The Sun.
London, England, 1831-03-15 00:00:00

' more important intereite of public justice. Their Lord-
ships could hardly credit the unremitting energy with
which this siege had been, he might saay strictly, hourly
carried on since he first proposed the measure for their
adoption. It almost amounted to a blockade, and all that
it wanted to constitute a close blockade would be afforded
by the artful motion for delay just proposed by his Noble
and Learned Friend. He, therefore, called ❑pon the
House to refuse its sanction to the motion, as one fraught
with more insidious mischief than their Losdshipa coulel
have supposed, from the artful statement of his Noble and
Learned Friend. Not that he was a captious stickler for
a particular dav, or would sacrifice, in the slightest point,
the public good to the strict letter of a motion ; but that
he felt himself bound to oppose the principle on which he
was persuaded his Noble and Learned Friend bad brought
it forward. He was anxious, however, to remove all
the grounds of cavil on the part of the opponents, direct
or indirect, open or covert, of the measure ; and he was,
!Above all, anxious that its provisions and principles
should be thoroughly understood ; and therefore should
not object to a moderate delay, if he could persuade
himself that by the delay they would have the ad.
vantage of the observations of the Noble and Learned
Lord who had so long presided ever the Court to
which the jurisdiction of the present Bill properly
belonged. He would consent to this moderate delay with
a frankness at least equal to that which his Noble and
Learned Friend had proposed his motion, but should offer
to his motion as it stood his most strenuous dissent. The!
Noble and Learned Lord proceeded next to say, that he
felt some difficulty in replying to the observations of his
Noble and Learned Friend, in consequence of the shifting,
qualified, untangible nature of those obj ctions. His
Noble and Learned Friend never expressed himself hut in
doubt, thrown out as a quasi friendly suggestion, qualified
with a salvo of its not being intended as a decided objec-
tion to the Bill, but as a matter worthy of delay for its
serious consideration. But, alas ! all this friendly sugges_
tion, by way of doubt, was much worse for the Bill than
decided protest against its principle; for the inevitable
tendency of such insidious opposition out of doors, at
least, was to favour the clamour and misrepresentation
which those interested in its defeat had since its promul-
gation been endeavouring to excite. His Noble and
Learned Friend ha..? compounded his charge by every arti-
fice of imagination and forgetfulness ;—of forgetfulness,
for he bad carefully forgotte❑ all that be (the Lord Chan-
cellor) had e xplained at such length, of the tendency and
principle of the Bill, on the former occasion, supplying the
omissions from his own fruitful fancy. He would cite
one or two instances of this combination of artful obli-
vion and fancy. His Noble and Learned Friend had dwelt
upon the tendency of the Bill to add to the public bur-
dens,texpressing a becoming jealousy of all unnecessary ex-
penditure of the public money. Now, to say nothing of
his being perhaps as entitled to lay claim for having exer-
cised a constitutional jealousy on this score as his Noble
nil Learned Friend, he would only point out the insi-

_ .
dious insinuation, which this, as he would show, most
unfounded insinuation contained. His Noble and
Learned Friend well knew, that there was no one
mode more certain than another, by which the public
mind could be raised against a measure, than to im-
press it with the notion that its tendency would b'a to add
to the public burdens ; and therefore the burden of his
Noble and Learned Friend's speech was, that the new staff of
judicial officers, to quote his own expression, would be
an additional expense instead of a saving to the public ; or,
said his Noble and Learned Friend, the cost of the whole
seventy Bankruptcy Commissioners was but from 21,0001.
to 25,0001., while that of the ten new Judges proposed to
be substituted for them by the present Bill would be
40,000/., thereby entailing an additional charge of at
least 15,0001. per annum to the public.—(" Hear," from
Lord Wynford.) What answer would lie make to phan- I
tonic of clerks and commissioners which his Noble and
Learned Friend had conjured up, to scare, if not himself,
certainly those out of doors, as thus likely to cost the
public 40,000/. per annum ? Why, simply this—that
his Noble and Learned Friend's statement was without

:be shadow of a foundation—(Hear)—that it was, in

fact, from beginning to the end pure fiction.—(Hear.)
He would not then fatigue the House with a twice-told
tale of his former calculations on this point, for he was
confident that if his Noble and Learned Friend had for-
gotten them for the ace esion, many of their Lordships had
not.—(Hear.) He hail, when explaining the features
and details of the Bill, shown their Lordships that so far
from his plan adding 15,0001. a year to the public burdens
it would actually lessen them by more than that amount—
(Hear)—that the saving would be somewhere about
20,0001. per annum. And this led him to another, if
possible, still more groundless insinuation (for his Noble
and Learned Friend had not ventured upon a bold and
tangible assertion) of his Noble and Learned Friend—
namely, that with reference to the funds from which the
new Judges were to be paid. Strongly as the public felt,
and justly too, on the score of additional expense, they felt
still more strongly averse from the idea that Parliament
should make free with the funds belonging to the suitors
in Chancery—( He tr)—hence his Noble and Learned
Friend, with all that advocate one-sided adroitness,—all
that nisi pries astutenes which he had often admired in
Westminster-hall—charges the framers of the Bill with
designing to pay the ten new Judges out of the suitors'
fund.---(" Hear," from Lord Wynford.) From the begin-
ning to the end there did not exit the shadow of a foun-
dation for this assertion—the pure creation of his Noble and
Learned Friend's fruitful, and, as in this instance, most
cunning fancy.—( Bear.) He (Lord Brougham) never said
that the new Judges were to be paid out of the suitors'
fund ; on the contrary, he most distinctly stated that they
were not to be so paid ; and this explicit disclaimer of
such a proposition was the only shadow of a foundation
for his Noble and Learned Friend's artful statement. In-
deed, his Noble and Learned Friend seemed to he as igno-
rant of tl e nature of the suitors' fund, as he evidently was
of the tendency of the Bill lie was covertly endeavouring,
to defeat ; fir if lie was not so, he would not have told
them that the fund was similar in kind to that of un-
claimed dividends. It was not ; and for this simple rea-
sun,—if the Government made use of any portion of the
unclaimed dividends it did so on the guarantee that it was
only as a loan, to be instantly repaid to the first bona fide
claimant that presented himself. But no such use could
be made of the suitors' fund, (of which there were two
species under the control of the Court of Chancery) ; and
the Government could only apply that fund called the
"dead fund" for defraying the charge of the machinery of
justice, and this, of course, only by permission of the
Legisl iture by statute. But, said his Noble and Learned
Friend, there was no instance of any portion of the suitors'
fund—he it the dead fund or what it would—being thus
applied to the payment of any of the officers of the Court
of Chancery. A simple fact would show his Noble and
Learned Friend and their Lordships how ill-founded was
this declaration. The charge of the Master's-office, the
Vice-Chancellor's-office, and, since Mr. Pitt's regulation
in 1795, the salaries of the Masters, 6001. a-year each,
were paid cut of this fund—(Hear)—and all the altera-
tions which his Bill would effect; so far as the suitors' fund
was concerned, would be to restore to it the 6,5001. per
annum which it at present contributed towards the charges
of the Master's office—(Hear)—showing that the asser-
tion of his Noble and Learned Friend was a most gratuitous
and groundless—nay, in the teeth of fact—creation of his
own fertile fancy. This was not all. lie fund which
he had alluded to as that which would be applied to the
charge of the machinery of the Courts, was the dead fund

—_that is, the fund arising from the interest simple and
compounded of the suitors' fund ; and no payment would
be called fur by his Bill at all affecting that fund. The
next point to which he would advert was the insinuation
of his Noble and Learned Friend, of the needless number of
the new Judges which the Bill proposed to appoint. It,
said his Noble and Learned Friend, was the first time that
he ever heard of ten Judges being appointed to determine
one branch of one portion of law ; and he then indulged in
some sneering comparisons between these officers and what
he termed the younger as well as the elder brothers of the
Trinity-house. Now, was it fair to thus attempt to stig-
matize ten gentlemen about to be summoned to the dis-
charge of very important administrative as well as judicial
duties ? and was it fair to insinuate that their number was
far greater than their duties could require, without having
inquired into those duties, or waited till the appointment
had been completed, and the machine actually put in mo-
tion ? And first with respect to the number of the Judges.
His Noble Friend argued that because fifteen Judges were
all that were engaged in all the Courts in Westminster-
hall, that therefore four or five ought to suffice for the
intended bankruptcy jurisdiction. Now he (Lord
Brougham) had, on a I,rrcer occasion, explained at length
the grounds on which be proposed that ten should be the
minimum number of the new Judges—.had explained that
he at the outset was anxious to have a less number—to
have but five if possible—and that nothing but the unani-
mous conviction of, and after numerous conferences with,
the most experienced equity and common law practitioners,
induced him to abandon his own small number, and agree '
that less than ten Judges would defeat the end he had in view
in all his legal Reform measures. The Noble and Learned
Lord dwelt on this point at some length, referring to the
report of his speech for proof of his declaration, that he
had originally proposed but five new Judges (though
not in a tune peremptory or dogmatical), and that only
conviction, the result of the demonstrations of experienced
men, induced him to propose that the number should be
ten. And rightly did the eminent men whom he bad con-