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The Green Bag

given to him a direction which should have been addressed to the AttorneyGeneral, rebuked the deceit and com mitted the false messenger to prison. He has a peculiar interest for American lawyers, because, unlike most of those who have reached high judicial office in England, he did not combine political activity in the houses of Parliament with the discharge of his duties as a judge. In the words of Lord Campbell, he was a "mere lawyer," possessing a "passion for justice" and a "genius for magis tracy" — qualities displayed during a long judicial service and resulting in a record that has made Holt "the model on which, in England, the judicial character has been formed." As Chief Justice Holt's days were drawing to a close Lord Hardwicke, against the judgment of his mother, who wished him bred to some "honester trade," was entering on those studies, which, aided by his great powers of mind and long experience, were to give him the consummate knowledge and mastery of equity for which he is pre eminent. It was not unfitting that as the great judge who knew so well and so soundly administered the common law was laying down his work, he who was to expound so admirably and in a large measure to create the present sys tem of English equity was taking up his own. Individual judgments will differ, but Chief Justice Holt and Lord Hardwicke, each in his own sphere, are perhaps the highest types in the two great branches of English law. But Lord Hardwicke was greatly superior to Holt in culture and general fitness for high judicial position. He succeeded by persistent efforts, which were charac teristic of everything he undertook, in making himself an admirable English scholar, a quality which his judgments reflect; and he spared no pains to inform

himself on all subjects that would fur nish any direct aid in the discharge of his duties as a judge. The result of such thoroughness, aided by such ability, was the creation of a type to serve as a model for all judges who have followed him. His self-control, his desire to do justice, his courtesy and consideration, left nothing to be desired in his demeanor on the bench. More learned and more gifted perhaps than any who appeared before him, he was yet ever patient and attentive, anxious to gather any light that counsel might give, and, without untimely suggestions and interruptions, he heard the case through to the end, when a complete grasp of the facts con sidered in the light of the law, which none knew better than he how to apply, enabled him to give a sound judgment. Scotland has given some eminent judges to England. Of these, when every point is considered, Lord Mans field is easily the greatest. It would require more than a paragraph or two to do justice to what he was. From the beginning he applied his remarkable mental powers to the acquisition of a broad and thorough learning, seeking to liberalize and to strengthen his mind by gaining a real acquaintance with history, literature, philosophy, and the classics, and by association with men of literary attainments and culture. In his study of law itself, he did not tread merely in the narrowest circle of profes sional learning, but sought out and made his own the Roman civil law, inter national law, and the systems of modern European countries other than England. These habits of study he continued throughout a long life, covering nearly the whole of the eighteenth century; and so when at fifty-one, after m ny years of experience at the head of the English bar and in parliamentary life, he' was called to preside as Chief Justice