THE LAW MAGAZINE.

ART. I.-REGISTRATION OF BIRTHS, MARRIAGES AND DEATHS

AROUND every subject will grow a cluster of adventitious circumstances from which the mind must find great difficulty in abstracting it; in other words, it is not easy to determine a question fairly upon its own merits. Admitting the absence of all interested and personal motives, we ever cling to custom and shrink from novelty, and though this sometimes only saves us the trouble of thought, it will generally be the most prudent course.

But it does unfortunately happen, that custom and novelty will occasionally, to our imperfect perception, so far modify the appearance of things, that we are made to love one practice that has long been established, and spurn another that is newly suggested, though the reasons for both be perfectly identical. We never argued concerning the old practice; we found it established, we experienced no inconvenience, we therefore quietly acquiesced in it, and should vehemently oppose any attempt to disturb it. But the new proposal we discuss (i. e. cut up) with great acuteness; we argue it over in the lump and in detail on the first, second, and third reading, and then tear in pieces its disjecta membra in committee; we demonstrate that there is all manner of inconvenience in the measure, and meanwhile never dream that it is much the same thing as the convenient old custom that has so long enjoyed our approval.

If some honourable and learned member were to give notice

of a motion to declare all written instruments unnecessary, and that henceforth transfers of landed property and dispositions thereof by will might be proved by the oral testimony of witnesses present at the transaction, or by such circumstantial evidence as could be put together, we should simply laugh at him without troubling ourselves with his argumentation. Yet in this enviable position are we now placed with respect to Births and Deaths. Why is a deed or a will written and executed in a certain formal manner? We need not enumerate the reasons, because we are satisfied with them. But, whatever they are, the same reasons will suffice to prove that as secure a record ought to be kept of Births, Marriages, and Deaths. For a deed or a will is simply a transaction by means of which certain parties acquire legal rights to property: a Birth, a Marriage, or a Death, is an occurrence by which they equally acquire similar legal rights. Why, then, should the law be more careful in preserving the evidence of some of these things than of the others. There is no reason, but there is custom. We have been accustomed for centuries to care for the safety of the former, even with a particularity which some of the indocti deem needless, whilst all exclaim, indocti doctique, that we shamefully neglect the latter, though they are just as much entitled to our attention. M. Adolphe Quetelet, Director of the Brussels Observatory, is asked in his examination before the select committee on this subject: "Whether it has not occurred to him as extraordinary that a "country like England should have no registry of the births " and deaths of its population?" and he replies, that, "he "cannot sufficiently wonder at such a state of things. That "it is indeed a subject of wonder to every intelligent stranger, "that in a country so intelligent as England, with so many σε illustrious persons occupied in statistical inquiries, and "where the state of the population is the constant subject of "public interest, the very basis on which all good legislation "must be grounded has never been prepared: foreigners can hardly believe that such a state of things could exist in a country so wealthy, wise and great." That very wonder which M. Quetelèt expresses at finding a country "wise, wealthy and great" as England, without a registry of births and deaths, should we Englishmen experience on passing over

to some region equally famed for intelligence and civilization, and discovering that all their evidence of title to property, whether transferred from father to son or from seller to buyer, was deposited in the memory alone, and could be established by nothing but oral testimony.

We are now, however, on the eve of improvement. A select committee of the House of Commons has applied itself to the investigation of the subject, and without affirming, that therefore the question will be satisfactorily set at rest; we may in the present instance remark that the best representatives of each diversity of opinion have been examined, that the evidence, therefore, as a whole, is complete, accurate and impartial, and that the report, the unanimous result of the examination, does actually sketch out some definite line of proceeding, and concludes with a "decided opinion that a new national system of registration should be attempted."

Several professional gentlemen were examined before the committee, and to their evidence we shall have occasion particularly to refer; it displays, we conceive, a greater disposition to sacrifice personal emolument at the shrine of public utility than would be expected under similar circumstances from individuals connected with any other profession or employment.. Lawyers, indeed, as a body, have some right to consider that their merits are not sufficiently acknowledged by the public, whilst even the demerits of the worst portion of them are owing to the default of that very public which reproaches them, which first fosters the vice and then complains of it. In this, as in other matters of purchase, the supply of any commodity will be about equal to the demand. If practitioners of a peculiar quality are wanted by the public, there will be abundance of them; if the public will cease to employ. any such, then will they altogether cease to exist. But unfortunately, tradesmen will express their disgust at the conduct of such and such particular practitioners, and afterwards, when these very tradesmen have cases of their own, which require as they think a little extra sharpness of procedure, they will apply to the very individuals whose conduct they had known and reprehended; will expose others to the tender mercies of which they had so just a dread themselves, and will ultimately become, as they really deserved to become, the

victims of their own inconsistency. If the public will hate trickery only when it is against them, and cherish it when exerted in their own behalf, trickery will still thrive-but, if the public would consistently and invariably abstain from availing themselves, under any circumstances, of the dishonest practitioner, then in half a dozen years (the precise period of legal limitation) there would not be one such left in the land.

One characteristic which the public frequently fasten upon lawyers, is, that of a bigoted perhaps a venal attachment to antiquated abuses. The remark is not unfrequent, that it is absurd to expect efficient law reforms from men interested in the complexity and expense of law. Lawyers may both retort the charge and defend themselves from it. In any revision of matters appertaining to trade, manufactures, agriculture, or commerce, let it be proposed that lawyers be engaged to accomplish the requisite changes, because the tradesmen, merchants, farmers and landowners will each conserve the peculiar interests of their own craft at the public cost. Is it not the fact that they will do so?-Would any one of them consent to have his regular profits lessened one halfpenny for the good of the public?—No, not five such just men could be found amongst them. But lawyers have not merely consented, they have originated, proposed and accomplished many, and are now accomplishing many more, plans of legal reform, which, while they benefit the public, will lessen their own profits. The Registration of Births, Marriages and Deaths, is one of those plans. The more difficult the discovery of proof of title, the more journeys, and searches, and examinations that are necessary in order to make that discovery, the more intricate the connexion of the proofs, the more perusals, and reperusals, and consultations, and opinions that are requisite to trace that connexion,-the more profitable of course must it be to the lawyer and the more dilatory and expensive to the public. Yet are lawyers found prominently active in exposing these defects to the committee, and in recommending the establishment of a secure, expeditious and cheap mode of registration. None, indeed, but the practising lawyer who has been engaged in the deduction of family titles and long pedigrees through all the doubts, difficulties, and insecurities of the present parochial registers, could be qualified to furnish