1828. ] Court of Chancery. 373 
proceedings, and generally then have to await their turn on the list for 
full two years before they are heard, and after that, perhaps, only to 
receive an interlocutory judgment, without obtaining their final decision 
until four or five years from the period of their first institution; yet our 
legislators (if they are to be judged by their actions) seem to think this 
all in exceeding good time. We suspect, however, there are few indi- 
viduals awaiting the decision of their causes to obtain possession of their 
property who would like to adopt this legislative notion of dispatch ; and, 
we apprehend, we should not be charged with urging on proceedings 
with untimely haste, if we were to affix a twelvemonth from the com- 
mencement as the average period within which ordinary causes ought to 
receive their determination. The causes tried in the courts of common 
law are frequently of equal importance with those litigated in Chancery ; 
yet the average there certainly does not exceed six months, and even this 
we conceive to be higher than necessity demands. Now, in order to 
estimate the additional force necessary to infuse into the court for approxi- 
mating its dispatch of business to this average standard, we have instituted 
a comparison over a period of three years, for which we happen to have 
the materials, between the causes requiring its judgment, and the extent 
to which it is enabled to give it. The return refers to cases of pure equity 
alone, and will stand thus :— 
Dismissions| Result of Aggregate | Proposition of 
a aoe position 
bees Bilis for Causes 3 rg of Adjudication 
eas | filed want of requiring Sig Gs: eo Causes to Causes 
Prosecution.| Adjudieation. | A = 
adjudicated.} requiring it. 
‘ NN ee ee ee ee 
It is true, the returns of bills filed do not distinguish between 
original bills and those of revivor and supplement; and, as the 
two latter are the mere continuous steps in the same cause, taken for 
the purpose either of reviving a suit against the representatives of a 
deceased party, or adding new parties to it, the apparent amount of 
cases requiring adjudication is to all the extent of those swelled beyond 
its actual one. It is certain, however, that bills of revivor and supple- 
ment form a very insignificant proportion to original bills; and we 
believe we should be speaking prodigiously within the mark, if we fixed 
‘it at one-fourth. Taking it, however, at this very low estimate, the 
apparent proportion of causes disposed of in the space of a twelvemonth 
to those requiring a decision, will, in the two most favourable years, 
have been little more than a third, and in the other vastly below it 380 
that, at the very lowest possible estimate, it would require the effective 
force of the court to be tripled, in order to accomplish the decision of its 
present average quantity of causes within the somewhat protracted period 
of twelve months—and this, be it remembered, in equity alone—without 
saying one word of either bankruptcy or lunacy matters. But the pre- 
sent amount of business pending is by no means that from which the 
estimate ought to be drawn. It is beyond all doubt, that the delay and 
