During Queen Victoria's reign great changes for the better were
effected in simplifying the laws and the administration of justice.
When she came to the throne the Parliamentary Statutes at Large filled
fifty-five huge folio volumes, and the Common Law, as contained in
judicial decisions from the time of Edward II (1307), filled about
twelve hundred more. The work of examining, digesting, and
consolidating this enormous mass of legislative and legal lore was
taken in hand (1863) and has been slowly progressing ever since.
The Judicature Acts (1873, 1877) united the chief courts in a single
High Court of Justice. This reform did away with much confusion and
expense. But the most striking changes for the better were those made
in the Court of Chancery (S147) and the criminal courts.
In 1825 the property belonging to suitors in the former court amounted
to nearly forty millions of pounds.[1] The simplest case might require
a dozen years for its settlement, while difficult ones consumed a
lifetime, or more, and were handed down from father to son,--a legacy
of baffled hopes, of increasing expense, of mental suffering worse
than that of hereditary disease.
[1] See Walpole's "History of England," Vol. III.
Much has been done to remedy these evils, which Dickens set forth with
such power in his novel of "Bleak House." At one time the prospect of
reform seemed so utterly hopeless that it was customary for a prize
fighter, when he had got his opponent's neck twisted under his arm,
and held him absolutely helpless, to declare that he had his head "in
chancery"!