8 FEBRUARY 1851, Page 7

The application to the Court of Queen's Bench on behalf

of the executor of the late Queen Dowager against the Treasury was decided on Saturday last. The Court held that there was nothing special in the wording of the act of Parliament granting the late Queen's annuity, and nothing therefore which distinguished the ease from the ordinary annuity cases ; and about the general laws of such cases there is no reason for raising a doubt. When an annuity is granted, it is in the power of the draftsman to say that the payments shall be apportionable, or to leave the case to events, letting the annuitant run his chance of benefit or loss. In the present CASS, the estate of the annuitant gained by the events ; the late Queen obtained the quarter's payment for ten days after the King's death, and her representatives lost the quarter's payment for the sixty-three days between the last payment and the day of her death : blending the times, her estate gained a quarter's paymentfor a term less than a quarter by nineteen days. Dealing seriatim with the points urged on behalf of the executors, Lord Campbell finally touched with some severity upon the topic of the "exalted rank" of the deceased. "We are at a loss to know how this should influence the construction of the language by which provision is made for her. We might as well be told of her exemplary virtues while living, and of her saintlike death, which will ever make her memory cherished with affection and reverence by the English nation. These we are most ready to acknowledge; but we sit here merely as judges to interpret an act of Parliament ; and, according to the just interpretation of this act of Parliament, we are all clearly of opinion, that in the event which has happened no arrears of annuity can be claimed subsequently to the 30th of September 1849. Under the peculiar circumstances of this ease, we were willing to have allowed the mandamus to issue, so that there might have been a more solemn argument at the return, and, the question being put upon the record, it might have been estrried to the House of Lords : but both parties having declared that they should be contented with our opinion, we have only to say that the rule for the inanda• inns must be discharged."