Page:Select Essays in Anglo-American Legal History, Volume 1.djvu/815

 20. VEEDER: A CENTURY OF JUDICATURE 801

was Knight-Bruce to shake off the trammels of technical pro-cedure when they interfered with what he conceived to be the justice of the case, that in some of his decisions as vice chancellor (generally overruled by Cottenham) he anticipated reforms which shortly followed. One of Knight-Bruce*s most prominent characteristics was his fastidious English ; and a certain irrepressible humor pervaded his gravest judg-ments. So vigorous and original was his mind, so animated and epigrammatic his style, so constant his flow of humor, that his opinions are veritable oases in the dreary wastes of the chancery reports. These sentences are taken at random : " Men may be honest without being lawyers, and there are doings from which instinct without learning may make them recoil." " Some breaches of good manners are breaches of law also." " The decree in this case is a matter of course unless the court and the laws of this country are to be recon-structed with a view to this particular case." See, also, his highly characteristic opinion in Thomas v. Roberts, where the father of a child had joined a new sect and had gone to live in " a sort of spiritual boarding-house," to which, as a home for the child, Knight-Bruce said he would prefer a " camp of gypsies." ^ The contrast between Knight-Bruce and Turner in their habits of thought and modes of expression — the vivacity and dry humor of the one and the steadiness and gravity of the other — blended admirably in result.^ » Thomas v. Roberts, 3 De G. & Sm. 758; Walter v. Selfe, 4 do. 315; Prince Albert v. Strange, 2 do. 652; Be Gumming, 1 De G., M. & G. 559; Kekewich v. Manning, 1 do. 176; Burgess v. Burgess, 3 do. 896; Briggs V. Penny, 3 De G., M. & S. 525. the case of Stourton v. Stourton, 8 D. M. & G. 760, where it was sought to interfere with the education of a child who was being reared by his guardians in a different faith from that professed by the boy's father. The judges had an interview with the child, and Lord Justice Knight- Bruce expressed the opinion that " the Protestant seed sown in his mind has taken such hold that if we are to suppose it to contain tares they cannot be gathered up without great danger of rooting up also the wheat with them. Upon much consideration, I am of the opinion that the child's tranquillity and health, his temporal happiness and, if that can exist apart from his spiritual welfare, his spiritual welfare also, are too likely now to suffer importantly from an endeavor at effacing his Protestant impressions not to render any such attempt unsafe and im- proper." And Lord Justice Turner sagely adds, in answer to the argu- ment that the child was too young to have formed fixed opinions : " May it not be that the impressions which have been formed might lead to the
 * A fine illustration of their benevolent wisdom is their disposition of