If any such circumstances had existed in an agreement between private subjects, there is no question but that both the awards would have been easily set aside; but with the crown for an antagonist, and the equity side of the exchequer for the scene of action, a contest was indeed desperate, in the face of the enmity of a leading agent of the powerful party; so that after Mr. Elsee had presented a memorial to the commissioners, who were _induced probably by some misrepresentations from going into the merits of the case_; and after having disputed the validity of the general award, on the trial of an information in the nature of an action for debt, filed upon it by the Attorney General, the result was what might be very naturally anticipated, from the conditions of the agreement which he had been entrapped to sign. He was compelled to pay the sum that had been awarded, and to bear the additional expence of his useless endeavour to protect his own interests. At this period the losses of Mr. Elsee amounted to _about three thousand pounds_, but he was destined to be a still greater sufferer. We have before mentioned that the Attorney General filed an exchequer process for certain dung, claimed under the agreement, instead of the more simple, cheap, and equitable mode of sending the matter for assessment to a sheriff’s jury. Now, though Mr. Elsee had no business to have signed such a document, he was of course bound by its conditions when he had done so, and was ready to comply with them, and to carry back two loads of dung for every load of hay, and one load of dung for every load of straw carried off.—The dung was ready for the purpose; and he only waited _to know what was to be brought_, _and to obtain credit for what he had carried_, _which he never had been able to do_. The exchequer process terminated in a reference to Mr. Bolland, whose general reputation stands on high ground; but who appears in this instance _to have wanted that degree of practical knowledge_, _which was requisite to enable a referee to appreciate the value of the testimony given on both sides of the question_; and it is difficult to guess at the principles that governed the decision, except on the supposition _that Mr. Bolland is a better lawyer than he is a farmer_. Mr. Elsee attended to prove that he had carried _a large quantity of dung_, which he estimated, and proved by his witnesses, left 130 ton to his credit, _after deducting the quantity in return for the wheat straw_. He then shewed by his _books_, in which the accounts of every day had been regularly entered, in a way that set all contradiction and suspicion at defiance, and by the production of the market tickets, that the gross amount of all the hay carried from the farm, amounted to 119 loads; and that the account stood as follows:—