The Sun.
London, England, 1836-11-25 00:00:00

rity funds for their sown benefit) a Majority of ten to seven
when you will remember, and I dare you to deny it, that
after I bad urged the same argument against the Council
having anything to do with these funds that I have
now, that you yourself admitted that they were im-
proper persons, and you asked me if I would be
satisfied if you gave to the petitioners a majority over the
Council, in order to prevent such misapplication of the cha-
rity money that I anticipated.
Such conduct, Sir, may be becoming enough in Master
Brummagem, but in Master Brougham it is as unexpected as
it is inexcusable. In order to make out somethinc, like a case
to justify you, you have, if I am to understand thatb this deci-
sion of yours is conclusive, and is to be reported to the Chan-
cellor, thrown all the blame on me, to which I will not sub-
mit. Far be it, however, from me to throw out in this stage
of the business, a threat to you in your capacity of a Judge.
I have too much respect for that high office, when it is
held as it ought to be—for the protection of its suitors—
to be unmindful of my duty. All I ask is, that there
should be a re-hearing, and that you should set yourself right
where you have been led into error. All I ask, in short, is
even-handed justice, in which case this letter shall never be
made public, nor shall your serenity be again disturbed by any
further remonstrance from

Your obedient and very humble servant,
E. L. CHARLTON.
P. S. I shall be in London on the first day of Term, and
shall wait for your answer at Fendall's Hotel, Palace-yard.
To William Brougham, Esq.
His LORDSHIP continued—The Master having commu-
nicated this state of circumstances to me, I felt it my duty
to notice them, whereupon I received the following letter
Fendall's Hotel, Palace Royal, Nov. 9, 1836.
My Lord—By the report in the Times newspaper of yes-
terday of the proceedings in Chancery on the preceding day,
I am given to understand that your Lordship says that you
have "no legal knowledge" that a certain letter of the 24th
of October, signed with my name and dated from my residence
to Master Brougham, respecting his conduct in the matter of
the Charity Trusts of Ludlow, was " written" by me. lam
uncertain, therefore, whether this letter will throw any addi-
tional light on the subject, but the motive I have in writing it
is to avow the authorship, and to say, with all becoming re-
spect, that I shall not shrink from the responsibility.
The letter was written some time ago, and I came to town
on the first day of Term for the express purpose of receiving
Master Brougham's answer, and if Master Brougham had
been such a Judge as your Lordship would make out, I
am inclined to think that he might have contrived to have
been in London at the period when the Judges inva-
riably assemble (instead of arriving near a week after-
wards), particularly when he had such weighty matters
before him—a circumstance that I should hardly notice,
if it did not forcibly point out, that though he is a Master in
Chancery, he is, from his own want of punctuality, and from
the reprehensible manner in which he preserves order in his
own Court (to which I shall take another opportunity of ad-
verting), barely entitled to that respect and dignity, which
ought, in my humble opinion, to be devoted invariably to the
solemn functions of a Judge.
I may remark, too, in passing, that though I do not presume
to question your Lordship's extensive power, I do presume to
assert that it has a limit beyond which your Lordship dare not
force it ; and in so important a question as this, which affects
the liberty of a British subject, aid the independence of the
British Bar, I venture to dispute the groundwork of your
authority—that is, whether your Lordship had the right, under
the Municipal Act, to send the appointment of trustees to the
Master at all (and, if I am not misinformed, such was your
Lordship's opinion once), and against which I, in the first in-
stance, protested before the Master.
The words of the Act, I believe, are (I quote from memory),
that in such case, that is, "if Parliament did not otherwise
provide, before the first day of August, 1836, the Lord High
Chancellor should have power to make such orders for the
administration of the fnnds as he shall see fit." Not a sylla-
ble is said of the appointment of new trustees ; but, on the
contrary, the context clearly indicates, that it was the inten-
tion of the Legislature to continue the old trustees, subject to
your Lordship's orders, in whom, and in whom only, the legal
estate is now vested. If by these half dozen words it was
meant to vest all the trust estates in the kingdom in the Lord
Chancellor, it surely would have been alluded to in the pre-
amble of the Bill. But I ask pardon for presuming to dis-
cuss this point with your Lordship, which I should not ven-
ture to do if it was not in reference to what I shall subse-
quently advert, and if I was not informed that every Gentle-
man of any eminence at the Chancery Bat is of my opinion.
But to proceed—
Your Lordship says, that "for above 30 years' experience"
you never knew an instance of this kind. Possibly not. But
before your Lordship imputes crime to the singularity of the
circumstance, I would venture to ask your Lordship, if in
" above 30 years' experience" you ever knew a person who
calls himself a Judge, and who shelters himself under the purity
of the judicial mantle, to have been guilty of the practices with
which Master Brougham stands charged by me, and of which
I have unquestionable proof?
The point in issue, my Lord, I humbly but fearlessly main-
tain is whether Master 'Brougham has misconducted himself
or not ; and if he has, whether my letter is such as to deserve
imprisonment, with which your Lordship indirectly threatens
me? That is the question.
If I do not generally practice in your Lordships', nor in
any other Court, I am not, I presume, on that account the
less entitled to the protection that a Counsel has a right to
demand in behalf of justice and his clients • and, to put an
hypothetical case, I would ask your Lordship if a Judge (a
Recorder for instance) in some inferior Court imputed to
Counsel what was notoriously untrue, and forfeited his word
to him in a most inexcusable manner in order to give a judg-
ment for sinister purposes, what, I ask, is to become of the
boasted independence of the British bar, if the Counsel thus
insulted, tricked, and defeated, is not to be allowed to complain
of the deception that has been practised upon him, in the
manner that one gentleman usually complains of the ill-treat-
ment that he has received from another, without being hoisted
up for contempt of a superior Court, and an upright and en-
lightened Judge?
My Lord, I repeat that I have put this case hypothetically.
In the defence of my own conduct it would ill become me to
charge Master Brougham with sinister purposes ; yet I must
be permitted to say, that I humbly conceive that party pur-
poses are, in a court of justice, sinister purposes ; and, in jus-
tice to my constituents, I must add, that I shall now, I fear,
be reluctantly compelled, in consequence of what has taken
place, to institute an enquiry into the decisions of the Master
on the meeting of Parliament, not only in the Ludlow case,
but in others.

I shall feel myself called upon too, my Lord, in justice to
my own character, to repel the animadversions that your Lord-
ship has cast upon my conduct from the judicial chair in the
High Court of EQUITY. My Lord, I contend that I have
preferred no calumnious insinuations against Master Brougham.
I have witnesses of the highest respectability to confirm the
truth of every word that I wrote. I contend too, that
I made no use of a " threat" in the manner in which
your Lordship has introduced it. In brief, my Lord, I
claim for myself the most disinterested and the most cre-
ditable conduct as a counsel, a Member of Parliament,
and a man, which I defy your Lordship to controvert
or impugn—my sole object was to see the Charity Funds of
the borough that I have the honour to represent, administered
for Charity purposes only, for which they were originally
given. I cared not by whom, so that they were not entrusted
to a set of persons who denied that the estate was a Charity
estate, and denying it, made no secret that if they could get
possession of it they would devote the funds for the Town
Fund, and who, since the case was before the Master, have
positively commenced an action against the Charity Trustees
for part of the property in question. Was this conduct of
mine criminal ?
The truth is, my Lord, and I will not conceal the fact, that
I suspected, and not without reason, towards the close of the
last session of Parliament, that a portion of his Majesty's
Government were attempting to convert the Charity,
Funds throughout the kingdom to party and political pur-
poses, which I did not then hesitate to avow ; and I was re-
solved to watch them very narrowly. Circumstances that
will probably be made public in due time, were brought under
my notice, which tended strongly to confirm my suspi-
cions, but it was not till I heard that a certain legal
functionary that had been very active in these Charity
concerns had given it as his opinion that there could be no ap-
peal from the Master's decision, which would be therefore ne-
cessarily final, that my fears were more strongly excited, and
my attention more immediately called to the conduct of the
Master in every case brought before him. It is not my busi-
ness now to say what that conduct has been ; I shall confine
myself to the part that I acted. Being perfectly well ac-
quainted with the subject of the Charities belonging to Lud-
low, which I have more than once prevented the misapplica-
tion of, I resolved to accept the brief that the petitioners
offered to me, and appear as Counsel in the cause. I had
certain misgivings from what I heard and saw, which will be
given fully when I come to speak of the gross irregularity, not
to say indecency, that prevailed in the Master's Court, and
therefore I was determined to be very particular in my own
observations, and to be equally attentive to those of the
Master—two only of which I will allude to now. The
first was, that the Master said, that the Council would
be very improper persons for Trustees ; the other was a
distinct and positive promise to grant me an opportunity of
reply, before he settled who the new Trustees should be ;
scarcely, however, were these words uttered, scarcely had the
breath escaped his lips, when Master Brougham gave judg-
ment in the teeth of his own words, by selecting the very per-
sons that he acknowledged would be improper, and instead of
keeping his word to me, he left London, and gave his clerk an
order to draw up the Report, as the case was " settled." Nor
was this all.

Now I ask your Lordship, I ask any man of honour, what be
would have done under these irritating circumstances but write
to Master Brougham, and attempt to obtain the fulfilment of
his pledges, which, as a man of honour, and a gentleman, he
was bound to perform ? If I wrote stronger than might have
been expected, let me beg you to look at the motive I had at
heart—the disappointment that I had experienced as a Counsel
the injustice to my clients and constituents—the suspicions
that had been excited—the trick that I had been played—from
all which there was No APPEAL. The sole object that I had,
and this I solemnly affirm, was to give Master Brougham au
opportunity of setting himself right where he had been led into
error, and to remind him of the pledges he had made and for-
gotten which I expected he would readily correct; and ifmy letter
was as your Lordship asserts, for the purpose " of obtaining
the ends of the writer," it was because the ends of the writer
were those of justice and of truth, and were such as the
Master himself had in effect pledged himself to support .t
This is the head and front of my offending ; and when I
say that through life I have been the ardent opposer of abuses,
let me find them where 1 would; and in Ludlow particularly,
I have spent large sums, incurred great ebloquy, and quarrelled