matter. These are the works of the nation. Compare them with
the works of the rulers of the nation. Look at the criminal law,
at the civil law, at the modes of conveying lands, at the modes
of conducting actions. It is by these things that we must judge
of our legislators, just as we judge of our manufacturers by the
cotton goods and the cutlery which they produce, just as we judge
of our engineers by the suspension bridges, the tunnels, the
steam carriages which they construct. Is, then, the machinery by
which justice is administered framed with the same exquisite
skill which is found in other kinds of machinery? Can there be a
stronger contrast than that which exists between the beauty, the
completeness, the speed, the precision with which every process
is performed in our factories, and the awkwardness, the rudeness,
the slowness, the uncertainty of the apparatus by which offences
are punished and rights vindicated? Look at the series of penal
statutes, the most bloody and the most inefficient in the world,
at the puerile fictions which make every declaration and every
plea unintelligible both to plaintiff and defendant, at the
mummery of fines and recoveries, at the chaos of precedents, at
the bottomless pit of Chancery. Surely we see the barbarism of
the thirteenth century and the highest civilisation of the
nineteenth century side by side; and we see that the barbarism
belongs to the government, and the civilisation to the people.

This is a state of things which cannot last. If it be not
terminated by wisdom, it will be terminated by violence. A time
has come at which it is not merely desirable, but indispensable
to the public safety, that the government should be brought into
harmony with the people; and it is because this bill seems to me
likely to bring the government into harmony with the people, that