'talked over the Committee delightfully' at the time, but has sadly deceived them since. They considered 14,0001. a year the mark, with the bankrupt business to perform, and a pension of 40007. The Lord Chancellor threw out a lure for an additional 10007. a year to his present pension of 40004., in respect, he said, of the heavy duties to be imposed on him in attending the Privy Council Court after he should cease to be Lord Chancellor, but the Committee did not take the hint. Now the account stands thus: 1. Lord Brougham says-I mean to divest myself of all means of providing for my family-then, say the Committee, you shall have 14,000/. a year, although we are sensible that the sum may appear large at first sight.' (We are quoting from the Report.) In page 10 of the same Report, the Committee state that the Lord Chancellor receives 50007, a year as Speaker of the House of Lords, and the 2 and 3 Will. IV. c. 122, secures him a net 10,060. a year as Lord Chancellor; so that he gets 15,0907. a year, and we understated the case in our Review; and he now insists that he was also entitled to retain all the family patronage; and he has at once, at a vast expense, invested himself with new patronage, and divested himself of the labour of the bankruptcy business. 2. Lord Brougham says-give me an additional provision of 1000l. a year for the heavy labours I mean to perform after I cease to be Lord Chancellor. The Committee are silent. Le silence du peuple est la leçon des rois. But no: by the 2 and 3 Will. IV. c. 111, the Lord Chancellor has the 10007. a year secured to him, not for services to be performed, as he proposed, for none are imposed, but as a compensation for the offices which were intended to be paid for by the 14,000/. The Pamphleteer occupies pages in admiration of the Lord Chancellor's disinterestedness during the delay in securing his salary and pension; but we here again understated the case, for he gained by the delay. If the bills had been brought into parliament immediately after the Report of the Committee, the two offices never could have been filled up by him, and his additional pension of 10007. a year would not have been granted. We assert that our original statement on this head is more than borne out by the Report of the Select Committee on Reduction of Salaries,' of the 15th of February, 1831, to which we refer our readers. It is but a poor excuse for filling up the obnoxious offices with a member of his own family at the old salaries, without uttering one syllable in public as to his intention of speedily abolishing them, to turn round now, and say, O! he did mention it privately to some of his colleagues;—they say so. If his intention was pure, why did he express himself with so much bitterness against a member of the House of Commons, for simply inquiring what his intentions were? We now have the admission of the Pamphleteer, that the whole of Lord Brougham's amendments are to be found in the Report of the Chancery Commissioners made in March, 1826:'-so much for his pretensions to originality as a legal reformer! We are gravely told that the compensation clauses in the 3 and 4 Will. IV. were not in the act when it left the Lords. The writer ought to have known that they could not have been introduced there; but he does not venture to deny that the provision in the act extends to Mr. W. Brougham, and that he intends to claim the benefit of it. He must know that he is not speaking truly when he compares that gentleman's practice at the bar with Mr. Trower's and Sir Griffin Wilson's. The Pamphleteer himself proves that the Lord Chancellor has been compelled to admit that the judges of his bankruptcy court were too many, and the court too expensive; but then he has imposed new duties on that court!!-Yes, because they had but little to do ;-yet a greater violation of good faith was never committed than by converting the bankruptcy judges into insolvent commissioners; but Lord Brougham let his resentment against an individual get the mastery over his sense of right. The anonymous writer is delighted with the happy results from the official assignees; not even the Quarterly Reviewer has denied that.' We were but too forbearing. With the administration of the bankrupt law in the Court of Review there is a universal dissatisfaction. The official assignees are also generally complained of in the City. Mr. John Smith himself has signed a petition to the court, complaining of the allowance to an official assignee. In a comparatively small estate, with scarcely any labour, the official assignee was allowed nearly 5007. 202 for for about one hundred working days, approaching within a few shillings to 57, a day, and all his expenses were paid besides. Such things are the subject of just and general complaint. The accounts returned by order of the Commons show the great gains of the official assignees; but the public does not know the whole truth, as the published accounts show not what they have gained during a given period, but only what they have received. As to the secretary of bankrupts, the Pamphleteer is so dull as not to see that such an officer might be proper for a Chancellor when he heard all the bankrupt business, and yet be an highly improper one for a Chancellor who does not hear half a dozen of cases in a year. The proposition of Lord Brougham's scribe is, that because a salary of 25007. is proper for an office full of charge, 12007. is the right sum for a sinecure. Upon the subject of patronage, the Pamphleteer boldly states, that no sooner were the appointments of the Masters known, than even the complaints of rival candidates were hushed. We assert, on the contrary, that the Chancery Bar was disgusted with the manner in which the patronage was exercised; they said, with Shakspeare, that preferment goes by letter and affection.' We suspect that the Pamphleteer and his reforming friend are anxious themselves to be Masters; and, naturally enough therefore, do not like to have the pretensions of candidates too strictly investigated. The Pamphleteer does not attempt to refute our assertion as to the extent of the Chancellor's patronage. The learned Lord strove hard before the Salaries' Committee for a little more! He wished to have the patronage of the colonial judgeships. To win them to his way he said,If the Chancellor makes a bad appointment-he incurs immediately the frown of the bar which he has to face every day, and then he dares not do that which a mere political minister would do in safety.' This exactly corresponds with our former view; but when the Lord Chancellor said this, had he not made up his own mind to be a political judge only, and to withdraw himself, with all his vast patronage, from that 'searching eye' which he would not face every day'? By the time the Chancellor has appointed Recorders of whig-radical principles throughout the empire, with good salaries, his cup of patronage, we opine, will be full to overflowing. Our remarks upon an extraordinary provision in the Privy Council Bill are met by an assertion that it was not suggested by Lord Brougham. If the Pamphleteer had read the ministerial pamphlet, he would have known who took credit for it: -at every step this writer demolishes his patron's title to rank as a legal reformer. He is too dull to comprehend our moderation in confining our strictures to the part of the act selected by the 'ministerial manifesto.' Does he know that Westminster Hall rings with complaints against the provision in the act, which enables a court of appeal-and such a court of appeal!-to examine or re-examine any witnesses, whether there was evidence below or not? Such a provision-a scandal to the law of England-renders it impossible to acknowledge Lord Brougham as an enlightened legal reformer. Upon whom is the disgrace of this provision to be cast? The Pamphleteer attempts to defend the correctness of the acts of parliament passed by the present government. He complains that we only gave one instance of error. If he were competent to the task he has undertaken, he would know that we might give numberless examples of mistakes, absurdities, and clashing clauses. On the 14th of last August it was enacted (3 and 4 Will. IV. c. 41, s. 26.), that any two judges of the Court of Review might sit in the absence of the chief judge at the privy council, except that any two judges are not to hear any matter by way of appeal from any commissioner or subdivision court; and on the 28th of the same month (3 and 4 Will. IV. c. 47, s. 7.) power is given to his Majesty to authorize one or more judges of the said court to exercise the same jurisdiction in all respects as was vested in any three of them! Has the Pamphleteer never heard of the blundering clause in the Bankrupt Act about the eligibility of officers to parliament ? The Pamphleteer praises the Chancellor's speed. May we ask him, what has be come of the Chancellor's business? Where are the motions? When had he a cause petition day? How many cause petitions has he to hear? How often has he had regular lunatic petition days? Does not the Secretary make the orders? How many bankrupt petitions has the Lord Chancellor heard during the last year? Above all, has not the business of the House of Lords been shamefully neglected in order to keep down the business in the Chancellor's own court? Finally, Finally, the pamphlet touches upon the intended separation of the judicial from the political functions of the Great Seal, and the intention imputed to the Lord Chancellor to secure to himself 12,000l. a year. The writer insinuates, rather than states, that the Chancellor is only to have 80007. a year; but this operative evidently is not in the secret. In the bill brought into the Lords last session by Lord Brougham to separate the jurisdictions-(of which bill, by some mismanagement, only one or two copies were printed)-he provided 80007. a year for the Lord Chancellor, and no other emoluments; but he did not prohibit him from being Speaker of the Lords; to the 80007. therefore add 5000l., and the income will be 13,0007. Indeed we are led to believe that he intended to commence as political Chancellor and Speaker with 14,000. a year; it seems to us that, although the Salaries' Committee were ignorant of his drift, he must have had this in view when he said to them,- My distinct opinion is that the Lord Chancellor ought to be paid by two sums, but net sums without emolument. What I mean by preferring two sums to one, is for this obvious reason, that he is paid both as Chancellor and as Speaker of the House of Lords. The offices might be severed; and as the Speaker of the House of Commons has 60001. a year, you might pay the Chancellor 60007. a year as Speaker of the House of Lords, and let him have whatever else you may think fit to make up his salary from the Suitors' Fund.' The 6000. -which was suggested in the House of Commons by Sir Thomas Denman-added to the 80007, would just make 14,000. We may, we fancy, take some little credit to ourselves if a smaller salary is ultimately accepted. We admire the tenaciousness of the Chancellor to his secretaryships in lunacy and bankruptcy. By the Bill, to which we have alluded, he was to retain them both after he was no longer accessible to the bar-and although matters both in lunacy and bankruptcy require at times the instant intervention of the court-but the patronage was too powerful to be resisted. We think it not improbable that we may shortly be called upon to consider this important subject with more deliberation. Since our last Number was published, the 18th section of the 3 and 4 Will. IV. c. 94, has been repealed by an order of the Lord Chancellor's of the 26th of November. Confusion and dismay were introduced into the Chancery offices and amongst the suitors. Seventeen orders promulgated on the 26th of November have been superseded by others on the 21st of December, and many orders on dismissals of bills, which before the Reform cost 10s., are now to be charged 47. 108.; and many orders on common motions, although called special, which cost 3s. or 4s. before, will now cost 17. These examples do not prove that legal reform is not desirable, but that it should be intrusted to other hands. INDEX TO THE FIFTIETH VOLUME OF THE QUARTERLY REVIEW. A. - ABSENTEEISM, evils of, 397. - Senna, 131 Mozambique, 132- Antediluvian deposits illustrating the Apprehension, effect of upon disease, 128. the Shores of, under the direction of Associations to resist the payment of taxes, 269. Athenæum Club-House, architecture of, Atmosphere, the, described, 26, B. Bank Charter, measure of the Reform mi- Barlow, Mr., value of his fluid refracting Belgian question, conduct of the Reform Bell, Sir Charles, his Treatise on the Bergami et la Reine d'Angleterre, en cinq Berri, Duchess of, in La Vendée; com- Biela comet, 24. Blair, William, Esq., his 'Inquiry into Boat navigation, miraculous escape in, Books, saying of Cervantes concerning, 149. -Mr. Whewell's Astronomy and Ge- Bubbles from the Brunnens of Nassau; by C. Calthorpe-street riot, conduct of the police 6 Capelle, Baron, de l'Origine et des Pro- Cheap law, mischiefs of, 245. Climates of the earth, 28. Coral reefs and islands, consequence of Corporations, measure of the reform minis- Cosway, the miniature painter, 79. 6 Cox, Rev. Robert, his Liturgy Revised; Coxe, Archdeacon, his Memoirs of the his |