little of his professional success. A considerable combination of qualities united in a single personality may, however, be noted. Every Chancellor has been a lawyer of some eminence, an advocate of fair capacity, confident in himself and thus giving confidence to his clients. Common sense and insight into men and their motives, so that the knowledge of law should be capable of application to the business of the world, have also been necessary. adjuncts. How little, indeed, of the academic temperament there is in the English lawyer, how entirely unprofessorial he is, is well exemplified by the careers which we are now surveying. The salient qualities of the Englishman of the eighteenth century, his common sense, his clear view of an objective, and his absence of imagination seem to be perceptible in all these eminent persons. In other words, they were typically English, they suited the English taste, as shown by that essentially English person, the solicitor with a practice. Perhaps Westbury was the most academically-minded of the group, and it was his absence of common sense which caused his downfall; indeed, a man less abnormally brilliant would never have had that want of the perception of the ordinary man's mind which Westbury constantly showed in his biting sarcasms. An intellectual arrogance had gained the mastery over him, which showed itself on the smallest provocation. “Mr. Rolt, we must be careful how we make our quotations in the presence of that distinguished scholar, Mr. Bethell," said Lord Justice Knight Bruce on one occasion, as he and Rolt were quoting passages against each other. "I beg your lordship's pardon," said Bethell, looking up, "I thought my learned friend and yourself were quoting from some Welsh author." But among the

Victorian Chancellors Westbury was unquestionably preeminent for mental grasp and range, for a vivid interest in any subject which came within limit of his mind, and for his classical cultivation (e).

Our legal education may be unscientific, our jurisprudence informal, but nothing, as these careers indicate, can detract from the fact that the English Bench is as a whole the most meritorious in the world, because even in the case of the Chancellor, who must be a politician and must belong to the party in reign of the late Queen Victoria the lawyer who has been chosen by the Prime Minister for the time being for the office has arrived at the position which, by common consent alone, makes him eligible, by his individual exertions. and by his intellectual capacity.

in power, in every instance during the

As a politician the Chancellor is but one among several members of a Cabinet, each of whom, even if, as happens to-day, there are among them men who have practised at the Bar, is primarily a politician. A Chancellor who can be pre-eminent as a statesman and a debater must be of

(e) A popular historian in commenting on the death of Lord Westbury has called him a "failure," and rhetorically pronounced 66 the close of his career but a heap of ruins." (M'Carthy, History of Our Own Times, Vol. IV. pp. 378, 379.) This statement is an absurd exaggeration.. Westbury, after a brilliant professional career, was Chancellor for several years. He left office under Parliamentary censure on a comparatively small administrative mistake, and he subsequently served with distinction as a judge both in the House of Lords and the Privy Council, and was strongly urged by Mr. Gladstone to accept the office of a Lord Justice of Appeal. It was generally recognised that his administrative error was caused by good-natured carelessness. Westbury's loss of office is chiefly remarkable as an example of the cleanliness of English official life-a small mistake cut short his official career.

abnormal capacity. To be a useful politician and a capable lawyer-Lord Halsbury, for example, well answersthis description-is not enough to cause a Lord Chancellor to be singled out for particular commemoration. Looking back over the lives of those who occupied the Woolsack during the reign of Queen Victoria, two names only seem to satisfy the test which enables us to rank them as statesmen of weight and influence, those of Lyndhurst and Cairns. The influence of the former in the House of Lords was remarkable; in 1832 he nearly destroyed the great Reform Bill. His power arose from the fact that he was not only an orator and a debater, but also united largegeneral knowledge to much worldly shrewdness.

'Lyndhurst," says his last biographer, "possessed an extensive and accurate store of knowledge on the minutia of the Eastern question, and on the history of Austria and Prussia. Five years later, when in his eighty-eighth year, he took the opportunity, on July 5, 1859, of callingattention to the state of our national defences. It was the year of Solferino and Magenta, and its later months. were marked by that extraordinary ebullition of Anglophobia on the part of the French colonels which evoked the Volunteer movement on this side of the Channel. In July there was no open sign of ill-feeling between the two nations, but Lyndhurst pointed out how vastly the invention of steam and the improvements of internal communications had increased the striking power of our old rival, as illustrated by her rapid mobilisation and triumphant campaign on the Mincio, and he proceeded to state to the House the measures which he deemed necessary for the safety of the country. Into these details we need

not follow him further than to notice that he was emphatic in his insistence upon what is known as the 'two-Power standard' recently raised by official acknowledgement to 'two Powers and a margin.' If we wish to be in a state of security, if we wish to maintain our great interests, if we wish to maintain our honour, it is necessary that we should have a power measured by that of any two possible adversaries."

And when Lord Palmerston was in doubt as to the person whom, when he came into office for the last time in 1859, he should create Lord Chancellor, it was to Lyndhurst that he applied to solve the difficulty, and it was on his advice that Campbell, then Chief Justice of the Queen's Bench, was selected. "He had always belonged," said Lord Lyndhurst, "to the Liberal party, he was a sound lawyer, and would do no discredit to the Woolsack." When we remember the position and the character of Palmerston, it would be difficult to find a better illustration than this of the opinion that was held by his contemporaries of Lyndhurst's sagacity and shrewdness. Yet his brilliant qualities were sometimes in the zenith of his career marred by a certain irresponsibility and by an audacity which, whilst they often served him well in debate, inclined him to take risks which slower intellects would not have incurred. Still he remains among the Victorian Chancellors a striking and illustrious figure, connecting the mid-Victorian period with Eldon and the eighteenth century, at once a memorable Chancellor and a Parliamentarian of the first order.

It is singular that the man whom we couple with him

was so dissimilar to him. The urbanity of Lyndhurst was in marked contrast to the austerity of Cairns. One passed his life in actual physical enjoyment, the other was always contending against ill-health. The one lived to a great age, the other was prematurely taken from his contemporaries. Yet each attained to a position of exceeding political influence by the sheer force of ability. But Cairns, though he was equal to Lyndhurst as a debater and a politician, was unquestionably superior as judge, and it is for this pre-eminent combination of qualities, as we have said, that Cairns should probably be held to be the first of the Victorian Chancellors. No two men worked harder for their party; but Cairns was a Conservative by conviction, Lyndhurst by choice. It is remarkable, however, that whilst Lyndhurst would have involved the country in a formidable constitutional crisis over Lord Grey's Reform Bill, the more true-hearted party man, as Cairns was, negotiated the passing of the Irish Church Bill of 1869. It would be out of place here to enter into details of this episode, which is political and not legal. It is sufficient to say that the Bill had passed through the House of Commons by a large majority, that in the Lords the second reading had also been carried, but that the measure was in danger of destruction in Committee, and that it was through the disinterested efforts of Lord Cairns that the opposition of the Conservative party was

overcome.

This action was not only a remarkable revelation of Cairns' character, but one which stamps him as a statesman of first-rate calibre, who combined boldness with caution, and it exemplifies the influence which he had