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The Green Bag

superficial but interesting fact is the great age that so many reached. The sound mind and the sound body seem to have met. Of those mentioned all but six reached their seventieth year. Lord Mansfield died in his eighty-ninth year. Lords Lyndhurst, Brougham and St. Leonards (Sugden) each lived until past ninety. Coke was eighty-two, Camden, eighty, Lord Chelmsford, eightyfive. Lord Eldon and his brother, Lord Stowell, have already been mentioned. Of fourteen judges who held the office of Lord Chancellor during Queen Vic toria's reign the average length of life was over seventy-nine. One, Lord Halsbury, still survives and is strong of body and clear of head at eighty-six. It is promised to those who serve the higher law that "length of days, and long life, and peace" shall be added unto them. May we not believe, from the facts here briefly recorded, that the scriptural promise has been given a wider applica tion? Looking somewhat more deeply, a study of their lives leaves the conviction that, with rare exceptions, they owed their promotion, not to mere chance circumstances, but to their apprecia tion of the difficulties of their calling and to the perseverance and industry which they applied in overcoming them. Native mental gifts played their part, but of their success the language of Lord Campbell, in speaking of Lord Hardwicke's great achievements, may be used, that "like everything else that is valuable, it was the result of earnest and persevering labor." The account of Lord Mansfield's great exertions to pre pare himself for his legal career would cast a damper over the spirits of most young men looking to the law as the avenue to success and distinction. The statement is made of Lord Eldon that BO thorough and comprehensive had

been his preparation that before he had ever pleaded a cause he was fit to pre side on the bench. Lord Nottingham. Lord Somers, Sir Edward Sugden, indeed all who won real distinction, laid out their lives on the same principle and reaped the fruits of it. Such preparation must have preceded true success; but any real knowledge of the history of English judges will impress one with how well in almost all respects the great majority measured up to a high standard of judicial fit ness — in natural ability, in knowledge, in independence, in general judicial de meanor, in the labor and practical skill necessary for the thorough and efficient administration of the large duties they were called to fulfill. Individual faults have been recorded. Occasionally a poorly fitted or even incompetent selec tion was made. Owing also to the par liamentary duties required of those filling the highest judgeships, political considerations in a measure controlled in the appointments to these posts; but even in these instances the choice was nearly always made from men whose mental worth and accomplishments had raised them to a position of leadership at the bar. The object appears to have been that the judge should be a real expert — the very best that his country could afford for the work to be done. But as judicial integrity is the founda tion stone of any administration of jus tice, so better than all else is the record of high character. Abuses have existed. Justice has been sometimes delayed, and many judges, who, with the oppor tunities before them, should have been the initiators of reform, were slow to take steps for the simplifying of the com plicated and expensive legal machinery of the courts and for the abolition of outworn and unjust laws. But it has been rare in the last two or three hun