WESTMINSTER REVIEW. VOLUME XXXV. JANUARY AND APRIL, 1841. "Legitime inquisitionis vera norma est, ut nihil veniat in practicam, cujus non fit etiam doctrina aliqua et theoria." Those who have not thoroughly examined to the bottom all their own tenets, must confess they are unfit to prescribe to AMERICAN EDITION. NEW YORK: PUBLISHED BY JEMIMA M. MASON, (LATE LEWER.) CORNER OF BROADWAY AND PINE STREET. 1841. THE WESTMINSTER REVIEW. No. LXVIII. FOR JANUARY, 1841. ART. 1.-1. Petitions to the Houses of Commissioners has shown that a great Lords and Commons, complaining of the part of the long career of impunity of proCriminal Procedure and of the Licence fessed depredators in places where there is of Prisoners' Counsel, by which Parties a police force, is occasioned by the preva injured were deterred from seeking Just-lent reluctance to prosecute, or to give ice for fear of further Injuries. that information which may lead to pro2. Lord Brougham's Speeches; Speeches secution. on the Queen's Trial and the Bankruptcy Bill. THE defence of Courvoisier by Mr. Charles Phillips shocked and excited the public feel ings, and was made the subject of comment by the newspapers, on the supposition that Mr. Phillips had exceeded his line of duty as an advocate. We shall, however, show that his defence came within the rule which the bar have laid down for themselves. Petitions were presented to both Houses of Parliament, setting forth the fact, which ought to be more extensively known, that the usual treatment of witnesses in our criminal courts operates to deter prosecution, and consequently to give impunity to criminals. In answer to the petition which Mr. Hawes presented in the House of Commons, the Attorney-General pleaded that the practice complained of was one not for the benefit of counsel, but for the advantage of the public. We shall join issue on that plea. We conceive that it may be proved that the rule is most pernicious in its operation on the penal administration of the country, and we hope to aid in its abrogation. The investigation of the state of crime in this country by the Constabulary force The state of our penal procedure is such, that few persons, of any respectability, who have once prosecuted or given evidence in any of our penal courts, could ever be induced voluntarily to prosecute or give evidence a second time. Part, no doubt, of this reluctance is ascribable to the trouble and loss of time imposed on the prosecutor or witness by the mode of the procedure, needlessly encumbered as it is with forms, which afford no real protection to the innocent, and give only chances of escape to the guilty; but a most serious part of the reluctance is the dislike of persons of any sensibility to expose themselves to the assaults of the prisoner's counsel,-to their express or implied imputations of mendacity;-to their imperious deportment and to their efforts to confuse witnesses,-assaults which modesty and timidity only serve to invite, and against which innocence or ordinary respectability affords no protection. The following instance which came to our knowledge may be given of the reluctance of persons to implicate themselves in a matter which might bring them into court as witnesses: "As- we were rowing on the Thames, near Windsor, we saw near the |