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VOL. V.

No. 1.

BOSTON.

JANUARY, 1893.

SIR GEORGE JESSEL, MASTER OF THE ROLLS.

BY JOSEPH WILLARD. THE fame of an eminent lawyer is pro verbially short-lived, and we doubt if that of Sir George Jessel will prove an exception. He died March 21, 1883, at the age of sixty, and in the fulness of his reputa tion, no judge even among his superiors in station being more highly regarded, and the most exalted position in his profession seeming almost within his grasp; and yet we apprehend that to many of the present generation he is little more than a name. To his own generation he was a very marked and lively personality. Apart from their sound conclusiveness, his opinions were characterized by a vigorous and pungent em phasis, which penetrated the dull air of the court-room like a rifle-shot, and his unspar ing criticism was impartially distributed be tween the bar and the bench. Like Sarah Battle, " he held not his sword like a danNo adequate memoir of him has yet appeared; none perhaps may ever be written, nor do we intend anything so serious. " Non prater solitum leves," the epic of a legal bi ography is not for us, and we profess only to give in outline what manner of man the Master of the Rolls was, mainly in the light of some of his opinions. In one respect he was a notable figure in English legal history. lie was a Hebrew in race, faith, and communion; the first of that race, we believe, to attain high judicial station.1 England has certainly advanced since the earnest but costly dentistry of the 1 L. т 74, p. 390. i

feudal day made a Jew disclose his treasures at the risk of his teeth; or even since Lord Hardwicke's time, when Elias da Paz's char itable bequest to educate the youth of the house of Tsrael in their ancestral faith was held wholly void for that purpose, but by a charmingly logical application of the doc trine of cy prcs was transmuted into instruc tion in the English Church catechism; and Front de Bœuf would have been hardly more amazed if a prophetic vision had revealed to his eyes a Jew as premier outranking Eng land's nobility, than would the great Lord Chancellor that his successor should come from the despised house of David. His religious faith excluding him from Oxford and Cambridge, young Jessel re ceived his education at the London Univer sity. He was called to the bar in 1847, aп^ rose rapidly in his profession, making £ 1,000 in the second year of his practice. His income while Solicitor-General in the two years before his promotion to the bench was £25,000 each year. The period of his judicial service extended less than ten years; his first reported de cision l having been rendered Nov. 8, 1873, and his last2 March 15, 1883, less than a week before his death. Before he had occupied the judicial seat a year he decided the great Epping Forest case, which lasted twenty-two days; one hundred and fifty wit nesses having been examined, and the evi 1 Re W. Canada Oil Co., L. R 17 Eq. 1. a Ex parte Willey, L. T. 74, p. 366.