t approve of sixpenny fares, wishes to know if the
Law will bury him now that it has screwed him down?

* * * * *

QUERY.--Whether Mr. GEORGE BUTT, M.P., who opposed MR. PHILLIMORE'S
motion for amending the laws against simony, may be looked upon as one
of the buttresses of the Established Church?

* * * * *

THE OLDEST CHANCERY SUIT IN THE WORLD.

[Illustration: O]

On many occasions we have heard of the father of the bar, the father of
the City, and of the father of lies; but a discovery has just been made
of something which may be perhaps likened to the last, in other matters
besides antiquity. We allude to the father of equity, or what we believe
to be the oldest suit in Chancery. This precious relic was dug up a few
days ago, and its tattered remains were exposed for a few minutes to the
air in the Court of VICE-CHANCELLOR KINDERSLEY. It arose out of a bill
filed nearly a hundred years ago; and we need not say that it must be by
this time a precious old file that keeps the tattered old thing
together. It was a bill to distribute all the property of an old
Scotchman among all his poor relations, and as the Scotch can always
scrape or scratch a relationship with each other, and as the relations
of a Scotchman are certain to be poor enough to want something, the
whole of Scotland may be said to have been more or less interested in
the suit in question. Four hundred and sixty-three persons had already
made out a claim, and the descendants of all these are now contending
with the descendants of another batch of poor Scotchmen with "itching
palms," who have filed bills of reviver for the purpose of galvanising
this spectral old suit, which still haunts, like a ghost, the Courts of
Chancery.

The Vice-Chancellor made an order for a reviver, "no one appearing to
oppose;" and, indeed, who could have appeared but a few ghosts of dead
legatees to demur to the galvanising of this sepulchral business? We are
satisfied that his Honour, when making the inquiry if "any one appeared
to oppose," must have felt, with a shudder, that he was performing a
species of incantation, and that to call upon any one to "appear" under
such circumstances was almost equivalent to an invocation of _Zamiel_.
The "suit," however, is to be permitted again to walk the earth for a
time by the agency of a bill of "reviver," and we suppose it will
disappear at the cock crow of the long