1828.] Notes for the Month. 293 



to Leghorn ; and of the gifts and capacities of a great many of his lite- 

 rary friends. One or two persons, we believe, are a good deal offended 

 at certain disclosures contained in this part of the book : but the quar- 

 rels of authors generally will be viewed with indifference excepting 

 as matters of recreation by the public. The greater part of Mr. Hunt's 

 minor reminiscences are rather of a laudatory character ; and for the 

 parties whom he has attacked, we confess we think the less they say 

 about " personalities/' the better. 



A paragraph in the Courier newspaper, of the 25th of February, 

 contains the following extraordinary narration, Court of Common 

 Pleas. Sittings at Nisi Prius, before Mr. Justice Burrough and common 

 Juries. The court was occupied this day, in trying cases of no import- 

 ance except to the parties. In an action, which had been brought by 

 the assignees of a bankrupt, to recover some property that had been in 

 the bankrupts possession, Mr. Serjeant Adams, having occasion to allude 

 to the manner of proceeding in Basinghall Street (the Bankrupt^ Court) 

 drew a very unamiable picture of the gentlemen who exercise judicial 

 functions in this part of the City. After a great deal of general impu- 

 tation, the learned Serjeant came to more specific charges against the Com- 

 missioners ; and stated, among other matters of the same sort, that often 

 " even when corporeally present, they were mentally absent." When 

 Mr. Justice Burrough came to charge the jury, he fixed upon that part 

 of the learned Serjeant's address, " and said, that he felt it his duty to 

 say, that the assertion of the learned Serjeant, that the Commissioners, 

 " though corporeally present were mentally absent," was " a monstrous 

 falsehood." His lordship varied the expression of his opinion several 

 times, by calling the assertion which had been made at the bar a " down 

 right falsity," and an " infamous calumny." He said, that he himself 

 had been a Commissioner of Bankrupts for more than thirty years : and 

 could, from his own experience testify that the assertion, of the learned 

 Serjeant had no foundation in truth. He afterwards very highly 

 eulogized the present Commissioners ; and said, that some of the most 

 eminent men in the profession of the law had filled that office." Our 

 faith in the accuracy of newspaper reports, does not (with occasional 

 cases of exceptions) go to a very catholic belief in the notices of 

 evening papers ; which are prepared, even subject to greater haste than 

 newspaper intelligence in general. And we should be almost inclined 

 to think there must be some mistake in the paragraph before us. It 

 certainly was a odd part of any learned Judge's fe duty," to call an 

 assertion made by a learned Serjeant (unless it conveyed a personal 

 reflection upon himself) a " monstrous falsehood." But, a-part from the 

 precise phraseology, if his lordship has taken up in any strong terms the 

 defence of the proceedings before the Commissioners in Bankruptcy, he 

 will find that he is mistaken. Whatever the conduct and constitution 

 of those petty tribunals may have been, during the " thirty years of 

 his experience/' we have no hesitation in stating and there is not a 

 single respectable attorney in London who is not capable of testifying 

 to the truth of our affirmation that, at present, the system of proceed- 

 ings before the Commissioners of Bankrupts, is a disgrace to the 

 legislature that permits its endurance. There is not a portion of our 

 legal system so notorious for job, and personal insolence, and injustice : 

 and the manner in which business is conducted ressembles the etiquette 

 of the Five's court, more than the decency and attention which should 

 mark the transaction of a judicial tribunal. It is a strange proof of the 



