Page:Select Essays in Anglo-American Legal History, Volume 1.djvu/776

 762 V. BENCH AND BAR moreover, his great abilities were political rather than judi- cial, and when in office his attendance on judicial business was brief and irregular. Lord Cottenham, on the other hand, was an eminent lawyer. During the whole period of Brougham's supremacy, and until the chancellorship of St. Leonards, aside from occasional assistance from Lord Lang- dale, the Master of the Rolls, he was the only competent equity judge in the court. The Irish chancellors, Manners and Plunkett, sat occasionally, but their service was incon- spicuous. But Cottenham, a pure lawyer, profoundly versed within the narrow sphere of equity, but knowing little be- sides, was not constituted by mental temperament to take the same view of things as the versatile Brougham. In common law authority, on the other hand, the court was somewhat better, owing to the elevation to the peerage of. several common law judges. Best, whose service as a legal peer, under the title of Lord Wynford, was second only to Brougham's in duration, was a regular attendant on judicial business for a few years only ; long before his death he ceased to sit. Chief Justice Tenterden sat quite regularly from his elevation to the peerage in 1827 to his death in 1832. His successor, Denman, was raised to the peerage a few years later expressly to assist Brougham in appellate work, but owing to the heavy work of his own court his attendance was irregular. With the accession of Lord Campbell in 1841, by virtue of his appointment to the Irish chancellorship, the House enjoyed the services of a thoroughly competent com- mon law judge. The uncertain composition of the court was, however, a serious drawback. A litigant had no assurance that his appeal would be heard by a judge whose learning and experience In the particular subject was equal to that of the judge from whom he appealed. If Brougham's tech- nical knowledge had been equal to his energy and assurance, the situation would have been better; but it must be said that his work, except in Scotch appeals, is not of a high order. During the ten years from 1850 to 1860 five chan- cellors succeeded one another in rapid succession : Truro, St. Leonards, Cranworth, Chelmsford and Campbell. Truro left appellate work to Brougham, and St. Leonards and Cran-