and the dividends duly paid. A double service of trustee and banker is thus discharged by the Accountant-General, and that too without fee, percentage, or commission charged for the management of such accounts.

There are not a few accounts which may be termed dormant; that is, accounts from which no payments have been made for many years. These are of two kinds-such as consist, first, of sums of stock with the accumulated dividends; and, secondly, of sums of cash only. From time to time investigation is made into the former; and when it is found that no payment of dividends has been made for fifteen years preceding, the titles of the accounts are extracted, and arranged alphabetically; and the list printed, and copies exhibited on the walls of the different offices of the court for the information of attorneys and all persons concerned. The first investigation was made in 1854, when it appeared that the entire number of accounts, the dividends on which had not been dealt during the time specified, was 566, and the total amount of stock and dividends on such accounts £256,176 2s. 8d. The result was, that many persons came forward and preferred claims, and about one-half of the above total amount was transferred out to the successful claimants. A second list with new accounts added was published in 1860, and recently a third list has appeared. When the first list was published in 1854, certain solicitors specially devoted themselves to the work of tracing out claims. Guided so far in the first instance by the lists--which, however, contained only the bare titles of the accounts, and in no case the amount of the funds-these gentlemen burrowed among the old orders and other musty documents to which they had access in the Record Office, until such knowledge was gained as enabled them to communicate with the persons whom they had discovered to be entitled to the funds. It was as if treasure had been found.

The happy attorney who had successfully struck upon the right clue and followed it out to certainty, offered to make over the spoil to the rightful owner or owners, who in most cases were entirely ignorant of its existence, on condition that no slight share of the same

We

should be retained by himself. have known as much as fifty per cent. asked; but whatever were the amounts of the shares parted with by those fortunate persons who thus "heard of something to their advantage," and actually received that something, it is an undoubted fact that very considerable sum of money were pocketed by some of these persevering and successful Chancery excavators.

As a security against dishonest dealing with these accounts, the AccountantGeneral, when asked for information of the precise amount of the fund, in every case requires evidence that the solicitor is acting for a bona fide interested person. And every petition to the court regarding the disposal of any such fund must state on the face of it that the fund in question belongs to the fifteen-years' published list.

A return made in 1850 of the dormant cash accounts showed that for ten years previously, there were in that state, 1,220; for twenty-five years, 1,056, and for fifty years, 975. No list of these accounts upon which unclaimed cash only is standing, has up to the present time been published. There are nearly 1,200 accounts upon which the stock and cash remaining would not cover the cost of an application for the payment of the fund; and 351 accounts showing sums under £1 while on 831 more the sums range between £1 and £5.

It may be well to give some notion of the nature of the transactions performed by the Accountant-General and his staff of clerks. In the various modes we have indicated cash is paid and stock is transferred into court. These sums remain for a longer or shorter period, and usually become subject to various operations, always, however, under the direc tion of the court. Dividends are received on stocks, and when received are either paid out to persons or invested or suffered to accumulate without investment. As the interests of the persons entitled may require, the fund on any particular account, consisting of stock, or cash, or both, may be carried to new accounts and retained in Chancery, or at once paid or transferred out. just as the Accountant-General is required to invest sums paid into court, and dividends as they accumulate, so he

And

is, when the occasion arises, ordered to sell stocks. The cash so raised may be needed for various purposes. It may be required to pay legacies, to clear off mortgages, or in the case of creditors' suits, to discharge debts, or what is very much more frequent, to pay costs. Sales of stock are being constantly made for this last purpose-the total amount sold each year is very large indeed.

Costs are paid to solicitors, who among the various claiments on a fund have always a priority accorded to them. In the applications made to court for orders or for other objects, and in the conduct of suits, as well as in the general management of Chancery proceedings, many and various expenses are incurred. Solicitors have to fee counsel, to advance money for stamps, and to make sundry outlays on behalf of their clients. Their own labors have besides to be remunerated. There is a scale of charges published in the general orders of the court, which fix the rate according to which attendances and other services are paid for, so far as these relate to necessary proceedings in the management of the business of suits and matters under the cognizance of the court. The bill of costs of every attorney is besides taxed by the proper taxing-master, so that there is no room for undue charges; or, if such charges are made, they are not allowed by that official, and consequently not paid for out of the funds in court standing to the particular cause or

matter.

In carrying out the orders of the court respecting funds already in, or to be brought into its custody, the main duties of the Accountant-General are, as we have stated, to receive cash and stocks, and to invest cash in stocks. In the same way he sells stocks, pays cash, and transfers stocks out of court; he carries over cash and stock from one account to another, and receives and pays dividends. He also, by his clerks, furnishes to the court, through solicitors, certificates of the actual amount of the funds on any of the accounts which appear in his ledgers, when requested by them to do so, as well as affords to these members of the legal profession verbal information of the state of the funds and of all particulars regarding the same, so far as his cognizance extends. In cases

when persons to whom cash is payable cannot personally attend at the office in Chancery Lane, he grants powers of attorney to enable them to do so by deputy. Transcripts of his ledger accounts he also makes out for the more precise information of the court, of solicitors or their clients, by which every individual transaction or dealing with any particular fund can be clearly seen.

Of the vast aggregate of Chancery funds, between three and four millions consist of cash. This amount of cash is composed of individual sums, either in the meantime waiting investment, or which are not required to be invested; also of accumulated dividends and of the dormant cash balances to which we have referred. The total sum of cash paid into court varies, of course, from year to year. It may be taken at about ten millions annually, and the repayments, including sums invested, as somewhat under that amount. It follows, therefore, that the balance of general cash remaining uninvested gradually increases. The Bank of England, as banker to the Court of Chancery, would have the exclusive use of these three or four millions of cash balances, were they not otherwise dealt with. The court, however, steps in, and while it leaves with the Bank a balance (£300,000 more or less) sufficiently adequate to recompense it for its trouble as banker, it invests the remainder in Government securities. The funds created by these investments are known by the general designation of suitors' funds, and these we shall now briefly describe. The first investment out of the general or common cash in the custody of the court took place on the 2d of July, 1739, when, pursuant to Act of Parliament, £35,000 were laid out in the purchase of Exchequer tallies, which in 1752 were exchanged for an equal amount of consols. This investment was the foundation and commencement of that portion of the suitors' funds now known as "Fund A." Repeated investments, made from time to time from the same source for upward of a century, have swollen that fund until it now amounts to more than two and a half millions of stock. This stock is of course the representative of so much of the suitors' general cash as has been taken to purchase it, and is there

fore liable to be reconverted into cash at any time, should the claims of the suitors necessitate such an operation.

The interest arising from the first investment in 1739, to which we have alluded, was used to pay the salaries of the Accountant-General and his clerks. As subsequent investments were made, the salaries of the Masters and other officers of the court were met out of the dividends arising on the stocks purchased. It, however, happened that the interest produced by these various investments was more than sufficient to pay the salaries charged thereon, and accordingly in 1768, an Act (9th Geo. III.) directed that such surplus interest should be laid out in the purchase of Government securities, and placed to a new account. The interest yielded by these last securities was also directed to be invested and accumulated on the same account. These investments and accumulations constitute "Fund B." It is to be observed that as Fund B has arisen from surplus interest on Fund A, it is therefore equivalent to the profit account of a banker. Its amount represents the clear gain made by the court in its capacity of banker, so to speak, after paying its expenses, and upon which no individual suitor as such has any manner of claim, just as the customer of a banker has no claim on the profit made by the use of banking funds. The interest of Fund B, however, instead of being allowed constantly to accumulate, has been occasionally diverted for such purposes as purchasing ground and building offices; after which temporary diversions, the accumulations of interest were continued to be made as before, and the fund gradually in consequence increased in amount. This was owing to the circumstance that for very many years the income of Fund A alone was more than sufficient to answer all the charges made upon it, so that Fund B was regularly swelled by the surpluses of Fund A as well as by the stated investments of its own produce. In 1826 it had reached £537,800 stock; in 1848 the sum had increased to £1,094,604 10s. 10d., while in 1852 the total of investments amounted to not less than £1,291,629 10s. 5d. In that year its further increase was arrested by Act of Parliament, which made a new

disposition of the fund, and directed the interest as it accrued to be carried over to an account already existing, termed the Suitors' Fee Fund Account (Fund C).

This last-named fund was created in 1833 by an Act generally known as "Lord Brougham's Chancery Regulation Act." This Act required the Masters, the Registrars, the Examiners, with their respective staffs of clerks, and also several other officers of the court, to collect the fees formerly received and retained by them by way of salaries, and to pay the same into the bank, to the Suitors' Fee Fund Account. Out of the funds on this account, in lieu of such fees, they were to be remunerated by fixed salaries. All fees imposed on proceedings in the court are also paid to this fee account, entitled Fund C. The surpluses of cash on this fund, after meeting all the charges on it, the Lord Chancellor was empowered to direct to be invested also in Government securities, and thus was created a fourth, or Surplus Fee Account, named Fund D. The stock on this account, in 1852, amounted to £201,028 2s. 3d. consols. It was also provided that in the event of there being at any time a deficiency in Fund C for the payment of salaries and other expenses of the court, such deficiency was to be made good by resorting to the interest and dividends arising on Fund D, or, in case of need, by a sale of a portion of its capital.

A pretty considerable amount is paid every year to the Fee Fund C, arising from brokerage levied by the Chancery broker on all sums of cash invested and stocks sold. The charge is the ordinary one of one-eighth per cent. Formerly the Accountant-General received a share of the brokerage as part of his official income; but since 1852, he has been paid entirely by fixed salary. More recently the broker has also been recompensed by salary; so that now the entire proceeds of brokerage pass direct from the broker's hands to Fund C. By this arrangement a saving has been effected; all the more, as year by year, owing to the increasing number of Stock Exchange transactions, the amount of brokerage shows a gradual increase.

All fees levied on proceedings in the Court of Chancery since the passing of

the Suitors' Relief Act in 1852, with slight exceptions, are raised by means of stamps, under the direction of the Commissioners of Inland Revenue, who keep separate accounts of the same, and each month pay the amount received to the credit of the Fee Fund C. By this act, also, fixed salaries were substituted for fees throughout all the offices of the court. We have already stated that by the Act of 1852 the interest on Fund B was no longer allowed to accumulate on that account, but was directed to be carried as it accrued to the same Fee Fund C. So likewise with the surplus interest on Fund A. The Suitors' Further Relief Act of 1853 enacted that the dividends which would arise from the sum of £201,028 2s. 3d. consols on Fund D should also in future be carried over to Fund C. Since the passing of these Acts no addition has consequently been made to either of the Funds B or D. The whole amounts of the interest and surplus interest on all the Funds, A, B, and D, are now regularly placed to Fund C, which is entirely an income account, swelled and maintained by these amounts of interest and by the produce of fees levied, while it is charged with the salaries of a whole host of Chancery officials, with pensions, and with the various expenses of all the offices of the court.

The amounts of stock accumulated on Funds B and D are respectively, as already mentioned, £1,291,629 10s. 5d. and £201,028 28. 3d., making together about one million and a half. It is this sum which Parliament has appropriated for the erection of the new Courts of Justice; nor can it be said that in such an appropriation are the profits and careful accumulations of the Court of Chancery for upward of a hundred years likely to be injudiciously expended.

We cannot conclude this brief account of the Chancery funds without adverting to the efficiency of the establishment entrusted with their management. No one can have read the report of the Chancery Commission issued some two or three years since, without being struck with the ability and thorough knowledge of the business of the department shown by the comments and statements of the Accountant-General and his chief clerk, as contrasted with the suggestions of the Law Societies and

several other recommendations contained in the report.

There are, however, two changes of an external kind, which, if introduced, would confer signal benefits: these are, first, the establishment of a branch office by the Bank of England in Chancery Lane; and, secondly, the abolition of the office of signing registrar. In regard to the former, we are glad to find that the plans of the new courts provide accommodation for a branch bank; but why should so great a boon, more especially to the poorer suitors, not at once be conceded? The signature of the registrar to the Chancery checks is the relict of an antiquated and cumbrous system, now happily gone. It is clearly useless, since the examination and check which it formerly authenticated have been long ago abandoned as unnecessary. On the other hand, the adherence to the signature is productive of a vast amount of inconvenience and annoyance, not only to the legal profession, but to bankers and to the suitors themselves, because the registrar will not sign certain checks unless he sees the orders of the court, and these at the time cannot often be had. The name of the AccountantGeneral attached to the checks he draws on the funds held by him should be sufficient, without the counter-signature of any other official of the court.

Fraser's Magazine.

MARRIAGE LAWS.

MANY reasons concur, making it not expedient only but highly important, that the topic of marriage should be treated fundamentally before popular audiences and in popular books. The teachers of religion, by dealing with it only dogmatically, briefly and allusively, throw away the vast influence, which, if wisely informed, they might beneficially exercise; and already it is manifest that with a formidable fraction of society they have lost all moral authority. Nor only so; but parents seldom feel themselves strong enough in knowledge to converse freely with their children and give them reasons for established restrictions. Young persons pick up opinions on the whole question rather from their companions and friends whose

age is slightly in advance of their own, than from their parents or from any maturer and more fully furnished minds. That libertinism of the most demoralizing character flourishes in London, in Paris, and in New York, cannot be a secret; nor that it is confined to no grade of society. But, alas! the chief cities do but impress the imagination more, by the scale of the evil: how much it is really less in smaller assemblages of mankind, is hard to say. One One thing only is clear; that the theoretic morality both of the law of the land and of the Christian religion is systematically set at naught by masses of men too numerous to punish and too intelligent to despise; to whom no public argument is addressed; whom no pulpit denunciations affect or reach. And, what makes the evil more untractable, at the back of the offenders lies, as a force in reserve, a theory which they often imagine to justify them; a theory upheld by earnest persons of both sexes, hitherto wholly guiltless of transgression against the received moralities. Concerning opinion in France, Italy, and Germany, we shall not attempt to speak. It concerns us more, that among people who talk English and have Protestant Christianity for the basis of their moral culture, on both sides of the Atlantic, a theory has arisen concerning "free love," which, however variously applied, in every case would supersede marriage. Meanwhile polygamy has burst out, not among the Mormons only, but among the ruder Americans who are in contact with polygamic Indians; and still more preposterous customs are in some sects practised in the name of religion. Evidently it is on American soil that the battle of old and new morality will most actively be fought; but in the time of transition the most sacred virtues are not safe here, unless the whole question is opened to discussion and everything overstrained or unjust in existing institutions be removed. For undoubtedly, nothing so insures a violent and pernicious overthrow, as the pertinacious maintenance of error, and the consecration of injustice.

It may be a dozen years, since a young couple were married in the United States, who forth with put into all the papers a protest against the tyranny of

marriage. (We respect them too much to give the name here; we see it often foremost in philanthropic and virtuous work.) In the advertisement the husband disowned his right to expect "obedience" from his wife; and they jointly declared, that marriage was a thing between themselves and God, with which society and the law had nothing whatever to do. Such is the fundamental idea of "free love;" which with some will be matrimonial faithfulness, with others wild caprice. It assumes that marriage, like friendship, is an affair essentially private, with which it is impertinent and offensive for the State or social opinion to interfere. The assumption is either a truth or a falsehood; until its falsehood is proved, we cannot take the first step in argument beyond; and when such a view is upheld in simple sincerity, by persons who have persuaded themselves that it would deliver us from the prevalent deplorable unchastity, they certainly have a right to expect a frank acceptance of their challenge. We trust that our readers need not fear in this article anything that can justly offend their taste. The most critical of the topics which we need to treat, are such as ought to be deliberately sifted by every prudent maiden.

and

While two persons live together as married, but without children, nothing appears of which the State must necessarily take cognizance. But unless such a condition of things were exceptional, human society would soon die out; law must of course be framed on the assumption that offspring will be the result of unions. The instant that children are born, a duty of protection falls upon the State. Our morality has long ago passed beyond the barbaric principle that children belong to the parents only and not to the community also. No one now claims that the parents shall be free to expose them to wild beasts, or starve them by cold or famine. Thus the State at once appears as a guardian on the background, ready to act, if necessary. We may add, this function of the State (which none will now deny) instantly opens a new topic; the right to treat as an offence any premediated destruction of infant life about to be. Whether it be expedient to exer