INCUMBERED ESTATES COMMISSION.

HC Deb 22 July 1850 vol 113 cc86-7

MR. FRENCH

begged to ask the right hon. Baronet the Secretary for Ireland, whether it was the intention of Her Majesty's Government to appoint a Vice. Chancellor, or any other officer whose peculiar duty it should he to allocate the fund accumulated under the incumbered Estates Commission to the different persons having claims upon it; or whether they proposed taking any steps in order to secure the distribution of moneys received under the Act for the sale of incumbered estates in Ireland?

SIR W. SOMERVILLE

, in reply, said, that on a former occasion he had understood his hon. Friend to ask whether the Court of Chancery had declined to distribute the proceeds of sales under the Act for the sale of incumbered estates. If he was light in supposing that to be the question, he begged to say that there was no foundation whatever for the report that the Court of Chancery had declined to distribute the money, because by the Act of Parliament they were bound to take charge of the money. He suspected that the report to which his hon. Friend had alluded on a former occasion owed its origin to the following circumstance, as described by Baron Richards:— The Court of Chancery, I apprehend, has no power to refuse to receive moneys transferred there by our order. The report alluded to has its origin, I make no doubt, on account of the Master of the Rolls having objected that moneys should be transferred from our court to the Court of Chancery by what is called 'a side bar rule,' instead of by an order in court on counsel's motion. The former mode of procedure would induce an expense of a few shillings merely, and the latter something about 5l. for each order. The Lord Chancellor approved of this object being effected by a side bar rule, but the Master of the Rolls refusing to concur, a counsel's motion will be necessary in all such cases, although in the Exchequer the same thing may be done by a side bar rule, but hitherto we have lodged no money in that court. In reference to the distribution of the money by the commissioners, he would read to the House a statement forwarded to him by Baron Richards, the chief commissioner, and Dr. Longfield, which was as follows:— But, in fact, the practice of the commissioners is not to lodge money in the Court of Chancery in any case in which it can be avoided. They will have sold more than half a million of property before they separate for the vacation, and of that sum they hope to distribute the entire, with the exception of about 25,000l., or 5 per cent on the whole; about 100,000l. has been already distributed; only two sums have been lodged as yet in the Court of Chancery. The commissioners hope, without any assistance from any court of equity, to distribute 200,000l. before the vacation, and 200,000l. more in the month of October. There is no part of their practice which gives the public such satisfaction as the readiness with which payments are made when the rights of the parties are correctly ascertained.