The Sun.
London, England, 1828-04-08 00:00:00

NEW ORDERS OF THE COURT OF

CHANCERY.

The publication of these orders has followed close
upon the Lord Chancellor's announcement of them.
They relate chiefly to certain points of practice, and
to some of the proceedings in the Master's office.
They, however, fall very far short of the end which
the propositions annexed to the Chancery ,Commis-
sion were intended to accomplish. The Lord Chan-
cellor has explained this in a great degree, by stat-
ing that some of the further orders, by which the
practice is to be altered, have not yet been agreed
on ; and that others are of such a nature, that they
cannot he carried into effect without the authority
and aid of Parliament. Against each of these rea-
sons for delay, nothing can be said at this moment.
It is true that many of the proposed alterations s-
quire serious deliberation before they are conelu-
sively adopted; and that others cannot be made
without compensating the individuals whose emolu-
ments are to be taken away by the change in the
practice of the Court. These two reasons, how-
ever, good as they are, are not conclusive against
the reform which the conntry calls for, and which it
has been publicly and solemnly admitted, by per-
sons in authority, ought to be forthwith effected.
Two years and a little more have elapsed between
the day on which the Chancery report was made
and the date of Lord Lyedhurst's orders. If that
space has not afforded time enough for deliberation,
it must be nearly enough, and the delay which may
still be necessary cannot be a long one. The com-
pensation question is one not so easily got over. It
was said that two noble and learned persons, whose
names were contained in that commission, relied
mainly on the difficulties that this question would give
rise to, for the purpose of bailing and disappointing
the good which the commission was intended to
bring about. Whether this be true, or an " inven-
tion of the enemy," does not matter much. The
business is in other, and (why should we hesitate to
to say ?) better hands. " The old man of the sea"
has fallen off ;—and the hopes of all persons who
really wish that the practice of the court of Chan-
cery should be made what, considering its great im-
portance and the interests it has to deal with, it
ought to be, are revived by seeing that Court under
the influence of an energetic mind, which can un-
derstand and keep pace with the spirit of the times
we live in. We have therefore no doubt that this
question of compensation, when it shall be once
fairly and earnestly taken up, will be disposed of
satisfactorily. There are funds unappropriated in
the Court of Chancery far more than sufficient to do
all that may be required under the commission, and
which cannot be, to our thinking, more properly
applied.
In the mean time, the great security which the
public has that a substantial and effectual reform
must be made, is contained in the report of the
Chancery Commission. Not only are names annexed
to that report which are of authority sufficient to
silence the only persons who could object to
its conclusiveness, but there is a body of infor-
mation drawn from various sources, which places
the faults and abuses of the present system in
the clearest
,possible point of view. Nobody can
any longer be ignorant even of intricacies of the
system. The mysteries have been explained
by the very priests themselves; and now, when
the matter comes to be discussed—as often it will be,
in Parliament and by the public press, until the
whole of the projected reform is completed,---no
person will be found bold enough to deny the facts
proved in evidence annexed to that report. The
old reproach which has been so cunningly and so
often cast upon the uninitiated—that it was impos-
sible for them to understand the profound subtleties
of Chancery practice—has lost its force. A reply
is to be found in every page of the Report, and even
they who may venture to doubt what Mr. James
Lowe says, cannot dispute the evidence of Mr. Bell,
or the Vice-Chancellor. At the same time that it
has exposed the evils-of the system, it has laid down,
in distinct broad terms, what ought to be done, in
the opinion of the commissioners, for remedying those
evils. Their propositions form a test by which may
be tried the extent and sufficiency of any proposed
improvement ; and until they shall all be carried into
practice, or some good reason given for abandoning
them, the public expectations will not be satisfied.
For the reasons which have been stated, the orders
now published do not pretend to carry the whole re-
port into effect. It would hardly be possible, within
such space as we can spare for this purpose, to com-
pare the present orders with the propositions in the
report; and as they form only a small part of those
propositions, it is not worth the while. Besides,
as this subject is to be brought before Parliament in
more shapes than one, soon after the holydays, a
more convenient opportunity of discussing them will
then be afforded. At present we shall only describe
shortly, the general purport of the orders, which are
eighty-one in number, and which, for greater conveni-
ence, we shall class according to the subjects to
which they relate.