Note 47 — Chapter CV · THE KING'S BENCH PRISON.

Mr. Commissioner Fane, of the London Bankruptcy Court, was brought up as a Chancery lawyer; and in a recent "Letter to Lord Cottenham" he thus explains the causes of that shameful dilatoriness which characterises Chancery proceedings:—

"In Chancery the suitor applies first to the judge: every thing is done in writing. The judge, after great expense has been incurred and after a long delay, makes a decree: that decree tells the Master, in endless detail, what he is to do (just as if he required to be taught the simplest matters): the decree is drawn up, not by the judge, who might be thought wiser than the Master, but by the registrar, who, in teaching the Master, frequently omits some material direction; the parties then adjourn to the Master's office; there the matter lingers, month after month and year after year; at last the Master makes his report, tells the Court what he has found, and sometimes what he would have found if the registrar had authorised him to do so, and at last the Court either acts or sends the matter back to the Master with new directions. Meanwhile, as Lord Bacon said about two hundred years ago, 'Though the Chancery pace be slow, the suitor's pulse beat quick.' I know of nothing to which to compare this process except the game of battledore and shuttlecock, in which the poor suitor plays the part of shuttlecock, and is tossed from the judge to the Master, and from the Master to the judge, over and over, till the scene is closed only too often by despair, insolvency, or death."