The Lord Chancellor took the opportunity of the meeting of
Parliament to make a personal statement in regard to "the imputations of misconduct made against him." "There is just this grain of truth, and this alone, in all the state- ments that have been made, that the expediency of a more permanent transfer of winding up cases has been under con- sideration." The change was contemplated because it was inconvenient to have a Judge liable to go off on circuit, an inconvenience which was recognised in the demand from the legal profession for a Judge who could remain continuously in London. The idea of a rearrangement bad, however, been abandoned before the controversy in the Press. The notion of friction having arisen between him and Mr. Justice Vaughan Williams was repudiated by Lord Herschell with considerable warmth. "The only com- municational have ever had with the learned Judge in respect of the winding-up of companies have been on points of general application." In most of those cases, the con- terences were sought by Mr. Justice Vaughan Williams. The allegation that he had asked Mr. Justice Vaughan Williams to withdraw some of the statements made by him in the New Zealand case was treated with scorn. The Lord Chancellor ended his speech by a reprimand to the news- papers which had assailed him. "We sometimes see attacks upon the foreign Press for their campaigns of scandal. May it not be well to look once in a while at home, and to see whether, if there be a mote in their eye, there may not be a beam in our own ? "
