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Simplifying the Sources of the Law: An Essay in Law Reform

There can be no doubt both that during the nineteenth century the key to change in England and Wales was legislation and that an outstanding characteristic of much of the legislative process was the prior inquiry of a Royal Commission or of a Select Committee of the House of Commons or of the House of Lords. Such inquiries reached their peak about the year 1850. The spirit of inquiry was at its height, therefore, during the middle of the era 1825-70, which Dicey has dubbed as the period of Benthamism or Individualism.' Yet at the beginning of that period reforms had been introduced only gradually and in the most piecemeal fashion. Accordingly, as the century approached its halfway mark, professional and public concern at the defects alleged in our legal institutions was mounting. "We are all radical reformers now", wrote a legal magazine in 1852; and of codification and reform The Times proclaimed in 1850: 2 "We have of late often said that the true interests of the public and of the legal profession are identical, and that, in order to render our attempts to effect a reform in the law successful, we must induce lawyers to become reformers ... In the minds of our people generally the feelings that must arise (with respect to the New York Code), are admiration and envy. Hope, however. ought to cheer us: for what a kindred people has thus happily and early brought about, we surely can also achieve: and that height of generosity and degree of enlightenment which the lawyers of the State of New York have reached, cannot, we hope, be deemed beyond the attainment, or beside the wish of their professional brethren in this country." On the one hand, therefore, concern regarding Our legal institutions did exist at this time. It manifested itself, inter alia, in the creation of the new County Court in 1846, a year which had also seen the publica-