There is a mischief of some gravity, which we have yet to notice. The essential check upon all judicial or private dereliction is publicity, and publicity gained through the press in _all_ cases which require it; but the existing system gives the coroner the power of excluding reporters. He can, if he pleases, make a Star Chamber of his court, hold it in a private house, and conduct it in secret. Instances—though very rare ones—can be adduced of this having been actually done. Here opens a door to another abuse;—it is known that a certain few among newspaper hangers-on—persons only connected with the press by the precarious and slender tenure of ‘a penny-a-line’—find it profitable to attend inquests—not for legitimate purposes—for their ‘copy’ is seldom inserted by editors—but to obtain money from relatives and parties interested in the deceased for what they are pleased to call ‘suppressing’ their reports. This generally happens in cases which from their having no public interest whatever would not, under any circumstances, be admitted into the crowded columns of the journals; for we can with confidence say that any case in which the public interests are likely to be staked, once before the editors of any London Journal, and supplied by a gentleman of their own establishment, no power on earth could suppress it. It has happened again occasionally that, from the suddenness with which the coroner is summoned, and the slovenly manner in which his office is performed, an inquest that ought to have been made public has wholly escaped the knowledge of newspaper conductors and their accredited reporters, and has thus passed over in silence. Let us here put up another guard against misconception. No imputation _can_ rest upon any accredited member of the press; the high state dignities which some men who have been reporters now so well support, are a guarantee against that. Neither do we wish to undervalue the important services sometimes performed by occasional or ‘penny-a-line’ reporters; among whom there are honourable and clever men. We only point out a small body of exceptional characters who are no more than what we have described—‘hangers-on’ of the press. We now proceed to suggest a remedy for the inherent vices of ‘Crowner’s quests.’