Note 27 — PREFACE TO THE NOTES.

Witnesses in Chancery are examined upon written interrogations prepared and signed by counsel: a most wretched and ineffectual system of extracting truth. The execution of the commission is entrusted to friends of the solicitors in the cause, and the witnesses are all previously well tutored as to what it is expected of them to swear. The proceedings are always conducted at an inn, where the solicitors, commissioners and witnesses, drown all their animosities in the sociability of the table. Every day is provided at the expense of the litigant parties a dinner, at which the viands and wines are the very best and most expensive that the house can afford. Liberal potations of course produce head-aches, for which there is nothing so wholesome as air and exercise. Business is thus frequently neglected for the sports of the field. Can any censure be too severe for such iniquity?