§ Report brought up.
The MASTER or THE ROLLSsaid, he must take that occasion to advert to provisions in the Masters in Chancery Abolition Bill, by which the Lord Chancellor was empowered to sell the Masters' Offices in Southampton Buildings, Chancery Lane, and to provide chambers for the Judges for their chamber business. As the offices in Southampton Buildings were extremely convenient for the required purpose, he could only suppose that the proposition proceeded from some romantic whim, that, inasmuch as those buildings had been used for the business of the Masters, the Judges in transacting their new business would be polluted by occupying them. The Bill had passed that House, but would again come under consideration in the House of Lords, and he hoped the Government would take the opportunity of altering the provisions to which he had referred.
§ MR. WALPOLEsaid, the objection of his right hon. Friend appeared to be that the clause in the Bill to which he had referred, compelled the Lord Chancellor to take chambers for the Judges in Lincoln's Inn, while the chambers in Southampton Buildings, now appropriated to the Masters, would answer the purpose, and yet were directed to be sold. That objection had appeared to the Government to be good, as the clause originally stood, and it had therefore been corrected in that particular, so that now the Lord Chancellor would not be required to procure chambers in Lincoln's Inn, but only in a general manner to procure chambers, and he might avail himself of those in Southampton Buildings, now used by the Masters.
§ Report agreed to.