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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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Untitled Article
will be soon . It cannot be otherwise . But there appears to us no attempt to bring the machine into a state which is not pregnant with immoral influence , much less into a state in any degree commensurate with the requirements of the people . A man can hardly come out of a hostile chancery suit , if he have entered into all the working of the warfare , as honest a man as he was
when he went into it ; it is well if he be not greatly demoralized by it . The power of intimidation , which equity confers by its great dilatoriness and expense , is a vast source of evil . There is no more effectual way of bullying an injured man into submission , than by threatening him with a chancery suit . He is asking , perhaps , from a fraudulent executor for his share of the testator ' s estate , and an account of that estate ; and objects to
some improper charges made against it . He is told that if he says more , a bill shall be filed ( by some other party probably any one having the remotest interest will do ) to pass the accounts . A long bill is filed , in which the counsel ' s ingenuity , after the fashion of a hydro-oxygen microscope , magnifies simple story to an almost illimitable extent . A tale of a few words among plain-spoken people , is stuffed with common form lies in
the stating part of the bill ; the same lies are echoed back in the charging part of the bill ; and then re-echoed in the interrogatories , where every word of the bill is reiterated in the form of a question . Then follows the prayer of the bill , that the accounts may be taken ; the granting of which prayer is , in this case , a thing of course , and therefore all the matter before the prayer , and all the long skins of answers which follow , might as well be entirely omitted .
These answers now follow . If the poor legatee is frightened , and does not like to incur the expense of putting in a useless answer , he is committed to the Fleet for contempt . The bill and all the answers must be respectively signed by counsel , whose fees for settling and signing them are proportioned to the length
they run them to , for they draw both bills and answers , though the solicitors always charge for doing it . Next comes the evidence , if any be required . In the case above supposed there would probably be none . Then the hearing , with its preparatory subpoenas to rejoin , subpoenas to hear judgment , and many other entirely useless and therefore mischievous formula ? . The briefs
to counsel and their fees , all again paid for according to length , * are accompaniments to the hearing . Then follows the decree , which now in every case under the new Orders costs Al . 10 s . and * We believe that in an ordinary executor ' s suit the additional cost arising from every unnecessary folio , or ninety words , in the stating part is nearly 1 / . and in the
interrogating part we suppose 7 a . or 85 . and yet interrogatories , admitted to be unnecessary , and extending often to thirty folios , or even much more , continue in almost all cases to be inserted . The interrogatories are so much a matter of course , that they are always drawn b y the barrister ' s clerks , and a clerk is more valuable who knows how to interrogate .
Untitled Article
Lord Brovgham ' s Chancery Reforms . 125
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Feb. 2, 1834, page 125, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2630/page/41/
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