The Sun.
London, England, 1851-07-31 00:00:00

THE SUN, LONDON,

explosion happened, Mr. George Rhodes, one of the part-
ners in the firm was going into the willow room, and
upon opening a door leading into it from the principal
mill he was met by a cloud of dust followed by a rush
of steam. He at once shut the door, and returned
to the mill, from the lower floor of which he sent out
all the workpeople, being afraid that the dan-
ger was not over. Some of these people going
round to the door leading from the willow room
into the mill yard, and finding that room full of steam
and a portion of the flooring fallen in, were at once con-
vinced that the three men, whom they could not see,
must be severely injured. After the steam had some-
what cleared away, some persons descended into the
firing hole, where they found the three men, who had
been working in the willow room, lying on the fallen
flag., The men were at once brought out, when it was
found that Winterbottom was quite dead, The other
two were still alive, but almost immediately expired.
Mr. Elliot, surgeon, was speedily in attendance, but was
of course unable to render any assistance, and the bo-
dies were soon afterwards removed to the Red Lion
public-house, at Austerlands, where they are now lying.
The bodies are all very severely scalded, but do not ap-
pear to have sustained any injury from the fall; and
there can be no doubt that, as stated by the surgeon,
death was caused by the scalding.
Upon examination, it was found that one of the plates
in the upper part of the flue, immediately over the fire-
box had been rent by the explosion to the length of
its
position, inches. The boiler was not moved from
position, nor was any damage done to the nachinery
or the building, with the excepion of the throwing
down of the wall, and the tailing of the large flag-
stone already mentioned. The cause of the accident
has not yet been ascertained. The names of
the deceased' were Samuel Lord, laptenter, about
forty years of age, living at Lees; Jonah Brierley
willower, about fifty or fifty-five years of age, living
at Hey; and James Winterbottom, willower, about 33,
also living at Hey. Lord and Brierley have both left
widows; the former one, the latter two children. Win-
terbottom was unmarried. The inquest is expected to
be held to-day (Wednesday) at the Red Lion, Auster-
lands.—Manchester Guardian of yesterday.

CHANCERY REFORM.
It may well be questioned, if the professors of the
common law had some tea years ago introduced a certain
amount of substantial reform into their methods of pro-
cedure, whether they might not still have retained the
business of the country. We were perfectly willing to
have received changes at their hands, and pretty much in
their own way, so they had given but a freer course to the
,administration of justice. No layman willingly 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, are so alien
from his ordinary habits of thought, that he reluctantly
rindertakes and gladly relinquishes the repulsive task.
Nothing but the direct necessity, nothing but the con-
tinued spectacle of cumulative injustice, could induce
any other than a professional man to broach or carry
through inquiries of such a nature. It was not until
the three superior courts at Westminster had clearly
shown that even justice might be purchased at too high
a rate, and not until they had manifested a de-
termination to persist in the most dilatory modes
of procedure, that the people of this country took the
matter into their own hands. The returns of the
number of causes, and of the amount of property annually
adjudicated upon before the newly constituted tribunals,
afford the most satisfactory comment upon the admons-
tions of those reverend sages of the law who bade iu
beware how we laid the axe to the root of the tree.
We have before us the warning, the inroad, and the
result. That result is well calculated to inspire
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 extent.
It is not, however, just now our object to write an
epitaph upon the buried hopes of those learned gentle-
men who had 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 roles 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 Chen-
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
wellnigh all this delay, and weilnigh all this_ expense,
must be accepted as inseparable from litigation. They
may introduce, to be sure, a tew 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 tar as their own
interests are concerned. It has been already heard, and
heard again, from one side of Westminster-hall, 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 human credulity.
The best answer that can be given to 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 on heirloom, genera-
tion 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
fied 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 ori-
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-
wick° 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
tee other day was an ea- parte one from Jasper's repre-
sentatives. The suit, so it was stated, had teen revived
in due form, and as the Master of the Rolle exercised a
very proper caution in not dealing, upon a mere one-
sided statement, with so large a sum as 10,0004, it bids
fair to flourish for another century. The case 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, wo 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 any
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 bud it not been guarded by tee
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
dune iii the way of amendment. To be sure we have an
occasional order from the Chancellor which effects a few
formal changes in the practice of his court, but so slight
an alleviation of the evil scarcoly deserves the name of
even an attempt at reform.
It would almost appear as though the time had ar-
rived when we may entertain some well-founded hope of
definite improvement. The final settlement of the great
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. Ques-
tions of law reform during the last two sessions of
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
1 of the Crown, or an eminent lawyer in either House, to
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
points 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- 1
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-
of any kind, in any part of the
ship of property
World, or held upon any form of tenure, can be
carried through without a century's delay, and
without a very serious deduction from the value of the
estate. There must be something radically wrong in a
system which throws so much power into the hands of
those who would delay or defeat justice. The very
form of the bill, the method of taking evidence, the
puerile pretezta 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
Ramebottoms are at stake, the dilatory proceedings in
the massers'-offices, and twenty principal defects besides,
could be readily enumerated which:must all be amended
before we can look for any real administration of
justice from the Court of Chancery. Let the equity
oar look to it in time. The gentlemen engaged in that
department of the profession have all the advantage of
a practical warning before their eyes. Let them be very
sure that if tho procedure of their court be not entirely
remodelled their own personal interests may be very
seriously affected by the delay.—Times.

ST. LIELEN's.—An inquest was held on Thursday
last before Charles Driffield, Esq., coroner, at the house of
Mr. William lorbor, the Sefton Arms, on view of the body
of John Hunter, a glassmaker, aged twenty-five
years. The
deceased worked at the Union Plate Glass works, and, on
Wednesday last, he was carrying a large sheet of plate glass
accident oeenrre
from the kiln to the packing-room • the glass broke, and the
top part of it fell on the deceased's neck, and cut through
the "g'ular oo",i, The deceased survived only an hour after
before, through na,
c. Ire had been cut on the neck once
Verdict—" Accidentaling th td glass carelessly.
death." e all"
of

STATE OF TRADE.
(From the Manchester Guardian.)
MANCHESTER, TITESDAY.—By the Afriea, which ar-
rived in the Mersey on Saturday night, we learn that cot-
ton had lost from to 1 cent per lb. at New York during
the week, and that rarely has a growing crop presented a
more healthy or vigorous appearance, or a better stand
than the present one does. In Liverpool, a considerable
business continues to be done, and prices are reported
to be about id. above those of Friday; but
buyers find an anxiety to sell which enables
them generally to do as well as on that day. In
our own market, the operations in yarns have been on
a fair scale for India and Russia; and the prices paid are
about the same as on Friday and Saturday. The Ger-
mans still show much backwardness, and complain of
the dull state of their markets, yet they continue giving
out moderate orders. Mediterranean yarns, and low
counts generally, remain scarce. There is still a good
demand for warps, up to number 20's, both for continental
and home consumption, but particularly the latter; and
the makers are, in many instances, supplied with
contracts far several weeks to come; yet higher prices
cannot be obtained, and those who are open to
orders take them on the terms which have lately
prevailed. Medium pin-eop weft is quiet. In goods,
there has been a fair business of a pretty general
character. Some manufacturers of stout fabrics and
printing cloths have entered into renewed engagements,
of rather considerable extent. The Indian buyers,
seeing an unfavourable telegraphic statement about
piece goods, have held aloof, waiting for their letters,
which will be received this evening. O❑ the whole,
there is no decline to-day in any descriptions of yarns
or goods, neither is there any advance; but there is
more steadiness throughout, and many articles exhibit
what is called an increased stiffness.
ROCHDALE, MONDAY.—The peace market has under-
gone little change since last Monday, either in price or
demand. In wool the demand is steady, and prices arm,
with a scarcity of that quality of wool varying from 9d.
to 13d. per lb.
MACCLESFIELD, TUESDAY.—Our manufactured goods
trade is, if anything, less active than of late; owing, in a
great measure, to the interim which usually takes place
at this season, prior to preparations becoming general
for the autumn trade. The demand for thrown silk re-
mains quiet. The appearance of the market is, however,
satisfactory; prices maintaining their firmness, which
operates favourably with producers, who are gradually
extending their operations. The raw silk market re-
mains very firm, with as upward tendency. The delive-
ries continue good.

HALIFAX, SATURDAY.—In our piece hall to-day there
has been rather more doing in light fancy goods; but for
heavy fabrics there is hardly any inquiry. Yarn remains
in the same condition of extreme depression. The de-
mand is far below the production, and the quotations are
consequently in a drooping state. Scarcely any wool is
changing hands, and the turn is still in favour of the
buyer.
HUDDERSFIELD, TUESDAY.—Our market continues
much the same as last week. A pretty active trade has
been done during the week. It seems to be generally
expected that we shall have a good autumn trade. The
wool warehouses have been rather more active to-day.
LEEDS, TUESDAY.—The market at the cloth halls has
been good, and a fair quantity of goods continue to be
delivered to order. Prices remain firm, and business in
the warehouses is brisk.