pa 372.69 fOcr. 
COURT OF CHANCERY: 
No. Ill. 
To those who have followed us through our two former articles on 
this subject, it can scarcely fail to have become apparent that the grand 
evil of the Court—its original sin—is the narrowness of its capacities 
relatively to the matters requiring its attention. To some extent this 
disproportionate supply undoubtedly originates in that excess which, 
by driving parties into litigation for its construction, the confused and 
obscure state of the law gives to demand. Still let the law become as 
simplified as the complication of society will admit, while the Court of 
Chancery continues to retain its functions, we think we have shown 
enough to prove that, under its existing organization, it never can be 
adequate to their appropriate discharge. 
It is, however, no easy matter to define wherein adequacy consists ; 
good laws and able administrators being given, it is true it might be 
propounded to be comprised in the combination of the greatest economy 
with the greatest despatch. But economy and despatch are branches of 
the definitions which require to be defined themselves, and it is difficult 
to lay down any general scale by which to determine either. Costs will, 
in all probability, be more affected than time by variations in the subject 
of litigation, and the utmost that can be effected for the attainment of 
economy, would seem to be the establishment of the subordinate machi- 
nery of the court upon the simplest models, and the arrangement of the 
wages of all employed in its working, not upon a patronage and mono- 
poly, but upon a competition price.* Delay, asthe more tangible, has 
been the general subject of attack; but, as to the point at which delay 
commences, there seems to be but one common vagueness of idea. The 
Chancery Commissioners interrogate the witnesses, on the one hand, 
about the capability of the court under its present constitution for getting 
through the business with sufficient dispatch; the witnesses, on the 
other, talk about the impossibility of keeping the business within mode- 
rate limits; but neither the one nor the other condescend to inform us 
wherein that sufficiency and those limits consist ; and parliamentary 
orators seem as little to have settled the terms of their contest. With 
our legislature, indeed, time would seem to admit of very nice attenuation 
before it is spun out into delay. When, in 1813, the House of Lords met, 
in grave deliberation, to devise means for expediting their appellate 
business, they thought they had done wonders when they provided mea- 
sures by which the disposal of the existing arrears would be accelerated 
from eleven to four years,t though they forgot, at the same time, to make 
any additional provision for the appeals intermediately to be presented. 
In like manner, though causes are seldom set down for hearing, in the 
Court of Chancery, until a twelvemonth after the first commencement of 
* Tn the contest'in the Six Clerks’ Office, which happened about the year 1693, between 
the Six Clerks and the Sworn Clerks, it was vehemently contended by the latter, that they 
could do the business of the office much cheaper and more eapeditiously without their 
superiors; and, indeed, the charge of causing the records to be taken away from the 
office to be copied at under-rates, was doubtless much more grievous than the others made 
against them of using “‘ unmannerly and abusive language,”’ “ breaking of windows,” 
“ cutting desks,’’ “ breaking down seats,” &c.—Parke’s History of the Court.of Chan 
cery, be 255, We leave our readers to apply the moral. 
+ Cooper’s Parliamentary Proceedings as to the Court of Chanccry, p. 177. 
