Page:Select Essays in Anglo-American Legal History, Volume 1.djvu/748

 734 V. BENCH AND BAR It may be well to quote his own justification as given in his diary: " During my chancellorship I was much, very much, blamed for not giving judgment at the close of the argu- ments. I persevered in this, as some thought from obstinacy, but in truth from principle, from adherence to a rule of conduct, formed after much consideration, as to what course of proceeding was most consonant with my duty. With Lord Bacon, ' I confess I have somewhat of the cunctative mind,' and with him I thought that ' whosoever is not wiser upon advice than upon the sudden, the same man is no wiser at fifty than he was at thirty.' I confess that no man had more occasion than I had to use the expression which was Lord Bacon's father's ordinary word, ' You must give me time.' I always thought it better to allow myself to doubt before I decided, than to expose myself to the misery of doubting whether I had decided rightly and justly. It is true that too much delay before decision is a great evil. But in many instances delay leads eventually to prevent delay: that is, the delay which enables just decision to be made accelerates the enjoyment of the fruits of the suit; and I have some reason to hope that in a great many cases final decision would have been much longer postponed if doubts as to the soundness of original judgments had led to rehearings and appeals, than it was postponed when much and anxious and long con^deration was taken to form an impregnable original decree. The business of the court was also so much increased in some periods of my chancellor- ship that I never could be confident that counsel had fully informed me of the facts or of the law of many of the cases. There may be found not a few instances in which most sat- isfactory judgments were pronounced which were founded upon facts or instruments with which none of the counsel who argued the cases were acquainted, though such facts and instruments formed part of the evidence in the case." Accordingly, he was given to reviewing a case in all con- ceivable aspects long after he had in fact exhausted the actual issue; and the reports are full of instances where in matters of difficulty he laboriously examined the whole