existing practice and recent proceedings of the

court.

Taking the report and the evidence together, we think the first impression arising from a perusal of them, must be astonishment, that in a country where the business of government has been for much more than a century so well understood as in England, such a system could have been tolerated for ten years with the best of judges. The next sentiment must certainly be, a very agreeable surprise, that a commission composed exclusively of lawyers, threefourths of them judges, masters, or practitioners in the court, of which they were to investigate the abuses, should have given to the world an exposure of those abuses so full, minute, and unsparing. It augurs well for the future improvement of our legal polity, that whether from a sudden and miraculous conversion, or from an inability to withstand the force of opinion in a public, who have long since learned to think for themselves, lawyers are resigning their title to the old reproach against their tribe, and are ceasing to be the worst reformers of the law.

The unlearned reader, however, has some reason to complain of the manner in which the subject is unfolded in this report. It is desultory and immethodical. The whole tale is not told in any one of its three divisions; and it is only by taking the entire to pieces, and putting these together in a new arrangement, that any

* Preface to Roll's Abridgment.