The difficulty in legislating, where the talent for the task has been of the most preeminent and brilliant quality, that wilful offenders shall not escape the retributive stroke of justice, it is obvious, therefore, to human endeavours has been found insuperable. To reduce this difficulty, one Act of Parliament has been passed, as it were, upon the back of another, to strengthen the power of that which had preceded it, and add new sinews to an arm of the law, extended to exact obedience, but intended only to excite alarm where vicious principles lodged, and vicious actions should disclose themselves as their consequent result. But almost in proportion, as the wisdom of our legistators has been found to limit the hope of impunity with the guilty, the innocent have been exposed to a liability of being regarded as in a false character; actions, abstractedly reviewed, have appeared as in alliance with culpability, where no design to err has lived, and disgrace and punishment have followed. To form a penal code all perfect, as we have said, has been found impossible: to render that we have a terror to the ill-disposed, and protective in its opposite, an especial discretion, therefore, is expected to be exercised in its administration-and, for the honour of our country, we have to boast, that such, generally, has been the practice living among us-equity and law, consequently, have often appeared as twin brothers, united in their pursuits, and neither as contemplating a different nor a divided interest. By the articles of war, a soldier convicted of desertion incurs the penalty of death; and, if we mistake not, it is not in the jurisdiction of a martial court, to pass a sentence different; nor, after passing it, to commute it for a minor punishment :-how then, where a case shall appear to merit it, is the dreadful penalty, without a violation of the law, to be avoided? Why, in the exercise of that especial discretion in the executive power to which we have alluded-the prisoner, for a first offence, and often for a second and a third, instead of " desertion," will be tried for "absence without leave;" a conviction uuder such a discretionary arraignment, leads not to a fatal result; and many lives, which reform, eventually, has rendered valuable, have, we doubt not, been pre

served thereby, to consecrate the humanity of the practice. The terror of death, for an offence of such a dangerous magnitude, notwithstanding, the vital security of a country demands should be incurred and, in some cases, that death should not only actually follow its repetition; but, under peculiar marks of atrocity, its earliest commission :-the law in itself, therefore, needs no revision; it only needs a sound and humane discretion in its application. Perhaps there is not a greater pest to a community, than a pettifogging attorney-a fellow who, for a pecuniary advantage, will do any kind of dirty work, and pursue a practice, such as a respectable solicitor would be ashamed to be identified withand yet his dirty work shall be so involved in the vortex of law, that none can stay him; no one have the power to shew that what he has done, is not to be justified on legal grounds; nor have the privilege to hold him up to merited obloquy, without the risk of an "action for damages," or a "criminal information." If human laws could be made to embrace perfection, the auxiliary, "discretion," would need no separate particularization-but as perfection never did, and never will give a character to the work of mortals, the essence of public good can only be made to retain its healthy flavour, by the discretionary prudence with which they may be brought into general action. The more rigid features of the law may awe by their frowns, where guilt is felt, though not apparent, and, thereby, are they inducive to a public good-but though ruin and the rack be threatened; though they "speak daggers" to the mind, yet was it ever intended that punishment should but be apportioned to offence and, thank heaven, by the saving aid of "discretion" with our administrators of justice, it usually is so. It will sometimes happen, however, that in the executive department, a process will partially shew itself, as resting, apparently, on oppression-its partial developement it may be that gives it such a semblance, and which its ultimate and general exposure may entirely do away. A revenue officer has been known to stop a nobleman's carriage in a public street, and ransack its several compartments, with as little ceremony as he would a dust cart;

yet has such an individual, strange as his behaviour has appeared on the onset, never been accused of supererogation, when an "information" that came legally under his cognizance, has been established as his influencing ground of action. It can but be obvious, therefore, that circumstances may arise, to require the most rigid enforcement of the most rigid provisions in an Act of Parliament, to ascertain their nature, and, if found expedient, subdue them-the late visit of our Magistrates to some of the licensed houses, to us, appears to have been directed by such an imperious necessity.-Information, unequivocal and direct, had reached them, from a source of unquestioned respectability, that gaming, to a ruinous extent, drunkenness, and late hours, such as threatened the peace and safety of the town, and which called loudly for legal suppression, were carried on, and pursued in a plurality of quarters, under cover of their licences, for better and more useful purposes granted. The vigilance of the duly instructed police, however, failed to discover the existence of the enormities contained in the information noticed; nor did the personal intervention of the Magistrates eventually produce any very different result. It is true, that one or two of the proprietors of licensed houses, were fined for having had their houses open somewhat beyond the immediate hour prescribed by law-but their offences, for so the law will call them, would never have been regarded as meriting legal cognizance, but for the character of the information (an erroneous one, doubtlessly, but that was unknown to the Magistrates) we have mentioned. Had the said information been correct in all its blackening parts and bearings, how would a supineness in the Magistrates appealed to have been reviewed, and what would have been the common inference, as involving the public tranquillity and good? The answer can but include a justification of the mentioned past. The penalties, where incurred, under the peculiar circumstances, however, cannot be spoken of as in combination with disgrace-they sprung as from an accidental cause, and were as little to be foreseen, as difficult to be avoided. By the "Tippling Act," no person is al

lowed to keep his licensed house open beyond a limited period; nor is any person to be permitted to remain in such licensed house, for more than an hour directly after his dinner, nor for longer than a moiety of that space at any other part of the day. Now, that this clause in the Act was intended to rescue the labouring branches of society, from temptations which, if yielded to, would destroy that spirit of industry in them, by which only they could be enabled respectably to exist, there can be but little doubt; but yet, as it is the law, and a law which makes no distinction as to persons and conditions, it would be worse than useless to say, that one branch of a community may hold it at defiance, and not another. If the clause in the Act named, therefore, were generally and indiscriminately to be enforced, a licensed house would require a difficulty in the management that no person could be qualified to meet-or, if such an one should be found, his returns in trade must, of necessity, be so reduced by it, that, from the result of his more than circumspect and extraordinary labour, he would find it no very easy matter, perhaps, to purchase bread. By what means, then, is the hardship to be remedied? We have answered that question in our preceding observations-it is with the executive, and occupies a site of mercy, in the comprehensive word "discretion." The law may often pass unnoticed, what it has power to punish-and it may, and often does, appear to be unacquainted with that, which it has not a direct authority to sanction: but when evils arise from the forbearance, forbearance, from that instant, ceases to be a virtue and let it be remembered, that the law so emerging from its passiveness, must be uniform in its operation; and hence, it is, that the comparatively innocent are sometimes involved in its vortex, and made to smart beneath a punishment, which never, but for the grosser offences of others, would have found its way to their persons and dwellings. The recent penalties imposed upon the licensed houses we have alluded to, are obviously to be traced to the latter cause; and, however they may be regretted, it would be idle to say, that they ought to be regarded as unauthorized by law. It may also be in strict coincidence

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with the provisions of a statute, that a Magistrate shall be at liberty, in his own person, to perform the minor offices of constable and beadle-and yet, if it be so, it is a part of the law, in common with others, that we cannot avoid deprecating—and for this reason that where the said Magistrate is called upon subsequently, and must act judicially and finally, the defendant, in one and the same individual, may have to contend with his accuser, his jury, and his judge!! In cases, where a recognizance and sureties can only be required, to meet the consequence of the complaint at a future day, in a court where the pro and the con must have their due weight, the same objection does not press so heavily; but in neither instance can a satisfactory feeling be supposed to arise, nor additional protection to the public, in, as it were, the temporary suspension of the functions of the minor offices, in the persons, with whom, for wise and prudent purposes, they were originally placed. It is said, that our Magistrates, in respect to the locally licensed houses, intend to grant no protection to one that is not extended to another-the larger houses are not to meet with an indulgence such as may be denied to the smaller : and, truly, there is wisdom and equity in such a resolution; but not as it has been misrepresented-for misrepresentation it must have been, which has trumpetted forth, that our unpaid and independent conservators of the public peace, had determined to act in the future, as if a direct and cognizable information had been lodged already, against all the licensed houses, severally and collectively, in the parish! Private rooms, in public establishments, we doubt not, are intended to be included in that discretionary forbearance of the law which we have noticed, until sufficient cause, in the shape of an accredited information, shall be found to exist, to deny to one or more of them the usual indulgence but in the actual discovery and existence of such sufficient cause, every principle of justice demands that it should be followed up, for the public interest and weal, without any, the slightest, bias or favour towards persons or houses.