Page:Select Essays in Anglo-American Legal History, Volume 1.djvu/818

 804 V. BENCH AND BAR J It was finally determined to reinforce and infuse adequate ability in the House by the creation of life peers. The plan itself was admirable, but the elevation of Baron Parke as Lord Wensleydale, in pursuance of the plan, was not calcu- lated to further liberal views. Wensleydale came to the House of Lords after his long domination in the common law courts — and, it may be added, just as his domination ceased. The Common Law Procedure Act seemed to him a desecration of the sacred system of special pleading, and led to his retire- ment from the Exchequer. The atmosphere of the House during his twelve years' service was not congenial to his pe- culiar powers. Lord Campbell, whose unquestioned learning was his servant, not his master, combated here, as he had in the courts below, the narrow technicalities within which Wens- leydale sought to confine the common law. Then the prepon- derance of equity lawyers, due to the rapid succession of chan- cellors, was little calculated to lend support to his general views. A far more accomplished lawyer was added to the court in 1858 in the person of Lord Kingsdown, after his brilliant services in the Privy Council. From the chancellor- ship of Westbury (1861-65) a new period may be said to begin. Himself one of the ablest lawyers who ever held the seals, Westbury had the assistance of four ex-chancellors and two legal peers. The chancery element now predomi- nated, and the eminent ability of the succeeding chancellors. Cairns, Hatherley and Selborne, maintained this ascendancy for the remainder of the period. In 1867 the court was further strengthened by the addition of a distinguished Scotch lawyer, Lord Colonsay. In 1869 Sir James Wilde was also gle judge who, by the common consent of mankind, embodies the highest qualities of a judge, then the decisions of that individual, being uniform, certain, definite and clear, would be of the highest possible value; pre- cisely as if you had an arbitrary government, with absolute authority vested in a man of the highest possible moral and intellectual perfec- tions, one would desire to live under that government rather than any other. But it is so difficult to obtain such a man, and still more a suc- cession of such men, that it is impossible, particularly in the case of a tribunal which has causes brought before it from all quarters of the globe, involving all possible questions, to suppose that one individual will at all times be equal to the satisfactory determination of such a vast and multitudinous assembly of subjects; therefore it is that we de- sire a greater number of minds than one, in order that some may supply what is wanting in others."