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America the Probate Courts have been preserved as distinct Courts. There is usually a Surrogate in each county possessing a plenary jurisdiction over the goods of any testator or intestate, being at his death an inhabitant of the country. From these County Courts of Probate there lies an appeal to the Prerogative Court of the State. Even if Courts of Probate were preserved as distinct Courts in this country it would be desirable, as much as possible, to assimilate their practice to that of the Courts of Common law. I propose that a new tribunal be constituted in London, to take cognizance of all questions of matrimony, divorces, adulteries, general bastardy, incests, fornication, solicitation of chastity, and all other offences against public morality, which now fall under the cognizance of the ecclesiastical Courts. That the law of Divorce be altered according to the suggestions of the Commissioners who were appointed to consider that part of the law. The only point in which the suggestions of the Commissioners appear to have failed is touching the constitution of the new tribunal. I submit that the Judges of the present Ecclesiastical Courts might very properly be entrusted with this reformed jurisdiction. Oral evidence and summary proceedings, similar to those which prevail in our Courts of Common law would, according to the Commissioners' suggestions, be substituted for the present cumbrous system.
I further propose that the remaining juris-
