Page:Select Essays in Anglo-American Legal History, Volume 1.djvu/741

 19. ZANE: THE FIVE AGES 727 or wife of a party, became a competent witness in a civil case. All the common law judges and the Chancellor, Lord Truro (better known as the barrister, Wilde, who appeared with Brougham and Denman for Queen Caroline), opposed the bill. Even Lord Campbell, who gave the act its first trial, said : " It has made a very inauspicious start ; one party, if not both parties, having hitherto been forsworn in every cause." Finally, in 1898, the defendant in a criminal case was made a competent witness on his trial. The original changes in the rules of pleading at common law were made under rules formulated by the judges. In 1860 all common law courts were given equity powers as to all questions at issue before them. This bill was violently opposed by Lord St. Leonards, but was supported by all the common law judges. Power was given to all the common law courts to examine witnesses de bene esse, to order the discov- ery of documents, and to compel an examination of a party by his opponent. In this way the whole distinctive auxiliary jurisdiction of equity was swept away. Finally, the Judicature Commission made its report, and the two great lawyers. Lord Selborne for the Liberals and Lord Cairns for the Conservatives, proposed and carried the Judicature Act of 1873. All the historical courts of England were combined in a single High Court of Justice. It was given a Chancery Division, a King's Bench Divi- sion, a Probate, Divorce and Admiralty Division.^ Above the High Court of Justice was constituted a Court of Appeal, and from the Court of Appeal a further appeal lay to the House of Lords. All branches of the High Court of Justice were given power to administer both legal and equitable relief, and wherever there was any conflict between the rules of equity and the rules of law, equity was to prevail. Power was given to transfer a cause from one division to another, so that Lord Calms could say : ' " The court is not now a court of law or a court of equity, but a court of complete jurisdiction." The result of the Act, it »The two additional Divisions of the original Act, Common Plea* end Exchequer, were shortly afterwards abolished. » 7 App. Cas. 237.