The Sun.
London, England, 1827-07-14 00:00:00

LAW INTELLIGENCE.-(THIS DAt)

COURT OF CHANCERY.
IMPORTANT DECISION UNDER THE NEW

BANKRUPT ACT.

IN THE MATTER OF RICHARD BURGESS, A BANKRUPT.
The LORD CHANCELLOR stated, that this matter
stood for judgment to-day, and that after having
fully considered the question arising in it—a most
important one to the commercial world, he was pre-
pared to dispose of it, which he should proceed to
do. Richard Burgess appeared to be entitled to an
estate for the joint lives of himself and wife. From
his farm he took earth, which he worked up and
burned into bricks for sale ; this, it was considered,
rendered him liable to the Bankrupt Laws, and a
Commission was issued against him; an application
was made to the Court to supersede that Commission
on the ground that he did not come within the opera-
tion of those laws. In the Court's opinion it was
perfectly clear that previously to the passing of the
recent Act of Parliament, Burgess would not have
come within the Bankrupt Laws, and therefore, the
question to be decided, turned upon the construction
of the 6th of George IV., which was in these
words---" All persons who seek their living by buy-
ing and selling, cr by buying and letting for hire, or
by the workmanship of goods and commodities."
It had been contended' that a person who was the
owner of soil, and worked up that soil, by the
exercise of that manufacture for sale, sought
his livelihood by the sale of goods or commodities,
therefore that though Burgess could not have been
declared a Bankrupt under the old laws, he was liable
so to be declared under the recent Act. The sub-
stantial. question arising in this matter had given rise
to a great deal of dikussion in Courts of Justice
for a considerable period of years; it was at last
finally settled that persons holding, even for a term
of years, land which was converted into bricks for
sale, did not thereby become liable to the -Bankrupt
Laws. If the Legislature had intended to
change that statute, and to have made an alteration
so marked as that which had now been con-
tended for, it was but reasonable. to suppose
they would have introduced that change in
the laws by a clear and distinct enactment, and
not by words of so vague and general a nature as
those referred to in the recent Act were. If the al-
teration had been made, it would have been of the
most extensive kind; it would not only have been
applied to manufacturers, but to ill owners of soil,
who, by workmanship of that soil, in any degree,
raised a-commodity, which they sold for profit, and
have rendered them liable to the Bankrupt Laws.—
It would also have subjected persons to bankrnptcy
who had not been so under the old system, namely,
manufacturers of alum, burners of lime, persons who
cut down timber and sawed it into planks for sale, ' and so on. It further appeared, from a reference to
the work of a gentleman (Eaden), who had had
something to do with the preparation of the recent
Act, before it was proposed to the Legis-
lature, that it was not the intention of those
who prepaz'ed it that any such alteration should
lave, as was now contended had, been made.—
It, was also evident, from the words of the recent
Act, with reference to the words that had been
used in the Act passed on the Ist May, 1825, and
repealed on the 2d May in the same year, that the
Legislature had no such intention as to make such
an individual as Burgess, under the circumstances
described, liable to the Bankrupt Laws. On the
whole, therefore, he was entitled to have the commis-
sion superseded, which the Court now ordered, with
costs. Reference in the arguments at the bar had
been made to the Scotch Sequestration Laws ; but
those laws were quite different to the manner of
administering justice here, and required no further
observation here.

COURT OF COMMON PLEAS.
(Sittings at Westminster, before the. Loan CHIEF JUSTICE

and a Common Jury.)
ALLEGED LIBEL.

MICE versus THWAITES.
This was an action brought by the plaintiff, who
is a barrister, against the proprietor of the. MoTitfiik
Herald, for the publication in that paper, of a libel
against the character of the plaintiff. The libel was
alleged to be contained in what purported to be a
report of a certain trial in the Court of Exchequer.
Mr. Sergeant WILDE stated the case. His client
wasl again compelled to come into Court
for the vindication of his character, from the
persecution with which the Morning Herald
newspaper seemed determined to pursue him. Mr.
Price, who was a barrister, well-known to the pro-
fession, was upon one occasion returning home
through Maiden-lane late at night. Having turned
aside for some necessary purpose, he was collared by
a watchman, and lodged in the Covent-garden watch-
house upon a charge of indecently exposing himself.
He was next day brought up to Bow-street, and
discharged by Mr. Minshull, the magistrate who
heard the charge. A pretended report of the pro-
ceeding at Bow-street was published on the follow-
ing day in the Morning Herald, and Mr. Price justly
conceiving that his character had been most impro-
perly attacked in this report, brought an action
against the proprietor of the newspaper and received
damages to the amount of 1001. A verdict which,
in the most unqualified manner, declared the
publication to have been false and malicious.—
Of that trial no account was given in the Morn-
ing Herald, no attempt was made by that
paper to repair the injury which the publication of
the libel must have inflicted on any gentleman of
respectability. Common justice ought to have told
the editor, that having given the poison, he ought to
have subsequently administered the antidote. No
such thing, from that day to the present, not a single
line of the trial has appeared in the columns of that
newspaper, and thus the public who had read the
libel, might still remain impressed with its truth,
although a Jury had pronounced it false, and punish-
ed the defendant for having published it. The
libel was copied from the Morning Herald into other
newspapers in a more mitigated form ; it appeared
in the Sunday Times, under the head of " Odds and
Ends," and the report in that paper concludes with
saying, that Mr. Price was discharged by Mr. Min-
shull, with a caution and a hint at the Vagrant Act.
For this latter libel Mr. Price also brought an ac-
tion against the Sunday Times: the case was tried
in the Court of Exchequer, and although the da-
mages recovered by Mr. Price were but one shilling,
yet he obtained what was to him quite sufficient, a
full vindication of his character from the imputation
cast upon it.
The defendant in that action had
pleaded a justification, which was in effect saying
that all the matters and things contained in the
police report. were true ;—the Jury on their
oaths negatived that Plea, and thereby de-
clared that there
A
foundation for the
charge against . . Price.
.A mutilated and inaccu-
ratepublished in the
pwuabslication of that re-
port report of this ladtteforrttrhiaebl
_Morning Herald, an.
newspapers
this if arras
orfotuilahlt.
present action
. pretended to publish reports
reportswas but due
be correct,
to the public that those
tshould
instead of malicious ,mis-statements. ements. The Jury
Id recollect that the defendant, in the. action in
would
the Cpurt of Exchequer, had. ploefadtehdatafajcuts,etiofircoaftit°hne
and yet not the slightest none
Learned
out
inference from it, was taken in thed report. Th
Sergeant then read the report,an pointed various
passages in
it which had the appearance of being
highly coloured. He said it was but one of a series
of attacks which this paper thought proper to make
upon his client; and he put it to the jury, whether
any man, however conscious of his own innocence,
could bear to hear charges of this nature repeated
time after time against him. He concluded by
calling the attention of the Jury to the whole con-
duct of the defendant, and the system of persecution
which he had used against the plaintiff.
Mr. Hezekiah Harwood, from the Stamp-office,
Produced a Morning Herald of Thursday, Feb. 22.
which contained the alleged libel. The paper was
put in, and the report of the trial in the Court of
Common Pleas was read by the officer of the court.
George Eyett produced an examined copy of the