Page:Select Essays in Anglo-American Legal History, Volume 1.djvu/545

 16. BOWEN: THE VICTORIAN PERIOD 531 by the suitor's own solicitor; but, useless as it was, it was lucrative to the clerks in court, and the chief clerk in each court received, it was said, an income varying from 3,000Z. to 8,000Z. The chief argument in favour of the institution was that the clerks in court were the repositories of the practice of the court. Whether they were the pundits their adherents represented it is difficult at this interval of time to decide; but an anecdote survives, according to which an eminent Chancery Queen's Counsel, being consulted on a point of practice, recommended his client to ask his " clerk in court," and to do exactly the opposite of what that official should advise. Such, roughly speaking, were the salient defects of the Superior Courts of this kingdom, in the year 1837. To attempt on the present occasion to follow the changes as one by one they have been made, would be to lose oneself and to drown the reader in a sea of detail and of technicality. But, from the above outline, it will not be difficult for any- one to determine what kind of shape any legal reform was bound to take that was to be worthy of the name. In the first place, the distinction between the Chancery and Common Law Courts required to be swept away, except so far as it was founded on a natural division of labour. The Common Law and the Chancery Court each demanded to be clothed with complete and independent powers, and ren- dered competent to do in every individual instance full and perfect justice within its own four walls. The law and the equity which were to be administered needed to be made sim- ilar in each, the rights recognised by the one to be the same as those enforced by the other; the remedies given to be identical and in both final. The law of evidence at common law still laboured under the terrible absurdity which declined to permit of evidence from the parties to the action. A suit in Chancery had yet to be relieved of the mass of paper which swamped it, oral examination of parties and witnesses to be introduced, and both party and witness brought face to face with the judge who was to decide the cause. Tech- nicalities on either side of Westminster Hall needed to be rooted out, and machinery provided to enable the opinion