Page:Select Essays in Anglo-American Legal History, Volume 1.djvu/484

 470 IV. THE NINETEENTH CENTURY on declarations were taken away with those on bills and on original writs ; but fines on writs of covenant and of entry were left.^ The conflicts of jurisdiction carried on not only between the Common Law Courts and the Chancery and the Admiralty and the Ecclesiastical Courts, but also among the Courts of Common Law themselves, carried on by means of fictions and prohibitions and injunctions, and causing great expense, were a scandalous evil. ^ The Committee of Law Reform (1653) dealt with this grievance.^ It would have confined all tribunals within certain bounds, have kept all actions between subjects under that " lock and key of the Common Law " — the Court of Common Pleas, have allowed barristers as well as Serjeants to plead before that bench, and every attorney to practise in any court, and have paid the judges by salary and not by fees. Now, it was covet- ousness rather than desire to amplify jurisdiction, rather even than ambition, which led to those costly conflicts ; and therefore such measures, combined with others against judi- cial corruption, would have abated nuisance. But they could not be carried. A century later Willes, C. J. C. P., proposed that Parliament should open his court to barristers; he was met by the plea that there should be there (as there now is to some extent in the courts of first instance in Equity) a resident bar. In 1834 another attempt was made: in 1840, amid a furious tempest of wind (as Bingham, the reporter, notes), it was repelled. In 1847 the plan of 1653 was accom- plished. * Between the Equity and the Common Law Bar there was a quarrel of old standing ; and now that the latter, the soul of the Rebellion, was in the ascendant, the Chancery seemed » 6 Somers's Tracts, 179: St. 1653, c. 4: Resolution, Nov. 7: Stt. 1654, c. 53; 1656, c. 10. » North, "Guilford" (1742), p. 99. See Mr. Commissioner Hill's "Letter to Thomas Pemberton," etc. (1838), pp. 27-38: Bacon, "Works," vol. 10, p. 367 (ed. Spedding): 12 Rep. 109: 4 Inst. 99: Jones, «. *.; and other works, passim. •See its draughts in 6 Somers's Tracts, 211 foil, ridiculed in "The proposals of the Committee for regulating the law," etc. [ibid. 528-32], and sensibly criticized by the army in " A supply to a draught of an act," etc. (1653). Bing. 571: 1 and 6 Bing. n. c: St. 9 & 10 Vict. c. 54: 3 C. B. 537.
 * Wynne, "Serjeant at Law:" Manning, " Serviens ad Legem:" 10