Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 14.pdf/100

 A Century of English "Judicature.

A

CENTURY

OF

ENGLISH

71

JUDICATURE.

XII. Bv Van Vechten Veeder. IX the House of Lords Bramwell (188292) exerted, in the main, the same general influence for good that characterized his earlier judicial service. Perhaps his unconventionality was even more conspicuous in his new surroundings; certainly no more vigorous and original personality had en livened that court since the days of Thurlow and Westbury. Although he was to some extent overshadowed by the commanding authority of Blackburn, he was sturdily inde pendent in his views; and even when wrong —for he was often in the minority—he used his mother-tongue with the same directness and dry humor. At a very advanced age he showed no decay in mental power; his strong opinion in the Vagliano case was delivered in his eighty-second year. But it is observable that his personal views on cer tain topics which had not commanded judi cial assent became in later years more pro nounced and extreme. Lord Herschell's conspicuous judicial service in the House of Lords (1886-99) en titles him to a place among the great judges of the last quarter of the century. If he fell short of Cairns' breadth of mind and lacked Selborne's subtlety he had, nevertheless, in large measure the qualities which make for judicial excellence. His most prominent characteristics were indefatigable industry, thoroughness and accuracy. Not even Lord Selborne more completely exhausted a subject than did Herschell in such leading cases as Berry v. Peek, Bank of England v. Vagliano, Allen v. Flood, London Joint Stock Bank v. Simmons, British South Africa Co. 7'. Mozambique, Russell v. Russell, Trego v. Hunt, the Maxim-Nordenfelt case, and many others. In his zeal to leave no consideration unnoticed, he sometimes seems to wander around the issue, instead of

aiming directly at it as Cairns did. But this fault is confined mostly to his earlier opin ions; his work improved steadily in structure and finish, and his best efforts are among the highest models of judicial exposition. He was a man of broad views. The basis of his very able opinion in the great case of Allen v. Flood, (1808) A. C. 1, is conclusive evidence of this: "I do not doubt that everyone has a right to pursue his trade or employment without 'molesta tion' or 'obstruction,' if those terms are used to imply some act in itself wrongful. This is only a branch of a much wider proposition, namely, that every one has a right to do any lawful act he pleases without molestation or obstruction. If it be in tended to assert that an act not otherwise wrongful always becomes so if it interferes with another's trade or employment, and needs to be excused or justified, I say that such a proposition in my opinion has no solid foundation in reason to rest upon. A man's right not to work or not to pursue a particular trade or calling, or to determine when or where or with whom he will work, is in law a right of precisely the same nature, and entitled to just the same protection, as a man's right to trade or work. They are but examples of that wider right of which I have already spoken. That wider right embraces also the right of free speech. A man has a right to say what he pleases, to induce, to advise, to exhort, to command, provided he does not slander or deceive or commit any other of the wrongs known to the law of which speech may be the medium. Unless he is thus shown to have abused this right, why is he to be called upon to excuse or justify himself because his words may in terfere with some one else in his calling?" No more luminous illustration of the evo