The Sun.
London, England, 1853-07-25 00:00:00

TO THE EDITOR OF THE SUN.

Sin,—l have a poor relation, who, under an order of
the Court of Chancery, is entitled to an annuity of about
401., payable half-yearly, on the 24th of February,
and the 24th of August ; but for the payment which be-
comes due on the 24th of August, she has every year to
wait till the 2d of November.
I have also a cousin who is entitled to a rent of about
2501., which the Accountant-General was some years
ago ordered to pay him by quarterly payments on the
four usual days ; but he has always to wait till the 2d
of November for the quarterly payment which becomes
due the 29th of September.
I am myself entitled to the dividends of some Reduced
Annuities, which, if the fund were not in Chancery, I
could receive at the Bank on the 10th or 12th of Octo-
ber ; but now I must wait till the 2d of November before
I can get them.
There are many thousands of suitors subjected to
these and similar inconveniences, which are surely un-
just and oppressive, and ought to be deemed intolerable,
unless the public good requires them. Yet the only
reasons which the Lord Chancellor gives for their con-
tinuance are such as it is impossible to listen to with re-
spect or even with patience. They are an outrage upon
common sense and common decency.
Every year his lordship issues a general order for
closing the Accountant-General's office from the 19th of
August till the 28th of October (which, for all purposes
of real business, means the 2d of November, the first
day of Michaelmas Term) ; and the reasons for issuing
such order are stated on the face of it in the following
recital :—" Whereas it is proper that the accounts kept
by the Accountant-General of this Court should be exa-
mined and compared, in order to settle the same ; and
whereas it will require considerable time to perfect such
examination, and it is necessary that a time should be
appointed for closing the books of the said Accountant-
General for the purposes aforesaid."
Now, sir, the Accountant-General (except that he
cannot misapply or of himself dispose of the funds and
cash placed in his name) is neither more nor less than
the banker and stockbroker of the suitors of the court.
It is no doubt necessary that his books should be accu-
rately kept and their accuracy ascertained, and most
splendidly, not to say enormously, does the country pay
Lord J. Russell's accomplished and immoveable cousin
the present Accountant-General (whose public spirit
would " freeze a salamander"), for seeing this done. But
fancy, if you can, the Bank of England, or any private
banking-house, or any firm of stockbrokers, giving notice
to their customers that their offices will be altogether
closed for ten weeks, to enable them to " examine and
compare, in order to settle" their accounts for the cur-
rent year. Would not any persons that could issue such
a notice be considered fit to become inmates of Bethlem
or St. Luke's ? Yet this is the course of the Court of
Chancery—part of that admirable system of administer-
ing justice under which Lord St. Leonards (one of Mr.
Disraeli's " great statesmen"), declares that the country
has arrived at an unparalleled degree of prosperity !
Well, indeed, might Sir Samuel Romilly observe to Lord
Campbell—" The number of suitors in Chancery is no-
thing compared to the community, or the Court would
long ago have been abolished as a nuisance."
But the thing is really worse than it appears. The
Accountant-General and his clerks are bad enough in
all conscience (nor is this to be wondered at, seeing that
the pernicious system of gratuities was retained in the
Accountant-General's office for nearly twenty years after
it was abolished everywhere else); but still they areinot
such imbecile creatures as the Lord Chancellor's order
would make them appear. They do not require ten weeks
every autumn to examine the year's accounts, and, in
fact, they do not consume three weeks out of the ten
in any such dull work. The rest of the time they are to
be found, not in Chancery-lane or Threadneedle-street,
but at country seats, at watering places, and on the
Continent. The recital I have copied is only a pious
fraud—an annual work of fiction with which we poor
suitors may entertain ourselves, while we are kept out
of our money—in fact, a mere lie, intended to deceive
that many-headed but unreflecting dupe, the public, and
signed by the Lord Chancellor only as a matter of
course. If written with candour and truth, it would be
expressed in some such terms as the following :
" Whereas this Court thinks fit that the Accountant-
General and his clerks should have many holidays, and
deems it inevitable that they should all take their
holidays at once."
This, however, would be seen to be too bad, and there-
fore the Court is driven to the hard necessity of making
the Accountant-General and his clerks seem a little
worse than they are, in order to enable them to steal
away for six weeks' or two months' holidays, under the
false pretence that they are all the while examining ac-
counts in Chancery-lane. In the middle of the
nineteenth century this is our administration of equity—
this our public morality !
It is, I conceive, impossible to be guilty of a contempt
of Court in writing or speaking of these matters. What-
ever may be the amount of contempt, public or private,
which such abuses may call forth, there can be no guilt
in it. The offices of the Court of Chancery were all,

until recently, a disgrace to the country, and the Ac-
countant-General's office a disgrace to all the rest—a
thing lit only to he annexed to the odious Ecclesiastical
Courts, and to share with them the fate of the Star-
Chamber and the Palace Court.

Out of the Court of Chancery, who would believe that
an office instituted fur such purposes as the Accountant-
General's, would be absolutely closed against the suitors
for a hundred working days every year (which is what
the four vacations amount to), in order that the officials

might all take their holidays simultaneously ? Or who
would believe that, at the best of times, while the Bank
of England and all private bankers pay cheques from 9
till 4 (some of them till 5), and even the office of the
Accountant in Bankruptcy is open from 10 till 4,
Mr. Russell (who is about the best paid public func-
tionary in the kingdom) cannot deliver out cheques for
more than three hours a day—viz., from 11 till 2 ?
Does any man in the country doubt that the Accountant-
General's office (if it must continue to exist) ought to be
open for a reasonable number of hours every working
day in the year just as the bank and private bankers' and
stockbrokers' offices are ?
In November last, Lord St. Leonards, in the House
of Lords, after acknowledging the justice of the com-
plaints which had been made respectinc, the close of the
Accountant-General's office for the autumn, promised
that "arrangements should be made to meet the just
demands of the public and to clear the Court from that
imputation." But he resigned the great seal, having done
nothing on the subject. Sir Samuel Romilly would
have corrected the abuse without a speech. Lord St.
Leonards makes a very nice speech, and leaves the abuse
untouched.
We have now Lord Cranworth, whose perfect good
sense on all ordinary topics it is so delightful to listen
to, but whose adversaries represent him as being hope.
lessly deficient in executive talent. They seem to think
that his Lordship is no more equal to the great task of
law reform than an Addison or a Roscoe would be to
the work of a Luther or a John Knox. I sincerely
trust and believe that they reckon without their host ;
and that at all events, when he is asked to sign the gene-
ral order for closing the Accountant-General's office this
long vacation, he will have courage enough to pronounce
the monosyllable "No."
I beg to apologise for the length of this letter, and
remain, sir, your very obedient servant,
COMMON SENSE.
Highgate, July, 1853.

Friday about
I fifty of the A. Division waited
inconvenient, they were com-
pelled, " or incurring the
at the risk of being six'
to go to church, of what-
everoLown Sir Richard Mayne.
E.
might
persuasion
theybe. S. Richard
religious
displeasurepTehTlel eynd THE CHURCH
taCti
le du
out
fhe
talait,
rNp superiors, THE
however
E
told
them that he believed some intimation of the kind
was
disseminated during the administration of Mr.
Walpole at the Home-office ; but he believed it was a
matter of option with the men, who withdrew ap-
parently satisfied.
STRIKE OF THE HULL POLICE.—HULL, SATURDAY.—
An agitation has been going on for some time past in
this town, amongst the police, to obtain an advance of
their wages from 18s. sd. and 16s. sd. a week, to 21s.
sd. and 19s. sd. The watch committee have refused to
accede to the request, and the consequence is that about
thirty of the men have resigned, and about fifty refuse
to do duty, but will not resign. The watch committee
have this day been sitting to receive applications for
the vacant situations, but they had not had a single ap-
plication.

- PRINCE ALBERT AND PSALMODY.—The Christian
Times says :—" It was lately announced by the court
newsman, that a piece of sacred music, composed by the
King of Hanover, had been performed in the Chapel
Royal. This occurrence was nearly coincident with
another, which is not likely to reach the world through
the medium just referred to, but which may not on that
account be less interesting to many of our readers—we
allude to the fact that the Prince Consort has presented
a dissenting congregation with two pieces of sacred
music of his Royal Highness's composition. The cir-
cumstances were these :—A committee of gentlemen
were engaged in compiling a new tune book_
of
..._
use of the congregation referred to—the
.Weigh-b
the
one when, in a collection of tunes obtained from
other side of the Atlantic, they found .
question
attri-
buted to Prince Albert. The gentlemen
"Sinnwhich it was
in
nevery tune
were laudably anxious, not only to g
to its right owner, but in every case for its use,
practicable, to obtain the owner s permission
placed beyond a,
ter, and the origin of the p
An application was therefore.emceadewasin the proper guar-
otifiecaodudristei,onal offer, upon th
whichl its royal composer imme-
use. That permission was
d doubt
iate iybygtrahnetedfor. permission .
itsb
graciously highness, anotherof his - musicale
part of his royal royal
ae3ortion of the tune book just
forPmrine Alberts ' Gotha ' and a ' Christ-
mas accompanied
readily accepted,
Inas
and
compositions,n d
accordinglyn y
m Hymn'
adopted by the Weigh-house. The first three pastors of
this congregation were clergymen ejected from their
achniewdasy,
livings by the Act of Uniformity, and were repeatedly
imprisoned—sometimes interrupted in the performance of
divine service, and taken from the sacred desk to gaol.
Gratifying is the contrast thus presented between the
fortunes of a non-conformist church in the Stuart era
and under the benignant sway of Queen Victoria."
CRIM. Cox.—An action for erim. con. is brought
against Mr. Barry Baldwin, the ex, M.P. for Tot-
nes. He employed a gentleman, an attorney, to go
to Totnes to collect evidence in support of his petition
against the hon. gentleman who defeated him ; and is
charged with having seduced the wife of the attorney
while he was so employed at Totnes. The lady is young
enough to be Mr. Baldwin's grand-daughter, it is said.
—Marti Times.