1793.
opinion, in opposition to that of a majority of the attendant Judges; in other words, whether the judges called by the Lord Chancellor and Lord High Treasurer were to be considered as mere assistants to them without voices. The opinion of the Judges being taken on this point, seven against three held, that the Lord Chancellor and Lord Treasurer were not concluded by the opinions of the Judges, and therefore that the Lord Keeper in the case in question, there being then no Lord Treasurer, might give judgment according to his own opinion. Lord Somers concurring in this idea, reversed the judgment of the Court of Exchequer. But the case was afterwards carried by error into Parliament, and there the Lords reversed the judgment of the Exchequer-Chamber, and affirmed that of the Exchequer. However, notwithstanding this final decision in favour of the Bankers and their creditors, it appears by a subsequent statute, that they were to receive only one half of their debts; the 12 and 14 W. 3. after appropriating certain sums out of the hereditary Excise for public uses, providing, that in lieu of the annuities granted to the Bankers and all arrears, the hereditary Excise should, after the 26th of December 1601, be charged with annual sums equal to an interest of three per cent, till redeemed by payment of one moiety of the principal sums. Hargrave’s case of the Bankers, 1, 2, 3.
Upon perusing the whole of this case, these inferences naturally follow:—1ft. That admitting the authority of that decision in its fullest extent, yet it is an authority only in respect to such cafes, where letters patent from the crown have been granted for the payment of certain sums out of a particular revenue.2d. That such relief was grantable in the Exchequer, upon no other principle than that that Court had a right to direct the issues of the Exchequer as well after the money was deposited there as while (in the Exchequer language) it was in transitu.3d. That such an authority could not have been exercised by any other Court in Westminister-Hall, or by any Court that from its particular constitution had no controul over the revenues of the Kingdom. Lord C. J. Holt, and Lord Somers (though they differed in the main point) both agreed in that case, that the Court of King’s bench could not send a writ to the Treasury. Hargrave’s case, 45, 89. Consequently, no such remedy could, under any circumstances, I apprehend, be allowed in any of the American States, in none of which it is presumed any Court of Justice hath any express authority over the revenues of the State such as has been attributed to the Court of Exchequer in England.
The observations of Lord Somers, concerning the general remedy by petition to the King, have been extracted and referred to by some of the ablest law characters since; particularly by