Page:Select Essays in Anglo-American Legal History, Volume 1.djvu/801

 W. VEEDER: A CENTURY OF JUDICATURE 787 lawyers and non-lawyers, of his age. I may be wrong, but the two men whom, in my own mind, I bracketed together were Lord Westbury and Cardinal Newman." It was this rare combination of thought and expression which particu- larly distinguished him. His power of lucid statement, which was accompanied by a rare capacity for marshaling a multitude of facts and collateral details in their logical order, arose from readiness and clearness of conception. " Clearness of expression," he said, " measures the strength or vigor of conception. If you have really grasped a thought, it is easy enough to give it utterance." His men- tal bent was almost wholly judicial; he convinced by ap- peals to sober judgment rather than to considerations of expedient or sentiment ; and the elevation which he gave to the simplest discussion arose from his habit of bringing the driest details to the test of original principles. Westbury's most conspicuous defect was an arrogant con- sciousness of intellectual superiority, manifesting itself, with utter disregard for the feelings of others, in fondness for caustic wit and rather spinous humor. He was too much in the habit of what his biographer has termed thinking aloud, without regard to the effect which the expression of his thoughts might have on others. His deliberate method of setting people right provoked intense irritation ; when roused by pretentiousness or humbug, his sarcasm fell with blistering effect. In fact he bids fair to be remembered by the public at large merely as the author of innumerable sharp sayings. He took a characteristic part in the theological controversies of the time ; baiting the bishops in the House of Lords was his favorite occupation. By his judgments in the case of the authors of " Essays and Reviews " and the Colenso case, he was said to have " dismissed hell with costs and taken away from the orthodox members of the Church of England their last hope of everlasting damna- tion." His description of a synodical judgment as " a well- lubricated set of words, a sentence so oily and saponaceous that no one could grasp it," has never been forgotten. The consequence of his unfortunate lack of restraint was that his enemies not only succeeded in blocking the great scheme