have been gradually evolved and are suitable to the country. The absorption of the then Common Law Courts has often been discussed; it is sufficient here to quote and endorse words of the latest biographer of the Chancellors:

The amalgamation of the Exchequer and the Common Pleas with the Court of Queen's Bench was a sacrifice to the goddess of symmetry, the wisdom of which may reasonably be questioned. The three old courts with their three chiefs, each at the head of his band of puisnes, had much to commend them besides their antiquity. Their rivalry, their esprit de corps, and the sense of responsibility which is now distributed among the sixteen judges of the King's Bench Division, did much to maintain the high level of the Common Law Bench, which was never higher than in the 'sixties' and 'seventies (c).

A single Supreme Court presupposes a single responsible head. The expression, "the enthroning of the Chancellor on the necks of all of us," which the late Lord Coleridge used in writing to Lord Lindley, while it contains some germs of truth, was and is incorrect, because the office of Lord Chief Justice creates to some extent, as regards the Common Law Divisions, a dual responsibility. Yet that of the Lord Chief Justice of England, who appears to the public eye to be supreme in his own Division, is anomalous, for he shares the work of the puisne judges, and he has not that personal authority which was possessed by the chiefs of the old Common Law Courts.

(e) The Victorian Chancellors, by J. B. Atlay, Vol. II. p. 417.

If Lord Selborne has left his mark on the procedure of the country, he and Lord Cairns will long be remembered for their influence on its jurisprudence. The Vendor and Purchaser Act of 1874 may be placed entirely to the credit of Lord Cairns, the Conveyancing Acts of 1881 and 1882, the Married Women's Property Act of 1882, and the Settled Land Act of 1882 must be regarded as the joint work of these two eminent lawyers, for if these latter statutes were conceived by Lord Cairns, they were carried into law by his successor. It is, therefore, not altogether unreasonable to regard Lord Selborne as the Chancellor who, during the reign of Queen Victoria, had the most personal influence as a legislator upon English law. To apportion actual merit and the several services of the Chancellors when, to some extent at any rate, more than one personality has conduced to a reform, may tend to mislead, and to give false views of legal history. Yet, in any estimation of the Victorian Chancellors, it is of the highest interest to endeavour to ascertain the effect of the several personalities on English law, in the first place as legislators, in the second as judges, otherwise the story of their lives differs little from that of other eminent public ser* vants, and the value of their careers is unassessed.

It has already been said that judicially the influence of the Lord Chancellor has under the force of circumstances steadily decreased. This is especially marked in the extent of judicial decisions. Lord Truro, for example, was Chancellor only for a year and seven months (185052), yet one hundred and thirty of his decisions are preserved, and fill two substantial volumes in the Chancery

Reports. On the other hand, during two years of Lord Halsbury's tenure of the Woolsack he gave judgement—during the years 1903 and 1904—in fifty-four appeals in the House of Lords, but in conjunction with other members of that tribunal. So that the judicial and individual influence of these judgements is not so great as if they had been delivered by a single judge. The influence of a judge on the body of English law is to some extent a question of time as well as of individual power. Lord Stowell and Lord Mansfield are memorable as judges, not only in consequence of the breadth and clearness of their Judgements, but also because each was fortunate in the period during which he was a judge. Lord Stowell was partly able to mould the law of the Prize and of the Admiralty Courts because before his time judicial decisions in them had not been formally reported, and because he occupied the office of judge of the High Court of Admiralty at a time of a great maritime war and of a notable increase in maritime commerce. Lord Mansfield had also the opportunity of laying to a considerable extent the foundations of modern commercial law. Other names will not be forgotten-those of Willes, Blackburn, and Esher, in whose time much of the later body of commercial law was established, and on it these three judges have left their mark. But the tenure of office of the Chancellors is not sufficiently long to allow a moulding effect to be produced, and their individual influence on English law cannot therefore be considerable, even when the mental character and training of a Chancellor had been such as to give his judgements the breadth and the vivid expression of elemental principles as applied to concrete facts, which alone enables them to have the distinction and guiding power

to become landmarks in jurisprudence. Thus, numerous as were Lord Truro's decisions as a judge of appeal both from the decisions of the Vice-Chancellors and of the Masters of the Rolls, they are largely concerned with purely technical matters which are of little value beyond the immediate case in which they are raised. Lord Truro was a sound lawyer, though somewhat narrow in his outlook; in early life he had been an attorney much versed in the technicalities of his profession, so that he was without the training conducive to that habit of mind which seizes the opportunity to lay down in a luminous manner interesting principles of law, and to give apt illustrations of their applicability to modern social and commercial conditions. In 1851-we take these cases almost at random as two illustrations of the failure to seize judicial opportunities-Lord Truro had to decide whether the AttorneyGeneral, acting on behalf of the public, could file an information to restrain the group of undertakings which is now the Great Western Railway Company from opening what may be called their main line, until the branch to Stratford-on-Avon, for which parliamentary powers had been obtained, had been constructed. An important question —almost national in its far-reaching consequences-was here raised. Lord Truro was, however, content to deal with it in a judgment which occupies but a single page of the report. He was satisfied to state that he could not extract from "the information" any grounds to warrant the exercise of the jurisdiction of the court. In another case an opportunity occurred of delivering a judgement of large social importance, which by means of a lucid statement of principles might have been a guide in many succeeding circumstances. The Chancellor set aside a family compromise as having been fraudulently obtained.

"I shall content myself," he said, "with stating the principle of law upon which my decision is founded and name two or three cases of, I conceive, undoubted authority in which the principle is recognised and acted upon. That principle is that to render a family compromise binding there must be an honest disclosure by each party to the other of all material facts known to them relative to the rights and title of each as are calculated to affect the judgement in the adoption of the compromise." Then Lord Truro cited four decisions which he regarded as establishing his statement of law. This decision, doubtless, effectually concluded the pending litigation, but it is so brief as to be of little use in regard to future

cases.

In striking contrast to these judgements of Lord Truro are those delivered by Lord Westbury. It was only lack of opportunity which prevented him from being memorable as a judge. He possessed in a remarkable degree a large outlook and a grasp of main essentials, as well as a power of clear and pointed expression which has only been approached since by the late Lord Bowen, who had the same love of precision and the same fastidious literary judgement. Four years is no long period in legal history, and it was impossible in that time for Lord Westbury to affect the growth of English law to any large extent, however peculiarly well suited to that end. The same hindrance is observable in the case of Lord Cairns. During the short Administration of Mr. Disraeli in 1868, he had little opportunity for the further developement of the judicial qualities which he had shown as a Lord Justice of Appeal. But the six years of Mr. Disraeli's second