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The Solicitors' Journal.

LONDON, NOVEMBER 6, 1869.

WE UNDERSTAND that the vacancy occasioned by the death of the late Lord Justice Selwyn will not be filled up, at any rate during the present year.

WE PRINT THIS WEEK an account of the twenty-second annual meeting of the Metropolitan and Provincial Law Association, held at York. The forty-third annual meeting of the Incorporated Law Association of Liverpool was held on Wednesday, the 3rd inst., at the Law Association's rooms in Cook-street, Liverpool. The election of officers takes place on Monday next. In our next week's issue we shall report the proceedings.

THE PROSECUTION of the Rev. Mr. Bennett, now pending in the Court of Arches, raises some important questions of law and practice as well as of doctrine, which, singularly enough, when the late unhappy frequency of ecclesiastical suits is taken into account, still remain unsettled. Mr. Bennett has had articles exhibited against him for a great variety of alleged heresies, and among others for having expressed an opinion contravening the 29th article of religion "of the wicked which eat not the body of Christ in the use of the Lord's Supper." To this last charge the Dean of the Arches, whose duty it is, in the absence of the accused clerk, to see that no improper articles are admitted, has taken two objections :-First, that it was not specifically alleged in the letters of request from the Bishop of Bath and Wells to the Arches Court, nor in the opinion of the judge could it be gathered from them by necessary implication; secondly, that, even assuming the letters of request stated the charge sufficiently, it was not a subject of inquiry before the commissioners on whose report those letters issued. Now, there can be little doubt that the first objection is well founded, if the learned Dean of the Arches' construction of the letters of request be the true one. They are the foundation of the suit, and the articles must not go beyond them in any particular (Breeks v. Woolfrey, 1 Curteis, 880; Simpson v. Flamank, 16 W. R. 8); a wise and salutary rule, which is also applicable to the citation or decree following the reception of the letters of request, and which prevents a defendant from being taken by sur

prise. But on the second point there is room for doubt, as there is no direct authority upon it. That the law ought to be as the judge has decided that it is, seems only fair and reasonable. The letters of request are issued upon the report of the commissioners. Surely they ought not to contain charges which have never been before the commissioners at all. Such a construction of the Church Discipline Act (3 & 4 Vict. c. 86), would render the issuing of a commission an idle and useless form. On the other hand the counsel for the promoters argue that when once a commission of inquiry has reported against a clergyman, the suit instituted may include any charge the promoter may choose to bring. Nor is such a contention without fonndation, inasmuch as there is no absolute need for a commission of inquiry to report at all. The bishop may send a case, by letters of request, to the Court of Appeal, either "in the first instance or after the commissioners shall have reported " (3 & 4 Vict. c. 86, s. 13). Still, whenever he does deem it expedient to appoint commissioners, and they make a report, it appears to us to be somewhat unjust to include any charges in the articles which are not in the report. We shall therefore be glad if the Privy Council find themselves able to affirm the judgment of Sir R. Phillimore on this matter. The question is entirely novel, the Privy Council having, on the only occasion on which it has been before them hitherto, expressly declined to decide it (Bonwell v. Bishop of London, 14 Moo. P. C. 395).

THE COURT OF QUEEN'S BENCH has refused to release the prisoners committed for contempt by the Beverley commissioners. The ground of this decision was that the commissioners had, by the Act of Parliament, power to sit" from time to time," so that the sitting at which the prisoners had been committed might be treated as a good sitting newly appointed by the commissioners, even if their former sittings could not be deemed to have been properly continued to that day by regular adjournments. The case, of course, depended entirely upon the construction to be put on the statute, and as usual the point was one which evidently was not contemplated at all by the Legislature. There were, therefore, some passages in the statute from which it might be argued that the intention of the Legislature was in favour of one view, and other passages from which a contrary intention might be inferred. On the whole there seemed sufficient to justify the Court in arriving at the conclusion which they did, and of course it was most satisfactory that they were able to do so.

The whole affair has been an unfortunate one, not the least unsatisfactory circumstance in connection with it being the manner in which it has been taken up as a party question. Because the Commissioners at Beverley had succeeded in discovering a greater amount of corruption on the Conservative side than on the Liberal, it was thought not unbecoming by writers in the Conservative newspapers to rail at the commissioners pretty smartly for their conduct, the illegality of which was almost taken for granted; and it was currently re

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