*

Company, before a spade was put into the ground, amounted to 432,620. The directors of the South Eastern Railway Company have recently announced to the shareholders, that their Parliamentary Law Expenses for nine years, in endeavouring to beat off competitors after their work was finished, amounted to 479,711l. 7s. 11d., or the average of 53,3011. per annum. The second Report on Railway Act Enactments informs us (p. 19.), -that the Eastern Counties Railway, which is fifty-one miles in length, cost 45,1907. in Parliamentary expenses alone. The Parliamentary expenses of the London and Birmingham Railway has been estimated at 650l. per mile: of the Great Western at 1000l. per mile.' 'Mr. Peto mentions one instance within his own knowledge, where, though the line was utterly impracticable, and the Bill never went beyond the Standing Orders Committee of the House of Commons, the solicitor's 'account, which did not include the expenses of engineers, and ' various other outlays, amounted to no less a sum than 82,000%.' From another source we learn that, in the case of the Worcester and Hereford Railway, extending over only twenty-nine miles†, and started with a capital of only 580,000l. (estimated as more than sufficient to complete the whole work), the Parliamentary expenses amounted to 250,000l., or one-fourth per mile more than the average cost of the entire construction of railways in the United States.

The personal inconvenience to members in attending Select Committees, and the enormous costs which Private Bills occasion, are, however, after all, of secondary importance to other evils, which the present system gives rise to,-evils arising from the mode of enacting Local and Personal Laws, and their subsequent operation on the General Law.

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Montesquieu, in a chapter of his Spirit of Laws,' specially devoted to the subject of the British Constitution (lib. XI. ch. vi.), points out the inevitable evils arising from a union of legislative and judicial powers in the same body. Some writers have ridiculed the gloomy prophecy of this French philosopher, that England will perish when the legislative power becomes more corrupt than the executive; but modern experience tends, no less than historical facts, to show, that Montesquieu really touches upon a vulnerable spot in our Constitution. When a Parliamentary Committee undertakes to adjudicate on conflicting private claims,-when, as will be seen over and over again in

See Report of Directors, published in Herapath's Railway Journal, Sept. 9. 1854.

† Herapath's Railway Journal, Sept. 1853.

the reports before us,- Parliament acknowledges itself incompetent to discharge efficiently the functions of judge,—when it is considered that members of Select Committees incur no direct responsibility, and that, if even devoid of pecuniary interest, they are open to personal bias, local influence, and individual solicitation, it must be admitted that we possess very slight security against corruption.

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The journals of the House of Commons show that in times gone by the system of private legislation did lead to Parliamentary corruption. We must not forget that those journals record the fact of even the Speaker being tempted by the sterling coin of the Corporation of London to connive at an iniquitous Coal Tax Bill, passing through Parliament under the deceptive title of An Act for Relieving the City Orphans.' There yet exist a variety of resolutions on these journals of a more recent date, ominously denouncing attempts to bribe or corruptly influence Members with regard to Private Bills; and there are not wanting cases which have come before our ordinary tribunals, where Members of the Legislature have entered into formal bargains, for valuable considerations in money, not to oppose a Private Bill.

The reign of the railway kings and the days of railway speculations will not soon be forgotten: those days when the mania for scrip was epidemic, seizing alike the humble citizen and the lordly aristocrat-when the allottees were not only those who appeared openly as promoters, but too often the Senators who sat in judgment-when dukes entered the share market, and M. P.'s in crowds became provisional committeemen-when Lawyers and Parliamentary Agents made fortunes by their personal influence with Honourable Members-when millions were expended in Parliamentary expenses, and shares were reserved, and funds expressly allotted for secret service. This, at all events, afforded grounds for pondering well on Montesquieu's remarks, and believing that Bentham might in his time have felt justified by personal observation in characterising a Select Committee of the House of Commons as a judicature (to use his own peculiar phraseology) as to all points of appropriate aptitude rendered notoriously in the highest degree unapt, and in particular in respect of moral aptitude; in one word, by corruption.'

Supposing, however, that the rough language of Bentham is inapplicable to our times-that Parliament contain none but the most immaculate Members-that bribery is out of the ques

Constitutional Code, lib. 1. ch. xvi. s. 4.

VOL. CI. NO. CCV.

M

tion, and the high tone of feeling which happily prevails so extensively in English society suffices to prevent a single interested vote being given in a Parliamentary Committee,—ungracious as it may be to mention it, it is undeniable that canvassing Members of Parliament for votes on Private Bills does prevail to a very considerable extent. The vote and influence of a single Peer or County Member may decide the fate of a Railway Bill. Canvassing cannot be prevented. It is, indeed, openly practised, and unblushingly charged for in the bill of How is its effect to be obviated? Are Members of the Legislature to withstand in the case of Private Bills the importunities of influential persons possessed of local power? holders of land, lenders of money, local officials and active Parliamentary Agents, busy town clerks who can manage a whole borough, solicitors who hold the title-deeds of both constituent and delegate, and who are able to command unhappy mortgagors?

costs.*

We impress on the minds of our law students that the principles of justice are immutable, and that positive laws should ever have an equal and general application-that it is for the Legislature alone to make them-the Judges of the land to decide on their application-that for money, influence, or favour no variation should be made: we call to mind the struggle between the nation and the Prerogative- the orthodox doctrines enunciated in Magna Charta, and vindicated by the Bill of Rights; and we still imagine ourselves secure in the constitutional guarantee that nulli vendemus nulli negabimus aut 'differemus justitiam aut rectum:' but after a short experience of the practices of Private Bills, the young lawyer soon discovers that these notions are not now in fashion. Our Private Bill system offers the greatest incentive to the practice of canvassing for the votes of the Committee-the most substantial ground for undermining the public confidence in the personal integrity, independence, efficiency, and honour of their legislators. A modern Parliamentary Committee, with the encouragement it affords to personal canvassing,-its reckless expenses,—its entire

* See the bill of costs for the Bury Improvement Bill, set out in Appendix 3. to the Report on Private Bills of 1847, where charges are made for making copies of the List of Committee, and attending each of them in succession, and also on various members in the Lobby and elsewhere, in consequence of having received information that 'the opponents of the Bill were attempting to influence members to 'throw out the Bill.' (See the Items, ubi sup. p. 358.) The Parliamentary agents in the same case charge twenty-five guineas for attendance on parties not specified, during the progress of the Bill.

disregard of the forms of law or the universal principles of jurisprudence, serves to encourage the promoters of almost any private scheme requiring the sanction of the law, if properly backed by wealth and influence. Our Constitution declares that Parliament, like the Queen, can do no wrong; but, as once gravely observed by a learned Judge, Parliament can do things which sound very strange. One day a City Coal Act, another a North Wales Railway Act take their places in our statute book. This Session we hear of thousands- a few years ago of millions-being squandered in Parliamentary expenses. The legal investigation of a claim to twenty guineas, or to half an acre of land, is exclusively entrusted to the most learned and experienced lawyers, whose responsibility is secured by the strongest guarantees, whose conduct is uniformly above all suspicion, whose lives have been devoted to the study of jurisprudence and the examination of evidence, while in the case of those vast conflicting claims that are submitted to the arbitration of Parliamentary Committees all guarantees are wanting for the legal competency, the general efficiency, or even the integrity of the Judges.

The language of Lord Brougham's Resolutions is free from any ambiguity as to the worth of a decision by a Private Bill Committee.

5. While the most trifling question arising between parties on the state of disputed facts, or the application of known laws to these facts, must in this, and indeed in every country enjoying the blessings of regular Governments, come before tribunals qualified by the learning, skill, and experience of the Judges composing them, to deal with such comparatively easy questions, the oftentimes much more important and much more difficult questions raised by the consideration of Private Bills only come before Committees of both Houses, on which professional men hardly ever sit, and which are wholly composed of persons who can have no experience to guide them, inasmuch as each can only sit on one or two cases in the course of a Session.

6. That the individual responsibility of the Judges who compose the ordinary tribunals of this and all well-governed states affords a security eminently necessary for enforcing the due administration of justice, and for giving the community full confidence in their decisions, a security held to be necessary, although it is much more difficult for a Judge, dealing with the known and fixed rules of the law, to swerve from his duty, and pervert that law to the purposes of injustice, than it is for men who are called upon to decide on the provisions of a Bill professedly creating exceptions to the law for particular purposes, and arbitrarily dealing with rights according to no known or fixed rules or principles whatsoever.

7. That in Committees of the two Houses, and dealing with inte

rests oftentimes incomparably more important than ever come before Courts of Justice, the members-guided by no fixed rules, changed in each case, unknown to the community, not acting in the eyes either of a watchful public or a jealous profession,- act almost wholly without any individual responsibility, nor can be prevented, as Judges are, at least in this country, from privately seeing parties, behind each others' backs, and proceeding upon information, and listening to reasons, and yielding to motives of a private and personal nature.'

In the debate on railway business at the commencement of the Session of 1846, Lord Brougham denounced in no measured terms the folly of vesting in

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Parliamentary Committees-in the very worst tribunals that mortal man's wit ever devised-the entire management of so enormous a proportion of the judicial business of the nation-for judicial business it was. to permit such a tribunal to sit in judgment on such a mass of property as was daily subject to the decision of Committees of that House,-property exceeding by a hundredfold all the property under litigation in all the Courts of Law or Equity.'

In the same year we find the House of Commons Committee reporting to the House that

No provision is made for furnishing the Committees which sit upon Private Bills with complete and trustworthy information, either with regard to the local evils requiring remedies, or with regard to the bearing which the provisions proposed in them may have upon the general law of the country. As the public are not represented before the Committee by any competent or duly qualified person, the Committee when the Bill is unopposed are wholly dependent for information on the interested representations of the promoters, inasmuch as the expenses of Opposition are such as to deter all parties from venturing to undertake it, except those whose interests are directly affected by the project, and who are also possessed of considerable means. The consequence is, that under the present system the interests of the public at large, who have neither the means of obtaining detailed information as to the proposed measures, nor the means of defraying the expenses of Opposition, are often greatly prejudiced by Local Acts. That besides this there are, moreover, often introduced into Local Bills provisions of the most objectionable nature, some varying or interfering with the general Statute or Common Law of the country; some, though ordinary in their nature, yet of a perplexing and needless diversity in form; and, finally, some so contradictory and mutually discordant as to render their improvement impossible, and to make the law doubtful and embarrassing even to those who are professionally versed in it.'

Sir William Blackstone, who every now and then glosses over the defects of our institutions in a manner which Lord Eldon must at an early period of his professional career have studied with great relish, thus apologises (vol. i. p. 139.) for our Private