REPORT.
7 recognizance entered into in the Court, or the representative of such person, to bring in any sum of money due thereon, or otherwise to perform the condition of such recognizance; such order to be conditional in the first instance, and any person affected by it to be at liberty to rely upon any equitable defence in showing cause against it; and if such order be made absolute, that it be enforced in the same manner as other orders of the Court now are; and, further, that all officers of the Court shall be liable, in cases of debt, to the ordinary tribunals of the country.
The duties of the office will thus be reduced to preparing and issuing the Writs before mentioned ; and secondly, to swearing gentlemen into office before the Lord Chancellor.
We are of opinion that these Writs should be issued by the Clerk of the Writs, and that gentlemen should be sworn into office before the Lord Chancellor, by the Registrar of the Court.
Mr.
O'Brien, who has held the office of Chief Clerk for the last nineteen years, has stated to us in his evidence, that the two gentlemen who held the office of Clerk of the Crown and Hanaper, prior to the appointment of the present officer in the month of June last, regarded it very much as a sinecure, and that the duties were performed almost entirely by himself; that they did little more than sign their names, and sometimes even left their signatures on a slip of parchment to be appended to the instruments by him, and that one gentleman was absent from the office for six months at one period.
If the recommendations we have submitted be carried out, the department of the Clerk of the Crown and Hanaper will be altogether unnecessary, and the office may be abolished.
We forbear, therefore, to make any proposal as to the salaries of the clerks in this office, the more particularly as the first clerk is amply remunerated by a recent improvement made in his salary, and there are no duties which, even in the present constitution of the office, might not be easily performed by him with the assistance of one clerk.
The case of Mr.
Walsh, the scrivenery clerk in this office, will be met by the regulations we propose relative to the scrivenery clerks in the other departments of the Court.
We beg to submit for the consideration of the Lord Chancellor, whether the form of a Commission for a Justice of the Peace might not be much abridged.
This commission is issued in far greater numbers than any other writ that issues from this office, and it appears to us to be unnecessarily prolix.
The name of every Privy Councillor in Ireland, of every Queen's Counsel, and of every Magistrate of the county (amounting in the county of Cork to 500), is twice repeated in every commission, thus adding considerably to the labour of the office.
CLERK OF APPEARANCES AND WRITS.
The office of Clerk of Appearances and Writs was created, on the abolition of the Six Clerks Office, by the Act 6 and 7 Wm.
IV.,
cap.
74, the sixth and following sections :— By the 7th section it is provided that such of the duties of the six clerks as may be necessary to be performed by any of the officers of the Court, shall be performed in such manner as the Lord Chancellor or Master of the Rolls shall direct.
By the 9th section it is provided that the Clerk of Appearances and Writs shall receive such of the Fees which were then payable to the six clerks as might be necessary for the purpose of paying the several salaries mentioned in the Act, and also for forming a fund for making compensation to such six clerks.
The Lord Chancellor and the Master of the Rolls, acting on the power vested in them by the 7th section, made a General Order (which is now embodied in the 188th General Order of March, 1843), directing that all notices, summonses, orders, and other matters to be served by one solicitor on another, should be served through the office of the Clerk of Appearances and Writs, and that the clerk by whom such document is served should mark thereon the word " served," with the initials of his name, which should be deemed good service of the same.
This office has, therefore, a threefold duty—1st, to prepare and issue all writs connected with the equitable jurisdiction of the Court, and to receive the appearances ; 2nd, to receive and account for the fees connected with the duties of the office, as also those that were formerly payable to the six clerks; and 3rd, to receive and serve all notices, summonses, and orders, on the several solicitors to whom they are directed, and to enter such documents in books kept in the office, and to mark the services in such books, and also on the documents themselves.
The staff provided by the Act of Parliament for carrying on the business of this office is the Clerk of Appearances and Writs, with a salary of £600 a-year, and two assistant clerks, the first with a salary of £300 a-year, and the second with a salary of £150 a-year.
When the Notice Office was added to this department, by the General Order of the
