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Report of the Case of John W. Webster, indicted for the Murder of George Parkman. By George Bemes, Esq., one of the Counsel in the Case. Boston, U.S.: Charles C. Little and James Brown. 1850.

WE must, when we have more space, again notice this phenomenon. Of all the leviathan machinery for breaking a fly this beats everything on record. A case divested of any kind of serious doubt or real difficulty, appears to have lasted twelve mortal days, and now fills (what with speeches and evidence) this huge volume of 628 pages!!! We undertake to give the entire gist of all that is really material in the evidence in two pages. The whole affair, as regards prolixity, is a negative example of all jurisprudence for all time to come; and we promise it as thorough a threshing and winnowing as we have yet bestowed on like offenders. It shall be belaboured along with our own precious law reporters.

Select Cases argued and adjudged in the High Court of Chancery before the late Lords Commissioners of the Great Seal and the late Lord Chancellor King, from the year 1724 to 1733. Second Edition. By Stewart Macnaghten, of the Middle Temple, Esq., Barrister-at-Law. London: V. and R. Stevens and G. S. Norton.

1850.

THESE are the sort of reports we wish to encourage. This volume has been very judiciously selected from heaps of rubbish, a notice not only of old cases but of new ones, which are really useful to the profession. The notes are after the fashion of Smith's Leading Cases, and they are tersely and ably written.

On the Construction of Locks and Keys. By John Chubb. Assoc.Inst. C. E. London: 1850.

A REALLY interesting and graphic account of locks and keys.

Practical Remarks upon the Injurious Operation of the Wills Act, in respect to the Execution of Wills, with Suggestions for its Amendment. By an Advocate in Doctors Commons. London: William Benning & Co., Law Booksellers, 43, Fleet Street. 1850. A VERY ably written Treatise.

The Act of Settlement and the Pope's Apostolic Letters. Second Edition. Pickering, London. 1851.

Ancient British and English Churches. Stillingfleet's Independence of the British Churches, &c.—Inett's Short View of the Ancient and Present State of the English Church and Monarchy. Pickering, London, 1851.

MR. Purton Cooper is the most indefatigable of extractors. Just what the public desires to find authority or data for, Mr. Cooper supplies them with piecemeal, at the very moment, and just as often as they seem to want it. Both of these are well-timed and palatable tit bits, and historical bonne bouches of admirable savour.

Dart's Vendors and Purchasers. A Compendium of the Law and Practice of Vendors and Purchasers of Real Estate; comprising the Authorities down to the Present Time. By J. Henry Dart, Esq. Barrister at Law. London: Stevens and Norton. 1851. WE have only glanced superficially at this work as yet; but, as far as we have been able to judge, it appears to us to warrant the high praise which we observe has been awarded to it by some of the daily

papers.

Events of the Quarter.

WE deeply regret to have to record the alarming increase of arrears in the Court of Chancery. On the first day of Michaelmas Term the arrears of causes, appeals, appeal motions, and claims, amounted to nearly 800, and the arrears have now increased to 1,050, or upwards of 250 more than they were ten weeks ago. So that the arrears in this Court are increasing at the rate of nearly 1,300 per annum. There is also an immense mass of motions before the Vice-Chancellors, and a great number of appeal and original petitions for hearing. The office of Chancellor must be re-modelled as we have suggested, nor is there any time to be lost. The matter is urgent. Infinite mischief and boundless injury to suitors will be the result of further delay by the government.

SINCE Our last number Mr. Baron Rolfe has been promoted to the Vice-Chancellorship of England, and has been elevated to the peerage by the title of Baron Cranworth.

Mr. Martin, Q. C., of the Northern Circuit, has succeeded Baron Rolfe as a Baron of the Exchequer.

THE Common Law Commissioners have put forth their Report, consisting of moderate and, it seems to us at first sight, judicious amendments, but such as certainly will not satisfy many of the more radical reformers of our jurisprudential system. We must of course reserve a review of the Report till our next.

DR. BOWYER has resigned his office as Lecturer at the Middle Temple. We deeply regret his loss, as his contributions to law literature promised to be very valuable. The remuneration afforded is alone a discouragement to talent. John George Phillimore, Esq., has, however, accepted the office, and gave a most brilliant and learned opening lecture on the 20th ult., attended by several judges and men of legal eminence.

Lord Langdale retires from the Rolls, and will be succeeded by Sir J. Romilly, the Attorney General, to which office Sir A. Cockburn will be promoted. Mr. Watson or Mr. Page Wood, it is said, will be the new Solicitor General.

WILLIAM MUSGROVE, Esq., second puisne judge at the Cape, has succeeded William Menzies, Esq., first puisne judge deceased, and Sidney Bell, Esq., equity draughtsman, is, it is said, to succeed Mr. Musgrove.

AN ADDRESS has been sent by the Bar to Her Majesty, expressing the indignation and surprise it feels at the Papal Aggression, and an expression of its illegality and encroachment on the Queen's prerogative. Nothing could be more absurd than to assert "surprise" about a thing anticipated by every one as the natural result of the invitations to Rome by traitors in our own Church. It prevented many barristers, ourselves among the number, from signing the Memorial at all. It has appended to it the names of 747 gentlemen, consisting of 46 Queen's Counsel, 3 Masters in Chancery, 9 Serjeants-at-Law, and 689 outer barristers. A perusal of the names of those of the higher ranks of the profession will show that the feeling of deep offence at, and resolute determination to oppose, the Papa! assumption, is confined to no political party. They are as follows:QUEEN'S COUNSEL.-William Baker, William Selwyn, Sir F. Thesiger, M.P., Richard B. Crowder, Francis Whitmarsh, Christopher Temple, John Stuart, M.P., Clement T. Swanston, Robert P. Roupell, Sir John Romilly, M.P., George Chilton, W. H. Watson, K. Macauley, C. Knowles, L. C. Humfrey, John Greenwood, C. Hoggins, Richard Bethell, Sir J. A. F. Simkinson, J. G. Teed, Loftus Wigram, M. P., James Russell, Kenyon S. Parker, James Parker, John Rolt, Frederick Calvert, W. P. Wood, M.P., Richard Malins, C. H. Whitehurst, P. F. O'Malley, W. Whateley, Charles S. Greaves, James Bacon, Spencer H. Walpole, M.P., A. Hayward, George J. Turner, M.P., Edward J. Lloyd, John Herbert Koe, H. L. Shepherd, W. Loftus Lowndes, John Walker, Wilkinson Mathews, W. C. Rowe, Henry Keating, B. Peacock, George Butt. MASTERS IN CHANCERY.-Sir W. Horne, Richard T. Kindersley, Richard Richards.

SERJEANTS-AT-LAW.-Alfred Dowling, Arnold Wallinger, R. C. Jones, N. R. Clarke, H. A. Merewether, H. Storks, J. B. Byles, W. F. Channell, E. S. Bain.

NEW Orders were issued by the Court of Chancery on the 2nd November last, under the recent Acts, which we print elsewhere.

In twenty years hence it is to be hoped that such pitiable buffoonery as the following will have become matter of curious history-a sort of fossil relic of barbarism. Mr. Baron Martin is the victim. "Just before the rising of the Court on Thursday, the judges withdrew into their private room, where Mr. Martin, the newly appointed judge, was invested with a coif. Immediately afterwards their lordships resumed their seats in court, and Mr. Serjeant Martin entered, and took his seat on the front bench, amongst the serjeants, and was then called upon to "count," according to ancient custom.

This ceremony, which is now much divested of its ancient solemnities, consisted simply (!) of the newly-made serjeant's reading a 'count' in an action of dower, as follows:-Yorkshire to wit.-Ann Ring, widow, who was the wife of William Ring, Esq., by John Jones, her attorney, demands against Charles Davis the third part of ten messuages, ten barns, &c., in the parish of Ripon, in the county of York, as the dower of the said Ann Ring, of the endowment of William Ring, deceased, heretofore her husband, of which she has nothing, &c.' The senior serjeant in court, Mr. Serjeant Channell, then demanded that the writ of dower should be read, which was done by the officer of the court. Mr. Serjeant Byles, the next serjeant in point of seniority in court, then said, 'I imparle.' The Chief Justice said, 'Be it so.' His lordship then said, 'Brother Martin, will you move?' and upon Mr. Serjeant Martin bowing in the negative, the ceremony closed, and the court adjourned."

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MIDDLE TEMPLE, November 9th.-William Caldwell Roscoe, John Hargrave Hodgson, George Edward Frere, Henry Lushington Phillips, and William Parker, Esquires.

MIDDLE TEMPLE, November 30th.-George Frederick Bullock, Alexander John Mansfield, Nathaniel Lindley, Thomas Turner, John Alexander Jackson, Wriothesley Baptist Noel, John Carter, Edwin John Herapath, William Sefton Moorhouse, John Doherty, and Horace M. Wright, Esquires; James B. Davidson, M.A; Edward A. Carlyon, M.A.; and William U. Heygate, M.A.

LINCOLN'S Inn.-Henry A. Roberts, John D. Rochfort, Esquires; Francis Compton, D.C.L.; William S. Pakenham, M.A.; Edward P. Walstenholme, M.A.; Francis Dobinson, M.A.; and Samuel Brandram, M.A.

GRAY'S INN, November 20th.-Montague Mordaunt Ainslie, Esq. (of Christ Church College, Oxford, B.A.), and William Arnold Bainbrigge, Esq., were called to the degree of barrister at-law.

January 22nd.-Richard Martin, Esq., B.A.

THE HON. DAVID PLUNKETT has resigned the office of Master of the Court of Common Pleas, in consequence of serious ill-health. Mr. Plunkett had been prothonotary of that court when Lord Plunkett was chief justice, previous to his promotion to the seals.

LEGAL PROMOTIONS.-Mr. Serjeant Allen of the Oxford Circuit, and Mr. Serjeant Wilkins of the Northern Circuit, have received patents of precedence. Mr. Miller, of the Midland Circuit, will receive the coif. The vacancies occasioned by the elevation of Mr. Martin, and the retirement from circuit practice of Mr. Whitehurst, have led to several applications to the Lord Chancellor for silk, but at present no determination has been made as to which, if any, gentlemen will be called within the Bar.

THE NEW MASTERSHIP IN CHANCERY.-Master Dowdeswell, senior master, resigned the office of head master, which he held for thirty years.

VOL. XIV. NO. XXVI.

K

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