HL Deb 14 March 1831 vol 3 cc384-401
Lord Wynford

said, that a few weeks ago, when he laid on their Lordships' Table a Bill enabling parties to be examined on oath in their own suits, his noble and learned friend on the Woolsack had stated that it would make such a sweeping alteration in the law of England, that he must require time for its consideration. When his noble and learned friend made application to him for time, he was immediately of opinion that time ought to be given; for he had too much respect for the law of England as it now stood to wish to innovate upon it without due consideration. Now, if the measure which he had introduced some weeks ago deserved the title of a sweeping measure, much more did the bill which his noble and learned friend had since introduced deserve that title; for it was so extensive in its details, and so sweeping in its alterations, as to require more time for consideration than any bill which had been laid upon the Table of their Lordships since he had the honour of a seat in their House. At this moment a noble and learned friend of his who wished to take part in the discussion on this Bill, was prevented from attending by indisposition. His noble and learned friend hoped, however, to be able to attend in his place in the course of a week; but as his hopes had been disappointed several times already, perhaps his attendance might not be so early as himself and his friends wished. Their Lordships were also aware that another noble and learned friend of his, who had expressed his intention of explaining his sentiments on this Bill, was now absent from town on the Circuit. If, then, the Bill to which he was referring were not of such a description as he had already stated, he should conceive that the absence of his noble and learned friends, who had expressed a wish to be present at its discussion, would be sufficient to induce their Lordships to accede to the motion which he intended to propose to them. But if their Lordships would only consider the rapidity with which this Bill had hitherto passed through its different stages, and the importance of every one of its clauses to the community, he was sure that their Lordships would see that a delay for the time which he asked was not either an extravagant or an unreasonable request. Besides, he had only got this Bill on Saturday morning in its printed form. He had devoted the whole of Saturday to a consideration of it, and he thought that, if necessary, he could convince their Lordships that it required a longer time for a fair investigation of its merits. He was inclined to think that this Bill was calculated to do a great deal of good; but he was also inclined to think that it would not do that good, unless it was altered in some of its details, and altered too, in a way which he was not prepared at that time to describe. When he mentioned the important subjects to which this Bill had reference, every body would see that it was impossible to state what alterations ought to be made in it without time being given for consideration. He thought that the Bill in question would clash with the whole system of our bankrupt law, as it was developed in the Statute of the 6th of the late King. How much of that Statute must be repealed, he was not then prepared to state; but that some part of it must be repealed he was quite convinced, otherwise they would have two Actson their Statute-book inconsistent with each other, and producing that confusion in the administration of justice, which was not only impolitic, but also dangerous to society. The Bill of his noble and learned friend swept away at once seventy-two Commissioners of Bankrupts. On the first blush of the matter he thought that it would be a good thing to do away with these Commissioners; but he had since heard the observations which had been made on that subject by a noble and learned Lord, who had greater experience than himself in matters of bankruptcy. He confessed, that though he was inclined to stand by his original opinion on this point, the opinion given by his noble and learned friend induced him to hope that the Bill would no pass through their Lord- ships' House without undergoing full consideration. The Bill got rid of seventy officers, whose joint salaries amounted to 21,000l. a year. Now the Judges who were to be appointed in their stead, though only ten in number, if they were to be supported as Judges ought to be supported, would cost the country, in the amount of their salaries, 25,000l.a-year. Thus, on this single point, an increase of 4,000l. a-year would be made to the burthens of the country. To this sum must be added the salaries of a Registrar, seven clerks, and thirty assignees. He must here state, that if these officers were to be paid in such a manner as would give the public security that they were men capable of discharging the duties of their offices properly, the expense which they would fix upon the country could not be less than 14,000l. a-year. Surely a Bill, which increased the expenditure of the country so materially in a time of general financial distress, was not one which ought to be passed without due forethought and deliberation. His noble and learned friend had said, that this Bill would not inflict any additional charge on the public, for the charge was to betaken out of the Suitors' Fund. [The Lord Chancellor intimated his dissent.]—Well, he might be mistaken in saying that the charge for the registrars, clerks, and assignees, was to be defrayed out of the Suitors' Fund, but as to the other part of the charge coming from that quarter there could be no doubt: for in the Bill it was distinctly stated, that the Commissioners were to be paid out of that fund. Now he begged to enter his protest against that arrangement. The Bankrupt Court and the Court of Chancery were distinct Courts; and their Lordships had no more right to take the funds belonging to the suitors in Chancery, and to apply them to the expenses of the jurisdiction in bankruptcy, than they had to transfer them to any other public object whatever. This was a tax on public property. If the Suitors' Fund did not belong to the suitors, to whom did it belong? To the public. It was true that the unclaimed dividends in the Bank had also been considered public property, and had been applied to public purposes. He had not made up his mind as to whether the objections against dealing with the Suitors' Fund as public property ought to prevail,—all he meant to say of them at present was, that they deserved time for consideration. Another objection against this Bill appeared to him, as at present advised, to be this—that it constituted too many Judges, and that those Judges were not co-ordinate. It produced a species of tribunal, which had no similarity to any of the tribunals which we had at present in the country: it would produce something more like to the Courts in France, or to the constitution of the different Courts of Session in Scotland. The four senior Judges in these new Courts of Bankruptcy were to be entitled "Elder Brothers," and the six junior Judges were to be entitled "Younger Brothers." He had heard of Elder Brothers of the Trinity-house, but he had never yet heard of any elder brothers on our benches of co-ordinate Judges; and he must say that in his opinion the introduction of these terms was very impolitic. He was convinced that if the Bankruptcy Court were constituted as the other Courts of Law were constituted in this country, five Judges would be sufficient to perform all the business which would come before it. Three of them might sit regularly in Court for the despatch of serious business, and the two others might, like the Judges of the ordinary Courts, sit at chambers for the purpose of despatching ordinary business. He would undertake to prove that these five Judges would be equal to all the duties of their situation, and that thus a saving of 10,000l. a-year might be effected. He must also observe, that there appeared to be a very plentiful allowance of officers to this new Court. In the Court of Common Pleas, when he had the honour of presiding there, there were only three Prothonotaries and three Secondaries. He therefore could not see any necessity why this new Court should have two registers and two deputy registers, together with seven clerks and seven clerks' deputies. If it had such a staff of officers, it would have more officers attached to it than the Court of Common Pleas, which administered justice throughout all the counties of England; and yet the jurisdiction of this new Court would not extend much further than the limits of the metropolis! There were also some other objections to the Bill, which he would take that opportunity of stating. There was to be a Court of Appeal, he believed, from this Bankruptcy Court. Now if there were to be such an appeal, he thought that it ought not to be to the Lord Chancellor. He had a great respect for all Chancellors, and as great a respect for his noble and learned friend then on the Woolsack as for any noble and learned Lord who ever sat there. He had heard that— Judges are wise, but Chancellors wiser still; but even allowing them all credit for judicial wisdom, he never could allow the propriety of admitting an appeal from four Judges to one. In all such cases, the appeal, if, indeed, an appeal were to be allowed, should be to that House. What he should recommend would be, that the appeal should be to as great a number of Judges, at least, as the Court consisted of. Their Lordships were well aware, that until the Act of a late Session was passed, a Writ of Error lay from the Court of Common Pleas to the Court of King's Bench, and vice versâ. The consequence of that arrangement was, that in case the two Courts differed from each other in opinion, the parties, knowing that it was only the decision of four learned Judges in one Court against the decision of four equally learned Judges in another Court, appealed, as a matter of course, to their Lordships. To obviate the litigation which arose from this source, their Lordships had passed a law, by which it was provided, that the Writ of Error from the King's Bench or the Common Pleas should be to the Judges of the Court of Exchequer and the Judges of one of the two other Courts from which the Writ of Error did not come. That alteration was much approved of by the Commissioners who were appointed to examine into the administration of the common-law in this country. Now their Lordships would be absolutely retrograding in the career of legislative improvement, if they permitted an appeal to be made to the Chancellor alone from a large body of independent Judges. Perhaps, when he had heard all that could be said on this part of the case, he might be inclined to change his opinions, but, in the mean time, he trusted that he had laid down sufficient grounds for granting the delay for which he asked. As yet there had been no debate on the second reading of this Bill. He did not mean to insinuate that there had been anything unfair on the part of his noble and learned friend on the Woolsack; but somehow or other it had happened, that no notification had been made as to the period at which this Bill was to be read a second time. His Motion was, that this Bill be not re-committed till the 15th of April; and he was the more encouraged to hope that his Motion would succeed, from his knowing that the public interests would not suffer from the delay which he now asked.

The Lord Chancellor

could but compliment his noble and learned friend on his having lost none of that skill and address for which his noble and learned friend was distinguished when his noble friend and he were accustomed to meet together in Court sometimes engaged on the same side, and sometimes on opposite sides, but always zealously striving for the interests of their clients. He had listened with no ordinary feelings of wonderment to the speech of his noble and learned friend,— a speech than which, one more skilful, more judiciously adapted to damaging a measure in the eyes of that House and the public, without directly opposing it, he had never heard, and which, when taken into consideration with the most unprecedented motion with which his noble and learned friend concluded,—a motion which, under the pretext of delay, would do away, to all practical purposes, altogether with the present important Bill,—would, he was sure, be felt as justifying a few remarks in reply to it. His noble and learned friend, instead of following the usual mode of opposing measures pursued in both Houses of Parliament, and boldly and gallantly coming forward with a decided motion to get rid of the Bill, by moving that it be read a third time that day three months, by which it would, according to Parliamentary usage, be defeated for ever and. a day, asked their Lordships to consent to the next stage being delayed till that day four weeks. By this delay all the purposes of those interested in the defeat of the measure would be obtained, and a stigma would be fixed on it equivalent to its ignominious rejection,—which, aided by the artful statement of his noble and learned friend, that would go forth to the public, would give birth to feelings of a most disastrous nature on the part of a most important portion of the commercial community. His noble and learned friend's statement had, indeed, amazed him a little,—it was so artful,—so skilful, —so cunningly (he used the term in its ancient sense, as synonymous with knowingly) skilful for its object, and was, besides, so timed, as to take him completely off his guard. And what, after all, was the gravamen of his charge? Why, that the advocates of the Bill were hurrying it too rapidly through its stages, and that, by so doing, they should be depriving themselves of the advantages of the observations which a noble and learned Lord (Eldon) was prevented by indisposition from offering on the present occasion, and of the observations of another noble and learned Lord (Lyndhurst)by his judicial attendance on Circuit. But it should be recollected, that neither of these noble and learned persons had urged any objection—at least any that he ever heard of —to the principle of the Bill, long as it had been before the House, though they had expressed their dissent from the provisions of a bill, not yet before their Lordships, for regulating the examination of witnesses before the Court of Chancery; so that it would be too much for his noble and learned friend to ground his Motion on what those noble and learned Lords might possibly have to say, were they then present. He readily admitted, that it would be desirable to have the assistance of these noble and learned Lords, but he had never before heard it urged as a reason for delaying a necessary measure, that some noble Lords who did not attend might possibly have some objections to urge, if they were present. Their Lordships would recollect that it was now three weeks since he had fully—indeed, he feared at a tedious length—explained the principal features of the present Bill; and since that occasion it had passed through several stages, each affording a convenient opportunity for a discussion, if his noble and learned friend felt himself called upon to provoke any; and yet his noble and learned friend, neither on the evening on which he had made his lengthened statement, nor when the Bill was in Committee, nor when the report was brought up, nor on the stage when the further consideration of that report stood as an Order of the Day, had made a single objection to the principle of the Bill, or to its chief features. Even now, he must say, he did not understand where the objection of his noble and learned friend actually lay, unless, indeed, the single objection summed up in what his noble and learned friend stated to be, not a change, but a modification of his opinion, with reference to what he termed the wholesale sweeping away of the seventy Commissioners of Bankrupts. This, after all, was, he was sure, the nucleus, though carefully wrapped up, of his noble and learned friend's ob- jection; his noble and learned friend was, perhaps unintentionally, the advocate of these seventy gentlemen, interested in preserving what the Bill went to remove altogether. The seventy,—the septuagint of the bankrupt commission,—had evinced an activity of opposition to the present measure which their Lordships were little aware of: they were the assiduous commentators,—the translators, much more laborious than faithful, of its tendency and provisions; and had employed every means in their power out of doors, and as far as they went, peradventure, in the House, to have it thrown out altogether. Hence the present Motion of his noble and learned friend to have the Bill delayed for four weeks, his force, he supposed, not being equal to the more open and decided measure of a Motion, that it be re-committed that day three months,—all in obedience to the unremitting exertions of the seventy Bankrupt Commissioners; he should correct himself, not all of them, but the large majority, who were personally interested in the existing machinery, with all its abuses and imperfections. He was himself actually besieged by these Gentlemen, hourly beset, either by letter or in conference with themselves, or some friend, counsel, judge, attorney, wife, cousin, aunt, or relation—all endeavouring to influence him to abandon or modify the provisions of the Bill, so far as they affected their individual interests, without any reference to the still more important interests of public justice. Their Lordships could hardly credit the unremitting energy with which this siege had been, he might say strictly, hourly carried on since he first proposed the measure for their adoption. It almost amounted to a blockade, and all that it wanted to constitute a close blockade would be afforded by the artful motion for delay just proposed by his noble and learned friend. He therefore called upon the House to refuse its sanction to the Motion, as one fraught with more insidious mischief than their Lordships could have supposed from the artful statement of his noble and learned friend. Not that he was a captious stickler for a particular day, or would sacrifice, in the slightest point, the public good to the strict letter of a motion; but that he felt himself bound to oppose the principle on which he was persuaded his noble and learned friend had brought it forward. He was anxious, however, to remove all the grounds of cavil on the part of the opponents, direct or indirect, open or covert, of the measure; and he was, above all, anxious that its provisions and principles should be thoroughly understood; and therefore should not object to a moderate delay, if he could persuade himself that by the delay they would have the advantage of the observations of the noble and learned Lord who had so long presided over the Court to which the jurisdiction of the present Bill properly belonged. He would consent to this moderate delay with a frankness at least equal to that with which his noble and learned friend had proposed his Motion, but should offer to his Motion as it stood his most strenuous dissent. He felt some difficulty in replying to the observations of his noble and learned friend on the Bill itself, in consequence of the shifting, qualified, untangible nature of those objections. His noble and learned friend never expressed himself but in doubt, throwing out as a quasi friendly suggestion, qualified with a salvo of its not being intended as a decided objection to the Bill, but as a matter worthy of delay for its serious consideration. But, alas! all this friendly suggestion, by way of doubt, was much worse for the Bill than a decided protest against its principle; for the inevitable tendency of such an insidious opposition, out of doors at least, was to favour the clamour and misrepresentation which those interested in its defeat had, since its promulgation, been endeavouring to excite. His noble and learned friend had compounded his charge by every artifice of imagination and forgetfulness;—of forget-fulness, for he had carefully forgotten all that he (the Lord Chancellor) had explained at such length, of the tendency and principle of the Bill, on a former occasion, supplying the omissions from his own fruitful fancy. He would cite one or two instances of this combination of artful oblivion and fancy. His noble and learned friend had dwelt upon the tendency of the Bill to add to the public burthens, expressing a becoming jealousy of all unnecessary expenditure of the public money. Now, to say nothing of his being, perhaps, as entitled to lay claim for having exercised a constitutional jealousy on this score as his noble and learned friend, he would only point out the insidious insinuation, which this, as he would show, most unfounded statement contained. His noble and learned friend well knew, that there was no one mode more certain than another, by which the public mind could be raised against a measure, than to impress it with the notion that its tendency would be to add to the public burthens; and therefore, the burthen of his noble and learned friend's speech was, that the new staff of judicial officers, to quote his own expression, would be an additional expense instead of a saving to the public: or, said his noble and learned friend, the cost of the whole seventy Bankruptcy Commissioners was but from 21,000l. to 25,000l., while that of the ten new Judges proposed to be substituted for them by the present Bill would be 40,000l., thereby entailing an additional charge of at least 15,000l. per annum to the public. What answer would he make to phantoms of clerks and commissioners which his noble and learned friend had conjured up, to scare, if not himself, certainly those out of doors, as thus likely to cost the public 40,000l. per annum? Why, simply this—that his noble and learned friend's statement was without the shadow of a foundation—that it was, in fact, from the beginning to the end pure fiction. He would not then fatigue the House with a twice-told tale of his former calculations on this point, for he was confident that if his noble and learned friend had forgotten them for the occasion, many of their Lordships had not. He had, when explaining the features and details of the Bill, shown their Lordships, that so far from his plan adding 15,000l. a year to the public burthens, it would actually lessen them by more than that amount; that the saving would be somewhere about 20,000l. per annum. And this led him to another, if possible, still more groundless insinuation (for his noble and learned friend had not ventured upon a bold and tangible assertion) of his noble and learned friend—namely, that with reference to the funds from which the new Judges were to be paid. Strongly as the public felt, and justly too, on the score of additional expense, they felt still more strongly averse from the idea that Parliament should make free with the funds belonging to the suitors in Chancery: hence his noble and learned friend, with all that advocate-like one-sided adroitness, — all that nisi prius astuteness which he had often admired in Westminster-hall,— charged the framers of the Bill with designing to pay the ten new Judges out of the Suitors Fund. From the beginning to the end there did not exist the shadow of a foundation for this assertion,—the pure creation of his noble and learned friend's fruitful, and, as in this instance, most cunning fancy. He (Lord Brougham) never said, that the new Judges were to be paid out of the Suitors' Fund; on the contrary, he most distinctly staled, that they were not to be so paid; and this explicit disclaimer of such a proposition was the only shadow of a foundation for his noble and learned friend's artful statement. Indeed, his noble and learned friend seemed to be as ignorant of the nature of the Suitors' Fund as he evidently was of the tendency of the Bill he was covertly endeavouring to defeat; for if he was not so, he would not have told them that the fund was similar in kind to that of unclaimed dividends. It was not; and for this simple reason,—if the Government made use of any portion of the unclaimed dividends, it did so on the guarantee that it was only as a loan, to be instantly repaid to the first bona fide claimant that presented himself. But no such use could be made of the Suitors' Fund (of which there were two species under the control of the Court of Chancery); and the Government could only apply that fund called the "Dead Fund" for defraying the charge of the machinery of justice, and this, of course, only by permission of the Legislature by Statute. But, said his noble and learned friend, there was no instance of any portion of the Suitors' Fund—be it the Dead Fund, or what it would—being thus applied to the payment of any of the officers of the Court of Chancery. A simple fact would show his noble and learned friend and their Lordships how ill-founded was this declaration. The charge of the Master's-office, the Vice-chancellor's office, and, since Mr. Pitt's regulation in 1798, the salaries of the Masters, 600l. a year each, were paid out of this fund; and if his noble and learned friend had attended to his former statements, even as much as a counsel attends to a Judge summing-up, or as a Judge attends to the thrice-refuted arguments of a counsel, his noble and learned friend would have known, that all the alterations which his Bill would effect, so far as the Suitors' Fund was concerned, would be, to restore to it the 6,500l. per annum which it at present contributed towards the charge of the Master's-office, showing that the assertion of his noble and learned friend was a most gratuitous and groundless—nay, in the teeth of fact—creation of his own fertile fancy. This was not all. The fund which he had alluded to as that which would be applied to the charge of the machinery of the Courts, was the Dead Fund—that is, the fund arising from the interest, simple and compound, of the Suitors' Fund; and no payment would be called for by his Bill at all affecting that fund. The next point to which he would advert was the insinuation of his noble and learned friend, of the needless number of the new Judges which the Bill proposed to appoint. It, said his noble and learned friend, was the first time that he ever heard of ten Judges being appointed to determine one branch of one portion of law; and he then indulged in some sneering comparisons between these offices and what he termed the younger as well as the elder brothers of the Trinity-house. Now, was it fair to thus attempt to stigmatize ten gentlemen about to be summoned to the discharge of very important administrative as well as judicial duties? and was it fair to insinuate that their number was far greater than their duties could require, without having inquired into those duties, or waited till the appointment had been completed, and the machine actually put in motion? His noble and learned friend had been very unlucky, both in the objections he had stated and in his manner of urging them, and he asked for delay to make up his mind on points that were clear and undeniable. And first with respect to the number of the Judges. His noble friend argued, that because fifteen Judges were all that were engaged in all the Courts in Westminster-hall, that therefore four or five ought to suffice for the intended bankruptcy jurisdiction. Now he (Lord Brougham) had, on a former occasion, explained at length the grounds on which he proposed that ten should be the minimum number of the new Judges,—had explained that he at the outset was anxious to have a less number,—to have but five if possible,—and that nothing but the unanimous Conviction of, and after numerous conferences with, the most experienced Equity and Common-law practitioners, induced him to abandon his own small number, and agree that less than ten Judges would defeat the end he had in view in all his legal reform measures. He had originally proposed but five new Judges, as such of their Lordships as recollected his former statement must know he had already declared (though he did not make that proposition in a peremptory or dogmatical tone) and only conviction, the result of the demonstrations of experienced men, induced him subsequently to propose that the number should be ten. He did that after attentively considering all the reports since 1824, and after much consultation with all those who were best qualified to give advice on the subject. And rightly did the eminent men whom he had consulted contend, that less than ten would not suffice for the ends of justice; and amply and candidly would he then avow that they were right, and that he was wrong in proposing a less number; and, attached as he was naturally to his own proposition, he surrendered it at once when it was proved to be erroneous. The eminent lawyers, on whose counsels he thus acted, had before them the most extensive information on which to ground their opinions. They had one element— an important one—of their calculation, in the number of hours which the whole seventy Commissioners of Bankrupts usually devoted to their functions; and they had another, in the nature and amount of the business which should come before the new Judges, And here he must say, that when his noble and learned friend talked of fifteen Judges being sufficient for all the common-law business of the country, while the Bill asked for ten Judges for the business of one branch of one jurisdiction, he evidently overlooked, or was ignorant of, the extent and importance of the cases on which the new bankruptcy Judges would be called upon to decide. He forgot that their functions would not only be extensively judicial, but that they would also have to act as administrators and trustees in all bankrupt cases that occurred in London and forty miles around; and, as such, that it would not be easy to over estimate the amount and importance of their jurisdiction. He certainly was taken somewhat by surprise by his noble and learned friend on that occasion, though he should be prepared to meet him whenever he chose to openly object to the principle of the Bill. He repeated, that the present number of the new Bankrupt Judges was not fixed upon by himself; but, contrary to his own prepossessions on the matter, had been adopted by him as the result of his inquiries and conference with those most competent to offer advice on the subject; that the only end he had, or could have in view, in bringing forward the Bill, was to promote the interests of general justice; and that it involved no novelty of principle to warrant the indirect attack of his noble and learned friend. If their Lordships sanctioned his noble and learned friend's motion, the result would be, the instantaneous dismay and despair of the mercantile community of the city of London, whose petition, signed by 4,500 of the bankers and merchants of that City, all crying out unanimously for the abolition of the present Bankrupt Commissioners system, he had presented to that House; and though the success of that motion might carry delight and satisfaction to those interested in the emoluments and patronage of the present bankruptcy offices, it would be, as he had said, productive of despair in the minds of a most influential and important class of their fellow-subjects, and of the public at large. For these reasons, and to counteract the mischievous effect which his noble and learned friend's observations might create out of doors, he must oppose his motion.

Lord Wynford, in explanation, had only to say, that he did not intend by his motion to moot the principle of the Bill, but only to induce a careful and unhurried investigation of its provisions. Nothing that had fallen from his noble and learned friend had affected the objections on which he had grounded his motion for delay, for his objections remained unanswered. If he was in error as to the funds from which the new Judges were to derive their salaries, the error was, not his own, but his noble and learned friend's, who failed, in his mind, to make matters much clearer. Besides, he had stated his reasons, be they valid or otherwise, for believing that the charge of the new Judges would be 40,000l. per annum, while his noble and learned friend had not condescended to favour them with his reasons for counterstating that the charge would be 15,000l. a-year less. As his noble and learned friend had not vouchsafed to give them more than mere assertion for his dissent to the motion for delay till the 15th of April, and as there was every ground to expect that Parliament would be sitting at least a month longer,—and as, above all, the present Bill had been altered in all its parts since first propounded by his noble and learned friend, he would take the sense of the House on his motion. He put it to their Lordships whether less than a month, the period of his motion, would suffice for a thorough investigation of its contents, and he put it to his noble and learned friend whether the jurisdiction of the Bankruptcy Courts was not essentially a common-law one, and whether, therefore, its administrators had any right to be paid out of the funds placed under equity control for strictly equity purposes.

The Lord Chancellor

had only to repeat his disclaimer that the new Judges were not to be paid out of the Suitors' Fund, and his surprise that his noble and learned friend should persist in insinuating that they were to be so paid. He begged leave, moreover, to deny the correctness of his noble and learned friend's assertion, that the Commissioners of Bankrupts formed no part of the Court of Chancery, inasmuch as the connexion which subsisted between them and the judicature of that Court was, in his opinion, direct and obvious. Setting aside that consideration, however, he should merely add, that should his measure be adopted, the public would save 8,000l. a year, while not the smallest loss would accrue to the Suitors' Fund in consequence of that saving. If, under such circumstances, their Lordships should resort to the unheard-of course of postponing the next stage of the Bill for so long a period as an entire month, according to the suggestion of his noble and learned friend, they would thus, in the estimation of the public, affix a stigma on the measure which could not possibly be justified by any argument that had heretofore been urged against it.

The noble and learned Lord then put the Motion, "that this Bill be recommitted on the 15th of April;" on which the House divided, when there appeared— Content 19; Not Content 34—Majority against the Motion 15.

List of the Minority.
Dukes Beresford
Cumberland Monson
Wellington Manners
Marquises Clanwilliam
Salisbury Delawarr
Bute Strangford
Earls Rolle
Aberdeen Redesdale
Rosslyn Farnham
Wicklow Kenyon
Lords Wynford
Ellenborough
The Lord Chancellor

stated, in reply to a question from Lord Manners, that he had no objection to postpone the re-committal until that day week, if such a concession should meet the wishes of the noble and learned Lord who had opposed proceeding with the Bill.

The Duke of Wellington

observed, that his noble and learned friend, the Chief Baron, would then, most probably, be absent -on circuit, in which case they could not have the advantage of his assistance in the discussion.

The Lord Chancellor

replied, that the House having already decided against postponing the re-committal of the Bill for a month, could not well consent to put their legislative capacity in abeyance, and make its exercise entirely depend on the presence or absence of any noble Member, how respectable so ever the individual might be. Nevertheless, it so happened, that he personally desired the presence of his noble and learned friend, who professed, indeed, to be interested in the lunacy bill, and also in the third legal bill which he meant to introduce, and which he had abstained from pressing forward with the others in compliance with the Chief Baron's own wish; but his noble and learned friend had not yet expressed, to his knowledge, any opinion, either in public or private, against the measure now proposed; nor did he believe that the noble and learned Lord did intend to object to it. At least, nothing up to that day had been uttered by his noble and learned friend as far as he knew which would lead him to anticipate the opposition which it was now insinuated he had reason to expect.

The Duke of Wellington

said, he had not formed any opinion on the measure, and therefore was not prepared to oppose it. All that he sought was, that a fair opportunity, and a reasonable length of time might be afforded for its adequate discussion.

Lord Ellenborough

was of opinion, that his noble and learned friend, the Chief Baron, had certainly expressed a wish to be present at the discussion of the Bill, at one stage if not on every occasion when it should regularly come under the consideration of the House. It appeared to him, notwithstanding what had fallen from the learned Lord on the woolsack, that the Chief Baron did entertain considerable doubts as to the expediency of this mea- sure, which he had described as containing little good that was at the same time new, while whatever it had of novelty was not good, but quite the reverse, and ought not to be adopted. Such being the opinion which, to the best of his recollection, his learned friend had already intimated, it was only fair that the House should be given an opportunity of hearing his sentiments on the details of the Bill, which were really of a very difficult and complicated character. If in the course of the fifteen days during which the noble and learned Lord himself had directed his attention to the subject, so many alterations had suggested themselves to his mind, was it not equally probable that other imperfections might attract the notice of noble Lords who enjoyed similar advantages of professional education? Lay Members were not competent to pronounce upon the merits of legal details, however capable they might be to decide upon the principle abstractedly; and it was consequently desirable that they should avail themselves of the advice of two of the ablest and most learned men who had ever held the seals of England, to whom they might refer, they being fortunately Members of their Lordships' House.

The Lord Chancellor

said, he was most anxious that the present discussion should not go forth to the public as stigmatising this Bill with the censure of a noble and learned Lord who was not in his place to state his opinions for himself. The noble and learned Baron who had just spoken happened entirely to misunderstand what had been uttered by the Chief Baron, as the latter noble Lord had merely said that he had intended by his bill to alter the sittings of the masters in Chancery, and the mode of taking evidence, and referred to the third measure as that in which he was principally interested. If the discussion should not be taken until the termination of the Circuit, such a delay would amount to the recognition of a principle which might be carried hereafter to an extent that no one could undertake to limit. He would, however, inquire when the Circuit was likely to end; and if he found that the postponement of the last stage of the Bill for a few days longer would give the noble and learned Lord an opportunity of attending, he should have no objection to such an arrangement. Meanwhile he should only observe, that the noble and learned Lord had not yet on any occasion expressed himself hostile to the measure.

Lord Ellenborough

apprehended that his noble and learned friend had intimated doubts respecting the propriety of the principle on which the Bill was founded.

Lord Wynford, said that the Chief Baron had not actually pronounced a decided judgment on this Bill; but he certainly appeared to incline to the opinion ascribed to him by the noble Baron who had just addressed their Lordships.

Bill to be re-committed that day se'nnight.