Page:Select Essays in Anglo-American Legal History, Volume 1.djvu/746

 732 V. BENCH AND BAR The lofty standard of right which chancery held out to suitors was apt to be an ignis fatuus luring them on to further expense and delay. In consequence of its applica- tion of a uniform procedure to contentious and adminis- trative business alike, persons between whom there was really no dispute were compelled to engage in useless contests. Equity pleadings, like those at common law, were marvelous specimens of tautology and technicality. Evidence was gathered by means of written interrogatories, and through- out the whole contest the litigants groped after one another in the dark. No litigant entering into a chancery suit with a determined adversary could have any reasonable hope of living to witness its termination. Everybody even remotely interested was a necessary party, and whenever one of these parties died pending suit, bills of review or supplement bills were necessary to restore the symmetry of the litigation.^ (a) Chancery Courts During the first quarter of the century Lord Eldon (1801-6; 1807-27) reigned supreme in chancery. Time has been so busy with Eldon's shortcomings that there is danger of losing sight of his eminent abilities. He pos- sessed in a degree seldom surpassed some of the highest qualities of judicial excellence: quick apprehension, reten- tive memory, vast technical learning, a judgment which neither perplexity nor sophistry could confound, and an industry never enervated by luxury nor disturbed by pas- sion. His understanding was capable of feats of meta- physical acumen and subtlety that would have enlisted the admiration of the schoolmen by whom equity was originally administered; but this was not In his case an advantage. Beyond his profession he was ill read, untraveled and without knowledge of the world. Aside from the performance of the political duties attached to his high office, he devoted confusions and obscurities which beset litigation at the beginning of Queen Victoria's reign, in the collection of essays published by Thos. Humphrey Ward in honor of the Queen's Jubilee. [Lord Bowen's essay is reprinted as No. 16 of this Collection. — Eds.]
 * See Lord Justice Bowen's graphic description of the technicalities,