London Legal Letter.
137
LONDON LEGAL LETTER. LONDON, Feb. 8, 1893. HPHERE has been no lack of legal incident •*- since 1 penned my last letter, but politics at present overshadow everything. Parliament opened on the 3ist of January, and we are still in the midst of the Debate on the Address; but this pre liminary skirmish will shortly close, and the engage ment become general all along the line, when the government disclose their Home Rule Scheme. On politics pure and simple, however, I may not enter. Rather an interesting question in constitu tional law has arisen in connection with the demand of the Radical party for payment of members of Parliament. The friends of the proposal are well aware that the fate of a bill dealing with the subject even in the present House of Commons would be most uncertain, and so they have been urging the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Sir William Harcourt, to make the innovation indirectly and quietly by simply inserting a provision in his next budget by which a draft from the public purse should be appropriated for the purpose. This idea has fairly bewitched the advanced politicians, who have been clamoring for what they style a democratic budget. One of their number, eager to bring the matter to a point, addressed a letter to the Chancel lor of the Exchequer inquiring as to his hidden pur poses. The reply which this interrogation elicited was a sad discomfiture. Sir William Harcourt was of opinion that the measure was of so serious a character that it would be unwise and unconstitu tional to seek to attain it in the manner proposed. A most successful dinner was given the other evening by the recently formed Association of Solicitors' Managing Clerks at the Court's Res taurant in the Strand. Sir Horace Davey, Q. C.. leader of the Chancery Bar, was in the chair, and many eminent barristers and solicitors were present. The association was started when solicitors' clerks were threatened with exclusion from audience at Judges' Chambers and before the Chief Clerks in Chancery. There are 1,000 managing clerks in London, and the association hopes soon to ramify in the provinces. The ordinary qualification for membership is that the applicant should be a man aging clerk of five years' standing. The association will in any case form a pleasant social centre, and 18
bring men together who might not otherwise meet one another. In Morley v. Loughnan we have had a case of ab sorbing public interest. It is seldom that a Chan cery Court is the scene for trial of a sensational cause, but for more than a week Mr. Justice Wright was engaged in presiding over the developments of as curious a drama as has lately seen the light of day. The plaintiffs were the Right Hon. Arnold Morley. M.P.. Postmaster-General, and his brother. Mr. Samuel Hope Morley. executors under the will of the late Mr. Henry Hope Morley; the defendants Messrs. W. H. Loughnan, Alexander Loughnan, and their brother-in-law, Mr. Charles Sleeman. The action was brought to recover large sums of money amounting to .£140,000, alleged to have been obtained by the defendants from the late Mr. Henry Morley under circumstances which rendered the advances invalid. The testator, Mr. Henry Morley, was a son of one of our best-known public men, Samuel Morley. The lad in his early years showed signs of physical and mental weakness, and was subject to epileptic seizures. His father, being minded to secure a companion for his son, chanced to light on one W. H. Loughnan, who, with his brother Alexander, one of the other defendants, had formerly been a clergyman of the Church of England, but was then and afterwards connected with the Close sect of the religious persuasion known as Plymouth Brethren. It was an express condition of Loughnan's employment that he should engage in no discussions as to his own peculiar views with his charge. Religious hysteria, so frequently associated with epileptic symptoms, was one of Henry Morley's besetting weaknesses, and his companion was not slow to avail himself of the opportunity thus afforded to gain a complete ascendancy over the enfeebled mind of the docile patient. To cut a long story short, during the years of their connection Loughnan succeeded in diverting into his own pocket and those of his friends immense sums of young Morley's money, which in large part at any rate the latter was weak and foolish enough to think was well bestowed. Latterly the patient was absolutely controlled in all his movements by the wily companion, who with, such ample funds at his disposal acquired valuable
