NEWS OF THE WEEK.
P.intrAlrENT has gone, for its Easter holyday, not so ill-earned as usual.
Even the curtailed sittings of the present week have not been unemployed. Lord Brougham signalized the last evening in the
Upper House by introducing a bill for extending the Winding-up Act to, administration suits in Chancery,—the modest description of a reform which cuts off a vast amount of the vexatious, costly, and needless delays that block up the threshold of uncontested pro- ceedings in Clancery.
Sir John Romilly has explained a bill to facilitate still further the transfer of land in Ireland. Well-intentioned, and fitting with a doctrine much in fashion just now—that land ought to be made the subject of commerce like any other article of purchase—the absolute value of this measure is not so undisputed as that of others by the seine author. Its plan is, to allow credit for half the
purchase-money to purchasers under the Encumbered Estates -Act ; the balance being secured on the land by debentures, which -are to 13ass current on simple endorsement. The brevity of pur- -chase-deeds that will go into. your cash-box, is to be surpassed by
that of mortgage-deeds (scrip) that will go into your snuff-box.
-The sale of land will be heilitated by the more easy sale of -charges on it, and the value of both the pledge and the loan will rise proportionately. If English capitalists do secure some of the good bargains in estates which nationalists would rather that frugal and successful Irish tenants alone should obtain, the nation- alists may console themselves that whithersoever the capital come, Irish mortgagers will reap the benefit of the competition for their land.
More equivocal in present appearance, if not in solid merit, is the Ministerial conduct in regard to the reduction of public salaries. Lord John Russell contemplates a Select Committee to inquire into three classes of official emoluments, with a view to reduction,—the salaries and emoluments of Members of Parliament bolding office during pleasure ; the salaries, emoluments, and re- tiring pensions of judicial officers in the Superior Courts of Law and Equity ; and the Diplomatic expenses charged on the Con- solidated Fund. Probably the judicial salaries will not be ma- terially reduced, the amount being in some degree fixed by the
price in the market for the highest legal talent. That probability might have induced Lord John to spare the scandalous aspect of the arrangement by which, while he knew that this Committee would be appointed, he contrived to accomplish the appointment of lucky Lord Campbell before the Committee should be publicly announced; a vacancy for Lord Campbell having beenjwit
Lord Campbell's salary is to be secured at Lord Denman's rate, by act of Parliament !
