singularly indefinite on the subject, of the High Court of Justice also. He is named as president of the Chancery Division of the latter court. By the Amendment Act of 1875, he is not to be deemed a " permanent member of the High Court of Justice " within the meaning of the section of the original Act, limiting the number of permanent judges to twenty-one. His judicial patronage is very extensive, and Lord Campbell says that he is by usage the adviser of the Crown in the appointment of judges in the superior courts. His proper title is " Lord High Chancellor of Great Britain and Ireland." His salary is 10,000 per
annum, and he is entitled to a pension of 5000 per annum.In Ireland there is a lord chancellor at the head of the equity system, which arose in minute imitation of the English.
In Scotland a chancellor appears at a pretty early period in history, as the person who, being the adviser and con science-keeper of the king, issued his writs or letters for the remedy of injustice done by judges or other persons in power. A comparison between the English and the Scottish chancellors of the 13th century would probably show them to have thon been much alike. Subsequently, however, the civil law predominating in Scotland, the chancellor was its chief administrator, instead of leading on a system antagonistic to the common law. Hence he became the leading judge of the Court of Session on its establishment in 1533. While Episcopacy predominated he was generally an ecclesiastic, never a working lawyer; and after the Revolution he became an officer of state, who was not expected to be a working lawyer. Hence, when by the Treaty of Union the great seal for public transactions was appointed to be kept in England, the Lord Chancellor of Scotland drupped out of existence. A keeper of the great seal continued to be appointed for sealing writs as to private matters, and the office of director of chancery remained for the transaction of routine business connected with the department. When the method of certifying hereditary successions was simplified and placed on a uniform system in 1848, it was put under the direction of an officer called the Sheriff of Chancery.
The Chancellor of a Diocese is an officer who holds the courts of the bishop, and acts as his assessor or adviser in matters of ecclesiastical law. A bishop may be compelled to appoint a chancellor ; and there is no appeal from the chancellor to the bishop.
The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster is an officer appointed of old chiefly to determine controversies between the king and his tenants of the duchy land, and otherwise to direct all the king s affairs belonging to that court. By late practice, the office, nominally one of high dignity, but demanding little exertion, has been given to statesmen who have grown old in other and more laborious offices, but whose services are still desired in the ministry.
The Chancellor of the Exchequer is an officer who, ac cording to the old definitions of his functions, presides in the Exchequer Court, and takes care of the interest of the Crown. He is always in commission with the lord treasurer for the letting of Crown lands, <fcc., and has power, with others, to compound for forfeitures of lands upon penal statutes. While the treasury is understood to have the custody and distribution of the collected revenue, it is the function of the exchequer to realize it. Hence the Chancellor of the Exchequer, as the head of that depart ment which proposes to parliament the plans for the annual revenue, and sees to its realization, is always an important member of the cabinet. Sometimes he is prime minister. His annual statement of the method by which he proposes to meet the exigencies of the exchequer is called " The Budget." The salary attached to the office is 5000 a year.
CHANCERY, the court of the Lord Chancellor, now consolidated along with the other superior courts in the Supreme Court of Judicature by the Act of 1873. Its origin has been briefly noticed under the head of Chancellor.
It has been customary to say that the Court of Chancery consists of two distinct tribunals one a court of common law, the other a court of equity. From the former have issued all the original writs passing under the great seal, all commissions of sewers, lunacy, and the like some of these writs being originally kept in a hanaper or hamper (whence the " hanaper office"), and others in a little sack or bag (whence the " petty-bag office "). The court had likewise power to hold pleas upon scire facias for repeal of letters patent, &c. " So little," says Blackstone, " is commonly done on the common law side of the court that I have met with no traces of any writ of error being actu ally brought since the fourteenth year of Queen Elizabeth."
founded on the supposed superiority of conscience and equity over the strict law. The appearance of equity in England is in harmony with the general course of legal history in progressive societies. What is remarkable is that, instead of being incorporated with or superseding tho common law, it gave rise to a wholly independent set of tribunals. The English dislike of the civil law, and the tendency to follow precedent which has never ceased to characterize English lawyers, account for this unfortunate separation. The claims of equity in its earlier stages are well expressed in the little treatise called Doctor and Student, published in the reign of Henry VIII. : " Conscience never resisteth the law nor addeth to it, but only when the law is directly in itself against the law of God, or hnv of reason." So also King James, speaking in the Star Chamber, says, " Where the rigour of the law in many cases will undo a subject, then the chancery tempers the law with equity, and so mixes mercy with justice, as it preserves a man from destruction." This theory of the essential opposition between law and equity, and of the natural superiority of the latter, remained long after equity had ceased to found itself on natural justice, and had become as fixed and rigid as the common law itself. The jealousy of the common lawyers came to a head in the time of Lord Ellesmere, when Coke disputed the right of the Chancery to give relief against a judgment of the Court of Queen s Bench obtained by gross fraud and imposition. James I., after consultation, decided in favour of the Court of Equity. The substitution of lay for clerical chancellors is regarded by Mr Spence (Equitable Jurisdiction of the Court of Chancery] as having at first been unfortunate, inasmuch as the laymen were ignorant of the principles on which their predecessors had acted. Lord Nottingham is usually credited with the fipst attempt to reduce the decisions of the court to order, and his work was continued by Lord Hardwicke. By the time of Lord Eldon, equity had become fixed, and the judges, like their brethren in the common law courts, strictly followed the precedents. Henceforward chancery and common law courts have exhibited the anomaly of two co-ordinate sets of tribunals, empowered to deal with the same matters, and compelled to proceed in many eases on wholly different principles. The Court of Chancery could in most cases prevent a person from taking advantage of a common law right, not approved of by its own system. But if a suitor chose to go to a court of common law, he might claim such unjust rights, and it required the special intervention of the Court of Equity to prevent his enforcing them. In many cases also a special application had to be made to chancery for facilities which were absolutely necessary to
the successful conduct of a case at common law. Another