[45]. It is not terminated yet!
[46]. Mr. Prout's prophecy seems likely to be fulfilled; for the case pends yet, having now lasted one hundred and sixty-two years!!! In 1710 Lord Chancellor Harcourt made a decree commanding the boundaries of the litigated land to be ascertained; and the commissioner appointed to carry this decree into effect, reported that no boundaries could be traced! Proceedings continued; and on the 25th of January, 1846, the case was re-argued before Vice-chancellor Shadwell, eight counsel being engaged for relator, lessee, trustees, corporation, and the various other parties interested. The Vice-Chancellor of England referred the matter to the Master's Office, where it is not likely to be disinterred for the next half century! Really, we English are a highly civilised people: a law-suit may be perpetuated through a dozen generations, without any delay or fault on the side of the parties interested—the whole and sole blame resting upon the Chancery Court.
[47]. Mr. Commissioner Fane, of the London Bankruptcy Court, was brought up as a Chancery lawyer; and in a recent "Letter to Lord Cottenham" he thus explains the causes of that shameful dilatoriness which characterises Chancery proceedings:—
"In Chancery the suitor applies first to the judge: every thing is done in writing. The judge, after great expense has been incurred and after a long delay, makes a decree: that decree tells the Master, in endless detail, what he is to do (just as if he required to be taught the simplest matters): the decree is drawn up, not by the judge, who might be thought wiser than the Master, but by the registrar, who, in teaching the Master, frequently omits some material direction; the parties then adjourn to the Master's office; there the matter lingers, month after month and year after year; at last the Master makes his report, tells the Court what he has found, and sometimes what he would have found if the registrar had authorised him to do so, and at last the Court either acts or sends the matter back to the Master with new directions. Meanwhile, as Lord Bacon said about two hundred years ago, 'Though the Chancery pace be slow, the suitor's pulse beat quick.' I know of nothing to which to compare this process except the game of battledore and shuttlecock, in which the poor suitor plays the part of shuttlecock, and is tossed from the judge to the Master, and from the Master to the judge, over and over, till the scene is closed only too often by despair, insolvency, or death."
[48]. "The Code Napoleon is sometimes declared to be a failure; but it has been no failure. In place of the previously differing laws of the provinces of the ancient kingdom it has substituted a consistent uniform code for the entire of France. But it is urged, that it has been buried under a load of commentaries. Of course there has risen a pile of judicial constructions, as must be the case with the text of every code. But these constructions have a platform to rest upon, framed in the light of modern science. Ours are wholly different; they have no such foundation to settle upon: they rest upon a mingled heap of rubbish and masonry, of obsolete laws and laws in force. Even the basement storey has not been firmly laid, as in France. This, however, it is that the nation requires to have done; it requires an entirely new legal edifice to be erected. All that is good in the past it would have preserved under a new and better arrangement; and then the mass of statutes, reports, and text-books from which the analysis had been made, and which had long embarrassed both the learned and unlearned—declared by parliamentary authority to be no better than waste paper—null and void, and no more citable for any purpose of legal argument, illustration, or decision."—Black Book of England.
[49]. 53rd, George III.
CHAPTER CVI.
A FARTHER INSIGHT INTO THE KING'S BENCH.
At half-past seven o'clock on the following morning, the slip-shod waiter knocked at Mr. Curtis's door, exclaiming, "Please, sir, you must get up, and go down to the lobby by eight, 'cos you're wanted."
"Who want's me there?" demanded Frank, leaping from his bed, and suddenly animated by the hope that Sir Christopher had accidentally heard of his predicament and had come to pay his debts.
But the boy had hurried down stairs again; and Curtis was accordingly compelled to hurry over his toilette in a state of profound suspense. By the time his ablutions were performed and he was dressed, it was close upon eight o'clock; and he repaired to the gate, having bestowed en passant a thundering knock with his clenched fist on the door of the captain's crib.