Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 13.pdf/474

 A Century of English Judicature. A

CENTURY

OF

ENGLISH

435

JUDICATURE.

VII. BY VAN VECHTEN VEEDER. CHANCERY COURTS. The Chancery Courts were somewhat be hind the common law courts in improve ment. A new and better period in chancery may be said to have begun with the acces sion of Lord Westbury to the woolsack in 1861. During the succeeding fifteen years the Chancery was presided over by Westbury, Cairns, Hatherley and Selborne. Westbury, Cairns and Selborne rank among the most distinguished names known to English law, and Hatherley suffers only in comparison with men of their genius. Lord Westbury (i86i-'65) was one of the marked personalities of his time. His intel lectual gifts were of the highest order. Baron Parke considered him the ablest advocate at the bar; Sir George Jessel de scribed him as. a man of genius who had taken to the law, and Gladstone compared him to Cardinal Newman for "subtlety of thought, accompanied with the power of expressing the most subtle shades of thought in clear, forcible and luminous language." It was this rare combination of thought and expression which particularly distinguished him. His power of lucid statement arose from readiness of perception. "Clearness of expression," he asserted, "measures the strength or vigor of conception. If you have really grasped a thought, it is easy enough to give it utterance." The elevation which he gave to the simplest discussion arose from his habit of bringing the dryest details to the test of fundamental principles. With such a powerful equipment he seems to have set out to conquer the world rather than conciliate it. Heedless alike of miscon ception and antagonism, he impressed his

intellectual, superiority upon his contempo raries with caustic wit and blistering sar casm. His judgments in the ecclesiastical controversies of the time—particularly the case against the authors of the "Essays and Reviews" and the Colenso case—by which, it was suggested, "he dismissed hell with costs and took away from the orthodox members of the Church of England their last hope of everlasting damnation"— brought him into conflict with the High Church party; and his standing controversy with the bishops in the House of Lords gave rise to some of the most characteristic speci mens of his rather spinous humor. His de scription of a synodical judgment as "a welllubricated set of words, a sentence so oily and saponaceous that no one could grasp it," has never been forgotten. The conse quence of this unfortunate lack of restraint was that his enemies blocked the great scheme of law reform which seems to have been the one continuous purpose of his life. In his great speech of 1863 in the House of Lords he proposed the most systematic scheme of law reform that had been con ceived1 since the time of Bacon. Since Lord Westburv's day other men, better suited by temperament for the patient diplomacy by which alone radical legislative action is attained, have carried on the work which he began; and as the outline of his splendid conception is gradually filled in by accom plished fact it becomes us to remember him for his aspirations as well as for his actual achievements. The law reports contain about two hun dred and fifty cases in which Lord Westbury