Page:Select Essays in Anglo-American Legal History, Volume 1.djvu/563

 16. BOWEN: THE VICTORIAN PERIOD 549 fication as an alternative expedient, but after two years of labour this project was also laid aside. Both digest and code appearing to be beyond the range of practical politics, the idea of consolidating and amending the existing law was re- vived again, and six Criminal Law Consolidation and Amend- ment Acts of much importance were passed in 1861, which now constitute the nucleus of our written criminal law. This is the greatest achievement of the reign in the branch of the law now under consideration. Mr. Justice Stephen has produced of late years a draft code that has not yet received the sanc- tion of Parliament, but which in itself is an effort worthy to be remembered as one of the valuable pieces of industry of the last fifty years. Among the names that deserve to be recol- lected in connection with the amendment of the statute book stand pre-eminent those of Lord Campbell and Lord Cran- worth, of Sir J. Jervis (the Chief Justice of the Common Pleas), and of the late Mr. Greaves. The law of libel has been corrected by enabling a plea of justification to be pleaded in matters where publication of the truth is for the public interest. In 1851 invaluable, though not imlimited, powers of amendment were conferred on criminal courts, and other practical changes in procedure enacted to prevent slips and miscarriages of justice. In 1865, the present Mr. Justice Denman introduced into Parliament an Act to rectify certain anomalies, chiefly in the law of evidence, and an Act due to the initiation of the late Mr. Russell Gurney contributed, two years afterwards, greater improvements to the procedure. The present Court of Crown Cases Reserved was created in 1848: a tribimal for which doubtful points of law may be reserved at the trial — reservations previously dealt with by the judges in a less public and general, and therefore a less satisfactory way. But the criminal procedure and practice has undergone less alteration than the civil, probably because ample protection for the prisoner was afforded even by the older law. Although miscarriages are but rare, the system of criminal pleading is still extraordinarily cumbrous and involved. Ten years ago, an indictment drawn by the present writer in an important Government prosecution, and settled in consultation with the present Lord Chancellor and the late