] 827.] Letter on Affairs in general. 527 



made upon him. He finessed a little more than the occasion required, but 

 still shewed great tact in the manner in which he hoisted a friendly signal 

 to every senatorial sinner in shares. No doubt, they will rally round him, 

 and fight to the last in defence of the property which they have wrested 

 from the public. Will their defence, which rests upon the forms and tech- 

 nicalities of the House, be allowed to succeed ? It ought not, but I am 

 afraid it will. 



The " assize intelligence'' has not been of an interesting description. 

 Justice Park has found out, that Monmouthshire is the most ignorant, and 

 Somersetshire the most wicked, county in England, thereby affording a 

 geographical proof, that there is no great distance between ignorance and 

 crime. Justice Bayley has proclaimed to gamekeepers, that they will be 

 hanged, in future, if they murder poachers, which will, in all probability, 

 prevent poachers from being hanged for murdering gamekeepers. At Aber- 

 gavenny, some rustics, who were no conjurers, maltreated an old woman 

 who was no witch, and are now spell-bound for it in any thing but an 

 enchanted castle. You may laugh in London at the superstition which 

 led these Welsh clod-hoppers" to commit the offence of which they were con- 

 victed, and may flatter yourself, that it is only to be found in mountainous 

 and isolated districts. But the fact is not so. There is scarcely a village 

 in these northern counties, in which the labouring peasantry are not 

 imbued with a most ludicrous dread of witches and witchcraft. Even 

 some of the middling classes are not exempt from it. I know a respectable 

 and opulent farmer, who, though in other respects no fool, feasted the 

 " wise man of Stokesley" most sumptuously for three weeks, and paid him 

 40., in hard cash, besides, for freeing his cattle from the spells which he 

 fancied that an old crorie of his village had cast upon them. 



In the Vice Chancellor's court, a curious discussion took place the other 

 day, between the King's Counsel and Mr. Montagu, in which the silk 

 gowns had all the hard words on their side, and Mr. Montagu all the right 

 on his, Mr. Montagu attributes much of the delay in the Court of Chan- 

 cery to the manner in which the King's Counsel neglect their work, after 

 receiving the hire for performing it ; and has given notice that he will not 

 undertake the responsibility of a leading counsel, in any case in which he 

 only acts the part, and receives the fees, of a junior. Now, if Mr. Mon- 

 tagu has given proper public notice of that intention, nobody can blame 

 him for adhering to it, especially if he returns his fees to his client, as he 

 did the other day, when Mr. Heald, who was his senior, absented him- 

 self from the court, and left him, without notice, to manage the cause as 

 he could. The senior counsel, however, consider this conduct, on the 

 part of Mr. Montagu, as an act of lese majeste against them and their 

 dignity, and express the bitterest scorn for this attempt to confine their 

 engagements within the.scope and ability of their performance. Mr. Sugden 

 and Mr. Heald, notwithstanding all their fine palaver about "more ease, 

 and less fees," fumed so violently against Mr. Montagu, on this score, the 

 other day in open court, that the Vice Chancellor felt it his duty to inter- 

 fere, arid tell them that he was convinced that Mr. Montagu acted from 

 the purest motives, in the resolution to which he had come. It would be 

 a great benefit to the suitors of the court, if the other junior counsel would 

 act in the same prompt and decisive mariner ; but it is idle to expect such 

 determination from them, until they have shook off that subserviency to 

 their seniors, which renders them blind even to their own immediate 

 interests. 



