The Sun.
London, England, 1854-07-01 00:00:00

lICTION BILL.

TEST.dMENTA.

TO THE EDITOR OF THE SUN,
Sin,—This bill passed the House of Lords by the convincing
,S majority of 2, in a house composed of 12 members; and,
after successive postponements, its second reading in the
House of Commons has been announced for Monday next.
It is calculated to ruin the practitioners in Doctors' Com-
mons in the following manner. Our contentious business it
sit once transfers to the solicitors ; and of our common form
r business it gives one-half to the country proctors, leaving the
other half to us for ten years only, as a sort of " loaf and cup
Isof water," to avoid the imputation of starving us outright.
It does indeed allow the London proctors (120 in number)
ISo share, if they can, the future testamentary business with
some 111,000 solicitors; but it is well known, and the evidence
given before the Chancery Commission, only last year, estab-
- lit bed the fact, that the proctors obtain their clients at present
th•ough the solicitors. It must be obvious, therefore, to any
one but the Lord Chancellor that all our business will stop in
Iran .itu in the offices of the solicitors themselves, that the
bill 12 /ill make ourbest clic ,ts our' keenest rivals, dissolve our
past connexions, laboriously or expensively acquired, and
force us to setk new clients through entirely new channels.
If, b ending to the storm, we ask but for compensation for
suck losses, we are told we must take the consequences of
Jestslation, and that Sye can form part, erships with the solici-
tors. But what fair equivalent can we offer them? They
have Alrsady got over the " chance of dying of their own too
much, " awl in future their clients bringing wills to prove
will be' introduced to some quondam clerk of Doctors' Com-
mons, as " the gentleman who superintends our testamentary
depart went."
It is true the Ecclesiastical Courts need extensive reform.
Institutions which have existed.for centuries with scarcely any
alteration must obviously require amendment to adapt them
to the changes society has undergone. Our profession should
be open to all corners willing to devote themselves to it, leav-
ing the supply to be regulated wholly by the demand, and
the statutory restriction on the business arrangements between
proctors and solicitors repealed. Our clerical nomenclature is
repugnant to the feelings and honest prejudices of a large pro-
portion of our fellow-countrymen, and confounds us with a
system, with which, with that exception, our testamentary
business has no connexion; and our monster sinecure, riveted
upon us by Parliament, is both a reproach and injury to us.
It is here that the Chancellor's argument would be just that if,
in making these and other needful alterations, the interests of
the proctors should be, affected, they must yield to those of
the public at large ; and I am-sure our profession would be
willing to rely for recompense for any such losses on the addi-
tional business the increased efficiency of our courts would
obtain for us.
To remodel and reconstruct in the practical spirit of English
legislation is not, hoWever, the Object of the present bill ;
but the annihilation, pure and simple, of our testamentary
courts. Such, a measure is in complete opposition to the
whole weight of evidence of the reports of Royal commis-
sions, and, up to this session, of committees of both Houses
of Parliament ; and the merchants and bankers of London,
and seventy of the leading firms of London solicitors, have
petitioned Parliament against it.
Is it too much to ask of the promoters of this bill to show
some great public advantage resulting from such great private
injury, and that our present system of procedure is so rotten,
and ourselves so much part and parcel of it, that the benefits
of reform must be measured by the amount of ruin which it
inflicts upon us ? May we not reasonably expect to have our
efficiency, as ref .rmed, first tried ? The floodgates may at
any time, by the simplest act of legislation, be opened to ad-
mit the solicitors; but when once opened our immediate de-
struction is irretrievable, unless some barrier gradually to
mitigate that result be first provided:
Incompetency on our part cannot be averred; for the
voluminous evidence before Parliament fully proves our
respectability and efficiency. The real property clauses have
been withdrawn from the bill, and no inconvenience has
hitherto arisen from the line of demarcation between the
jurisdictions of the Courts of Chancery and Doctors' Commonp.
Questions of validity are entirely different from questions of
construction or distribution ; so are the litigant parties ; and,
it would seem, so also the numbers of their counsel, four or
six being required in Doctors' Commons, and from twenty to
thirty even in remodelled Chancery. In expense, also, the
dissimilarity is still preserved, the costs in the instance
recently quoted in the Times by a Chancery barrister of a corn•
mission to take evidence being, in Doctors' Commons, 71. per
diem, in Chancery, 371. per diem.
The solicitors, besides their Parliamentary, conveyancing,
mescals, ile, and other business, already practise in the com-
mon law, equity, bankruptcy, insolvency, and criminal courts
of the country—studies surely of sufficient magnitude and
variety to admit of question whether it would be wise to add
to them those of another whole profession ; for this bill " is
but the prelude to the ruder gale." The Chancellor has already
introduced a bill for the transfer of our jurisdiction in causes
of marriage and divorce to the Court of Chancery. Our purely
ecclesiastical business is very small, and our admiralty busi-
ness, notwithstanding the well-deserved popularity of its pre-
sent court, must depart from us with the rest, as it will never
be tolerated that a court to whose arbitrement nations sub-
mit their claims should be confined to some dozen practi-
tioners to which our profession will then have dwindled.
Our bar, too, on which the highest encomiums have been
passed, and which has given to the world such men as Sir
Leoline Jenkins and Lord Stowell, is to be destroyed with us.
It is already a complaint of our jurists that the ,ivil law is
not studied as its merits deserve. Is it wise to destroy our
only courts which foster it ? We are at the commencement of
what may be a long European war. Is it wise, at such a time,
to disperse the bar and practitioners of our Admiralty Court,
upon the consequences of whose decisions may depend the
destinies of nations ?
It is in evidence before the Chancery Commissioneis, that,
comparing the number of attorneys with the number of proc-
tors and the amount. of our testamentary business, an attor-
ney would be thirty-three years in acquiring as much expe-
rience as a proctor novs-does in one year. Will the public be
better served by the former, with so limited au experience,
than by the latter, with heir constant practice and exclusive
devotion to it, and,; such a division of labour to be called
monopoly ?
The remark of Lord Erskine mentioned by Lord Brougham,
" You would not surely send a fellow-creature into the Court
of Chancery," reminds us all of the estimation in which Chan-
cery was up to no late period held, and the recent great re-
forms have not yet been fully tried. If unsuccessful, it were
most unwise to extend the jurisdiction of those courts; if
successful, those courts will be fully employed.
A most fatal error of the bill—as, did space permit me, I
could fully prove—is the severance of the contentious from
the common form business. Experience in the former is the
essential requisite for a due Worn:mime of the latter. The
clearly proved incompetency of the country courts results
entirely, as shown by Lord John Russell in the debate on the
Ecclesiastical Courts Bill of 1544, from the small amount of
their contentious business ; and the distinction between the
two branches will be most difficult to be drawn, but the bill
proposes their complete separation.
Its provisions affecting us may be thus summed up :—Our
fees, of course, must be reduced ; our common form business
diminished one half, and that secured to us for ten years
only, and our contentious- business taken away altogether.
Part of our business will thus be given to the country proc-
tors, already incompetent to discharge it, and likely to con-
tinue so—a further part to the solicitors at present ignorant
of it, and incapable as a body of acquiring extensive experi-
ence in it. The small remainder left to us will be clearly in-
sufficient to preserve our efficiency, and we are to be com-
pensated (!) by being admitted as solicitors, i.e., to practise a
profession of which we know nothing, in competition with
men thoroughly conversant with it.
It really seems to me that a more ingenious process for in-
suring competency by effecting injustice could not well be
devised.
It Nxas stated in the House of Lords that the title of Mr.
Moore to his sinecure was as good as the title of any of the
noble lords to their estates. The position of a proctor cannot
certainly in its quality or emoluments be compared with that
of a noble lord. but as regards its quality it may not
unfavourably be contrasted with Mr. Moore's. His is not a
patent office, nor .does the statute 9 Geo. -IV., c. 51, in any
way guarantee to him its continuance ; whereas the proctors
are secured iu their exclusive practice and emoluments by the
statute 53 Geo. 111., c. 127, s. 9, which imposes penalties on
any participation in their fees or functions.
Why, then, under his conviction of the necessity of so
sweeping a reform amongst us, are only Mr. Moore's claims
to compensation intelligible to the Lord Chancellor ? Is it
because Mr. Moore is, like many of the noble lords, indebted
for his title to the position of his forefathers—or is it because
the claims of the proctors, being founded on services rendered,
are too subtle for the Lord Chancellor's comprehension?
A VOICE FROM DOCTORS' COMMONS.
30th June, 1554