There was "the great case" of Errington
and Rorke, which travelled up slowly from the
Assizes to the Court of Queen's Bench, from the
Court of Queen's Bench to the Court of
Exchequer Chambers, and from the Court of
Exchequer Chambers to the House of Lords; and
on which hung more serious questions than
unprofessional outsiders dreamed of.

A Mr. Rorke had the misfortune to be a
tenant, in the enjoyment of a lease for three
lives, upon an estate which was about to undergo
the salutary purging by fire, of the Incumbered
Estates Court. With other tenants he received
due notice, furnished his lease, had its existence
duly acknowledged, and went his way secure
and comfortable in mind. The sale took place.
Adjoining lots were sold, but not the lot in
which Rorke was interested. Before matters
were concluded, one of the purchasers, Mr.
Errington, proposed to exchange a portion of
his newly acquired territory for the lot which
had not been sold, and which was in possession
of the unconscious Rorke. Through some
unhappy misapprehension, this was agreed to; a
formal conveyance was executed; and luckless
Rorke, dreaming in fancied security of his three
lives and certain terms, was one morning
confounded at finding himself considered as an
interloper and trespasser. There was no
mention of his lease in the conveyance. He was
promptly dealt with, by ejectment; Mr. Errington
having only to show his conveyance to the
jury. But the point was "saved" and carried to
a higher tribunal. The judges were strangely
divided. It did, indeed, appear that it was the
intention that the title given by the court should
be almost of an omnipotent character, indefeasible,
not to be disturbed by mistake or any
possible contingency. Still it was urged that it
could scarcely have been contemplated that in
selling Mr. A.'s incumbered estate, Mr. B.'s
adjoining and flourishing domain might, through a
mistake, slip into the conveyance and be
irrecoverably handed over to a purchaser. The
discussion began to excite intense alarm. For some
seventeen to eighteen millions sterling had been
already invested on the faith of this parliamentary
title, which was held out as being secure against
all the world; and vision of newly-found flaws,
and fresh legal groping among those hateful
yellow deeds and parchments, sat as horrid
nightmares on the breasts of purchasers. The
battle was accordingly fought out, over again,
at the bar of the House of Lords.

There, the law lords condoled with the
unhappy tenant, and the exceeding hardship, but
felt themselves constrained to support the
Incumbered Estates Court and the judgment of
the court below: the Lord Chancellor dwelling
specially on "the very masterly and satisfactory
manner" in which Chief Justice MONAHAN had
dealt with the case—a name now very familiar to
the public from the unprecedented eulogy which
was poured upon it from all sides of the House of
Lords, and which the Lord Chancellor
characterised as belonging to the "ablest and most
enlightened judge that ever adorned the bench!"

There was Colonel Keough's case—a case of
exceeding hardship. This gentleman's estate
had been submitted to the process of being
saved, yet so as by sale; the money had been
distributed, but, unluckily, in paying off an old
judgment debt, the commissioners had paid the
wrong person. When all was concluded, when
the moneys were disbursed, and when the estate
was in possession of the new purchasers, the
original judgment creditor appears upon the
scene, and forces the late proprietor to
discharge this debt a second time. It was cruel
"miscarriage" of justice, as the indulgent phraseology
of the law would put it, and the victim
has petitioned the House that some special relief
may be granted to him, The House has recently
determined that justice should be done, and that
the injured officer should be recouped the full sum.

These are cases of hardship, truly, where the
innocent have suffered for the general good.
Rorke and Keough are as the canonised martyrs
of the Incumbered Estates reform. But where,
after all, has the huge legal diligence rumbled
on, and run over so few?

In the year eighteen hundred and fifty-eight
the term of this wonderful tribunal ran out; and
in the month of August it passed away quietly
and without a struggle. It had been long
known to be ailing, for the strange reason that
it had no work to do: its labours in the last
month of its existence dealing with some
seventeen or eighteen petitions, or about four
and a half to each judge. What would we
have? Its functions were accomplished. There
was nothing left for it to sell; there were no
more patient mortgagees, exasperated by long
suffering, to petition. Everybody was paid.
Nobody was incumbered of land. These are,
indeed, the great days for Ireland. A newer
form of machinery is now at work, under the
title of the Landed Estates Court, and is meant
to deal with unincumbered as well as
incumbered lands; with a wider philanthropy, it
opens its arms even to any little dwindled lease
under sixty years. Any owner now, nervous as
to his title, may come in and have it riveted
and steel-plated, and made capable of resisting
all attacks.

The whole tendency of both these systems is
to promote a free transfer of land; so that the
conveyance, perfect and complete in itself, may
pass from hand to hand, a land bank-note, and
of which the owner may divest himself at a
moment's notice, like railway shares or other scrip.
Such a system is already at work in certain
foreign countries, and is found to answer well.

For the end, remains the pointing of the
moral. What may be done with five-and-twenty
millions may surely be done with ten times
that sum. There is a huge superficies in Great
Britain, already handsomely burdened; there
are mortgagees hungering and thirsting after
their proper moneys, and labouring through the
protracted formalities of the English Court of
Chancery, to recover it. The cumbrous engines
of that establishment are too slow and old-
fashioned for the work of the age, even after