Strange Lord his Lordship, complaining of the malpractices of the officers of the Irish Court of Chancery, and which petition was presented by me, by the directions of Lord Plunkett, on the bench, in open court, but in chamber his Lordship was pleased to make an order "No rule." This was the first appeal to the House of Lords, and the decree of 1835 was not adjudicated on by the House on that appeal. When Sir Edward Sugden was appointed Lord Chancellor a second time for Ireland, I had got into a small way of business in London, and I had saved a few hundred pounds. I went down to Thames Ditton to Sir Edward Sugden, and I presented a petition to him for the restoration of my property. He sent word out to me, by Mr.Senior, his son-inlaw, "If I brought my case regularly before the court he would Base decep, do me justice." I parted with my business, and all I was Sir Edward possessed of, to enable me to do so; notwithstanding which, he Sugden. refused me justice, and destroyed all my earnings, and my tion of of a Master of the Rolls. prospects a second time. I having no other way but by filing a fresh bill of review and reversal-the bill I had filed in 1837 having been dismissed out of court for want of prosecution-I filed a bill in 1844, and the defendants James White, Robert Courtney, George Kernan, and Thomas Read Milliken, were four months' in contempt; they then petitioned the Court, and Misconduct it was referred to the Master of the Rolls for liberty to file a plea, that I might get the same relief, under the bill of 1837, as I sought under the bill of 1844, and the said Mr. Francis Blackburn, then Master of the Rolls, allowed them three weeks to file such plea, notwithstanding the bill of 1837 was dismissed out of Court for want of prosecution. I produced the order in Court for the dismissal of the bill of 1837, and read it to Mr. Blackburn, and handed it up to him, and he read it, and it is inserted in the order he made on the said application as being read, and to which order reference can be made, and he also restrained me from proceeding with the bill of 1844 until I had paid the costs of George Milliken, incurred by the bill of 1837, although he, George Milliken, was no party to the bill of 1844, and had been paid his costs of the bill of 1837, out of the proceeds of my property, and he expressed himself from the Bench that he was sorry he could do nothing more against me,-And Chief Baron Pigot, who was then my counsel, thus expressed himself: "Those were not the words of a dispassionate judge." These orders I appealed against to the then Lord Chancellor of Ireland, who was pleased to reverse them: to the they were then allowed to demur to my bill of 1844, for want of equity; notwithstanding my bill was full of equity, the demurrers were allowed against me. In 1816, I appealed to An appeal the House of Lords against those demurrer orders,-the decree House of of 1835 was not adjudicated on upon that appeal. In 1848, Lords for justice. the House of Lord was pleased, considering the gross injustice exercised towards me, to allow me to appeal against certain decrees of the Court of Chancery in Ireland, and Lord Cottenham was the judge that heard the first two appeals, and was chairman of the Appeal Committee on every application made on my behalf, and also gave me liberty to extend my appeal to the decree of 1835, and all notices were duly served on the respondents, and they refused to appear at the bar of the house, on the grounds sworn by the affidavit of James White, that Lord Cottenham had noted to them that I had no case, and that the appeal would be dismissed, as the former appeals had been. reverse pro Chancery In 1850, the House of Lords heard the appeal, and gave House of judgment in my favour, reversing all the proceedings taken in the Lords Court below against me, and referring it back to the Court of ceedings of Chancery, to do what was just and consistent with that judg- Irish ment, and ordering certain sums of money to be paid to me, Court. the amount of which was set forth in the Accountant-General's certificate, which could have been made up in ten minutes; but the Lord Chancellor of Ireland in 1850, referred it to Master Murphy to take an account of the sums of money to be paid to me, and which proceeding delayed me upwards of twelve months; and when I went back to the Court, the Lord Chancellor stated from the Bench, that if he had known it had appeared in the Accountant-General's Certificate he would not have sent it to the Master to take such an account, notwithstanding the Accountant-General's certificate was produced before him on the hearing in November, 1850, and fully read and explained to him; yet he made the order referring it to the The Lord Master, which I fearlessly assert was wilfully done to defeat the wilfully ends of justice. The trustees in the meantime had made away defeats the with their property and fled the country, to defeat the judgment justice. of the House of Lords. In November, 1851, I applied in person to the Lord Chancellor for a writ of elegit to deliver unto me all property which the plaintiffs James White, Robert Courtney, and George Kernan, were seized or possessed of in July, 1850, when the judgment of the House of Lords was Chancellor end of officers in the Irish Court of Chancery. given. The Lord Chancellor said that a writ of elegit should issue under the decree of the Court of Chancery of 1850, and any fraudulent disposition of property should be set aside by the parties being brought before the Court, at the same time. I then complained to the Lord Chancellor of the misconduct of certain officers of the Court of Chancery, and he directed me to bring them before the Court, and he would see that justice Fraudulent was done. I then presented a petition for that purpose against Charles Hogan, John Brennan, and John Knight Boswell, charging them with gross fraud and conspiracy, which I had complained of in open court. This petition was referred to Mr. Smith, the Master of the Rolls, to whom I applied to have it Honourable listed for that term. His Honour remarked "That I might give Master of notice; but it would be at my peril." Not being versed in the language of peril, I served notice: the petition came on before Mr. Smith, who dismissed it against me with costs, and stated in the Irish that the officers of the court had only done their duty; which bears out the observation of Sir S. B. Bulkeley, upon the conduct of the Court of Chancery, made by this gentleman in the House of Commons, at the opening of the Parliamentary session of 1852, when her Majesty had, in her speech, recommended a The Court reform of the Court of Chancery:-" Perish the Court of an Augean Chancery, perish the masters, perish the entire system, rather than continue that Augean stable. threat of a the Rolls. Sanctioned fraud and conspiracy in Court of of Chancery stable. Lord Blackburn In December, 1851, I filed a cause petition upon proofs, that James White had disposed of his property to his sons for the purpose of avoiding the decree of the Court, which had ordered payment to me of the monies found by the master's report to be then due to me, and which petition came on to be heard before Chancellor the then Lord Chancellor (Blackburn) of Ireland, on the 31st of May, 1852, when he dismissed the said petition with costs against me. It is necessary here to remark, that when Mr. Blackburn was my counsel in 1835, he compromised my rights, and in 1844 and 1845 he made the most inconsistent orders against me, which accounts for the manner in which he dismissed my petition and denied me justice. an accom plice in felony. On a motion before Sir William McMahon, then Master of the Rolls, in 1837-the trustees and the Millikens having quarrelled as to the disposal of the property they had robbed me of-Mr. Litton, counsel for the trustees, stated in Court, that the Millikens ought not to have turned round on the trustees in the manner they did, as the trustees studied the Millikens' interest McMahon conspiracy. only; and at and previous to the filing of the bill they sailed in Sir William the same boat together; when Sir William McMahon, was admits pleased to express from the Bench that "The murder is out, and fraud and all the allegations of that poor man sitting there (meaning me) against us and our officers are true." In March 1834, when I received a counterpart of the trust-deed from the trustees, Mr. Robinson, my solicitor, called on me the following day, and said Mal-prac"The trustees have sent you a copy of the trust-deed: I have tice of an made out a case which you will send to Mr. Litton with two Irish guineas for his opinion." I did so; Mr. Litton gave his opinion in my favour, but afterwards came into Court and pleaded against his own opinion. honourable barrister. and In 1850, after judgment was given in the House of Lords, in Lords Truro my favour, the respondents petitioned the House for a re-hearing. Brougham's Lord Truro, then Lord Chancellor, and Lord Brougham, stated decision "The House could re-hear the case only by a special Act of re-hearing. Parliament made for that purpose." In 1850, in the month of November, Thomas Houghton White, son of James White, and solicitor to the Trustees, stated to me that they had influence enough with the Court and the profession to keep me in litigation for sixteen years longer, and that I should never get any redress. against a legal in fluence to keep up the Irish Inquisition. relative. A charge of In 1852, when Sirs Edward Sugden and Francis Blackburn The doings of came into power as Chancellors of England and Ireland, the Sir Edward trustees as respondents presented a second petition to the House Sugden's for a re-hearing, and which petition was got up by the brother of Sir Edward Sugden's son-in-law, which the House had power to grant only by special Act of Parliament, and which petition was heard in the House of Lords, and judgment given high treaon the 5th of April, 1853, reversing the judgment of the House son against of 1850, without re-hearing the cause. That when Lord Cranworth, Cranworth gave judgment in this case on the 5th of April, 1853, he stated "that admitting the decree of 1835 to be wrong, which he was willing to admit it was wrong, and he knew it was wrong; but if we give judgment in Tommey's favour there will be twenty families ruined." In 1844, when Sir Edward Sugden ruled the demurrers against me in the Court of Chancery in Ireland, he stated from the Bench that he might have come to a wrong conclusion, from the evidence before him, as to the decree of 1835, and the only way to reverse that decree was by a re-hearing, or an appeal to the House of Lords. I persevered, and succeeded in appealing Lord for setting the consti tution at naught. against the decree of 1835, reversing all the proceedings taken against me in the Court below, using Lord Brougham's own words when the appeal was heard in 1853-" Stop, stop, Romilly. for God's sake stop! (meaning Sir John Romilly, my counsel,) I have heard enough of this case to satisfy me there was something wrong in the Court below-I mean a miscarriage." In giving Trish Chan judgment his words were-"We are bound to give this poor man all the justice we can: had he applied to us sooner, we would have stopped the sale of his property." Lord cery Mis carriage. worth liable for £150,000 by violating his oath. Such is a plain brief statement of the facts, so far as I can relate them in so short a space, I have carefully avoided exaggeration, I have understated my own hard case; I appeal to the sense of truth and justice, that actuates all honourable Lord Cran- Englishmen, for help against the cruel injustice that has been inflicted upon me. I am nearly seventy years of age-I am forced into deep distress-my wife died fifteen years ago of a broken heart, caused by this frightful iniquity. Iad not this foul injustice been perpetrated upon me I should now have been worth property to the amount of £150,000. But-alas, for the weakness of helpless poverty!-my oppressors are strong, I am weak-my oppressors are rich, I am poor. I have spent my life, from my youth upwards, either in the service of my country, or in the pursuits of industry, labour or business, to win bread for my family, and support for the hour of my need The Legal in age. Ah! it is hard to be thus robbed under the colour of the law; for, using Mr. Charles Pickering's (solicitor of Dublin) words" Money will get the lawyers; they have esprit du corps, and where a suitor has been victimised, if he finds fault with one of the fraternity, they will combine against him, from the highest Immorality judge down to the Old Bailey hack." A further proof of this is of judges. given in the fact, that after the House of Lords had given judg profession easily bought. ment in my favour in 1850, reversing all the proceedings against me, and, so far as a judicial sentence from the highest tribunal in the kingdom could do, reinstating me in the position that I was, by daring malpractices on the part of lawyers, deprived of. When Sir Edward Sugden, the lawyer, was raised to the Upper House, the judgment given by the IIouse in 1850 in my favour was reversed, and for a third time the cup of hope was dashed from my lips by the hand of fraud; again miserable pain surprised me, grief and horror enthralled me once more; yet I felt That not all the horrid lies of law or rhyme, Can blazon evil deeds or consecrate a crime |