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Untitled Article
which might have been pronounced at first without a bill being filed ., or a counsel employed . The expenses are by this time , perhaps , from 2001 . to 300 / . or 400 / . more or less , according to the interlocutory matter into which an unprincipled opponent may drive you , almost at his pleasure . The decree is for the Master to take the accounts . This is done by charge and discharge , as
it is called ^ in a most clumsy , dilatory , and unintelligible manner . The poor legatee now obtains the disallowance of the charges to which he objected , and would be glad to stop the suit , and let the expenses be paid out of the estate ; but no , there are infants in the case , and it cannot be done . A report must be made ; and then a new hearing by the Court ; then a new reference and new orders , until , perhaps , the whole property which has
not been spent ( for the solicitors are the only people who , from time to time , get money , under orders for their costs , all others wait till the conclusion ) goes to swell the suitors' fund in the Court of Chancery , an unclaimed fund of at present we believe about thirty to forty millions sterling ; or if the money be at last obtained _ , it has been at a delay of at least three or four years , probably much longer . These are some of the monstrous
grievances at which Lord Brougham so long thundered his philippics . What has his Lordship done to remedy them since he has been placed at the head of the Court ? He has merely dabbled in little details , and made here and there a paltry alteration , ( often somewhat for good , but not always , ) while he has left the great evils altogether untouched . His alterations are solely of practice ; the principles of the Court ' s proceedings are not impeached The substitution of salaries , for the remuneration which the officers
of the Court derived from fees proportioned to the business done , is one of the principal changes . As there is no expeditionary control over these officers , the effect of the alteration will be obviously to render the officers less attentive and slower than they were before , and to cause a great deal of their business ( particularly such as is pressing ) to be done by the solicitors . It remains to be seen whether these gentlemen will do the work without
being paid , or whether ( as in the case of * entries on the roll in the common law courts ) the officer and solicitor are both to be allowed to be paid for doing the self-same work . We will trust the solicitors for looking after their own interest . They are not a body of men ( and it is no disparagement to say so ) who like to do work without pay . Of this alteration we will say no more ;
but we doubt whether the saving it will effect , will not be more than compensated b y additional delay . There will now be two classes only who will get business done—gentlemanly men and thorough blackguards ; the former will be attended to out of civility , the latter that they may be got rid of . Besides the introduction of salaries , there are many alterations made by the new Chancery Orders , which we will briefly run through . First ,
Untitled Article
126 Lord Brougham ' s Chancery Reform * .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Feb. 2, 1834, page 126, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2630/page/42/
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