In 1851 a flagrant and inveterate anomaly was removed by the success of those law reformers who had long in vain protested against the absurdity of disallowing the evidence of persons immediately interested in the suit. After this, the movement did not pause till the Commission of 1869 was appointed, with the result that in 1873 there passed the Judicature Act which has amalgamated conflicting usages into a homogeneous system, and produced the long desired fusion between Equity and Law. The ancient divisions are perpetuated to-day not in different Courts but in different divisions of the same Court. The result briefly stated is that notwithstanding the real difference which still exists between Equity and Law, and the practical division of the Bar into two branches, Law and Equity can to-day be administered by the same Courts and one judge can give suitors the same relief as any other judge. There is now no possibility of a question being decided by one tribunal according to Common Law principles, and by another according to the principles of Equity. To prevent any chance of confusion it has further been enacted that wherever the rules of Equity and Law seem to conflict, those of Common Law are to prevail. The principle of a division of labour still exists. Every judge, that is, does not transact every sort of business. The judges in the Chancery division are still specially charged with the execution of trusts and other such matters, even as happened in the case of their predecessors fifty years ago. To do justice with as little regard as may be to forms and precedents is the visible object of the administrators of the law in every department. That professional prejudices should have disappeared was not to be expected, and, perhaps, not to be desired. But the exclusive etiquette of judges and lawyers is not greater than prevails in other professions, among doctors, diplomatists, or divines. The plaintiff in person is no more welcome in the reformed, than in the unreformed, Courts; nor, in the interests of public time and of common sense, is it probably to be wished that he should be. The two principal and practical defects in the administration of English law that still need attention would seem to be--one, the barbarous system which still obtains through the imperfect arrangements of the Circuit Courts of keeping untried prisoners unreasonably long in prison. Of late cases have been noticed in which persons, proved on trial to be innocent, have been detained in prison for weeks or months. The second defect is the undue licence allowed to the legal profession of protracting the hearing of cases secondary in their importance by the accumulation of unnecessary evidence and cross-examination. This has often been objected to, but has seldom been firmly controlled by the judges.