Perhaps the best testimony to the effectiveness of the reforms of 1852 is the fact, that men of a slightly later generation, familiar with the working of the courts half a century after, find it difficult to believe that such abuses as are plainly described by the legislation of that year, should really have existed in the middle of the nineteenth century.

Chapter XIX, Modern Civil Procedure, p. 360 - A Short History Of The English Law (First Edition) (1912)