PREFACE.

THE national importance of the subject of this volume needs no demonstration. The English

Court of Chancery at the present moment pos"effects of the Suitors" amounting to

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FORTY MILLIONS sterling, at the same time that it holds in abeyance the right to other personal and real estates of much greater and unknown value. The evils and abuses of the jurisdiction are enumerated amongst the greatest grievances of the People.

In the last Parliament the Court of Chancery became an object of frequent discussion and enquiry. Numerous publications issued from the press; but not one of them, in the author's humble opinion, pathologically examined the nature of the complaints, probed their source, or by minute dissection discovered the remedies necessary for their complete removal. No member of the Chancery bar, in or out of Parliament,

had then come forward to expose the causes of the evils; no one propounded any practical cure. Those members of the House of Commons, of the common law courts, who chiefly impeached the Chancery, were not technically acquainted with its practice; and in the debate of 1824, Mr. John Williams, (to whom, with Mr. Michael Angelo Taylor and Mr. Brougham, the public is under great obligations for their devotion to the subject of Chancery Reform,) publicly asserted in Parliament that no Attorneys would aid in the exposure of the grievances of the Jurisdiction. Jupiter was said to reign among the gods, Quia Jovem tangere periculosum, because it was dangerous to meddle with him. The author of these pages, as a member of the profession, felt degraded by the reflection, and not fearing the " DI IMMORTALES," he began that investigation which now appears in the following history.

In commencing his labour he was sensibly impressed by the force of some observations of Lord Kames in the preface to the Historical Law Tracts:-"I have often amused myself with a fanciful resemblance of Law to the river Nile.

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"When we enter upon the municipal law of any "country, in its present state, we resemble a traveller, who crossing the Delta, loses his way among the numberless branches of the Egyptian river. But when we begin at the source, and follow the current of the law, it "is in that course not less easy than agreeable; "and all its relations and dependancies are "traced with no greater difficulty, than are the

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many streams into which that magnificent "river is divided before it is lost in the sea."

Under the direction of this guide the writer of the following pages began to explore the hidden sources of English Law, and the origin of the Equity jurisdiction; but when he early discovered that MR. HARGRAVE and MR. MADDOCK had contemplated a History of the Court of Chancery, and that with all the advantages resulting from their learning and industry they had not been able to accomplish it, he confesses he paused and suspended for a time his journey into the labyrinth of legal antiquity; in the course of last year, however, he resumed the work, determined to grapple with all its difficulties.

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It would be affectation to conceal the application and reflection which this volume has demanded and occasioned. No previous history afforded assistance. All the references and authorities quoted, with scarcely any exception, were examined and collated with the original works cited; and numerous were the wearisome but necessary researches whence no information was derived. The perusal of the Statutes at large and the voluminous Journals of Parliament, (of which the volumes of the Lords have no index, and those of the Commons but a very insufficient one,) will give the reader some idea of the time and labour bestowed on the work. The chapter on the Commonwealth it is hoped may prove a useful contribution towards a faithful history of those eventful and misrepresented times. A further task resulted from the necessity of condensing the mass of information which had accumulated in the investigation of so long a period of history, and which in detail would have extended to three times the length of the present work. In these observations the author is so far from intending to laud himself, that in various ways he claims the indulgence of the reader.