We do not know, whether these considerations have contributed, in the smallest degree, to fix the attention of the public on the state of the Court of Chancery. Matters of a practical nature, much more cogent and touching than general reasonings, have probably had the greatest share in producing that effect. Patients, themselves smarting under their sufferings, and giving vent to their feelings directly, or through the medium of friends, obtrude themselves continually on our notice. Claimants of property of every description succeed to the complaints of their predecessors. Inheritances lose half their value by being bound with the chains of a suit. Terrors and ghosts of litigants, unlaid by adjudication (as Mr Burke once observed of undischarged accountants, disturbed, unquieted in the Court of Exchequer), haunt the houses of their children from generation to generation. * Judicial aphorisms, jests, which having lost, for centuries, the freshness of novelty, have therefore nothing to sustain them but the foundation of truth on which they rest, and the lamentations and complaints of recent sufferers, all lead alike to the same conclusion. We enter into none of the generalities, which are sufficiently familiar upon this subject; but it is obvious that justice delayed, and, by delay, encumbered with an increasing and overwhelming load of expense, may become, at length, hardly worth obtaining. We willingly leave the application of these remarks, and the decision, whether they have any truth in thein, or whether they are the produce of mere fiction, to those whose misfortune it may have been personally to have experienced the wearisomeness and irritation of a longprotracted suit, for the continuance of which they can learn no satisfactory reason, and of which, nevertheless, they can find no end.

It was impossible that what came so frequently within the sphere of each man's private reflection, should long remain without some more formal notice. Accordingly, Mr Taylor, now several years ago, brought forward a motion in the House of Commons upon the subject of the delay in the business of the Court of Chancery. To this gentleman, it is only justice to say, the public are deeply indebted for the meritorious exer

* During the trial of a cause at Westminster, one of the counsel having expressed an intention of applying to the other side of the Hall for redress, Lord Kenyon, in his abrupt way, said to him ;— i Get away with you, then, into the Court of Chancery;-abi in malam rem!' His Lordship, we understand, knew something of the Court.

tions he has so long made in attempting to procure redress for the grievances endured by the country. The ability, perseverance and industry, exhibited by him on these occasions, are above all praise. So fully, indeed, was the House of Commons itself impressed with the strength of his statements, and the necessity of inquiring into the existing evils, or, as perhaps we ought now rather to say, so entirely did that House participate in the infatuation and delusion prevalent out of doors, that they actually agreed to Mr Taylor's motion, and voted for a Committee! Not but that we are bound to state, in justice to the general consistency of this body, that the majority had not then discovered how essential it was to the purposes of good government to deny (by their votes at least), the dilatoriness and vexations of Chancery proceedings, just as it once was to prove (by the same means, and to the entire satisfaction, doubtless, of the people of England), that every thing was praiseworthy in the conception, faultless in the execution, and harmless, if not beneficial in the effects, of the Walcheren expedition. But, however, the House did vote for a Committee of Inquiry; and then, as if sensible of having done wrong in acting conformably to the wishes of their constituents, they hastened to retrace their steps, and to undo what they had been doing. Accordingly, it was very early predicted by Sir Samuel Romilly, from the quality of persons industriously selected and thrust forward upon the occasion, in what manner their labours were sure to end. Into the Committee, nevertheless, they went; and, for a time, matters proceeded with a degree of unanimity perfectly marvellous. Every thing which tended to show the arrears of business in the Court of Chancery, was eagerly caught at and adopted; but any attempt to inquire into the cause of the arrears, was as promptly rejected: In other words, it was considered safe and wise to inquire into the fact of the existence of a disorder, about which there was no doubt, but superfluous and imprudent to ascertain the origin of it, with a view to provide a remedy! After this manifest proof of an irresistible propensity, on the part of the Committee, to humour and drollery, Mr Taylor found it hopeless to proceed with the business; and the matter was dropped. The subject has been since frequently revived by him, as our readers are aware, and with additional reasons, but with diminished effect, in proportion as the political part of the Chancellor's charac-. ter fully expanded itself, and created, as might be expected, corresponding majorities.

In this state of things, Mr Williams, in the course of the last Session of Parliament, brought forward a motion of a similar nature, for a Committee to inquire into the delay in the pro

'ceedings in the Court of Chancery, and the Appellate Jurisdiction of the House of Lords, and of the causes of it.' Public opinion oppeared to have undergone no change. No adequate remedy, it was quite certain, had been provided. The admitted necessity of adopting a palliative, of which an experiment had been made, we allude to the appointment of a Vice-Chancellor, -served only to confirm the universally prevalent opinion of the existence of the evil. Upon the subject of that experiment, we must just observe in passing, that there has been much of (what it is difficult to consider otherwise than intentional) misconstruction. Nobody ever supposed,-it never was in any quarter surmised, that the appointment of the Vice-Chancellor was absolutely and entirely inoperative. No man in his senses could, or even did deny, but that all the business disposed of by the Vice-Chancellor, which, but for the existence of that officer, would not have been disposed of at all, was (provided his decisions were right and conclusive) a clear gain to the public. The question took a very different shape. The doubt, originally suggested as to the probable success of the measure, and the failure then anticipated (and by some was the subject considered in all its bearings with greater clearness and ability than by Mr Canning), proceeded upon a supposition abundantly realized by the fact, that the business in the Deputy Court would lead to business in the principal, in the shape of appeal; and that the subjects, already wearied to exhaustion, by one Court of Chancery, were to be revived and refreshed by being dragged through another, somewhat upon the principle of the hedge case in Thessaly. The circumstance, therefore, of this measure having been resorted to, and with the success which we have witnessed, seemed, before any farther changes were made, to lead most naturally to a preliminary question,-whether the delay really was the result merely of unavoidable and increasing pressure, or whether the whole, or a part at least, might not be referable to the wavering, the indecision, the dilatoriness and confusion, which had prevailed in the High Court of Chancery itself.

Common fame and accredited rumour, it has been said, are constitutional grounds for Parliamentary inquiry. This notion, however, it is obvious, must have grown into acceptation and credit, at a time when the House of Commons, mindful of one part of its duty, and faithful to the object of its institution,

* How nearly this was an accurate anticipation, may be judged from this, that the Lord Chancellor now hears no cause originally, but the Vice-Chancellor hears them all.

exhibited, as we learn it ought to do,* an openness approaching to facility to complaint." We may observe, in favour of such a course, that, after making allowance for the different species and degree of evidence on which they proceed, the theory (if, indeed, with the practice working before our eyes, it were worth while to cite the theory) is somewhat in conformity to what prevails in another, and that, too, the most admired and popular part of the Constitution. We allude to the course pursued by the Grand Juries of the country as to an examination and inquiry into every species of delinquency. They do not wish fully to sift the whole evidence, for fear of doing injustice to an innocent man, or for the purpose of arriving at a clear and certain conclusion of guilt; but it suffices to put the party upon his trial, if there be reasonable ground for suspicion and further inquiry. Public justice is presumed to be of greater importance than private feeling, or even individual safety. And who, we would ask, has ever heard of its being afterwards mentioned as a reproach to a person, that a bill had been found against him for such or such a crime, provided, upon his trial, he produced full and satisfactory proof of his innocence? But, in the Grand Inquest of the Nation, as it has been termed,the vaunted receptacle for redress,-the place which throws wide its doors to receive complaint, from a nice and tender feeling, which seems continually to increase, from a degree of sensitiveness and delicacy amounting to the soreness of disease, and often, doubtless, a symptom of it-inquiries, about which the public feels the highest and most lively interest, are to be stifled from a fear (not of putting upon his trial, but) of hurting the nerves and disturbing the repose, forsooth, of we know not whom, but about whom the public, it is certain, cares absolutely nothing!

The fact, therefore, of the existence of delay being, like any other, capable of denial, it seems to have been considered necessary, notwithstanding the universal conviction and belief, to produce proof. That proof, however, was unavoidably to be comprised within the limits which the time and patience of the House prescribed. Six cases were accordingly selected from one single office, partly from choice, and partly from necessity. It is well that our readers should here be reminded, that the delay of the Court is not merely an empty sound, and unproductive of consequences to the Suitor or to the Solicitor. The latter, be it known, becomes entitled, from the commencement to the end of the suit, to what is called a Term-Fee; and, moreover,

* Burke :-Thoughts on the present Discontents.

when the cause is ripe for hearing or judgment, and is actually (as the phrase is) in the paper, to a further fee for attendance in Court, which is earned by his remaining quietly in his of fice: For he, of course, has too much sense to go to watch what he knows is not to come on; so that a cause fairly launched, and sailing (not through, but) in the Court of Chancery, is an annuity to the Solicitor. A certain Clerk in Court, also, comes in for his share of something, for doing absolutely nothing. As a matter of election, a single office* was resorted to, lest it should be said, that the whole profession had been ransacked and scoured to raise six solitary cases during a period of twenty-five years; but the possibility of option was also much abridged, partly from a natural attachment on the part of Soli citors to the aforesaid annuities, and partly from an apprehension, by making disclosures, of giving offence to that power with which they are frequently in contact. Of these cases,

which were detailed fully upon the motion, but which, with one exception we can only notice so far as their duration is concerned, we hear it constantly asserted, that they were by no means the strongest which might have been produced. Be that as it may, if no wilful and unnecessary delay by the parties themselves can be shown (and nothing of the sort was attempted, or can be pretended), nor any other explanation given to show them to be exceptions, they must be considered as much as specimens and samples of the general course of practice, as if sixty had been brought forward, or six hundred.

In the first case (Brown v. De Tastet), a Bill had been filed for an account; and one was decreed by the Master of the Rolls, in 1812, against which there was an Appeal in that same year. Meantime, in pursuance of the decree at the Rolls, a Report was made by the Master, at an expense of not less than 500l. Three exceptions to that Report were heard before the Vice-Chancellor, and the Report of the Master was set aside, at an expense of probably not less than double the sum. Upon that, there was an appeal from the decision of the Vice-Chancellor to the Lord Chancellor, which was heard a before the original appeal from the decree of the Master of the Rolls. And finally, nine years after that original decree was made, and after the appeal against it was entered, that appeal was heard by the Chancellor, and the decree at the Rolls was reversed,

*That of Mr Lowe, Southampton Buildings, who has written a book of considerable research upon the orders, fees, &c. of the Court of Chancery; from which things, we suspect, are sometimes borrowed without acknowledgment.