678 THE CHANCELLOR'S CASE.

opened and reopened; and, from the nature of things, and to
answer the purposes of justice, must be kept open and depending
for many years. The adjustments under the late Spanish treaty
called up, and recently gave rise to much litigation, in cases that
had slumbered for nearly thirty years; and, in which the parties,
or their survivors had been dispersed over half the Union.

The labours of the chancellor are not, like those of a judge of
a court of common law, spread out and displayed before the pub-
lic, by calling in witnesses and jurymen to be present and to par-
take in them. The whole weight of his duties fall upon himself,
and upon himself alone. The anomalies and the intricacies in the
administration of justice are poured out upon him; and he is left
unaided and alone to ascertain the course which justice requires to
be pursued, according to the established principles of equity as
they arise out of the complicated facts of each case. The chancery
is the great property court of the State. And a vast proportion of
the individual rights to the soil of Maryland are only to be found in
that court. Perhaps, it would not be hazarding too bold an asser-
tion to say, that one half of all the titles to lands in Maryland,
when traced from the present holder to their origin, will be found
to have some one or other of the links, in the chain of title, resting
in the court of chancery.(z)

It would be foreign to the constitutional question, now under
consideration; and it would be invidious to contrast the duties of
the chancellor with those of any common law judge in the State.
But, there are those, who mistake the object of the act of November
1809, ch. 181, requiring the number of days each judge of the
several courts of law, attends in their respective courts, to be cer-
tified annually to the General Assembly; and, under that mistake,
they have taken up an opinion, that judicial labour was a sort of
job work, the value of which might be estimated by the number
of days the labourer was employed. To those, it may be satisfac-
tory to learn, that the business of the court of chancery has lat-
terly very much increased, and continues to increase; and, that its
records will show, that the present chancellor has, either in the
way of a formal session of a court, or otherwise, been called upon
about three hundred different days of the last year, to transact
business which had been brought before him from almost all the
different counties of the State.

(z) It has been said, that most of the estates in England, once in thirty years,
pass through the Court of Chancery.—(16 Howell's State Tri. 417.)