Page:Abolition of the Vice-Royalty of Ireland.djvu/21

17, which are in these days exercised by the Home Office, were in former times discharged by other officers of state, and that it is only by the gradual and increasing pressure of practical labour in another quarter that they have passed to that department. Formerly, as might be supposed, and as would seemingly be most natural, these duties appear to have been, as a matter of course, discharged by the chief law officer of the Government. But that chief law officer was also a judge. His once proper judicial burden increased of course with the growth of population and of wealth so rapidly as to leave little room for other occupation; and the result has been that the Lord Chancellor in our days has been compelled, not only to abandon most of such duties of superintendence to the Secretary of State, but to perform as he best might, and in many points but imperfectly, the remaining functions of an office which, by the concurrent testimony of all who have ever experienced or studied its conditions, it is beyond the powers of any mortal man—however great his powers—however indefatigable his energy,—satisfactorily to execute in all its parts.

You will probably be no stranger to the able and elaborate speech of one of the most distinguished of our living legal authorities—Lord Langdale—on this subject, in Parliament, in the month of June, 1836. I will venture here to recall to your recollection one or two of its passages in support of the