considerations, however, which appear to him to be of so much moment as to justify his offering them to the public, even in this hasty manner and in this imperfect form.

The objects proposed by this project are, as stated in the Report of the Select Committee of the Lords, from which it originates, that there may be secured at the same time a sufficient attendance upon the House of Lords by the Lord Chancellor, and sufficient means for carrying on the business in the Court of Chancery." To accomplish the first of these objects, there must necessarily be thrown upon the new and additional Judge a great part of the business of the Court, which is now done by the Lord Chancellor. That business may be classed under three heads:

First, the hearing causes, whether coming before the Lord Chancellor as original causes, or upon further directions, on pleas and demurrers, or on exceptions to the reports of masters.

Secondly, the interlocutory proceedings of motions and petitions.

Thirdly, the review of the decrees of the Master of the Rolls upon appeal.

The last of these has hitherto occupied but a small portion of the time of the Lord Chancellor. It appears by the report of the Lords' Committee, that in the ten last years of the chancellorship of Lord Hardwicke, he had decided only fifty-eight causes on re-hearings and appeals, being an average of less than six a year, including re-hearings of decrees originally pronounced by himself. The number is greater within the last ten years, but even in that period the average number does not exceed nine in a year.

The hearing of motions and petitions certainly engrosses much of the Lord Chancellor's time; but yet less than the

decision of causes. It is very obvious, therefore, that in order to enable the Lord Chancellor to afford any considerable attendance in the House of Lords, beyond what he now gives, it will be indispensably necessary that the newappointed Judge should relieve his Lordship from those duties which fall under the first head before enumerated. Perhaps it may be thought necessary that his Lordship should be relieved from those which fall under the two first of those heads, leaving him to exercise only an appellate jurisdiction in Chancery; but from the first of them he must be relieved, or the expedient must altogether fail.

This alteration, however, in the constitution of the Court, will divest the office of Lord Chancellor of those functions which have hitherto been considered as the most essential to it, and as constituting its nature and character, and will leave the person who holds the Great Seal, in name still a Chancellor, but in truth a magistrate of a very different description. He will have a variety of great and important duties to discharge, but the least of them will be to transact the business of the Court of Chancery: and, in the mean time, the ancient office of Lord Chancellor will, in effect, be divided between two Masters of the Rolls, or by whatever name they are to be called, neither of them subject to the control of the other, but each in his own hall exercising an original and independent jurisdiction.

This seems the more objectionable on account of the nature of that peculiar system of jurisprudence which is known in this country by the name of Equity. The rules of this system are not laid down in any statutes, but are only to be collected from decisions of which very few have been pronounced more than a century and a half ago; from decisions, too, of judges of whom some were, in a great degree, the authors of the law they were administer

ing, and were applying to the particular cases before them the rules which they had themselves previously established.

It appears to be extremely essential to the due administration of such a system of jurisprudence, that the person administering it should be intimately acquainted with every part of it, that he should have all its principles and doctrines constantly present to his mind, and the remembrance of them kept alive by habitual and almost daily exercise. If, of the three judges who are to preside in the same Court of Equity, two are to have the law of the court in all its various branches familiar to them, and kept constantly in their view, by a regular uninterrupted attendance in court, and the third is only, as an occasional visitor, to refresh his memory by looking back into records and precedents upon particular heads, just so as to enable him to decide in the course of a year, nine or ten causes, or twice that number, which may happen to be brought before him for decision, upon appeals, it is very obvious, that this effect must, in process of time, be produced; the appeal will lie from a judge, a perfect master of the law he is to administer, to one who has but an imperfect recollection of it; from one who has never departed from what may, if the expression be allowable, be considered as his native court, to one who has migrated into another place, and returns as a kind of foreigner. Or if that effect shall not really have been produced, there will always be a notion prevailing that it has. The suitor who has had a decree in his favor, and who sees it reversed, will be disposed to observe that the judge of the most experience is most likely to have well understood and to have properly decided his cause: and the appellant, whose appeal has been unavailing, will observe, that it is not surprising that the appellate judge should have had so much deference for his superior in experience and ability, though his inferior in rank, as to have submitted to

him his own opinion, and to have affirmed the decree, from deference, not to the reasons of the judgment but to the character and authority of the judge,

When it has been proposed to separate the offices of Lord Chancellor and Speaker of the House of Lords, it has been always objected to such an expedient, that as the House of Lords is a court of appeal, it is highly necessary that the person who presides in it, should have his knowledge of the law kept constantly refreshed, and the habit of applying its rules unrelaxed, and that this can be secured only by his being in the daily habit of administering justice in a subordinate court. But the expedient now resorted to will be attended with that very evil which it is supposed to guard against, and with this additional disadvantage, that the person who so presides is to be an incompetent judge in two Courts of Appeal instead of cne.

In a system of jurisprudence founded on no positive rules laid down by the legislature which may be at all times referred to, it must necessarily happen with respect to some of its doctrines, that they must be gradually and insensibly departed from by successive decisions. It may be sufficient to refer to such matters as fraud and breach of trust, to the acts which are considered as part performances of agree ment, to illusory appointments, and to the circumstances which convert executors into trustees of a residue undisposed of, to bring to the recollection of those who are well acquainted with the history of the court, examples of what is here alluded to. The particular notions and peculiar habits of thinking of each judge must necessarily have a considerable effect on this, and where two original judges, differently constituted as they must be by nature and habit, are sitting at the same time, it may happen that, with respect to the same rules, there should sometimes be deviations in quite opposite directions, and that there should

come to be gradually established two different laws administered at the same time, on the same subject, and by the

same court.

It has been asserted that a very considerable alteration has of late taken place in the Court of Chancery, and that orders are now made upon motions which formerly used to be reserved till the hearing of the cause, and which in many cases have the effect of putting an end to the litigation. It is presumed that the orders thus alluded to are those which are made for the appointment of receivers of estates and of managers of manufactories and mercantile concerns, carried on in partnership, for paying money into court, and for the restraining the working of mines, the diverting of water-courses, the making of navigable canals, and other works of a similar kind. Jf this be as novel a course of proceeding as it is represented, (and the statement comes from such high authority, no less than the noble and learned lord, who must himself have been the principal author of this innovation, if it has taken place, that we must not doubt it,) it affords a very remarkable instance of that large discretion exercised by judges in Courts of Equity, which has been before alluded to. It is surely only the supreme judge of the court who would venture upon such alterations. A subordinate judge would probably think, that to proceed with safety he must follow the precedents established by his superiors. But whether new or old, whether long established or but recently assumed, there is no doubt that it is a most important part of the jurisdiction of the court. By appointing a receiver, the possession of an estate is suddenly changed. A suspension of the working of collieries and mines may involve the parties in sudden and certain ruin, and a mistake in judicature upon such occasions may be fatal and irretrievable.

These important functions of the Lord Chancellor, it is