both loud and deep. Harpies of the law began
to disturb the last agonies of the patient; they
clamoured at the gate with an indecent
importunity; they threatened, by sheer force of
numbers, to bear down the ingenious frustration of
equitable proceedings happily interposing between
them and their victims; and then, and only then,
were the famous metropolitan doctors sent for
express.

The incumbrances had to be cut out with
the knife. Looking outside the fearful visitations
which had swept the country as with a
human murrain, it seemed to be agreed to lay
much of the evil at the private entrance of the
Court of Chancery. Much vituperation was
then outpoured upon that conduit-pipe of the
law, then much choked, and needing scavengering
sadly.

It was plain that this unhappy tribunal was
to be the Aunt Sally of the period. The sticks
came flying from every quarter. It was Bogie
Chancery, and nurses found an appeal to its
terrors useful in the treatment of children.
Terrible legends went abroad of its doings:
How its delight was to send forth a swarm of
Burrs known as Receivers, who, when an estate
became sick and weakly, proceeded to fix
themselves to it inseparably, and drain away its
vitals. How a greedy mortgagee, after a
three years' arrear of interest or a claim of
say ten pounds annually, might apply for a
special insect to be sent down and receive the
rents and profits of the whole estates. How
the whole land became overrun with these
cruel administrators, who, living in the capital,
drained from their provinces huge fees and
profits and costs, and suffered heavy arrears to
accumulate, and the lands and tenements to run
to waste, and often disappeared, largely in
default. We are told how this grew to be a
lucrative profession, side by side with a broad
comprehensive suit—a rich and luscious
professional plum-cake. It was considered the
normal condition of all estates. Each was
already enjoying or tending towards this agreeable
supervision.

Pleasant little narratives were in circulation,
as illustrating the awful wickedness of Bogie
Chancery. There was the tenant who, when
mildly remonstrated with on his not improving
his holding, pleaded his having had seven
masters in succession, all of the rank of
Receiver, within as many years; which
permutation of ownership naturally entailed an
uneasiness of tenure. Then came pleasant
personal reminiscences from the lips of the most
puissant of lawyers, the writer of the
Sugdenian Pandects and the Chancellor of two
kingdoms. No doubt, at many a board was
narrated that incident of his Irish experience,
when a great foreclosure suit was setting in, and
legions of barristers sprang up, one after
another, each introducing himself as accredited
from some party to the suit. Each as he spake
flung his brief towards the amazed Chancellor.
The mean Saxon mortgagee would
foreclose; but, by way of overture to his equity
opera, must give notice to every judgment
creditor. Hence this barristerial flux. The
Right Honourable Abraham Brewster had the
good fortune to be in at the final close of a little
suit, which began so far back as the year
seventeen hundred and ten. Other instances
came under that gentleman's professional eye,
enjoying a promising vitality of fifty, sixty,
and seventy years. In the last century the
great Lord Mansfield was induced to assume
the character of an Irish mortgagee, a step
which happily resulted in a thriving, healthy
suit, which actually survived down to the year
eighteen hundred and fifty-three—a fine
sexagenarian—when it unhappily met with an untimely
demise. An eminent judge, who sat in his
Incumbered Estates Olympus, has a little suit in
his memory where, to raise a small charge of
one thousand pounds, no less than fifty parties
had to be " served," for " answering" purposes.

The famous Jarndyce suit was notorious in
the Irish equity tribunal, long before it attracted
notice across the Channel. That sort of piece was
so familiar to an Hibernian audience, that they
almost smiled at the horror of the British public.
Taking it, then, that Irish Jarndyce, anxious to
recover his moneys, is inclined to pursue the
unworthy device of selling his debtor's estate,
it may, perhaps, be interesting to watch his
progress as he flounders slowly through the vast
equity bog. There were howls of delight at
Rackrent Castle when this intelligence came
down; an exultation shared in yet more largely,
by the solicitor to that establishment. There
was a " long day," and a certain annuity for a
definite period at last ensured to the estate. For
unsuspecting Jarndyce the first plunge was the
manufacture of "a bill," a huge, swollen bale of
paper flooded with verbiage and profitable
circumlocution, containing narratives in the nature
of biographies of every single person who might
in any shape be connected with the lands. A
sort of ruck of creditors, mortgagees, tenants
for life, and every variety of the incumbrancer
species, was laboriously introduced. This
process often took years, for it required singular
pains and diligence to unearth all the parties.
An omission discovered at a later stage would
be fatal, and entail a new beginning. But at
length, all being arranged in beautiful
symmetry, and each counsel incumbered with his
bale of clean snowy matter, it might be
reasonably taken that all was ready to begin. Vain
delusion! News has come that some one has
died beyond the seas. He must be eliminated
from "the bill." In another quarter, twins,
whom a little diligence might have forewarned
of, have appeared unexpectedly; they are fresh
"parties," and must be added to " the bill."

This awful engine, being duly placed in position,
it was only reasonable that fair scope and
opportunity should be given for defence. The
Rackrent solicitor now girds up his loins, and in
easy, lazy fashion begins garnering evidence and
preparing his "answer." This process,
laborious, too, must be indulged with a handsome
space of years. Finally, all being compact and