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 The English Law Courts.

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prepared by Prynne was relied on. Dr. lords of appeal in ordinary. It is perhaps Stubbs, however (Const. Hist. Ill, 439), worth observing that one of the favorite says that, on careful examination, Prynnc's suggestions for the present day reform of list shrinks to very small proportions : some the House of Lords is that the Crown should of the names are those of judges whose be enabled to reinforce the hereditary peer writs have been confusedly mixed with age by a reinforcement of life-peers. Many those of the barons; some occur only in men, whose talents would prove a source of lists of summons to councils which were not strength to our second chamber, are pecuni proper parliaments. In most of the other arily unable to bear the burden of an hered cases the cessation of itary title, and might the summons is ex yet be both able and plained by the par willing to accept a ticular family his life peerage. Lord tory; for example, Wensleydale lived till the son is a minor at the age of eightythe time of his fath five, and served in er's death, and dies the House of Lords or is forgotten before till his death, which he comes of age. In occurred in Febru others, nothing is ary, 1868. Parke known of the later was one of the very family history, and it greatest lawyers that must be supposed to ever sat upon the have become extinct. English bench. He Dr. Stubbs concludes knew, as we have that no baron was said, the science of ever created for life special pleading as it only without a pro never has been vision as to the re known before or mainder, or right of since; and his almost succession after his passionate adherence death. However this to legal forms, which may be, the Com has lately been the THE MARQUIS OF SALISBURY mittee of Privileges butt of Lord Cole decided that Lord Wensleydale's original ridge's misplaced wit, and of which his reply patent was invalid, and a new patent was to a proposed amendment of the pleadings accordingly issued in the usual form. It in a case, " Think of the state of the record," should be pointed out that the change was is perhaps the capital instance, was due, not necessitated by legal difficulties alone, since to any narrowness of intellectual vision, but Lord Wensleydale's only surviving child was to a firm belief that the ends of justice are a daughter, and he had thus no legal heir to best served by sticking closely to technical rules. The stories told of him are practically his title. endless; and the gossips of the Temple still The Wensleydale peerage case estab love to recount his apology to a lady for lished the principle that a lord of Parlia ment must be an hereditary peer; and this being late for dinner, that he could not tear principle still holds good, although modified himself away from a beautiful demurrer, and in the special cases of the bishops and the to dwell upon his passion for cold air, his