Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 19.pdf/541

 THE GREEN BAG Modern History and was elected to a fel lowship at Oriel — one of the most coveted distinctions at Oxford. In the commonroom of Oriel he had the stimulating com panionship of Dr. Stubbs, then busy with his researches with English constitutional history, while at Corpus Sir Henry Name was delivering those brilliant and suggestive lectures on "Ancient Law" which have created a new era in the history of jurispru dence. But charming as the academic life at Oxford is for a time, it is still a quiet back water, detached from the main current of life. Energetic spirits chafe at its philoso phic calm and yearn to be in the full stream of human life. Bryce was one of these and he chose the career "ouverte au talent." In 1867, just forty years ago, he was called to the Bar by Lincoln's Inn, took chambers in the Temple, No. 6 Crown Office Row, and went the Northern Cicruit. The judicial Bench was then remarkably strong. In the Queen's Bench was the brilliant Cockburn, the Lord Chief Justice, and the learned Blackburn. Lord Chelmsford was Chan cellor, Turner and Cairns were Lord Jus tices of Appeal. Willes, one of the greatest exponents of the common law of England, was at the Common Pleas; Brommel was a Baron of the Exchequer Sir Lurkingham was making the law in Admiralty by his luminous judgments. In his "Studies in Contemporary Biography" Mr. Bryce has given us some admirable appreciations of the great men he has known — the men whose fame has gone forth into all lands. Gladstone and Disraeli, Manning and Free man, Parnell and Dean Stanley and not the least interesting among them are the _ sketches of the two most eminent judges of his time, Lord Cairns and Sir George Jessel. LORD CAIRNS AS A JUDGE. "Cairns," he says, "was broad, massive, convincing with a robust urgency of logic which seemed to grasp and fix you, so that

while he spoke you could fancy no con clusion possible save that toward which he moved. His habit was to seize upon what he deemed the central and vital point of the case, throwing the whole force of his argument upon that one point and holding the judge's mind fast to it. Palmer (Lord Selborn) made an admirable Chancellor and shewed himself more zealous for reform than did Cairns. But Cairns was the greater judge, and became to the generation which argued before him a model of judicial excellence. In hearing a case he was singularly patient, rarely interrupting counsel and then only to put some pertinent question. His figure was so still, his countenance so impassive that people sometimes doubted whether he was really attending to all that was urged at the Bar. But when the time came for him to deliver judgment, which in the House of Lords is done in the form of a speech, addressed to the House in moving or sup porting a motion that is to become the judgment of the tribunal, it was seen how fully he had apprehended the case in all its bearings. His deliverances were never lengthy but they were exhaustive. They went straight to the vital principles on which the question turned, stated these in the most luminous way and applied them with unerring exactitude to the particular facts. He is as a storehouse of fundamen tal doctrines that his judgments are so valuable. They disclose less knowledge of case law than do those of some other judges, but Cairns was not one of the men who love cases for their own sake and he never cared to draw upon, still less to dis play, more learning than was needed for the matter in hand. He was in the grasp of the principles involved, in the breadth of view which enabled him to see these prin ciples in their relation to one another, in in the precision of the logic which drew conclusions from the principles in the per fectly lucid language in which the prin ciples were expounded and applied that his