Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 13.pdf/53

 The Green Bag, that there is clanger of losing sight of his eminent abilities. He possessed in a degree seldom surpassed some of the highest quali ties of judicial excellence: a quick and clear apprehension, retentive memory, vast tech nical learning, a judgment which neither perplexity nor sophistry could confound, and an industry never enervated by luxury nor disturbed by passion. His understanding was capable of feats of metaphysical acumen and subtlety that would have enlisted the admiration of the old schoolmen by whom equity was originally administered as an academic rather than a worldly system; but this was not in his case an advantage. Beyond his profession he was ill read, untraveled and without knowledge of the world. Aside from the performance of the political duties attached to his high office, he devoted himself to the law with entire singleness of purpose and indefatigable industry. The vast arrears in chancery which accumulated during his administration is the most serious blot on his reputation. It would be an injustice to the memory of a really noble character to fix upon him the sole responsibility for that monstrous denial of justice. The chancery system had never been distinguished by despatch, and the rapid and sustained increase in litigation during Eldon's time accentuated the delay which has come to be associated with his name. The cause of the arrears in chan cery was investigated by a Chancery Comission, before which so competent a witness as Mr. Bickersteth, afterwards Lord Langdale, testified; the delay arose, he said, from the general inability of the court to dispose of the business which came before it. This inability to cope with the work was due, in his opin ion, to the state of the law and the mode of its administration, to the insufficiency of the time applied to judicial business and to the want of an adequate number of courts. Lord Eldon was a powerful political officer as well as a judge and during his time the quasi-political duties of his office were par

ticularly onerous. The investigation of the Berkeley and Roxburghe peerage claims and the trial of Queen Caroline are illustra tions of the extra-judicial demands made upon his time. Slight relief was eventually afforded by the appointment of a deputy speaker of the House; but the establishment of a Vice-Chancellor's Court .was not, as we shall see, an immediate success, and it was many years before the master of the rolls was enabled to render any effective assist ance. Considering the vast political power that Lord Eldon exercised in the cabinet councils, it is, however, a deep and perma nent reproach upon his reputation that he did practically nothing to remedy the system whose faults have been, in this sense, justly fastened upon his name. And it must be admitted that Lord Eldon's judicial methods were dilatory in the ex treme. No one was ever better qualified by nature and by training to arrive at a speedy decision; indeed, during his short term in the Court of Common Pleas he showed a capacity for prompt decision which contrasts curiously with his marked indecision in chancery. His indecision was really due, not so much to want of readiness in reaching a decision, as to clilatoriness in formulating his opinion. The fact that this delay was due in large measure to his extreme con scientiousness does not affect the result, although it does to some extent relieve his memory. It may be well to quote his own justification as given in his diary: "During my chancellorship I was much, very much blamed for not giving judgment at the close of the arguments. I persevered in this, as some thought from obstinacy, but in truth from principle, from adherence to a rule of conduct, formed after much consider ation, as to what course of proceeding was most consonant with my duty. With Lord Bacon, .'I confess I have somewhat of the cunctative mind,' and with him I thought that 'whosoever is not wiser upon advice than upon the sudden, the same man is no wiser at fifty than he was at thirty.' I con-