334 Notes of the Month on [SEPT. 



say that a dozen barristers, any one of them as competent as Lord Ten- 

 terden, would be rejoiced to take his place for 3,000/. a year j and if 

 this be so, his salary ought not to be a shilling more. But what be- 

 comes of the labours of the Exchequer, which sits for its two hours, and 

 then goes en masse to take its airing in the Regent' s-park, or adjourns 

 from the cares of state, to the Ship Tavern, at Greenwich, and discusses 

 the properties of white-bait and iced champagne ? 



The following abstract was lately given of the duty performed by the 

 judges at an Old Bailey sessions : " Mr. Justice Littledale tried 6 j Mr. 

 Baron Vaughan, 8 ; the Recorder, 20 ; the Common Serjeant, 100 ; 

 Serjeant Arabin, 82. When we find that out of 216 cases, 14 only were 

 tried by the ' judges of the land,' taking it for granted that these were 

 the most laborious and important, our wonder how they could get 

 through the enormous mass of business subsides, and we do not feel 

 that they are excessively underpaid." 



We feel no such thing. We believe that they are monstrously 

 overpaid, and that among the first duties of our honest representa- 

 tives, will be a general overhauling of the judges' enormous salaries, and 

 the general sinecurism of the places connected with the courts. We 

 must have the prothonotaries, the great exchequer people, the my Lord 

 Johns this, and my Lord Toms that, forced to shew why they are to 

 fatten their noble persons on the money wrung from the honest portion 

 of the community. 



As an instance of the sinecurism, we give a minute which has ap- 

 peared in one of the newspapers/ touching the emoluments of that ines- 

 timably bewitching, virtuous, and clear-headed nobleman, the present 

 Lord Ellenborough, him of the order of the " Tame Elephant:" 



President of the Board of Commissioners for the 

 Affairs of India, by patent dated 26th September, 

 1828 5,000 



Chief Clerk of the Court of King's Bench 9,625 8 1 



The office of the Chief Clerk was granted to Lord Ellenborough by 

 the late Lord Chief Justice, in November, 1811, but the emoluments 

 have been received by his lordship only since the decease of the late 

 Chief Justice, on the 13th December, 1818. Lord Ellenborough also 

 holds the office of Gustos Brevium of the Court of King's Bench jointly 

 with Lord Kenyon, who receives all the emoluments arising therefrom 

 during his life. 



This is pretty well for the price of my lord's brains, ringlets and all. 



Africa has afforded only the strongest probability of all those catas- 

 trophes hitherto found on earth ; and it has accordingly been a favourite 

 speculation. Men, with clothes on their limbs, and supposed brains in 

 their heads, have followed each other in rival succession for the honour 

 of embracing the cholera or the Bulam fever, being shot with arrows by 

 his majesty of the Mandingoes, or serving as a meal to the lions and 

 panthers, lords of some millions of square leagues of sand. Lander's late 

 narrative gives a new specimen of this frenzy : 



" The son of Mr. Park, the celebrated African traveller, died in a 

 small town two day's journey in the interior from Accra, only three 

 days before my arrival on the coast. I first ascertained his name by 

 reason of a shirt sent in mistake for one of my own which I had given a 

 female to wash <' Thomas Park' being marked in legible characters at 



