Page:Select Essays in Anglo-American Legal History, Volume 1.djvu/739

 19. ZANE: THE FIVE AGES 725 would sound to the remotest corner of the Empire, I would re-echo the principle that, if ever a Roman Catholic is permitted to form part of the legislature of this country, or to hold any of the great executive offices of the govern- ment, from that moment the sun of Great Britain is set forever." Such was the attitude toward reform of the man who, if we look alone at the substance of his decisions, must be called the greatest English chancellor. After Brougham had quarreled with his party, the burden of passing the bills for the promised legal reforms fell upon Sir John Campbell. The ablest opponent of many of these measures was the Conservative leader. Lord Lynd- hurst. This great man was born in Boston just before the Revolution. His father was the painter Copley, his mother a daughter of that unfortunate Boston merchant whose cargo of tea was dumped into Boston harbor.^ Lyndhurst was taken to England, educated at Cambridge, and called to the bar from Lincoln's Inn ; he slowly worked his way to the head of the profession. On the Queen's trial he summed up the evidence in a speech which as a piece of legal reasoning far excels Brougham's or Denman's. As a judge he demonstrated that he was gifted with the finest judicial intellect that England can show in the nineteenth century. We are interested here solely in his attitude toward reforms in the law. When Attorney General he had proposed a bill for re- forming the chancery court, which as all parties were com- pelled to admit, stood in need of reform. In 1826 he made a great speech against allowing counsel for the accused in trials of felony to address the jury; but a few years later he concurred in such a change in the law. It should be remembered that Justice Park threatened to resign if a bill allowing counsel to the accused were passed, and that twelve of the fifteen judges strongly condemned the enactment. Most of the judges opposed the provision allowing defend- ants in criminal cases to produce witnesses. In the debates on the Reform Bill there appears a practice in one of the rotten boroughs which throws a curious light
 * This act of larceny is usually described as an outburst of patriotism.