In the present otherwise tranquil state of the nation, there had arisen a strong and laudable desire to inquire into its legal administration. The jurisprudence of England, in some of its features, approached to perfection. The laws had never, in any country, been administered with greater purity, greater learning, or greater fidelity. Yet their administration was not exempted from crying evils. Those of expense and delay stood prominent, and amounted, in certain cases, not only to a denial of justice, but to something worse than actual injustice. Hitherto, however, there had been a tendency to consider these as something inevitably attached to the nature of law. Its forms and tribunals had appeared to possess a certain sacred character which could not be touched without peril. But the time was come when a spirit of hardy investigation could not be prevented from operating upon every department in which the public interest was involved. The above evils, especially

that of delay, were more than ever felt, in consequence of the legal business of the country having outgrown the provision made to administer it, so that the former amount of courts and judges no longer sufficed. This had been first and peculiarly brought into notice in the great departments of chancery and appeal; partly because there existed in them a peculiar extent of arrear, and partly because there were eloquent young senators who, from motives political and personal, were not indisposed to impute it to the indecisive and protracted course habitual to the illustrious judge who presided over these departments. Our last volume exhibited the warm debates which accompanied the formation of an arrangement, to transfer to another judge the main burden of appeals. Discussion, however, was not closed. The state of the chancery department was still represented as calling urgently for serious and comprehensive inquiry.

On the 24th February, Mr John Williams brought forward a motion to the above effect. He declared his wish for inquiry only, and was not at all prepared to come forward with any specific proposition. Too much, he feared, had already been ventured on this important subject on too little inquiry. Eleven years ago a legislative measure was passed without distinct inquiry; and now, in the other House, a measure was, he could not say in contemplation, but in adoption, to expose in all its nakedness the legal presumption, that the members of that House, merely as such members, were competent to decide on matters of law. The honourable member quoted several early precedents to shew, that it was competent for the House to take such a step. It had occurred to some eminent person (no matter to whom) that from the number of appeals which were presented against the judgments of the Scottish Courts, it was fair to suppose there must be something wrong in the system of those Courts. Accordingly, a northern expedition was fitted out, and commissioners appointed to ascertain whether everything was sound. He alluded to the act of 4th George IV. cap. 85. By this act, full power was given to the commissioners to make inquiry as to the different forms of process; to simplify-to shorten-to ascertain whether the questions of fact could not be separated from those of law, and, in short, to promote justice. This he considered a wise, as the House had pronounced it, a salutary measure. The inquiry, in his opinion, ought to be entered into by a committee of the whole House. Mr Williams admitted the difficulty of the task, and his own little experience in Chancery business, yet he was confident of being able to prove all he had asserted on a former occasion. He would shew not only that the suitors

of the Court of Chancery were harassed by delay, but that even victory and ruin too often came together. He had applied, indeed, to several solicitors for information, but in vain. In several cases, after having at first obtained a promise, it was afterwards stated, that the parties could not comply with his wish without serious consequences to themselves. This reminded him of an allusion once made by the late Mr Burke, who observed, that there were some men like cats, that would not elicit any light until their backs were well rubbed. These circumstances clearly shewed the necessity of a committee; for information at present, by some means or other, was stifled. It appeared by the documents on the table of the House, that from 1813 to 1823, only 84 or 85 cases had been decided, being eight and a fraction in the year. Some of these were decided in two or three months, others in six or seven years. Thus were cases disposed of by fits and starts, and without regard to the least order or regularity. As he appealed to facts alone, he would refer the House to the last two terms, so far as regarded appeals, original causes, and rehearings. In one there had been no judgment; in another the case had been reheard, and no judgment; in another, an opinion had been given, but no judgment, and, consequently, no order could be drawn up; in another, case heard, but no judgment; in another, part heard, but no judgment; in another, as to the collegiate church of Manchester, there was a judgment, the only one. This was a case in which the judgment and the argument together did not take up half an hour. It would, no doubt, be asserted from the other side, that there had been no delay beyond what was necessary. It happened that there was nothing, however paradoxical, which could not be asserted in that

House, which would not be believed, if it were asserted by a person standing in a proper position. It became, therefore, a question of locality, and he happened to be in the wrong place. He would go into the detail of particular cases. The first was that of Dudley v. Freeman, affecting the title to 2000 acres of land, and an accumulated sum of 100,000l. The bill had been pled in 1784, and the suit was prolonged till 1823. Mr Williams proposed applying to the solicitor for information, but he was no longer in a situation to give it, for men die though suits survive. It appeared, however, that he had charged for 40 attendancies to call for judgment, and that his successor to this worn-out suit had attended 16 specific appointments for judgment. Anxiety in such a case might surely be forgiven. The next case was the case of the Earl of Moira against Wyatt and others. The bill was filed in 1814; the case heard in 1817, and remained untouched until the year 1819, many applications having beeu made for judgment. It was then said that the papers had been lost by the officer whose business it was to take care of them; fresh papers were then furnished; and then it was said that there must be a rehearing. (Loud cheers from the Opposition.) Fresh learned gentlemen were then retained; fresh discussion took place; the Chancellor said he would take the papers home with him, and give his judgment to-morrow,' but neverno, never, did that morrow come-and the despairing suitors were driven to a compromise. If this was not a denial, it surely was a failure of justice. The next was that of a gentleman whose name he should not here mention, but he would give it privately to any member who should apply for it. From mere fear of the Court, and not from any doubt of his case, this gentleman had consented to give up half

his property in a compromise. Another gentleman gained his cause; but in the course of the proceedings the defendant had become bankrupt, and a loss of 100,000l. was thus incurred. Another case was that of Gough against Lord Somers. It was heard in 1815, and application was made for judgment 40 times while it stood in the paper in the years 1815 and 1816. Those applications had been continued down to the present time; but no judgment had yet been given. The case was still pending, and might probably until the more serious day of judgment should arrive. The last case to which he should refer was the case of Copts v. Middleton. The bill was filed in the year 1793, for an account, and prayed that the defendant might be charged with a certain windmill in dispute. In the year 1796 there was a decree referring the case to the Master; and the case remained asleep in the Master's office for nineteen years. However, in the year 1815, there was a report, and exception to it; all upon matter not connected with the main question in dispute; mere interlocutory matter, as it was called, mere fringe. In 1818, time, which was known in the Court of Chancery only by its loss, was at work out of doors, and affected the windmill, the main subject in dispute, and which had been forgotten in the able arguments on the interlocutory matter, the fringe. The windmill was gone, was levelled with the ground, and was not worth the paper on which the case for the learned combatants was written. The decrees of the Court of Chancery were on stamps, at three shillings a-side, and they were so voluminous that a decree amounted sometimes to 401. or 50l., and would not pay the expense of writing out. The expense of Masters' reports was very great, and their mode of issuing warrants often very inconvenient. The prophecies made

at the time of the passing of the Vice Chancellor's bill had been realised. What had been heard by the ViceChancellor had been reheard by the Lord Chancellor, and the same arrears consequently existed. Thus, when the Vice-Chancellor was appointed, there were 141 causes to be heard, and 104 were the number of appeals from his court to the Lord Chancellor. He considered it a subject of inquiry, whether the political character of the Lord Chancellor should not be separated from his judicial functions. The former must often interfere with the due exercise of the latter, and were contrary to the principle of the British constitution, which required the judges to be independent of the crown. He declined entering into any laboured encomium of the individual holding the office, but conceived, if even the splendid endowments ascribed to him were unequal to the discharge of its functions, what must the situation of England be when it descended, as it must some time do, to an inferior hand? His sense of the difficulties of his task was increased by recollecting the failure of the most powerful and boldest man this country ever produced, he meant the Protector Cromwell. In a memorial of rights which he made to the House early in his public career, he repeated the necessity of a speedy reform being made in the law, the intricacy and delay of which," he said, “was a source of profit to particular men, but of expense and damage to the whole community." When in the zenith of his power he attempted to reform the Court of Chancery, at a time when lawyers were not so many, and when the Lord Chancellor was not so powerful, yet he attempted in vain. This failure he was said to have expressed somewhat in the following manner:-" I have met the king in the field and conquered him-the church I have new-modelled and cast

VOL. XVII. PART I.

as I please-the people of England I have quelled and still keep down; but these lawyers, when I begin to meddle with them, I fail, and am defeated.”

Mr Peel began by declaring his incompetency to enter into the details on this subject; but, indeed, he conceived, that the present was neither the time nor the place for doing so. His object in rising was merely to state, that the subject had recently drawn the attention of his Majesty's government. The honourable and learned gentleman had said, that it was the habit of the House to declare upon this subject, in a tone of confidence and boldness that knew no parallel, that there were no delays and no grievances. While he had been in that House, he must confess he had never heard such a denial. For the last twelve years, on the contrary, the attention of the House had been called to the subject, and remedies had been attempted. In 1813, when the Vice-Chancellor's bill was brought in, and discussed, was the existence of delays denied? Last year, when the subject of the Appellant Jurisdiction was looked into by the House, was the existence of delays denied? Mr Peel then admitted that he was not competent to deny those delays. There were delays and grievances in that Court, and he admitted this with the less hesitation, as he was prepared to prove that it could not be imputed as matter of crimination to any one. The mere increase in the population and wealth of the country afforded a presumptive proof that there must be a great increase of business. The same result would be still more decidedly obtained, by examining the comparative number of cases in each of the Chancery departments. The hearing of lunatic petitions was a most important branch. During Lord Hardwicke's Chancellorship, from 1737 to 1746, there were 434 orders on lu

E

natic petitions. From 1801 to 1810 the same length of time, by Lord Eldon, there were 1139, which was more than double; and from 1814 to 1823, the number of orders had increased to 2531, which was five times the number that were made by Lord Hardwicke in the same space of time. When, therefore, delays were imputed, and made the channel of a personal attack, which the whole tenor of the honourable and learned gentleman's speech proved, especially that part where he detailed all the attendance to hear judgment-when this delay was made the subject of a personal attack, they were bound to look at the quantity of business in reality done. (Hear!)-It turned out then that in lunatic petitions alone five times as much had been done by Lord Eldon as by his predecessor. Here then he was fortified in the statement he had made, that the business of the Court of Chancery had considerably increased. He would next ask the House to look at the appeals to the House of Lords. These, it would be found, stood as follows:

From 1750 to 1760, 107 appeals. 1760 to 1770, 272

1801 to 1810, 490.

Shewing an increase of more than double within the same space of time. The same result would still present itself were they to examine another department of the business of the Court of Chancery-he meant the Commissions of Bankruptcy. Here they would find, that from 1770 to 1790, there were 719 in each year. From 1790 to 1800, there were 1009 in each year; and for the last 12 years, there had been 2000 per annum, which was nearly three times as much as was done in the same space by the present Chancellor's predecessor. He had further proofs, however, of the increase of business in the Court, and the consequent diligence of the noble lord

now presiding. This he drew from a reference to the number of bills filed. In 1800 they would be found to be 1445; in 1820, 2071; and in 1823, 2327, shewing an increase of nearly double. There was a farther criterion of this increase in the amount of property belonging to suitors in the Court, and to this he would also refer, and with the same success as to his original position. In 1740 the balances in the hands of the accountant of the Court amounted to 1,290,000l., in 1820 they amounted to 34,000,000l. When he considered the manifold important duties attached to the office of that noble lord, he hoped it would not be imputed to the prejudice or partiality of friendship, if he said, that he was astonished at the human ability and strength which he displayed in discharging so much of those duties as he did. When they looked at the rate of two thousand bankruptcy commissions per annum, issued during the last ten years, and the thousands of lunatic petitions, the only question for the House was, whether it was possible for human powers to do more? Let them judge of the nature of his attendance in the House of Lords, from what two cases only had demanded from him. He alluded to the Berkeley and Roxburgh cases. A Committee of Privileges had sat upon one from the hours of ten to four, in all 34 days! The Roxburgh had occupied 26 days, and 44 in the peerage; thus 70 in the whole. It was, moreover, impossible to prevent lawyers from occupying an unconscionable length of time in their pleadings; that of one learned barrister had consumed 18 days. The Committee on the Appellant Jurisdiction had reported the impossibility of the individual holding the Great Seal performing the business of Chancery, of the House of Lords, and all the other functions of his high office. The present Lord Chancellor,