[53] The office of the six clerks, and of the sixty clerks in court where all pleadings are filed. The principal duty of the clerks in court is to copy the pleadings (for which he is allowed 10d. a folio) and to assist the masters in taxing costs at the rate of 6s. 8d. for every hour or for every twenty folios in the length of the bill. They are all a set of drones, but our friend John Baines really out Hectors Hector.
[54] Taxation is entirely regulated by custom, and the principle upon which it is conducted often produces the greatest injustice as well to the solicitor as to the client. To get a party into contempt for disobedience to an order of the court a writ of execution must be taken out and served upon him, and various other expensive proceedings resorted to; and yet should he obey the order before the whole process is actually completed, not one sixpence will be allowed against him in costs. There are other instances equally gross. I have often argued against such injustice, but have been always answered “this is our rule, we cannot do otherwise.” Is it not high time that a remedy should be provided. There are some, who in taxing discretionary charges as between a solicitor and his client, invariably take off one half of each item. How must a conscientious solicitor suffer from this mode of exercising direction! The resource of a less delicate mind is obvious.
[55] Infants and lunatics are the peculiar objects of the court’s protection as well in person as estate—but it is like an ogre feasting on the traveller to whom he had offered an asylum.
[56] The court is frequently obliged to interfere in partnership brawls, and wind up the joint trade. The Opera House has been in Chancery for years, and Covent Garden has now the same felicity.
[57] Why is not the court as vigilant in abstaining from waste, as it is in preventing others from committing it?
[58] Tithe-questions present a fruitful source of equitable jurisdiction. It is the fashion of churchmen to boast of their title by “right divine.” If the right be celestial, the remedy is satanic!
[59] Marriage settlements produce infinite litigation, but much as husband and wife may be dissatisfied with each other, they generally end in abusing their equitable mediator—reminding one of the old adage:
He, who between man and wife interposes
Will get black eyes, and bloody noses.
[60] Referring to the Mortmain Acts. Wills supply the court with more than two thirds of its victims.
[61] Alluding to the present over-abundance of business which it would take years to clear away, without the introduction of any new suits. Even brutes refrain from swallowing what they are unable to digest.