Page:Select Essays in Anglo-American Legal History, Volume 1.djvu/825

 eO. VEEDER: A CENTURY OF JUDICATURE 811 reasoning and the conclusion. The excellence of his judicial opinions becomes truly marvelous when we are assured that he never reserved judgment, except in deference to the wishes of a colleague, and that he never read a written opinion. A remarkable feat of this kind was his decision in the great Epping Forest case, concerning the ancient rights of twenty manors. The hearing lasted twenty-two days, one hundred and fifty witnesses having been examined. Jessel delivered judgment orally immediately upon conclusion of the evidence, and no appeal was taken from his decision, although the largest forest in the vicinity of London was thereby thrown open to the publip. " I may be wrong," he once said, " and doubtless I sometimes am ; but I never have any doubts." Apart from the soundness of his conclusions, his opinions are always expressed with vigorous and pungent emphasis. His work is conspicuous for the spirit in which he approached his cases. " There is a mass of real property law," he frankly told a friend, " which is nonsense. Look at things as they are and think for yourself." This he certainly did. No judge has ever been plainer in denunciation of ancient tech- nicalities. In Couldrey v. Bartrum, 19 Ch. D. 394, he said: thing in satisfaction of a debt except a less amount of money. He might take a horse or a canary or a tomtit if he chose, and that was accord and satisfaction ; but by a most extraor- dinary peculiarity of the English law he could not take 19s. 6d. in the pound. That was one of the mysteries of the Eng- lish common law, and as every debtor had not on hand a stock of canary birds or tomtits or rubbish of that kind it was felt desirable to bind the creditors," etc. Of authorities which conflicted with his views of equity he was not always as tol- erant as he was in the case of Jackson's Will, 13 Ch. D. 189, where, in speaking of the question whether a reversionary in- terest in personality should be excluded from a gift of " any estate or interest whatever," he said : " I see no reason what- ever why it should ; but not wishing to speak disrespectfully of some of the decisions I shall say nothing further about it." In Re National Funds Assurance Co., 11 Ch. D. 118, he be- gan his opinion thus : " This question is one of great diffi-
 * ' According to the English law a creditor might accept any-