THE CHANCELLOR'S CASE.—1 BLAND. 641

The Chancellor now claims the payment of his salary, under the
Act of 1798, ch. 80, at the rate of twelve hundred and seventy-five

enable the Judge to pronounce a formal judgment, as the general conclusion
of law from the facts as found by the jury; either in the form of a general,
or a special verdict. And, as it would be attended with great expense and
inconvenience to keep constantly together a sufficient number of the people
to compose juries; and to have witnesses kept long in attendance in order to
testify orally before them: without all which the administration of justice,
accordiug to the course of the common law, could not proceed; the Courts
of common law have always been limited in their sittings to particular times
or terms.

On the other hand, that branch of our code, called equity, is administered
by a Court of Chancery, without the assistance of a jury, upon the written
allegations and proofs laid before it. And. therefore, although a Court of
Chancery, for the return of process and the more orderly conducting of its
business, in other respects with convenience to Its suitors, has regular terms:
yet it is always open to meet and provide for the peculiar exigencies of every
case, "for conscience and equity is always ready to render to every one his
due." (1 Rep. Cha. The Earl of Oxford's Case, 6.) The High Court of
Chancery of Maryland, may indeed, riot only like that of England, be said
to be always open ia a sense, though not always equally accessible, because
of the other necessary avocations of the Chancellor, and because of its long
vacations, (2 Newl. Chan. 400; 2 Ves. & Bea. 351;) but, to be in fact always
open, and in truth always equally accessible, because of the Chancellor's
having no other official duties to perform, and because of there being no
vacations other than those intervals between its regular periodical terms or
sittings for the return of process and the hearing of cases. For, seeing the
great importance of having the Chancellor always in place, the General
Assembly, during several of those years, that the judicial salaries remained
insecure, directed, that so much should be paid to the Chancellor, " if he
shall reside at the seat of Government.''—(1782, c. S8: 1783. c. 31; 1784, c. 68.)
The judgments of the Courts of common law are always drawn up by
their clerks accordiog to precise forms; and. therefore, it is a general rule,
that where the case is of such a nature, or the relief sought is so complex
as, that no adequate redress can be given by any of the fixed forms of com-
mon law judgments, the party may obtain relief in Chancery, "where the
orders and decrees of the Chancellor, although regulated by well settled
principles, are always accommodated to the anomalous or peculiar nature of
the cases of which his Court takes cognizance. And because of the complex
or peculiar frame of a great proportion of such orders and decrees they can
only, according to the practice in Maryland, be drawn up by the Chancellor
himself.

Looking to the exact and reduced form into which a case must necessarily
he presented in order to obtain a concise decision, according to a settled
form, from a tribunal composed of a Judge and a jury on the one hand; and
to the anomalous and complex frame of the cases, and of the orders and
decrees thereupon in Chancery, on the other, it has been very strongly, if
not conclusively, argued, that the trial by jury itself, in controversies as to
the right of property, must be altogether abandoned, or certainly could not
exist in its purity and vigor, without the helping hand of a Court of Chan-
cery.—(Southern Review, Feb. 1839, Art. 3; The Federalist, No. 83.)

Junius, in his letter of the 14th of November, 1770, to Lord Mansfield,
says, "Instead of those certain, positive rules, by which the judgment of a
41 1 B.