The Sun.
London, England, 1850-07-01 00:00:00

JUL Y 1,

on the mind of the Attorney. General, who, as coun-
sel for the dismissed clerk, suggested that the Trea-
sury might protect the suitors by requiring sureties
from an embarrassed clerk—a solution of the diffi-
culties of his cave not likely to prove very satisfic-
tory to the suitors, who ,naturally think it quite
enough to have the trouble of obtaining judgment
against their debtors, without having to wait for a
second judgment against an insolvent clerk or his
surety ! Air. Justice Erle thus expressed himself :-
4.1 am of the same opinion. The jadge of a county
court may discharge the clerk in case of inability; but
the clerk has a right to raise the question, whether that
inability exists, and that question is for a jury- to decide.
The question has been referred to a jury, and they find
that tboligh the relator was dismissed for inability, no

other inability except insolvency could be charged upon
him. That seems to me the full eff,:ct of the finding.
So that there is no actual mental or bodily inability, but
circumstances are. found to exist, such that it is very
probable that the mind might be aftcted, ha.rassed, and
dittracted by them, or the man's principles of-common
honesty might ip eneangered. But they these circum•
stances are merely evidence.
" I'he tact of insolvency does not—as a conelu,ion of
law—import the inability spoken of in the statute.

Thyzro may be, and often is, a state of hop. less inst.&
v.-ney without any fault of the at.d beralliug
him in a co:irsr) of ordinary pt udenee and the most corn-
,
pltto honesty."
These reurnk..,, also must be understood as exclud-

ing the consideration of the •clezk's pecuniary respon-
sibilities. It can scarcely have h, err meant that a
dismissal must be postponed until that officer -absconds
with the money of the court, or commits some other

irremediable act of fraud or embezzlement ! Such,
however, is clearly the legal effect of the judgment.
This decision, by giving a dismissed clerk an ap
peal to a jury, renders the power of dismissal prac-
tically useless for the purpose of maintaining proper
discipline among those officers.
The verdict of a jury may be reasonably required
before punishment is inflicted or property taken away
—cases in which strict proof may fairly be imposed.
But to require similar evidence as a preliminary to
the dismissal of improper persons from offices of a
public or private nature is to afford impunity to mis-
conduct and incapacity.
What would become of any private. establishment
if its master could not change his servants except on
such proofs of " inability or misbehaviour " as would
ensure for him the verdict of a jury ?
A dismissed clerk may now drag his successor
through the following stages—viz., 1. Dismissal by
the judge. 2. Approval by the Chancellor. 3. Motion
for rule nisi for a quo warranto. 4. Motion to make
rule absolute. 5. Pleadings and trial of the quo war-
ranto before a jury, with any given number of new
trials should there be a legal flaw, or a doubt in the
evidence, &c. 6. 'Writ of error.

What inan of sense would accept on such conditions
an office of small emoluments, such as most of the
clerkships are ? One year's cost of litigation might
be ruinous. The worst characters whose removal is
trost necessary are invariably the most troublesome
and litigious, and therefore the most certain of im-
punity.
The circuit in which I act as judge, includes as
many as twelve court towns, the officers are conse-
quently numerous, and hence my exparienCe respect-
ing them has been various.
During the last three years I have frequently felt
it my duty to dismiss clerks or bailiffs. In spite of
care and caution in the selection, men will turn
out differently from what we are led to anticipate.
Few, perhaps none of these dismissals would have
been established before a jury, though the evidence
of misconduct was clear morally. That evidence
would commonly have been such as leads in Scotland
to a verdict of "Not proven."
Unless courts of justice possess public confidence
they will be practically useless. Legal subtleties
will not be substituted as a guide for the prudential
maxims of every-day life. Men of business will not
trust an embarrassed banker, nor employ an insolvent
agent to collect their debts or pay their workmen;
nor will they resort to a court in which the clerk is
wanting in honour or in solvency ; they will prefer
leaving their debts in the keeping of their debtors !
The County Courts have been only three years in
existence, they were founded to establish a more pure
and efficient adtninistration of the law. The suitors,
by whom alone these courts are supported, have a
claim to the services of honest and trustworthy offi-
cers even higher, if possible, than private individuals
possess, to honest servants in the care of their own
property and affairs.
The commercial community has an imperative
right to a redress of this grievance, simultaneously
with an extension of the responsibility of the county
clerk; arising-from the custody of larger sums of
money.
Serious, however, as is the mischief, it admits of
redress by means of a very simple remedy. All that is
required is an explanatory amendment of the original
County Courts Act, which may be engrafted on Mr.
Fitzroy's Bill. The equivocal words, " inability or
misbehaviour," should be cancelled. Power of dis-
missal should be given for sufficient cause, subject to
the Chancellor's approval, which should be made
final, as appears to have been the real intention of the
County Courts Act. No one supposes that the ex-
isting facilities of ulterior litigation can be favour-
able to any but to men, of bid character, or that the
power of dismissal will be open to abuse when sub•
jected to the superintending control of the highest
and most responsible legal functionary of the realm.
I remain yours faithfully,
A JUDGE OF THE COUNTY COURTS.
June 19, 1850.

THE POST-OFFICE.
TO THE EDITOR OF THE SUN.

SlR,—You are perfectly- right in asserting that the
suspension of the collection and delivery of letters
by the Post-office on a Sunday is illegal. The whole
mass of Post-office Acts contemplate, in spirit and in
words, the effectual, speedy, and uninterrupted deli-
very of letters • and the • very latest of these Acts,
10:h and 11th :Vic. (to which the Royal assent was
given July 22, 1847), is specially entitled " An Act
for giving further facilities for the transmission of
letters by post," Sic. All the Acts contemplate, in-
volve, and go for facilities of transmission, and one of
them enacts severe penalties against any official per-
son or. persons 'who shall detain or delay letters in
transitu.

Under this clause, a party advising his agents to
apply for and demand on a Sunday of a local post-
master, a post parcel or letter, arranged between
them to be so posted as to be in that, ostmaster's bags
and possession on such Sunday morning, and taking
care to have witnesses to prove the application for
such post parcel or letter, and the refusal to deliver it
on demand, or such closure of the office as shall
amount in practice to detention and delay in delivery
of such letter, &c., 'will have a right of action, and
would inevitably recover damages of the official, so
without legal authority detaining 'and delaying sue
parcel or parcels, letter or letters.
Let some dozen companies, who can " sue and be
sued,"•&c., and have pecuniary strength for the con-
test, take up the cudgels. of the law in this atrocious
matter, and Lord J. Russell will soon learn that if
facilities cf transmission must be acquired and ar-
ranged by nothing less than Acts of Parliament,
facilities of detention and.delay (caprices, crotchets,
I should say) can only be legally valid and enforced
by an equal power and authority, and nOt by the
mere bye-law power of the Post-office, called into
action by incomplete, and therefore incompetent au-
thority, and operating in utter abrogation .of esta-
blished practice, and contrary to the whole tenor,
scope, and meaning of the Act or Acts in which such
bye-law power is given and validated.
The bye-law power to which I allude, and on which
our no-lawyer Chancellor of the Exchequer and his
co-blunderers rely, is conferred• by the 9th clause of
the 2d and 3d of Victoria, and runs thus :—" And be
it enacted, that all post letters shall be posted, for-
warded, conveyed, and 'delivered, under and subject
to all such orders, directions, regulations, limitations,
and restrictions, as the Postmaster General, with the-
consent of the Lords of the Treasury, shall from
time to time direct." This is only a bye-law power,
or power in a minor degree, which must be exercised
in accordance with, not in contravention of, the
major power and pnrpose of the Post-office Acts,
which, both in spirt and letter, and (till last Sunday)
is long-established practical interpretation thereof,
contemplate and provide for sure, speedy, uninter-
rupted, and daily facilities of transmission of post
letters, &c., by the national post.
When the public, by its representatives, surrendered
to the Fost- office ie legal right to the monopoly of
postal business, &c., the implied' covenant, nay, the
spirits of all the Acts and many of the words, justify.
me in saving the expressed covenant with them was,
that the Post-office should work in their interest, and
on their behalf; without failure, laches, or intermis-
mission, de die in diem.
Most corporations have Acts in which a power to
make bye-laws is contained; suppose the main con-
dition of a corporation were that it should keep up a
minimum capital of half a million stifling, would any
bye-law power of limitation, restriction, &c , entitle
the directors to meddle with that main provision ?
No. Their power of limitation, &c., must be exer-
cised on minor details which shall not affect or con-
travene the major and main condition of their incor-
poration. A deed alone can extinguish a deed—an
Act of Parliament alone interfere with the essen-
tials of a preceding Act. The power to stop the post
on a Sunday, without Act of Parliament, is beyond all
possibility of contradiction, under such an enabling
clause as that I have quotpd, and on which the non-
legal party rely, a power to stop the post, at any
hour, or time, or day, or days, of the week that the
exercisers of such power may be cajoled or induced
to think fit. This is peremptory and undeniable!
No—this .clause must be tested, pond the whole
meaning and tenor, of the Post-office Acts, covenants,
awl liabilities, .just-.as theinterpretatiou clause (20)
of the last Post-office Act, .10th and 11tti Victoria,

r

1850.

tests certain words used in such Act, which are to
have, and bear, always such and such interpretations,
" unless such interpretations are repugnant to the
subject-matter, and inconsistent with the context in
which they arc found."
Again and again I advise some cautious and pecu-
niarily strong parties to vindicate the national rights
' by an appeal to the laws.
Newspapers, by an express clause, are left in the
option of parties to send by post or otherwise at their
discretion. Let the railway companies, carry them at
half a farthing apiece ! If it be worth while a com-
pany might be formed to do so without violation —I
should say, with and by permission of law.
To conclude, it is a dead fraud, robbery, and con-
fiscation for any Government to enforce a Sunday-
stamp-tax on a Stinday papei, and then, by re-
fusing its hitherto means of conveyance and delivery,
to put the proprietor to tli'enormous extra expense
and trouble of private postage, expresses, agents, and
new kcal delivery.—l ath, Sir, yuurs respectfully,
J. J., Barri.iter-at-Law.

-Inner Temple, June 28.
1.1.5' Toe Laws would give a much stronger and
better le!,son to Puritanical idiots than anything on
varth betides.

RATING OF TENEMENTS BILL.

TO THE EDITOR' OF THE. SUS.

Siu,—This iniquitous 13ill,,which.creates u distinc-

Lion in law between the rich and the poor, conies on
st. 12 o'clock on Thursday next for the third reading.'
From the title of the Bill persons are led to believe
that small tenements are not rated at present; such is
not, however, the case, small tenements are rated,
but the magistrates have power, on the recommenda-
tion of the overseers, to exclude very poor persons
froin the rates. To get rid of this power of excusing
widows and paupers from paying this Bill is intro-
duced, which creates a difference in the treatment of
the poor and the rich unknown to the laws of Eng-
land in any other case. Why not at once do away
with the power of excusing, instead of going in this
roundabout way to. make the paupers pay ? The
owners'of cottage property desire no favour, but they
have a right to demand that their property shall be
treated in the same way as other property.
Because from the poverty of the tenants of such
property there is a greater difficulty of getting pay-
ment than from tenants of other property, the land-
lord is to be called on to pay the rates, whether he
can get his rent or not.
Irt some large towns there are persons who collect
their rent weekly; but not one cottager in.a thousand
pays his 'rent weekly. In the country they pay
idf-yearly or yearly, so that. an argument used by a
supporter of the Bill, that the landlord swept off
everything, falls to the ground.
It is no argument in favour of the Bill that towns
have applied for such Bills; the intention of all such
Bills is to prevent the building of houses for the poor
in such towns. Villages and towns conspire against
the poor to drive them out—the villages, when under
the control Gf great landowners, by not allowing any
houses to be built, and the towns by getting such
Bills as these.

Do not talk of your model lodging-houses, and
pass sanitary laws, whilst you pass a Bill which will
do more to prevent improved dwellings being erected
for the poor than anything whatever.
Go through our villages, and inquire how many
cottage's have been erected by the " Squires ;" not
one in a thousand of the great landowners ever build
cottages, their plan being to drive the poor to live in
other parishes, although they may work on their
estates, so that when they are old or ill other parishes
have to, keep them, though they have bad their work.
The proprietors of an estate extending over 7 or S
villages, with an aggregate population of not less
than 4,000, have not erected a cottage for the last
century: The owners of an adjoining village to this
estate have never built a cottage, although many have
fallen down on each estate. This is the state of
almost every village in England, and I have seen a
great many hundreds of them.
Let an inquiry be made into the number of cot-
tages that has been built iu Berks, Wilts, Hantr, and
Dorset by persons owning not less than one-fourth of
the parish.
Instead of passing such a Bill as this, better pass a
Bill to compel every owner of a large amount•of
land to provide a proportionate number of labourers'
cottages, instead of causing these men, as they fre-
quently do, to walk five or six miles every night and
morning to their work, or to sleep in a barn or stable,
and only return to their families on the Saturday
night.
It is possible that in large towns men may have
built large numbers of cottages and made a good
per centage of them, but that cottage building is
generally profitable is not true, or we should not find
cottages so bad and so crowded as they are.
If I possess property on which it shall be very
difficult for me to collect the rents, on what principle
of justice can you make me answerable for the rates ?
I ask no favour, but only equal law equally applied.
I am, Sir, &c., •
TIMOTHY BROWN.