DEBATES ON ALLEGED ABUSES IN CHANCERY.
A commission of inquiry had been appointed last session to inquire into the abuses which were said to exist in the court of chancery. The report of this commission had not yet been made, but nevertheless the subject was again mooted in the commons. Two discussions on it took place in the present parliament. The first of these was introduced on the 31st of May, by Mr. J. Williams, on the occasion of presenting some petitions complaining of particular proceedings in chancery. The speech which Mr. Williams made was an attack not merely upon the court of chancery, but upon the whole law of England. He particularly animadverted upon the law of real property, upon which, notwithstanding, he declared himself ignorant; and the most important part of his speech went to prove, that courts of common law should cease to be so, and that the equitable and legal jurisdiction should be confounded. The subject was brought under discussion again on the 7th of June, by Sir Francis Burdett, who moved that the evidence taken by the commission instituted to investigate the practice of the court of chancery be printed. Mr. Peel opposed this motion, because to print such evidence, without any accompanying report, was contrary to the practice of the house; and that if it were printed, the session was too far advanced to take the subject into consideration. These attacks were chiefly made against Lord Eldon; and in the course of the discussion, Sir W. Ridley made a remark to which his own party, from whom those attacks came, would have done well to attend. “He wished,” he said, “as much as any man to see the system altered, but he must object to the mode in which an individual was attacked night after night. He was persuaded such attacks did no good; for Lord Eldon stood very high in the estimation of the people of England.” Mr. Brougham, however, did not profit by this advice; for he broke forth into an uncalled-for and indelicate attack upon Lord Gifford, who had been distinguished by the patronage of the chancellor, and was then deputy-speaker of the house of lords. The motion was rejected by a majority of one hundred and fifty-four against seventy-three. A remarkable circumstance in all the debates which took place on the court of chancery was, that none of its assailants ventured beyond general declaration. No part of the system in which the alleged evil lay was specified, and no remedy was propounded. All that these discussions could lead to, therefore, was to render the court of chancery the subject of popular odium, and to lower the general administration of justice in the public estimation.