_Chancery_, or _equitable relief_, is rarely sought in the Massachusetts courts. Indeed it was unknown, until, within a comparatively recent period, two or three statutes empowered the supreme court to administer it, in a very few specified cases--_mortgages_, _trusts_, _accounts between partners and co-executors_, _waste_, _nuisance_, and two or three others: omitting the fruitful subjects of _fraud_, _accident_, _dower_, _et cetera_--and especially the sweeping power to relieve _wherever there is no remedy at law_--subjects which, by the multiplication of cases, have made _our_ chancery, like that of England, the dormitory if not the grave of justice. And even as to the few specified subjects of jurisdiction, those statutes rigidly restrict the relief to cases in which there is _not a plain and complete remedy at law_. Before these enactments (and _since_, too, in cases without their scope,) the rigor of the law was mitigated only by the sense of justice in juries; and by sundry expedients--curious enough, to Virginian eyes--which seem to have left few _wrongs_ unremedied. For instance--if I am unjustly cast in a trial at law, by accident or surprise, or for want of testimony which I did not know of till the term was over; not a bill of injunction, but a petition to the judge in vacation, within a limited time, will procure me a new trial. If my debtor fraudulently dispose of his property; instead of a bill in chancery to ferret out the fraud, I may have, along with my execution (if I have obtained judgment) a _summons_ to the colluding purchaser as _garnishee_, to disclose orally on oath, in open court, what effects he has, of the debtor. Roads are laid off by a board of commissioners, established for that purpose in each county; and invested with judicial powers, in controversies on the subject. The probat of wills, the granting of administrations, the appointment of guardians, and the supervision of the accounts and conduct of guardians, executors, and administrators, are confided to an officer, called the _Judge of Probat_, appointed in each county for those purposes only; and holding his court monthly, in several convenient places of the county, to hear motions and decide disputes on those subjects. His records and proceedings are kept by a distinct clerk, called the _Register of Probat_; and an appeal lies from his decisions immediately to the supreme court. We, in Virginia, sorely need some tribunal like this; specially charged with the interests of widows and orphans.