' 1828. ] Court of Chancery. 375 
distributed among fourteen lists, of five commissioners each, of which 
three only sit at a time ; and in the same manner, though each country 
commission always contains the names of five persons, but three of the 
commissioners ever act under it. 'The meetings of country commission- 
ers are held in private ; those of the London ones, in rooms appropriated 
to the purpose, but amid a din, a bustle, and a confusion which is more 
like the riot of a bear-garden, than the dignified solemnity of a court of 
justice. 
Barring the “ Great Unpaid,” the judicial organization of England 
can boast few functionaries less imbued with aptitude for the discharge 
of their functions than are the Commissioners of Bankrupts, both town 
and country. In most of the parliamentary debates on this subjects, the 
tub thrown out has been the danger of committing the adjudication of 
the complicated circumstances arising out of a commission of bankruptcy 
to any less competent individual than the Chancellor himself. “ As to the 
particular jurisdiction of the bankruptcy business,” said Lord Castlereagh, 
in one of them, “none required greater attention, on account of its 
difficulty and intricacy. It was so particularly important in a commer- 
cial country, that it would be highly dangerous to trust the decision, in 
business of such weight, to any authority subordinate to that of the 
Lord Chancellor.” Yet, with respect to country commissioners, of the 
three individuals who in this “ commercial’ country are selected for the 
primary administration of a business of such “ difficulty” and “intricacy,” 
one is generally a mere provincial counsel, who, in the multiplicity of 
the branches of the profession he has to exercise, can scarcely be sup 
posed to have his head overstocked with bankrupt law ; and the remain- 
der are attornies—a class of practitioners who do not profess a knowledge 
of any thing higher than the mere practical department of the law, and 
who, it is notorious, seldom even attempt the study of its principles. 
From either, we apprehend, that sound adjudication, except on the most 
straightforward matters, may be looked for in vain ; and for both, we 
have the evidence ofa Mr. Spurrier, a country solicitor himself, and one 
of the witnesses examined before the Committee of 1817. “It is well known 
that commissioners are sometimes appointed by the solicitor himself-—not 
because they are the fittest persons, but because they are most likety to suit 
the solicitor’s or the bankrupt’s.purposes.—(Page 75, first Report). It is 
true the London commissioners are not chosen to suit the purposes of 
either the solicitor or bankrupt. As little are those of the creditors con- 
sulted in their choice. The purposes their selection has to suit are those 
of the aristocracy and the government. They wear on their foreheads 
“ the mark of the beast.” They are the living evidence of that whole- 
sale corruption—that agency of bribery—which, with the revolution; 
became the improved substitute for the more clumsy agency of physical 
force on which governments had theretofore rested their power. Judicial 
aptitude forming but a small consideration in the exercise of judicial 
patronage, sometimes the commissioners chosen are young lawyers, desti- 
tute of either learning, experience, or judgment; at others, they are 
those whose long and briefless standing only served to shew their inca~ 
pacity for offices of importance ; while the instances in which it has hap- 
pened that the acquirements of individuals would otherwise have afforded 
a guarantee for the ability of their administration, instead of the tribunal 
receiving their undivided attention, more lucrative professional avoca- 
tions in other quarters have left these to look upon their commissioner- 
