Page:Select Essays in Anglo-American Legal History, Volume 1.djvu/731

 19. ZANE: THE FIVE AGES 717 mont, and the Chief Justice was a younger son of that house. Early in hfe he was sent to England, to be educated, and Dr. Johnson always accounted for his marvellous capacity by saying that " much may be made of a Scotchman, if he is caught young." The youth was carefully educated at Winchester School, and then at Christ Church, Oxford. He was entered at Lincoln's Inn, and while there carefully studied the civil law; he always maintained it to be the foundation of jurisprudence. He studied with no less care the common law, but he had no particular reverence for it. Its oracle. Coke, he disliked; but he took pleasure in Brac- ton and Littleton. He was thoroughly conversant with the commercial code of France. His knowledge of ancient and modern history was singularly accurate and profound. At the same time he cultivated his literary taste by intimate association with men of letters. His physical constitution became robust and enabled him to sustain great labor. His mental faculties were acute and well-trained, his industry untiring, his memory capacious. When we add to these qualifications a marvellous talent for oratory and a voice of silvery clearness, we have described the best qualified man who ever undertook the profession of law. Eminence at the bar was assured. He rapidly achieved the highest professional and pecuniary success. He passed from the office of Solicitor General to that of Attorney Gren- eral, and became leader of his party in the House of Com- mons. He chose as his reward in 1756 the post of Lord Chief Justice, and held the place until his retirement in 1788. His career upon the bench is common knowledge. The law of shipping, of commerce, and of insurance was molded by him. The common-law action of assumpsit was expanded until it embraced a recovery upon almost every sort of pecuniary obligation. The law of evidence he amplified and illustrated, leaning strongly to the view that objections to testimony went rather to the credibility than to the com- petency of witnesses. By one decision he created the whole law of res gestae in evidence. His broad cultivation gave him a singularly free and open mind. He could not endure the laws against dissenters or Roman Catholics. He would not