The Sun.
London, England, 1826-05-22 00:00:00

TilF. LONDON JOURNALS.

FATRACTS FROM THE MORNING pAitRS,
MAY 22, 1826.

[THE TIMES.]
The measures recommended by the Attorney-Ge-
neral, professing to be for the alleviatiOn of that dread-
ful burden which the people of England have so long,
but of late with such impatience, borne—we mean the
Count of Chancery, with Lord Eldon at- the head of
it—are -what might have been looked for from the re-
port of the majority of Commissioners, as the report
itself bears the true family features of the. commission
whence it sprung. That Commission, indeed, was
planted by the very hand which ought to have been
tied up from all interference with it. Lord Won
planted the young tree, and twisted it into the shape
that best.pleaaed him, and beamed on it
,with his ap-
proving countenance, or, as we have been informed, wa-
tered it, when necessary, with hie tears. No wonder,
then, if the fruit be of goodly bulk, though of insipid
or even somewhat nauseous flavour. In fact,; the.
volume exhibited by these Commissioners—we ought.
perhaps to say by the majority of them, as they aci
knowledge that little harmony of sentiment was to be
found at their board—this volume contains above
500 pages folio, part report, part evidence, the latter
most ponderous, though- manifestly the result of ex-
aminations conducted with skilful and long-sighted
caution, the object of which
.could have been no other
than to prevent the witnesses from saying what
it might have been inconvenient to certain per-
sonages to record. There is inueh said, and by a
score of persons, touching the preliminary stages of a
suit in Chancery--=that is to say, the stages which pre-
cede the }lean:lig, and which are necessary to ripen each
litigated question for the direct attention. of the Judge.
To these points the solicitude of the commission- ap-
pears to have been industriously directed—to them it
hattbeen with umeh dexterity confined. In the delays
prior to, the hearing before the Lord Chancellor,
those official sages who-govern the commission appear
to assume it as a satisfactory datum, that all the
hardships upon the unhappy suitor are comprehended,
and to them, almost exclusively, the remedial measures

wproposed by the Attorney-General relate. Now,
ithout considering- individuals wholly to blame for
the dreadful :amount of wrong inflicted by this mon-
strous juriidietion, miscalled a Court of Equity, .upon
the public, -we beg leave to protest emphatically
against an extreme -of an opposite nature--viz. that
upon which. the commissioners have proceeded,
in regarding the judicial - vices or incapacities of
certain Judges as extraneous to the object of their
trust. When we are rebuked in the midst of such
observations by -Ministers and learned gentlemen,
who inform us that the commission was appointed to
inquire into the " system and practice of the Court of
" Chancery, not into the conduct of the Lord Chan-
" cellor," what is it. that these wincing members
of an ostensiblOccanmission mean? they assert
that a bad system may not be interwoven with, and
all its evils intolerably aggravated by, a vicious and
crooked administration of it ? That if it stares every
iniin in the face, how much the inherent slowness of a
Court of Chancery has been for many years augmented
by a doubting, procrastinating, forgetting, and re-
hearing Judge, it is no part of their duty as inqui-
rams to report upon a fact so momentous ? That if
all men agreed upon the notorious frequency of
and ruinous delays interposing between the rea.
dine+.4 of a cause for hearing, and the fact of its being
heard, as again between the termination of the hearing
and the delivery of a learned Judge's 'opinion upon
the matter of it—delays, in both cases, but especially
ib the last, by which the postponement of justice,
after the justice of a case has been ascertained, amounts
to an absolute denial of justice to those who have
already been all but starved in the pursuit of it,—will
they atlirin that the operation of a particular mind in
the production or increase of such a mass-of misery,
-otifilit not to become a 'component part of the state-
manta which it is their botinden duty to bring forward
a. for .the instruction and guidance of the Legislature ?
'Thus it is Ili most instances when enormous power
has been concentrated in a single hand. In spite
of that fundamental maxim of free government, that
the executive power should be rigorously restrained
from meddling too closely with the judicial, will any
one now look ;A the all but unbounded swing of an
individual, high in the Government of this country,
over the entire system of its jurisprudence, and allege
that any thing like the theory'of the British Constitu-
tion has been held inviolate ! One man seems to
wield irresistibly both branches of the legislature, and
all departments of the law. Even common justice to
the equity jurisdiction of - the kingdom would prompt
a searching and unsparing scrutiny into the real influ,
en.c..e-. of so high an officer 'as the .LOrd Chancellor
upon it. , Yet we are told, " you must not dare
" inquire into the conduct of Lord Eldon !" This
Leone servility,, this paltry whining, may promote the
, job of the day; our rights 'and comforts as a nation
may for a year or two be sacrificed to personal soreness
or cupidity but what will after ages think Of the
virtue and manhood of their ancestors ?. Every-one,
it seems, is, in the seaman's language, to be over-
hauled, except the presiding Nobleman. The. counsel
•(f.:-0,1 be praised for it) are to be reduced from :seven
at a Side to two ; the Mister's office is to be "put to
at pUrgation ;" the seventy CoininiSsioners of. Bank-
rupts are to be diminished to ten. Now, with regard
to this Bankruptcy system, was such a thing ever
heard. of ,as its enormous mischiefs and abuses There
are seventy of these judges as they must be called—.,
theJnajouty of them, as Dr. Lushington (one of the i
ornm casioners) assures Parliament, wholly incompetent
to the office—wrangling, blundering, idling Away the
time of the public, and the bankrupts' property, and
p:,.-ying upon both , in another and equally appalling
loam, by forcing parties to appeal to the Lord Chan-
caller from the ignorant, inapt, and iniquitous deci-
.:tions of Guildhall. Who, then, appoints this heap cif
`auhhish ? Why, the Chancellor. All the seventy
etre a portion of his patronage, and they pay their debt
a.gratitude to his Lordship, by_ creating occupation
for half Ms time. But' Mr. Hamilton, p. 97 of
ate- evidence, gave the Commissioners an unwelcome-
)Aace of truth when he told them, as a reason for. Lord
4-.2fionis
.incapacity to do
,justice, that the " Chancel-'
kr ban too many irons in the-fire." One, then, of
these irons,. 4‘ has been propbsed to reinove to another
*furnace Lord Eldon's.. The bankruptcy business'
ought to be given elsewhere: but
.the story goes that
Ai,..llklohle Lord would " re'ther•die than surrender it;"
arid' with seine reason, trulyi:i.f the -fees were to folks*
thd Work, since each coMmiSsiortifiringi the -Chan:.
error 151, in money, if we are
.well informed; and.on
sided lest‘' October, -the
an inspection of the Ckzetpe
pcofit to the venerable nobleman from-thatrsouree'oito
hardly be less than 1,0091. per week. But again—
.. •
why should the lawns of evidence, recognized .15171.

.the common law of England, be set aside by '
written interrogatories in our Equity Courts
Is that a mode of arriving at substantial justice ?
Why should the Courts of the Rolls- and the Vice-
Chancery be appealed from to the Chancellor, instead
of the House of Lords at once ? This effect of the
notable invention of a Vice-Chancellof was foreseen
and distinctly foretold on his appointment. Sir Sa-
muel Roiiiitly declared, that the appeal business from
the Vice-Chancellor would add to the embarrassments
of the Lord, Chancellor, instead of having a tendency
to relieve hint. Accordingly, we find that his Lord-
ship is overrun with appeals. We, wish, therefore,
that Lord Eldon's Court was' not henceforth to be
employed as a strainer for the impurities of other tribu-
nals, or an-additional engine for assisting fraud in its
obstrtietions to the path of justice. But we are con-
vinced that there are, throughout the -whole system of
this unconstitutional jurisdiction of our Coults of
Equity, vices too deep, too vast, too weighty, to be
reached or managed by the Report now laid before
IParliament. The Court of Chancery was first resorted
to, as a relief against the intricacies and technicalities
of law ; but it lias undergone an entire metamorplio-
,
Sib-it has beat the law at its own worst inventions:
every thing is now precedent, and form, and subtilty
c -
in our Courts of equitable jurisdiction, and there is
not the-grand safeguard of a trial of filets by a Jury.
The Report is a wash for eye-sores on the surface of
this diseased tribunal—it reaches not the malady