Page:Select Essays in Anglo-American Legal History, Volume 1.djvu/775

 «0. VEEDER: A CENTURY OF JUDICATURE 761 The reports of Dow (1812-18) and of Bligh (1819-21) covering the long chancellorship of Lord Eldon, indicate the defects of the House as an appellate tribunal. During this time the judicial functions of the House were performed by Eldon, assisted from time to time by Redesdale, the Irish chancellor. So far as their attainments in equity were con- cerned these two eminent judges left little to be desired. But Eldon often sat alone. Inasmuch as three peers were required to constitute a House, it often became necessary to catch a bishop or two, or press one or more lay peers into service, to act as dummies, and then the lord chancellor, gravely assisted by these two mutes, finally disposed of appeals from his own decisions. As the Earl of Derby said to his colleagues in 1856, they were upon such occasions " like the lay figures which are introduced in a painter's studio for the purpose of adding to the completeness of the judicial tableau." In spite of its manifest absurdity this system was viewed with veneration. The satire of Swift did not prevent Lord Hardwicke from saying that if he went wrong in Penn v. Baltimore ^ his errors would be cor- rected by " a senate equal to that of Rome itself." Yet in every case that went to the House during his chancellorship Hardwicke himself constituted that senate, and in judicial solitude he affirmed his own excellent judgments. And we read in Blackstone the wondrous tale of peers " bound upon their conscience and honor (equal to other men's oaths) to be skilled in the laws of their country ! " It may be imagined that such a tribunal would also be likely to discourage common law appeals, particularly in view of Eldon's asser- tion of his undoubted right to override the judgment of the assembled judges of the common law courts. Upon the retirement of Eldon the judicial functions of the House were largely dominated for more than twenty years by Lord Brougham. During the period from the resignation of Eldon in 1827 to 1850 there were only three Chancellors, — Lyndhurst, Brougham and Cottenham. Lord Lyndhurst's judicial services in the House were compara- tively unimportant. His experience had been in common law ; »I Ves. Sr., 446.