The Sun.
London, England, 1851-07-30 00:00:00

CHANCERY REFORM.

It may well be questioned, if the professors of the
common law had some ten years ago introduce, I a certain.
amount of substantial reform into their metho. Is of pro-
cedure, whether they might not still have retained the
business of the country. We were perfectly 1 villing to
have received changes at their hands, and prett: 7 much in
their own way, so they had given but a freer course to the
administration of justice. No layman willini ;ly takes
upon himself the character of a law reformer. The doc-
trines with which he is called upon to deal, the circle of
ideas into which he must transport himself, ar, a so alien
from his ordinary habits of thought, that he re luctantly
undertakes and gladly relinquishes the repulsi ye task.
Nothing but the direct necessity, nothing but t the con-
tinued spectacle of cumulative injustice, could induce
any other than a professional man to broach ir carry
through inquiries of such a nature. It was r tot until
the three superior courts at Westminster had clearly
shown that even justice might be purchased at t no h gh
a rate, and not until they had manifested a de-
termination to persist in the most dilatory :nodes
of procedure, that the people of this country tc ,ok the
matter into their own hands. The returns of the
number of causes, and of the amount of property an nually
adjudicated upon before the newly constituted tril
afford the most satisfactory comment upon the ad moni-
tions of those reverend sages of the law who be de us
beware how we laid the axe to the root of the tree.
We have before us the warning, the inroad, an d the
result. That result is well calculated to it
us with confidence for the future, if the remedies
introduced are of a sufficiently definite character to meet
the wrongs complained of in their entire ext ent.
It is not, however, just now our object to write ,an
epitaph upon the buried hopes of those learned gentle •
men who bad pinned their fortunes to the immortality
of the common law system of procedure, but rather
to bid their brethren of the equity side take warn-
ing by the result of their pertinacity. The amount
of misery inflicted upon the country by the chicane
of the common lawyers under the new rules has
been of slight account by, the side of the almost total
negation of justice consequent upon the forms of proce-
dure in Chancery. In the class of cases submitted to
the decision of the common law courts there were
ways and means by which prudent men, not inclined to
push matters to extremes, might stave off the calamity
of a protracted lawsuit. But in the great bulk of Chan-
, eery cases this is not so. Into court the reluctant
suitors must go, and there they must remain until the
most astute and practised brains in England have ex-
, hausted upon the property at issue all the resources of a
perverse ingenuity. The equity lawyers reply that
welinigh all this delay, and wellnigh all this expense,
must be accepted as inseparable from litigation. They
may introduce, to be sure, a few changes of no great mo-
ment, but substantially not much can be done. A negation
of justice is the inseparable incident of property in dispute.
This appears a very fatal argument as far as their own
interests are concerned. It has been already heard, aed
heard again, from one side of Westminster-ball, and fur
a certain time it prevailed to stop all improvements. The
time, however, has at last arrived when those who made
use of it have been roused from their dream of security to
find that they had made a miserable mistake as to the

extent of hurilan credulity.
The best answer that can be given 0/ the gentlemen
of the Chancery bar who thus endeavour to maintain
the credit of their system is to point to its results.
Is it absolutely necessary that their forms of proce-
dure should be so tedious that a Chancery suit
remains in a family like an heirloom, genera..
tton after generation? The other day, a case was
brought before the Masters of the Rolls in which judg-
ment was prayed upon a bill which had been originally
filed in the year 1748, more than a century ago. We
have to turn back through two or three volumes of
Lord Campbell's " Lives of the Chancellors," before we
meet with the name of the judge who made the oris
ginal decree in the cause. It appears that there
was a Mr. Pope, who died in Madeira in the
year 1743. Five years afterwards —in 1748—a bill
was filed for an account of the dealings between this Mr.
Pope and a certain Mr. Jasper. In 1753 Lord Hard-
wicke made a decree in the cause, and directed that ac-
counts should be taken. In 1764 there was a report to the
effect that something more than 9,500/. was due from the
representatives of Jasper to the estate of Pope. Mark
the course of the transaction. In 1772—that is, about
a quarter of a century after the filing of the original
bill—certain moneys were paid into court, and a certain
amount of stock was transferred. There it has remained
ever since—how or why we are perfectly unable to
say, for the application to the Master of the Rolls
the other day was au ex parte one from Jasper's repre-
sentatives. The suit, so it was stated, had been revived
in due form, and as the Master of the Rolls exercised a
very proper caution in not dealing, upon a mere one..
aided statement, with so large a sum as 10,0001., it bide
fair to flourish for another century. The ease is now re-
mitted to the office of one of the Masters in Chancery,
and so it may be considered in a promising way for dis-
patch. In a case of this kind, and when the report is
so meagre, we cannot of course undertake to say that the
neglect of the litigants since 1772 may not have
been in some measure the cause of the delay;
but with our previous knowledge of Chancery
procedure there is little necessity for aO7
explanation of this kind. It seems strange
than when Pope's representatives had obtained a report
in their favour in 1764, and money had been paid into
court in 1772, they should not have taken steps to ap-
propriate the property bad it not been guarded by the
Chancery .Dragons with all their usual care. There
is, however, nothing extraordinary in the case that we
should lay much stress upon it. Nothing would
be more simple than to produce a series of similar illus-
trations of the procedure in the Court of Chancery.
Here, then, is a specimen of the system in its results.
We cannot, with such an instance before us, but doubt
the statement of those gentlemen connected with the
Chancery bar who inform us that very little is to be
done in the way of amendment. To be sure we have an
occasional order from the Chancellor which effects a fen
formal changes in the practice of his court, but so slight
an alleviation of the evil scarcely deserves the name of
even an attempt at reform.
. It would almost appear as though the time bad ar,
rived when we may entertain some well-founded hope of
definite improvement. The final settlement of the greet
principles on which the commercial policy of this coun-
try is henceforth to be conducted has left the minds
of men free for inquiries of another nature. Quell'
tions of law reform during the last two sessions 0'
Parliament have been approached by Members
and by the public out of doors in a very different spirit
from heretofore. It is no longer possible for a law officer
of the Crown, or an eminent lawyer in either House, t°
poohpooh or browbeat his fellow-senators into silence.
We meet every day with cases in which lay members
wrangle throughout the duration of a Committee upon
pints of detail with an Attorney-General, and will not be
put down. More than this—the recalcitrant members are
cheered on by the great body of the public, who have
at last become aware that law need not of neces-
sity consist of a mass of confused technicalities.
All of us who have had any practice of business
are perfectly aware that an inquiry into the owner'
ship of property of any kind, in any part of the
world, or held upon any form of tenure, can 11
carried through without a century's delay, se'
without a very serious deduction from the value of the
estate. There must be something radically wrong in 1/,
system which throws so much power into the hands e*
those who would delay or defeat justice. The very
form of the bill, the method of taking evidence, the
puerile pretexts under which a suit is shelved to be
again commenced, and commenced to be again shelved,
the technical necessity for making Shem and Japhet par'
ties to an inquiry in which merely the interests of the
Ramabottoms are at stake, the dilatory proceedings in
the Masters%offices, and twenty principal defects besides,
could be readily enumerated which, must all be amended,.
before we can look for any real administration 0'
justice from the Court of Chancery. Let the equity
bar look to it in time. The gentlemen engaged in the!
department of the profession have all the advantage 0,
a practical warning before their eyes. Let them be ref
sure that if the procedure of their court be not entirely
remodelled their own personal interests may be very
seriously affected by the delay.—Times.

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GI:A/WOW AND SOUTII-WESTEIZN RAlLWAY.—Traffic for
the week ending July 26, 1851 :
Number of passengers (27,905),
goods and parcels, horses and
carriages ...
Corresponding week in last year
for Glasgow and Ayr, and
Glasgow, Dumfries, and Car-
lisle Railw.ys
Glasgow, July 23„

£4,320 12 4

... £2,824 6 6

ROYAL COLLEGE OF SURGEONS —The follow/og,
gentlemen having undergone the necessary examinations for
the diploma were admitted members of the college at tbo
meeting of the Court of Examiners on the 28th instant
Messrs. Arthur Adey, Hon. East India Company's servin*
Madras; Jeremiah Cronin, Cork; Henry Bond, Ware, Herts►
D. Leman, London; Charles William Chaldecott, Dorking'
Surrey; Edward Ashton, Boston, Lincolnshire; Willis Henry Yates, Stroud, Gloucestershire; Herbert Berreforno
Chesterfield, Derbyshire ; Henry William Wood, Royal WI;
James Crawford, Belfast ; and Southruead LangworthY,
Modbury, Devon.