Page:Select Essays in Anglo-American Legal History, Volume 1.djvu/553

 16. BOWEN: THE VICTORIAN PERIOD 539 At last the final blow was given to the old system which had divided equity from law. In 1873, Lord Selborne, as Chancellor, with the assistance of Lord Cairns and aided by the Attorney-General and the Solicitor-General of the day (the present Lord Coleridge and the late Sir G. Jessel), carried successfully through Parliament a measure which, supplemented by still later legislation, has swept away the old divisions. A " Supreme Court " of Judicature — a mod- ern variety of the ancient Aula Regia — has been substi- tuted, each chamber or department of which administers the same principles of equity and law, and is governed by a common and simple code of procedure. Some older lawyers still cast back at times a " longing, lingering " look to the ancient courts of Westminster with their glories and their historical associations, and to the former Court of Chancery with all its genius and its faults; but by no less trenchant a revolution could the reforms of the reign have been com- pleted and the organisation of the law adapted to the neces- sities of this great kingdom. The scheme in its outline was the outcome of the labour of a Commission of 1869, the names of whose members are appended below.* All imper- fections of remedy, all conflicts of jurisdiction, were at last to cease, while such a classification of business was still re- tained in the different branches of the Supreme Court as common sense required. It took a few years of further legislative arrangement before the plan thus adopted ripened into its present precise form ; but the details of this process may on the present occasion be passed by, in order to fix our attention on the broad result. The " Supreme Court " as constituted in 1887 is made up of the High Court of Justice and the Court of Appeal. The High Court contains several divisions. The largest in size is the Queen's Bench, Common Pleas), Sir Jas. Wilde (now Lord Penzance), Sir R. Phillimore, Mr. G. Ward Hunt, Mr. Childers, Lord Justice James, Mr. Baron Bramwell (now Lord Bramwell), Mr. Justice Blackburn (now Lord Blackburn), Sir Montague Smith, Sir R. Collier (afterwards Lord Monkswell), Sir J. Coleridge (now Lord Coleridge), Sir Roundel! Palmer (now Lord Selborne), Sir John Karslake, Mr. Quain (after- wards Mr. Justice Quain), Mr. H. Rothery, Mr. Ayrton, Mr. W. G. Bateson, Mr. John HoUams, Mr. Francis D. Lowndes.
 * Lord Cairns, Lord Hatherley, Sir W. Erie (Chief Justice of the