Page:Select Essays in Anglo-American Legal History, Volume 1.djvu/837

 ^0. VEEDER: A CENTURY OF JUDICATURE 823 summer, I think it was not. ... In my opinion a tenant who had paid the last quarter's rent by driblets under pres- sure must be regarded as an undesirable tenant." His subtlety in legal analysis may be seen to good advan- tage in Le Lievre v. Gould and Angus v. Clifford. What could be clearer, to give a single quotation, than his state- ment in Badeley v. Consolidated Bank, 38 Ch. D. 262, of the manner in which the lower court had gone wrong on an issue of partnership : " The question is whether there is a joint business or whether the parties are carrying on busi- ness as principals and agents for each other. Now where has Mr. Justice Stirling gone wrong? He has gone wrong because he has not followed that test. What he has done is this. He has taken one of the circumstances which in many cases affords an ample guide to truth; he has taken that circumstance as if, taken, alone, it shifted the onus of proof — as if it raised a presumption of partnership — and then he has looked about over the rest of the contract to see if he could find anything which rebutted that presumption. Now that cannot be a right way of dealing with the case. You have a group of facts — A, B, C, D, E and F — and you want to know the right conclusion to draw from them. The right way is to weigh the facts separately and together, and to draw your conclusion. It is not to take A, and say that if A stood alone it would shift the oniis of proof, and then to look over B, C, D, E and F and see if the remainder of the proof is sufficient to rebut the presumption supposed to be raised." Besides the Maxim-Nordenfelt case, see Finlay v. Chimey, Dashwood v. Magniac, Steinman v. Angier Line and Bruns- den v. Humphrey, for applications of the historical method. Allcard v. Skinner is one of the finest specimens of his style at its best. Borthwick v. Evening Post, Hutton v. West Cork Ry. Co., and the Carbolic Smoke Ball case are char- acteristic specimens of his colloquial style. Whatever the form of the argument may be — whether pure development of principle without the citation of a single authority (All- card V. Skinner), or elaborate analysis and review of a mass of conflicting cases (Phillips v. Homfray, Mitchell v. Darley