The Sun.
London, England, 1831-12-15 00:00:00

HOUSE OF COMMON ,S.

Mr. Sleath, from the Bank of England, appeared at the
bar with returns of the amount of balance of interest in
the hands of the Bank.

Jr.A Danvers, from the East India House, brought up
certain papers relative to the government of Fort George.
Mr. HODGES pres:mted a petition from the inhabi-
tants of Ramsgate, praying that provision might be made
in the Reform Bill to entitle them to vote in conjunction
with the town of Sandwich.
ABUSES IN THE COURT OF CHANCERY.

Mr. SPENCE presented a petition from a gentleman
named Joseph Harrington, complaining of the practice of
the Court of Chancery, particularly that portion of it
which related to the master's office, and the taxation of
bills of costs. The petitioner stated, that being unfortu-
n itely entitled to a portion of property under a will, which
was the subject of a suit in Chancery, his attorney's
bill amounted to no less than 7,0001. ; the Court of
Chancery permitted him to have the bill taxed, hut on
inquiry lie was informed that the expence of taxation
would be 1,500/.—(Loud cries of " Hear.") The bill of
costs extended to 7,000 folios, the mere copies of which
(which must be made, although wholly useless) would
he to 700—(Hear, hear),—and the whole expellee, the
items of which were stated in the petition would be
1,535/. 13s. 41—(Eieta.) He (Mr. Spence) knew that
such cases were of frequent occurrence, although they would
be hardly believed to occur in a country like this. He knew
one instance where a bill of costs in Chancery amounted
to 5001., and the expense • of its being taxed was an ad-
ditional 900/.—(Loud cries of " Hear, hear.") He
should dwell farther on the enormity of these cases did by
not know that a full and effectual Reform was shortie
about to take place—(hear)—lie was enabled to state
upon good authority, and he knew it for a fact, that
these abuses would he speedily and effectually reformed.—
(Cheers.) Under the sanction of the Lord Chancellor,
Bills were in the course of preparation, and the indi-
viduals employed about them were fully impressed
with the importance of the subject, and ho was
enabled to state, that shortly after the Christmas recess
one or more of those bills would be introduced in this or
the other House of Parliament ; one in particular relating
to the abuses detailed in the petition.—(Hear.)
Mr. D. W. HARVEY was persuaded that the informa-
tion just communicated by the Hon. and Learned Gentleman
would afford much gratification to the public. He hoped,
however, the Hon. and Learned Gentleman would direst
the attention of those engaged in preparing the Bills to
two tqings, viz.—the appointment of an officer, whose
exclusive duty it should be to tax bills of costs in
Chancery ; and also, that when fees to Counsel are taxed,
the allowances be returned. With regard to the first sub-
ject, the duty of taxing bills was oiten deputed by the
Masters to one of the Six Clerks, and it was not unfre-
quent that those officers had a direct interest in the
amount of the bids ; and, with regard to fees to Counsel,
those geddemen never returned any thing they received ;
but be did not see why one branch of the profession should
be taxed and not the other.

Mr. SPENCE said, that with regacd to taxing or re-
turning Counsel's tees, the Hon. Gentleman (Mr. Har-
vey) had his own remedy, as he was himself a solicitor.
Should the Masters in Chancery in future be allowed to tax
bills of costs, they would be prohibited from deputing that
power to any one else, so that in future they would not be
paid for that which they did not perform.
Mr. W. BROUGHAM corroborated the statement of
the Hon. and Learned Member, relative to the proposed
Reform to be introduced.
Mr. HUNT said the House bad now heard the
opinions of a Master in Chancery, a Counsel, and an
Attorney, but he hoped that the proposed bills would nut
be drawn by either of them, for be feared that between
the three the poor client would be where he now was.
The petition was read, and ordered to be printed.
Mr. SPENCE, with a view of affording every infor-
mation relative to the new Bills, he would move for the
returns of the amount of fees received by the sworn Clerks
in Court, or the six Clerks in each year for the last three
years, on the occasion of taxing bills of costs.—Ordered.
Mr. SPENCE then presented a petition from farmers
and breeders of horses in Yorkshire, yraying for an altera-
tion in the law regarding horses.
Colonel DAVIES presented a petition from the glove
manufacturers in Worcester, complaining of the great dis-
tress which exists in that trade. The Hun. Member de-
tailed the state of distress to which large numbers of
the operatives in that trade were reduced, and said be
earnestly hoped that his Majesty's Government would, at
an early period, institute an enquiry into the causes of the
distress, and introduce some remedy. He gave notice,
however, that shortly after Christmas he would move
for a Select Committee upon the subject, if his
Majesty,s Government did not take up the subject.
Mr. Robinson, Mr. Gore Langton, Colonel Torrens,
Mr. Sadler, Sir R. Vyvyan, Mr. Wetland. Mr. Warbur-
ton, and Mr. Hunt, spoke upon the petition.
Mr. P. THOMSON stated that when his Hon. and
Gallant Friend (Colonel Davies) brought the subject for-
ward, he would be prepared to state the view which his
Majesty's Government entertained, and what their inten-
tions were relative to the slave trade. At present it was
under the consideration of the Government.
Mr. SADLER obtained leave to bring in a Bill for re-
gulating the labour of childrem employed in mills and
factories throughout the kingdom. 7
Mr. CROKER asked the Chancalor of the Exchequer
when the information on which the details of the Reform
Bill were founded, relative to the members of boroughs to
be enfranchised, should he laid before the House.
Lord ALTHORP said the papers bad been sent down
to the House last night after adjournment, and they were
now in such a state that they could be delivered to mor-
row morning. The arrangement of the schedule, but not
the principle of the Bill depended upon the papers.
Mr. CROKER said, if the document were not placed
on the table to-morrow, be would object to the second
reading of the Bill.
Mr. STANLEY gave notice that he would to-morrow
move for leave to brine. in a Bill for tire relief
of Protestant members of 'Government from the sacra-
mental test in Ireland.
IRISH TITHES.
The &w an. having called on Mr. STANLEY, and that

part of the King's Speech which relates to Ireland having
been read,

Mr. STANLEY said, in rising, in obedience to the re-
commendation contained in the gracious speech delivered
from the throne, which we have just heard read,
to move for the appointment of a Select Committee
to inquire into the present state of the law relating to
tithee in Ireland, in order to ascertain whether such
legislative enactments cannot be made as shall at once
combine securisy for the property of the Established Church,
with the removal of those grievances existing under the
present system. I have undertaken, I am well aware,
a task of no ordinary difficulty.—(Hear.) Sir, we
shall be told on the one hand by those who adhere
to things as they arc, at all hazards that we are introdu-
cing unnecessary innovation, creating agitation on
subjects better kept quiet—leading the sanctions of effi.
cial authority to idle clamour and unnecessary complaint,
unsettling men's minds on the foundation of vested rights
of property, and giving an undue encouragement to un-
profitable and dangerous speculations. We shall, there-
fore, be told, Sir, on the other hand, lam well aware,
that to the evil if seen in its frightful magnitude, we
shrink from applying the only remedy that could re-
move it—that our judgments are warped by preju-
dice, that tve dare not look at the question as we
ought—and that nothing less than a sweeping
overthrow of all the existing institutions—the total de-
struction of property will be sufficient to remove the cause
of a grievance at once so wide in extent and numerous in its
consequences. But as I think it would be unwortey of his
Majesty's Government were they to shrink from the mag-
nitude anddifficulty of the task imposed uponthern, so
would I deem myself unworthy of the aituution which
I hold were I to refuse to offer myself as the
organ of that Government, in bringing befor this
House and the country, the views we take of the existing
evils, and to those points to which we conceive more espe-
cially legislative interference ought to be applied but, Sir, I
will own that upon such a question I am under a more
fearful responsibility still. It is not alone as a Minister of
the Crown, anxious for the tranquillity of Ireland, which
cannot be otherwise secured : it is the li'gher responsibility
of a Christian and a sincere Protestant, anxious for the
support of that Church to which I belong—for its re-
spectability, for its security, for its very existence, but still
more for the support of the religion for which that Church
is calculated to maintain and to propagate, that I call on
this House, of which so large a proportion belong to that
Church, seriously to consider what is 'the state in
which that Church and our common religion are now
placed in Ireland. Sir, the Right Hon. Member for
Tamworth, in commenting on some observations made
by me on that part of his gracious Majesty's speech,
which has been read, expressed the greatest possible alarm
at the notion of a Committee being appointed for this
purpose, and he argued with no inconsiderable degree
of plausibility, that so long as this important question
was pending in the House, so long a+ it was before the at-
tion of Parliament that there was a complaint between the
Clergy and the people, that any resistance would be
made, during the pendancy, to the payment of tithes
—(Hear.)—but tithes were paid only half-yearly, and
the present therefore was the most advantageous time
its discussion. It would be said that the present system
worked so well that there was no cause of complaint'
that nothing would exceed the harmony between Cathrlic
Clergymen and Protestant parishioners, that nothing
else was to be done than to enforce the violated
authority of the law. If this Was the case, the
Government would be without an excuse. They
would be condemned of having brought forward
measures of unnecessary agitation or proposed
changes, which the existing state of circum-
stances would not require. But if the state
of the law at present seas such as that it could
be hardly, if at all enforced, that if enforced the very sue•
cess of the exertions of Government would be the
ruin of the cause and the increase of the mis-
mischief—if the triumph, partial and unsatisfactory, only
increased discussions, if it placed the Protestant clergy in
a state of exposure on the one hand to the dangers
of absolute beggary, penury, and exile; and, on the
other hand, left them exposed to the charge, how-
ever unfounded, of avarice, extortion, and oppression. It
it prove not only injurious to the receiver of the tithes,
but equally so to those who paid them, he should have
good ground to call on that House to take the state of
the law into their most serious and deliberate consideration
which produced such effects, for the purpose of thvisink
some remedy. He would be told that Government was
giving way to clamour ; but, he would ask, were they to
be blamed for the delay that had been occasioned, or be-
cause that delay hae increased the magnitude of the
danger were they in their• turn to leave it to their suc-
cessors to propose, if it could be proposed, a remedy
for an evil which should then have become altogether
supportable, But if they did not yield to clamour, the
House would recollect that last winter, when various at-
te:npts were made to excite tumult and disorder, opposition
the established laws and settled institutions. Among the
various modes which were_resorted to by the then agi-
tators, various bodies of men, under the pretext
of playing at eertain games, assembled together,
threatening those who received and those who paid
tithes; but although those persons were put down by the
ordinary operations of the law, the effect they had excited
did not cease with their suppression. It began with the
county of Kilkenny, and by a gradual process it has now
spread through:the counties of Kilkenny Queen's, Carlow,
Wexford, Tipperary, Longford, and Westmeath, where
the same system prevals of opposition, tacit but
determined to the payment of tithes and of in-
timidation of those who think fit to pay.—
If be were told that the Government might have protected
those who had just claims and that they might
havr put down the spirit of disturbance his
answer was that if the House should be pleased to ap-
point a Committee to investigate the matter, he would
be ready to lay before it all the information as
to the means which his Majesty's Government had
at is disposal, and the course that had been pur-
sued. But in many instances there had been no
disturbances, no resistance to authority, nothing which
the law could lay hold of, but a firm and tacit reso-
lution to lay hold of all the powers of res-
sistance if the law placed within their grasp. We have
been told, however, that the tithes either were legal
or were not that if they were legal they might
be enforced, and all opposition to the collec-
tion of them be put down.—(Hear, hear.) lie
never denied the righis, on the contrary, she had always
admitted the claims of the clergyman to be legal, but there
might be on the one band the strict legal right,
and in the other a strict legal opposition to the enforcement
of that right. If a man, for instance, were in possessio❑ of
an estate which produced a gross omount of 1,000/. a
year, and if by various deductions and refusals to
pay that rental were rental were reduced to -'7OOl. a
year he had no right to come to the Legislature
and require the romoval of those restrictions by which he
was deprived of three hundred pounds a year. That
was precisely the situation in which the clergy stood
supposing that...gm—resistance was made to their claims,
but those which were sanction(' by the law of the
land. Among the attacks with which his Majesty's
Government had been assailed, was now coming front
a quarter which he had not in the least expected.
He did- not think that the Right Honour ble Gentleman
the Member fhr Hatwich could have charged him with
neglecting the claims of the Clergy, because that
Right Honourable Gentleman might have known
that if there was one clergyman more than :mt.
other who had met with much more encouragement
in the strict enforcement of his right, it was that Right
Hon. Gentleman's relative the Dean of St. Patrick.
(LEFT SPLAKIING.)

GENERAL POST LETTER ROBBERY.-
Since the examination of BARRET, the General Post
letter-sorter and carrier, at Marlborough-street-office, on
Saturday, the particulars of which appeared in our Paper
of Monday, the inspectors of the C. division of police
have been
actively engaged in endeavouring to ascertain
the extent of the robbery. On Sunday night Mr. M'KEE,
from information which he had received, proceeded to a
house, in Princes-street, Lisson-grove, where BARRET
had slept on the night previous to his being taken into
custody ; and, on making a forcible entrance into a hack
rcom, there discovered the Post-office uniform of BARRET
concealed under the bed. The pockets were examined,
and upwards of 30 letters, addressed to different indivi•
duals, were found therein. Among them was found the
letter in which the bill of exchange for 1001. which was
produced at the examination of the prisoner, had been en-
closed. On a further examination the inspector found a
Bank post bill for 1000/, one for 6161., another for 500/.
and several other bills, amounting in the whole to about
3,000/. From this it would appear that the system of
plundering letters had been carried on to a fearful extent;
and great praise is due to the inspectors, through whom
the prisoner 13Alt1xT and his brother-in•law were appre-
hended. We understand that the Bank post bill for 10001.
was enclosed in a letter to the Marquis of WF.STXIINSTER.
On Tuesday the prisoner BARRET, and a lad named Wm.
KAY, charged as an accessary, were taken before Mr.
CONANT, at Marlborough-street, and, after a long exa-
mination, they were remanded until next week.