Page:Harvard Law Review Volume 10.djvu/387

361 LORD BOWEN'S JUDICIAL CHARACTERISTICS. 36 1 " Although every judge of the present day will be swift to do justice, and slow to allow himself as to matters of justice to be encumbered with either precedents or technicalities, still every wise judge who sits to ad- minister justice must feel the greatest respect for the wisdom of the past." He was ready on proper occasions to sacrifice his personal views. When he was unable to follow authorities which seemed to offer a speedy solution of the controversy, we find none of the coarse •dogmatism which mars so much of Sir George Jessel's work. Without any obtrusion of his own personality, he gives his reasons for his action. Thus, in a case involving the construction of a will,^ he said : — " Although I do not disguise from myself that many judges . . . have used language to the effect that you must, before you can include under the name which the law usually appropriates to a legitimate tie persons who stand outside that strict line, find a necessary inference, or a very clear intention to that effect, it seems to me that the only weight one can give to such language is to treat it not so much as a canon of construc- tion as a counsel of caution to warn you, in dealing with such cases, not to give way to guesses or mere speculation as to the probabilities of an intention, but to act only on such evidence as can lead a reasonable man to a distinct conclusion. But I protest, that as soon as you see upon the will, read by the light of such extrinsic circumstances as you may survey, what the true construction is, and what the true intention expressed by the testator is, then your journey is performed. You require no more counsellors to assist you ; and after once arriving at the journey's end, to pause in giving effect to the true interpretation because, forsooth, the language has not been framed according to some measure or standard of correct expression, which is supposed to be imposed by judges out of regard for social or other reasons, appears to me to be using the lan- guage of such learned judges, not as laying down canons for construing a will, but as justifications for misconstruing it." It is obviously impossible to give within the limits of a maga- zine article the substance of Lord Bowen's work, and I shall con- tent myself with indicating those cases which best illustrate his methods. Any classification of forms of argument is necessarily tentative. A judgment may either contain in itself both principle and application, or it may express or even suggest only one of these, leaving the other to be implied. But whatever the outward I In re Jodrell, 44 Ch. D. 614. 48