The Sun.
London, England, 1856-11-28 00:00:00

LONDON, FRIDAY EVENING, NOVEMBER, 28, 1856.

LAW MITELE,IGENCE.—Nov. 27.

COURT OF QUU,NIS BENCH.

LUCAS V. TIM LONDON AND NORTR•WEBTERN RAILWAY
COMPANY.

This was an action brought by the plaintiff, a retired
farmer, of Leyton, in Essex, to receive compensation in
damages for injuries sustained by him by the alleged.
negligence of the defendants' servants.
It appeared that on the sth July last, the plaintiff,
who is 75 yeara of age, accompanied his daughter and.
grand.daughter to the Euston Station, for the purpose of
seeing them into the company's train for Manchester.
The train was announced to start at 8 o'clock in the morn-
ing, and having seen his daughter into a carriage, he was
about to put his grand-daughter--a child of about 6 years
of age—into the carriage, when an interruption took place.
The train was driven back violently by a collision caused
by other carriages being forced back upon it, in their
motion towards the turning-table, for the purpose of
being attached to it. The plaintiff was borne along the
platform in a direction with the train, and was unfortu-
nately jammed against the railing constructed for the
putpose of fencing off that part of the platform near the
turning-table. lie was most seriously injured in the
back, hip, and thigh, and was for eight weeks subse-
quently unable to leave his bed. The'effects of the acci•.
dent reduced him to the use of crutches. The child
fortunately escaped injury.
,The plaintiff gave evidence in corroboraticn of the
facts.

Sir Fitzroy Kelly declined to call evidence for the de-
fence, but addressed the jury, on whom he endeavoured
to impress con,iderations of the deep regret felt by the
company for the accident.
The-jury, after Abort conference in the box, retired,
and on their returfilitt ii—ciart, delivered a verdict for
the plaintiff—damages 175/.

of most depraved character. Tae letter constituted the
libel for which the present action was brought.
Mrs. James was examined, and debibd most positively
that there was any imkoper intimacy-between her and
Dr. Wallis. He attended her and her child merely so a
professional man. He'had not a key to her door. Ho
sometimes came in through the kitchen, and frequently
brought her meat and vegetables, for whieh she always
paid him. Sbe and her child drove ont occasionally in
,Dr. Wallis's carriage. She was poesensed of seine pro-
perty, on which she lived. •
Dr. Wallis was examined—He said he had sometimes
remained as long as three or four hours a day,' on some
occasions, at therplaintiff's residence, who. was suffering
from varicose legs and other complaints. He had given
fireworks t, the plaintiff's boy. He would not swear
positively that people were Plot in the habit of calling
after him in the street in consequence of his visits to
Mrs. .Tames: He hal never paid out of his own pocket
for the boy's schooling, although he had taken money
fr( tit the plaintiff to the schoolmaster. The neighbour-
ho )d in which he lived abounded in defamations, and he
was aware that there was a report attributing to him the
paternity of tlm plaintiff's child.
The Lord Chief litron summed up, and the jury re-
turned a verdict for the plaintiff, with 40s. damages.

ARCHES' COURT.
(Before Sir John. Dodson.)
DENISON V. DITCHER.

The Admiralty Advocate moved the Cour.4, on behalf
of the Archdeacon of Taunton, to admit the libel of ap-
peal given in this case. It was, he said, an appeal from
a court constituted under the 3d and 4th of Victoria,
chap. 86, commonly known ,as "An Act for better
Enforcing Church. Bythatftstatute a clerk
accused of offences against the laws ecclesiastical' could
only be proceeded against under its provisions. There
were two ways of proceeding, one by sending letters of
request from the diocesan of the clerk accused ; the other
by the diocesan sitting in person and proceeding to hear
the case. The latter mode had never been put-in force

previously to the trial of the Archdeacon of Taunton. It
so happened that the diocesan was patron of the pre-
ferment which the archdeacon held, and under the 24th
section it became necessary that the archbishop of the
province should act as the diocesan of Bath and Wells,
for the conduct of that trial. He did so, and it was not
necessary to trouble the Court now with any of the
proceedings which took place. On the 22d of October
lait.sentence of deprivation was passed, against which
the present appeal was brought, and it would now be
for his learned friends to state their objections to the
libel of appeal.

Dr. Bayford, in opposition to the libel, said that the
Admiralty Advocate had spoken of this as an appeal
,from the diocesan court, but he (Dr. Bayford) did not
find the dioiasan court mentioned in the statute. The
archbishop sat in a suit to be tried ,before him in
the diocess within which the' offence charged bad
been committed. The court held at Bath was a court
without a name. There could not be a name given
to it unless the statute provided it. The court was
the creature of the statute, and whether there was an
appeal from it or not trust depend on the statute ; and,
also, where the appeal, if any, was to be heard. The real
question which be was about to submit was whether
there could be an appeal to this Court or not. The libel
stated that the cause was lately depending before the
Archbishop of Canterbury. If that was a true descrip
tion, he must say that he thought the present official
principal of the Court of Arches was the first who ever
sat to entertain an appeal from the Archbishop of Can-
terbury. If there was any doubt upon the question, he
thought the Court would hesitate before it put itself in a
position of which no instance had previously occurred.
The Archbishop had authority to do acts throughout the'
province just as much as a bishop in his diocess; and the
statute had called his Grace into the diocess to do an act
which he had authority'to do. He had done the act in
his own name, therefore it was not by the authority or
in the stead of the bishop. It was quite clear that his
learned friends could net appeal from the archbishop to
the bishop, nor could they appeal from the archbishop
to any judge who sat by his appointment. His Grace
had pronounced the sentence which he had delivered, not
in the name of the bishop, but in his own name. Was
the statute to be interpreted, contrary to every known
principle of law at pressut existing ?. What wss an
appeal ? The definition was given by Burns ; by Ayliffe,
in his Parergon, p. 71, and by Oughton. It was in its
nature and its essence an appeal from an inferior to a
superior judge. The civil law gave an exactly similar
description of it ; but the appeal now instituted was
directly contrary to the very nature and definition of an
appeal.' The appeal was accompanied by an inhibition,
and he presumed that the inhibition from the Arches'
Curt was served on t' e Arc: b'sh. p of Canterbury.
The 24th of Henry V 11.1., chapter 12, the first sta-
tute which spoke of an appeal, was directly opposed
to such an appeal as the present. The case in which
an appeal would lie from a judge to the same judge was
laid down in Oughton, p. 274. If a judge having the
whole jurisdiction of a inattser delegated t another judge
the particular trial of a particular cause, an appeal would
lie from the decision of that judge to the judge who ap-
pointed him. The same principle was laid down by
Lynwood in his " Prorincialis," liber 2, title 1, p. 80.
If there was an appeal from one judge to another, and
the two appointments were given to one person, then,
according to the decision in "Beare and Biles v. Jacob"
(2 Hagg. Eec. Rep., 262), the appeal was extinguished.
The principle that an appeal would not lie from a com-
missary to a bishop was laid down in the canon law, and,
had been relied upon in very anon at times. Was there
anything in the statute that overrode the positions for
which he had contended ? By the act new courts were
constituted. The bishop was to sit with certain assessors
and to try certain causes, or he might send them to the
Court of Arches. The archbishop was to try only in cer-
tain cases, the bishop in other cases. The archbishop was
not invested with the bishop's authority ; he had autho-
rity without taking any from the bishop. It might be
that when the archbishop sat there was to be no appeal,
or under general principles the appeal must be carried
to other courts.. The appeal from the bishop under the
statute was to the archbishop personally, and not to the
Court of Arches. If that position was correct, the arch-
bishop did not sit. as the locum tenens of the bishop.
The right of visiting the diocese appertained to the arch-
bishop, and, according to Burns, he then, for the time,
suspended the bishop's functions. There was a special
canon restraining the archbishop from doing so through-
out his dioceses, except at proper times. With all sub
mission to, and profound respect for, the Court, he was
sure the ourt would not desire to exercise jurisdiction
that did , not appertain to it. He trusted the Court
would dismiss the libel.
Dr. SPINKS followed on the same aide. •

The ADMIRALTY ADVOCATE said that, if he had b een
astonished at what he bad heard, he was still more
astonished at what he had not heard. Who would
imagine that his learned friends were in possession of a
judgment of the Court of Queen's Bench on the point at
issue, for which they had themselves made application,
but which they had not produced, to which, however, he
would advert at a fates stage of the argument. Whether
this Court had appellate jurisdiction depended absolutely
and exclusively upon the terms of the act of Parliament.
The statute swept away all previous legislation on the
subject. According to the defining clause, sec. 2, the
word " bishop" was to be construed to comprehend
" archbishop," from which he contended that " bishop"
and " archbishop" were used synonymously. The act
was concerned with two matters one, the jurisdiction
of bishop and archbishop ; the other, the jurisdiction of
the appellate tribunals. From the 2d section to the be-
ginning of the 15th the word " archbishop" did not
occur. The report of the proceedings in this case was,
in the first instance, filed in the registry of the Arch-
bishop's Court, but by the directions of the Court of
Queen's Bench it was ordered to be registered in the
diocess of Bath and Wells. The proceedings had been
taken under the 11th section, and the chancellor selected
to sit as assessor was the chancellor of the diocese, and
not the Dean of the Arches, who would have been the
proper otfiser if the archbishop was sitting qua arch-
bishop, and not qua bishop of the diocess ; the dean sc-
lected was the dean of the cathedral church of Wells,
not of Canterbury. The other assessors chosen threw no
light on the question. The sentence was in keeping with
the idea that the archbishop was acting as diocesan. The
preliminary commission was composed of beneficed clerks
resident in the diocess. All the proceedings, therefore,
had been carried on as if they were before the Bishop
of Bath and Wells. The reason why they were not
actually carried on before him was because he was the
patron of the preferMent. The archbishop was to
be considered as the diocesan, and nothing more. His
learned friend seemed to have forgotten that every
archbishop had two characters—the character of a
diocesan as well as the character of an archbishop. The
statute had made a court of its own, in utter contempt of
all canonical principles. Ho (the Admiralty Advocate)
admitted that an appeal lay from an inferior to a superior
judge, and there was an anomaly in the whole proceed-
ings; and he also admitted the correctness of all that had
been urged on the authority of Burns, Ayliffe, and Lyn-
wood. It was not his fault, but the fault of the Legisla-
ture, that such an anomaly existed. The right of appeal
was given by the 15th section of the statute, but the
argument of his learned friend went to the extent that
there was no appeal at all—that a clergyman was to be
deprived without the regular gradation of appeal. Ac-
cording to the 15th section, where the bishop had heard
a case the appeal was to lie to the Court of Arches, and
from it to the Judicial Committee. But it his learned
friend's argument was correct, the court at Bath and
Wells was a third court, and from it there was no ap-
peal. That was a perfectly unnatural construction, and
one which every Court would restrain. The archbishop
had no power whatever to sit under the statute in any
court of appeal, and when it was said that the appeal
should lie to the archbishop it meant to the Court of the
Archbishop. Throughout the act letters of request and
an appeal went in the same channel. If letters of re-
quest would lie to the Arches' Court, there was an end
to all the anomalies to which his learned friend had
referred. It was clear, from the 16th clause, that the
archbishop could send letters of request to the court
of appeal of the province. The archbishop could not
send letters of request as archbishop, but as diocesan
of Kent. The 11th section enacted that the commis-
sioners appointed should have the same powers as be-
longed to the Consistorial Court and the Court of
Arches, thereby recognising the Court of Arches. In

the jiniffment 'delivered in the Court of Queen's Bench
on the 2'ith of May last, Mr. Justice_ Coleridge. said that,
und'er th act,. the archbishop was_ substituted for the
bighOP ; Ne rwould., IA t'be acting as archbishop of the
,provitice, , but 2»'q lute vice as the bishop of the dio-
cese. lie did net rel.ton that decision, but it strongly
confirmed the position that the whole statute clothed the
archbishop with .a diocesan character. The Court of
Queen's Bench said to the archbishop, "You must not
trolifound your character as archbiShop out of the act
with your authority 'tinder the act." • '
• Dr.Weane having been heard on the same side,
Tne,h4trned'Xiidge'dildlie'*citild'giVe his decision on
ibe.nert court-day;