Lords Sitting of 27 August 1833

MINUTES.
Bills. Read a third time:—Merchant Seamen's Wages; Civil List Charges.
Petitions presented. By the Duke of RICHMOND, from Dundalk, for an Improvement of the Port of that Place and from Roscommon, for a Canal to the Shannon.

COURT OF CHANCERY REGULATION BILL.
The Lord Chancellorrose to move that the Amendments made by the House of Commons in this Bill be taken into consideration. The Commons had made several amendments to the Bill, to some of which he had no great objection; but there was one to which he owned that his objections were insuperable. A Committee of the other House, which appeared to have taken great pains with the subject, had recommended that some of the higher officers of the Court of Chancery should be paid wholly by fixed salaries, and not by fees. Hitherto the practice had been to pay them partly by fees and partly by salaries. For his own part, he approved of the principle of paying the greater part of their emoluments by salaries, and a small part by fees; for he thought that allowing a portion of the income of those officers, even though it should be only a small one, to be derived from fees, would be a benefit to the public, as it would be some sort of stimulus to them in expediting the business which had to pass through their hands, and the more so, as from the nature of their situations, those officers were removed from that vigilant control which the public had an opportunity of exercising in other instances. He thought, therefore, that the payment in part by fees of the masters and registrars of the court would be desirable, provided that the regulation of the amount of such were not under their control. The Bill, as it passed that House, was intended to

893
have a provision to that effect; but the House of Commons took a different view of the subject, and enacted that the officers he had named should be paid by salaries altogether. He did not concur in the policy of that course for the reasons he had stated; but still he did not think the matter of such serious importance as to move their Lordships not to concur in it. But the Commons had made another Amendment, to which, with all deference to the intentions of those who concurred in it, he must say, that his objections were insuperable—he meant that Amendment by which it was enacted that the clerks to Registrars and masters in Chancery should be paid wholly by salaries, and not by fees. The salaries of the Registrars' Chief Clerks were 800 l.; of the next, 600 l.; and so on down to 300 l. a-year. The salaries of the Chief Clerks to the masters were 1,000 l. a-year. Now, it appeared to him that the plan of paying those officers wholly by fixed salaries, to the exclusion of any benefit from fees, was bad, as it took away one of the greatest stimulants to the due despatch of business. He did not mean to cast any imputation upon the very respectable persons who filled those offices; but he thought it but natural to assert, that business would in general be more expeditiously despatched by clerks in those offices where a certain fee was to be paid on its performance, than it would where a fixed sum was to be paid, which sum the parties were certain to receive, whether the business were well or ill done. He hoped he might be mistaken in this view of the matter, and that the working of the system under the Bill as it had been amended by the other House, might turn out differently from what he apprehended; but he feared it would have the effect of impeding the velocity of the public business through those Courts. It might work well at first; yet, in the long run, he believed it would be necessary to alter it. Though he had felt it necessary to make those remarks, it was not his intention to move that the Amendments of the Commons be rejected; but it was with the understanding that, if the working of the system should turn out to be as he anticipated, he should call the attention of Parliament to it early in the next Session, with the view to amend the Bill in this respect. Having said this, he would now move, that their Lordships do agree to the Amendments made by the House of Commons.
Amendments agreed to.