Report from the Select Committee of the House of Lords appointed to take into consideration the Prac ticability and the Expediency of establishing some Principle of Compensation to be made to the Owners of Real Property whose Lands, &c. may be compul- sorily taken for the Construction of Public Railways; and also further to take into consideration the Ques- tion of Severance and that of Injury to Residences; and to report thereon to the House; together with ART. X. ON THE TRIAL BY JURY - ART. XI. CONVEYANCING REFORM. - ACTS OF THE PRE- 1. Lord Brougham's Speech on Law Reform. May 2. An Act to amend the Law of Real Property. Ses- 3. An Act to facilitate the Conveyance of Real Property. 4. An Act to facilitate the granting of certain Leases. 5. Report on the Plans for. shortening Legal Instru- ments, presented to the Society for promoting the THE LAW REVIEW. ART. I.-RAILWAY LEGISLATION. BOARD OF TRADE. THERE is not in the system of any civilised country a more singular anomaly than the constant, regular, and indeed everyday interference of the British Parliament with the most important interests and the most sacred rights of individuals. The laws make certain provisions to regulate the acquisition, the transfer, the enjoyment of property; certain other provisions to regulate the possession of personal rights and conditions. According to these rules alone, were the system perfect, or did it make an approach to perfection, all questions respecting men's possessions and their personal condition, all questions of property or of status would be determined. By laws generally applicable to the whole community, and not by particular laws made to regulate individuals, the possession of property and of status would be determined. By laws made prospectively, and before the question to be decided had arisen, would every thing be regulated, not by ex post facto laws constructed to suit a particular emergency, and made after the matter had come into dispute. Far otherwise is our English system of jurisprudence; and we give it this name advisedly, because the passing private acts, acts applicable to particular places, and dealing with the rights of particular individuals, has become as much a regular and understood portion of our system, is supposed to be defined and governed by principles as well known, and is subject to as well defined a course of practice as any of the actions that are brought, or the indictments or informations that are prosecuted, under the ordinary jurisdiction of the civil and criminal tribunals. Thus a will or a settlement has been made by a proprietor who had the undoubted right to dispose of his inheritance as he pleased within the limits prescribed in the general laws existing when he devised, bequeathed, or settled his money and his land. These laws have in no respect been altered since his decease; they still continue to regulate the transfer or enjoyment of all other men's estates, real and personal. But it is found inconvenient to those who take under such will or settlement, that they should be tied up in their enjoyment, or, it is suggested, that a public benefit may be gained by setting those devisees and legatees free from the fetters imposed upon them; and a new law is made operating on this particular case, this one will or this one settlement, upon some speculation, that had the testator or the settlor been able to foresee the present state of circumstances, he would have altered his arrangements. The law makes a new will or new settlement for him. Again, the law is clear that no man's property shall be taken from him without his consent; but certain persons have devised a plan which they report to be of public benefit. It consists in taking many men's property from them whether they will or no, and giving them for it not what they demand and have a right to claim as the price of their consent, but what a jury shall think sufficient. The property is thus forcibly to be seized and used by the projectors of the scheme for the public good; and a law is made to give them this power of seizing and using. All this, too, is practised, and daily practised, in a country which is so exceedingly delicate in protecting all rights of property from even nominal violation, that if A. holds his hand over a close belonging to B. without his consent, he is a trespasser, and liable to be sued when he must needs pay a farthing damages, and the costs of his own defence to the action. Many cases occur daily of persons being seriously damnified by such speculations, without the possibility of receiving any equivalent at all, nay, without even the ceremony being gone through of asking their consent. A work in the nature |