The Sun.
London, England, 1858-02-12 00:00:00

nature by an unscrupulous advocate—a weak-

ness which it is the duty of every de
to guard against, or virtue may be turned into
vice. One point in the case shows plainly how
the judcte had lost all jildicial capacity. The
application was to restrain an action for breach of
an agreement to purchase property, to which
action the purchaser had, among other things,
pleaded a denial of the agreement, which rendered
it necessary for the vendor to prove the agreement
at the trial, but whiph being unstamped, could
not be given in evidence without payment of the
duty and a penalty of 101. The vendor's coun-
sel, therefore, objected to the reception of the
agreement in evidence before the Vice-Chancellor,
unless the purchaser would withdraw his plea in
the action denying the agreement, so that the
vendor as well as the purchaser might be relieved
from the payment of the stamp duty and the
penalty. The purchaser's counsel evidently so
strongly felt that he had got such improper hold of
the judge's mind that he declined this proposal, say-
ing the agreement was stated in an affidavit made
by the vendor, whose counsel, however, strenu-
ously denied such being the case, and challenged
his opponent to read any such statement from the
affidavit, but which challenge was not ac-
cepted, leading to the unquestionable in-
ference that there was no such statement,
and that
it was the invention of the advo-
cate of the purchaser. Our readers will doubt-
less think that by this the mind of a judge, if
not wholly lost to all consideration of the real facts
of a case, would have been, to some extent at
least, brought back to its natural state ; but it
had no such effect in this instance ; the judgment
was given without allusion to this point, and the
Judge, when his attention was afterwards called
to it by the advocate of the vendor, said—" It is
stated to me that the agreement is admitted by
the affidavit of the purchaser, which is quite
sufficient."

The public press has well been called the fourth
estate of the realm ; it is also a safeguard to the
nation for the propriety of judicial conduct.
When the press was not so free as it is now, the
judgment-seat was not so pure. Vice-Chancellor
KINDERSLEY was formerly a Master only of the
Court of Chancery, sitting in a private room, free
from the control of the public press ; but he
should not forget that he is now acting in public,
and open to its praise or censure.
The case is one of very great importance to
every solicitor in the kingdom, and will, we hope,
receive their attention. If the decision should
not be reversed, they will hereafter be subject to
have imposed on them and their clients ranch
trouble and annoyance, and on the latter much
unnecessary expense also. The case appears to
have occurred in consequence solely of the advice
to mortgagees in Lord Sr. LEOTARDS' recent work,
"A Handy Book on Property Law," to pay
money to the mortgages, and not to a person
bringing the deed, although executed and the re-
ceipt signed, unless by the written authority of the
borrower. In the same author's work on " Ven-
dors and Purchasers," he, however, after stating
that purchasers frequently run considerable risk
in loving the purchase money to the agent or
solicitor of the seller upon the delivery of the
conveyance, adds that, of course, if the agent is
duly authorised to receive it, there will be no
risk. The weight to be attached to the passage
quoted from the former work will be easily ap-
preciated by seeing the error there committed of
advising the money to be paid to the mortgagee
instead of the mortgagor.