Page:Select Essays in Anglo-American Legal History, Volume 1.djvu/542

 528 IV. THE NINETEENTH CENTURY next in dignity ; last came the Vice-Chancellor of England — a judge who in 1813 had been created to relieve the pressure. Some equity work was also done by the Chief Baron, or, in his stead, a puisne baron sitting on the equity side of the Exchequer ; but this could only be during a limited portion of the year. The appellate system was defective in the extreme. The Chancellor sat singly on appeals from the Vice-Chancellor of England and from the Master of the Rolls (whose inferior in the science of equity he easily might be), and presided in the House of Lords over the hearing of appeals from himself — a position the less satisfactory inasmuch as, owing to the imperfect con- stitution of that august tribunal, the Chancellor was very often its ruling spirit. These appellate functions left him not too much time to bestow on his own duties as a Chancery judge of first instance. To a court so loaded with procedure and so undermanned in its judicial strength, the Chancery business of this kingdom, contentious or non-contentious, metropolitan or provincial, all flowed. A formidable list of arrears naturally blocked the entrance of the Temple of Equity. At the beginning of January 1839, 556 causes and other matters were waiting to be heard by the Chan- cellor and the Vice-Chancellor. Those at the head of the list, excluding all which had been delayed by accidental circum- stances alone, had been set down and had been ripe and ready for hearing for about three years. Three hundred and three causes and other matters were in like manner waiting to come on before the Master of the Rolls. Those at the head of his list had been standing about a year and a half. The total amoimt of causes set down and to be heard was 859, and it was facetiously observed that a greater arrear would probably never appear in the lists of the Court of Chancery — seeing that it had become wholly useless to enter any cause which was not to be brought on out of its turn as a short or consent cause. Since in each suit there were on an average two hearings, each destined to be separated by a period of something like two years, it was obvious that, in even the most ordinary litigation — such, for example, as that which involved the payment of debts or legacies out