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Middlesex

Leicestershire

Somersetshire

Lancashire

Suffolk

Wilts

Lancashire St. Alban's Berkshire Derbyshire

Middlesex

London

Middlesex

Notts

Hants

Lancashire

Middlesex

Lancashire

W. R. Yorkshire

Leicester

Cause Lists, M. T. 1841.-The Editor's Letter Box.

Queen's Bench.

CROWN PAPER.-Michaelmas Term, 1841.

-The Queen v. Eastern Counties Railway Company on prosecution of Price & others..
Same, on prosecution of Collingridge.

Leicestershire and Northamptonshire Union Canal Company.
William York.

Guardians of Wigan Union.

Mayor of Ipswich.

Charles Spackman and others.

Commissioners of Broughton Inclosure.

Inhabitants of Waterford.

John Touch

John White, one of the Trustees of the Thornset Turnpike Trust.
Churchwardens, &c., of St. Pancras, on prosecution of Skinners' Co.

Master, &c. of Society of Scriveners of London, on prosecution of Page
Vestrymen of Marylebone.

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GENERAL LIST of petitions FOR HEARING at Westminster during miCHAELMAS TERM, 1841.

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lect, then the fixing up the notice in the Six Clerk's Office will be sufficient. No doubt it would be better to have relieved the sinecurist from the reception of 6d. or 10d. per folio for to deliver copies of the pleadings, as in the office copies, and to have enabled the solicitors Common Law Courts. Our correspondent also regrets the loss of the convenience of serving all the London Solicitors in ten minutes, with ease and accuracy. At all events, the class which he represents already dread the winter nights, when they will have the luxury of perambulating from Bow to Bays

water.

The further letters on the Law of Attorneys Bill shall receive early attention.

The letters of W. É. S.; C. L.; and E. F., have been received.

We think Mr. Cooke's Work on Short-hand is the one best suited to F. S.

We believe we have stated all the cases down to the last on the often discussed question of the power of a husband to dispose of his wife's reversionary interest. We shall continue to watch the subject.

We presume there can be no doubt that Attorneys have an undeniable right to be admitted into either the New or Old Courts of the Central Criminal Court, and that the door-keepers are not justified in refusing them admission. The proper application would be to the Lord Mayor, who is the presiding Ma

A correspondent on the effect of the New Orders in Chancery, inquires, whether every solicitor, having a place of business more than two miles from Lincoln's Inn Hall, and not in London, Sonthwark, or Westminster, is bound to have a place within these districts for the purpose of receiving notices, &c. He is so required by the 2d Order, and if he neg-gistrate.

The Legal Observer.

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 13, 1841.

"Quod magis ad Nos
Pertinet, et nescire malum est, agitamus.

HORAT.

THE EXCHEQUER BILL FRAUD.

THE credit of a government must be maintained at all hazards. If once a doubt is thrown on either its power or its will to fulfil the engagements entered into on its behalf, public confidence is shaken, and one of the main supports of the state is withdrawn. A government may be, indeed must be, in many cases, arbitrary; but, if it be wise, it will never throw any doubt on those transactions by which its business is carried on. These being, as we conceive, political truisms, we think, if they be applied to the affair that is now agitating the public mind, they will prove that there is only one course open to the government to pursue. The Exchequer bills which have got into circulation, appear, according to the evidence before the public, more or less to have the appearance of genuine bills. They have all been numbered by the proper officer, although not signed by him. They are on the genuine Exchequer bill paper, and it was impossible for the most experienced dealer in them to distinguish the forged bill from the true bill. They have, it is true, been irregularly issued; they have not proceeded in all cases from the proper custody, but once out of the first hand, or, at any rate, the second hand, all guilty knowledge has ceased, and the present holders have paid value for them; and, under these circumstances, we consider that it would be highly injurious to public credit if the claims of these holders were not recognized by the government: if any other course be sued it will throw doubt, not only on all dealings in Exchequer bills, but on all other government securities. We may hear next that there have been fraudulent inseriptions in the Bank books; false stock VOL. XXIII.—No, 686,

pur

may be bought and sold; false money may be coined at the Mint," may get into circulation through an irregular channel, and the government may still say it cannot redress the grievance: the dealings between man and man may be paralysed, and the worst consequences may ensue.

Thus far as to the policy of the case; but we also apprehend that the rules of law will oblige the government to recognize the claims of the holders of these bills. The true question appears to us to be, who was trusted in the matter? Was the individual from whom the bill was received looked to, or was the government considered, by the person who paid his money for the bill, as responsible for its repayment? We apprehend it will not be denied that it was the government.

Now we conceive the settled rule to be in these cases, that an agent contracting in behalf of the government, or of the public, is not personally bound by such a contract, even though he would be bound by the terms of the contract if it were an agency of a private nature-it is the government which is bound. The natural presumption in such cases is that the con

a To shew that this is not impossible, we may refer to the case of the Earl of LauderScotland, and others, for official malversadale, or Lord Halton, Treasurer Depute ot tions respecting the Royal Mint of Scotland, 11 State Trials, 157. Among the charges against him are " 2. In making the fineness below the standard. 3. In coining 17,000 stones of copper money beyond the quantity contained in his Majesty's two warrants for the copper journeys." See also, as giving the Bankers' case, in the 14th volume of the some information bearing on the present case, State Trials, p. 1,-more especially the cele▾ brated judgment of Lord Keeper Somers. b Macheth v. Haldernand, 1 T. R. 172, с

18 Exchequer Bill Fraud.--The Chancery Commission. - Business of the Queen's Bench. tract was made upon the credit and re- Chancery Reform. The selection of the sponsibility of the government itself, as Commissioners could not have been better. possessing an entire ability to fulfil all its In the names of Lord Langdale, Vice Chanjust contracts, to use the words of Mr. cellor Wigram, and Mr. Pemberton, we reJustice Story,c "far beyond that of any cognize the men the most willing and the private man, and that it is ready to fulfil most able to conceive and to carry through them with punctilious promptitude and in an extensive scheme of reform. We beg to a spirit of liberal courtesy. Great public express the fullest confidence both in their inconvenience would result from a different zeal and their ability. We now, indeed, doctrine, considering the various public believe that the good work has began in functionaries which the government must earnest, and that the general plan of reform employ in order to transact its ordinary proposed in this work, to which we alluded business and operations." last week, if not adopted, will be seriously considered, and, as we have already seen, a part of it effected, so we do not despair of finding many other portions of it, if not the whole, become the settled procedure of the Court.

This principle not only applies to simple contracts, both parol and written, but also to instruments under seal, which are executed by agents of the government in their own names, and purporting to be made by them on behalf of the government; for the like presumption prevails in such cases, that the parties contract not personally, but merely officially, within the sphere of their appropriate duties.d

THE BUSINESS OF THE COURT OF
QUEEN'S BENCH.

NEW TRIALS.

The class of cases which establish this rule, than which none is better established, THE first four days of this term passed, appears to us to apply to the fraudulent and somewhere about fifty motions were Exchequer bills. Business was so loosely made for new trials. On the evening of conducted by the government officer en- the fourth day, a list of cases intended to trusted with their issue, that fraud might be moved, was drawn up, amounting to be easily committed. The public, the in- nearly half as many as had already been nocent purchasers, could not know this-heard. The Judges expressed surprise, they looked to the government, not to the and intimated a stronger feeling at this person from whom they purchased, the circumstance. At the close of the third agent, as responsible; and if the government, by its own negligence, allowed the public to be thus liable to be deceived, the loss must fall not on the private individual, but upon the state.

Thus, we conceive, as well on the ground of enlarged public policy, as of the strict law of the case, the holders of the fraudulent bills must recover.

THE CHANCERY COMMISSION.

THE Lord Chancellor has issued a Commission to inquire into the State of the Court of Chancery. We have not yet seen the terms of the Commission, but we have reason to believe that they are sufficiently extensive. They will embrace the pleadingthe evidence-in short, the whole procedure of a suit in Chancery. We hail this step as by far the most important that has as yet been taken in the great cause of

e Story on Agency, p. 265, who cites as well various American as English reporters as au

thorities.

a Unwin v. Woolseley, 1 T. R. 674; Gidley v. Lord Palmerston, 3 Brod. & Bing. 275.

day, their Lordships had suggested an intention of enquiring into the cause of the delay, should the motions for new trials appear to be so numerous as to require them to extend into the fifth day of the term. They did so- and yet no such inquiry was made. The fact is, that the Judges felt that, however they might regret the circumstance, there was no blame justly to be attached to any one. The whole evil,-and the Judges described it as an evil,—was in the system. They felt this, and they were silent. They took occasion, however, on the evening of the fifth day, to read a sort of admonitory lecture to the attorneys, as to what would be done in ensuing terms. May we be allowed to suggest, that the remedy is not in the hands of the attorneys, nor of the barristers, nor of the clients, but in those of the Judges themselves. It is in vain to expect from any body of men, the performance of a duty before the moment at which it becomes necessary. Human nature will defer and delay, as long as it can, any troublesome, and even very laborious, effort. As long as

the rules of the Court allow motions to be made on any one of the first four days of

The Business of the Court of Queen's Bench.

term, the motion is likely to be put off to the fourth day, and then (as always does in fact happen) the pressure of business becomes too great for the allotted time, and the next day is inconveniently occupied with it. So long as the opportunity for delay is given, that delay will take place. The Court alone can remedy the evil, and that remedy may be afforded in the simplest possible manner. Let the Court issue a general rule, declaring that on the afternoon of the first, or before half-past nine of the morning of the second day of term, the list of cases in which it is intended to move for new trials shall be completed, so as to be handed up to the Chief Justice on his entering Court on the second day of the term; that in no other cases but in those included in such list, shall any motion for a new trial be permitted, and that the cases shall be called on in the order in which they stand in such list. Let the Judges, in fact, do that on the first, or at farthest the morning of the second day of term, which they always do on the evening of its fourth day; and there will be no such complaints as Lord Denman made, and justly made, on the evening of Saturday last, of the evils resulting from the delay of these motions. But let us not be misunderstood:-When we speak of his Lordship's complaints as justly made, we apply that expression to his description of the public evil-not to that part of his observations which seemed to imply a censure on the attorneys. For we repeat that where a system tolerates, if it does not absolutely encourage delay, the evil consequent on that delay is to be charged on the system, and not on the men who, by habit rather than active volition, avail themselves of it.

PEREMPTORY PAPER.

pe

Let us now turn to another part of the practice of this great Court, - the most importaut of our Common Law Courts, the most pressed with business, and therefore, the one that most remptorily calls for observation and regulation. The learned Judges of this Court have abolished the Peremptory Paper. As the Peremptory Paper was managed, it was an unmitigated evil: as it might have been managed, it would have been a great benefit; and we doubt much whether the Court will not have to re-establish it. But if reestablished, it must be upon an entirely different foundation from that on which it

originally stood. The suspicion that its re-establishment will be necessary, arises

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not only from practical knowledge of the inconvenience consequent upon the want of some compulsion on parties to bring on motions, the decisions of which they have, in many instances, a positive interest to delay; but from some expressions which Lord Denman himself used on Wednesday and Thursday last, in observing on the number of enlarged rules, and the absence of Counsel. Let us then suppose the Peremptory Paper about to be re-established, and we ask permission respectfully to suggest to their Lordships one regulation which will convert it from an evil into a benefit. When Lord Mansfield originally established it, in Hilary Term, 6 Geo. 3, (the rule of Michaelmas Term, 30 Geo. 2, was but an attempt that way) one part of the rule was (3 Burr. 1842) that the cases in the Peremptory Paper should be called on “after the whole bar shall have moved." In these few words lay the germ of that evil which finally led the Court to abolish the Peremptory Paper itself. When a motion is to be made, there is an active pressing necessity, which urges men on to make it at the earliest opportunity. But having been made, the evil it was intended to prevent having been at least stayed, if not wholly averted, the object being partly attained by the public expresssion of the wish to attain it, the desire to bring it on for discussion and decision is less urgent; and should one party incline to press it forward, there are many causes of etiquette, of courtesy, of convenience, to say nothing of the ever-enduring delay in the paration of affidavits,-which may postpone the discussion of the rule, and leave its final termination to the chapter of chances. The general rule made by Lord Mansfield ought, therefore, to have been to hear motions (which are new business,) after disposing of the Peremptory Paper, (which is old business) and had such been the rule, the vexations of counsel, the wearisome attendance of attorneys, and the thereby heavily increased bills of the clients, would

pre

never have been united into such a bundle

of complaints as to crush the very existence of the Peremptory Paper under its weight.

Most respectfully do we offer these suggestions to the Judges, whose earnest desire to promote the healthful despatch of public business, will, we are convinced, ensure them a candid, and indeed an indulgent consideration.

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