EQUITABLE JURISDICTION.

Marlborough Express, Volume III, Issue 133, 29 August 1868, Page 4

EQUITABLE JURISDICTION.

To the Editor of the Marlborough Express. Sir, —In your paper of the 15th instant, you have a letter signed “ Observer,” telling us that we must have nothing to do with Equity so long as we can get Law; and the learned “Observer” —I imagine he is learned —gives us a scrap from Wharton’s Law Lexicon, in reply to which allow me to send “ Observer” a few words of Lord St. Leonards’, who is 1 believe, a “recognised authority” too. His Lordship says—“ The Judges in Equity soon found it necessary, like Common law Judges, to adhere to the decisions of their predecessors ; where it has inevitably happened that there are settled and inviolable rules of Equity, which require to be moderated by the rules of good conscience as much as ever the most rigorous and inflexible rule of law did before the Chancellors interposed on equitable grounds.” One can readily imagine a “learned gentleman” a little confused when the rules of “good conscience” came across his path ! It may account for his stating as a fact “ the ignorance of magistrates of the meaning of equity, and their inability to master (or at any rate acquire) a knowledge of theprinciplesof that branch of our jurisprudence.” What does he mean ? I am Sir, A Lover of Equity. Aug. 28, 1868. [ Without wishing to interfere in the very nice question between our correspondents, we-may remind “A lover of Equity” of the old latin proverb, JEquitas sequitur legem, Equity follows the Law; that is, to supply its defects, not to override it.— Ed. M.E.]