5 JUNE 1830, Page 11

TOPICS OF THE DAY.

"COLLECTIVE WISDOM?'

REMARKABLE SAYINGS OF THE LORDS AND COMMONS.

SIR CHARLES WETHERELL "objected to commissions to inquire into the state of the law, because the appointment of them involved an admission that there was something to be remedied."— Our law, according to Sir CHARLES, must be now, what our constitution used formerly to be termed, the envy of surrounding nations. Our laws, to be sure, are devised for the benefit of our lawyers ; and that eirenmstance may explain the admiration which they profess. Dr. PHILLIMORE himself, the author of the motion for reforming the existing law of divorce, observed, "that nothing was better established as a principle of our law, than that it should be equal for all parties—for high and low, for rich and poor; and st was so, except in so far as related to divorce." A gentle and trustworthy reformer, truly, like all the other practical reformers amongst US! It is left to Bishops to reform the Church, to Ministers to reduce official salaries, to the House of Ccmmons to reform the representation of the people, and to lawyers to reform the law. Is not the rate of our progression well accounted for? Sir CHARLES thought, that if Dr. PHILLIMORE'S Flan were adopted, "the House would be letting in a wild, latitudinarian, and mischievous principle, not hitherto recognized in any country in the world." The principle to which Sir CHARLES WETHERELL applies all these hard names, is, that the evidence on which a claim of divorce may rest, shall be sifted in a court of law before the divorce is granted—shall be decided on by a competent tribunal, instead of being hurried througl the House of Commons as a matter of form, or forced through i as a party question. "If the House were once, by the ins lution of a cheap kind of Pie Poudre Court, to allow all who had 4 small sum to spend, the privilege of divorce, the lower orders, w o were naturally more lax in morals than the higher, would de*riomte still more."—Sir Gammas talks as if it were sought to stablish the right to divine& in every man who could afford-to parchase it. On the contrary, it is sought 'to put an end to that verraystem, by examining with the utmost jealousy every claim to this unpleasant remedy, but when the claim is well-founded, to put the remedy in every man's power. "It is alleged," quoth Sir CHARLES, "that a great majority of divorce cases are carried by collusion. Will divorces, then, become less collusive, when the expenses attending them are lessened? "—Does Sir CHARLES mean to say that a check to collusion is to be found in the length of lawyers' bills? These bills are long enough in all conscience, yet Lord ELDON has testified that nine out of ten divorce actions are notwithstanding collusive. The check upon collusion which the friends of reform seek, is to be found in the sifting of the evidence.

If Sir CHARLES WETHERELL be irresistible as a logician, he is no less admirable as an expounder of truths moral and historical. He lays it down, in the most intrepid manner, that "divorces have never been allowed in this country unless after a solemn investie,-ation by Parliament ;" that the higher classes are less prone to adultery than the poor; and that HENRY the Eighth obtained a sentence of divorce from the Pope, his contemporary.

Lord F. L. GOWER opposed Mr. SADLER'S motion for extending Poor-laws to Ireland, "because he had not proposed a practical measure—had not shown how the machinery and instruments were to be found for carrying the Poor-laws into effect."—If the measure be expedient, it is the business of Government to find "machinery and instruments ;" which it would contrive to do, no doubt, did the question refer to providingthe machinery requisite for squeezing a few additional millions out of the pockets of the people. Lord GOWER. "was not disposed to controvert Mr. SAnT.Ert's statements ;" and yet he presumes to give his vote in opposition to those statements—statements which he has neither the candour to admit, nor the ability to confute. Mr. WILMOT HORTON objected to Mr. SADLER'S motion, that " it had kept him in town. He had expected something different from a speech in praise of the poor-laws."—Mr. HORTON, no doubt, expected a debate on the labouring classes, ill the course of which he might once more have had the pleasure of expounding the tiny expedients with which his name is associated. Nothing less, we believe, could have induced him to postpone his excursion. But since Mr. HORTON is disposed to grumble when public business confines him to town, why does he not relinquish the profession of a public man ? Others may be found to whom it is less irksome, and who are better fitted to be useful in it.

Mr. WARBURTON objected to a seigniorage upon the bullion carried to the Mint by private individuals, because " such a seigniorage would be equivalent to a depreciation of the coin of the realm."—The process by which Government renders gold fit for the purposes of currency, is quite as useftd as that by which a goldsmith converts bullion into ornaments for the table. The process is useful in both cases : why should the public expect to have the advantage of it gratuitously, in the one, more than in the other ? and Why should Mr. WARBURTON suppose that the charge of seigniorage depreciates coin, when neither lie nor any one else will contend that the goldsmith's charge for the fashion which he imparts to bullion detracts from the value of' the materials on which he works ?