Hongkong, 33rd Session.
Since I have had the honour to be Judge of the Vice Admiralty Court of Hongkong, I have obtained a more accurate knowledge than I had before of the existing practice in Vice Admiralty, and the more I see of it, the more completely I am convinced that a great change is necessary.
The very terms employed to designate the proceedings are utterly unintelligible to the Suitors, and in many cases almost as much so to the Practitioners. The great mass of the legal profession in England know nothing of Admiralty practice, so that when a Judge, Barrister, or an Attorney arrives in a Colony, he has almost everything to learn with regard to Admiralty proceedings, and the amount of business is so small that he must trust almost entirely to books for information, instead of gaining knowledge by actual experience.
The proceeding in rem is so peculiarly applicable to a certain class of cases that either it, or an efficient substitute for it, must always be preserved. But even that is unnecessarily cumbersome and expensive, whilst with regard to other parts of the practice of the Court, a complete change should, I think, be effected.
As, however, the dispatch sent to me refers merely to cases in...