LORD BROUGHAMpresented a petition from members of the Yorkshire branch of the Society for the Protection of Trade, in favour of the Bill before their Lordships relating to the jurisdiction of the County Courts, but praying that the provision of the present law enabling the parties to a suit, by common consent, to go before those tribunals with actions involving sums to an unlimited amount should be amended, so as to give the option in question to the plaintiff singly, leaving it to the defendant, if he object to that procedure, to insist on carrying the case to a superior court. The optional clause in the existing County Court Act, if not rendered wholly inoperative, was at least greatly clogged by the condition requiring both the parties to be previously agreed.
THE LORD CHANCELLORstated that the point referred to in the petition presented by his noble and learned Friend had received his anxious attention. It was perfectly true that the present system was open to objection; and since his Bill had been introduced he had been in consultation on the subject with Mr. Pitt Taylor, with whose valuable assistance certain alterations had been prepared in the measure calculated to obviate much of the evil complained of.