would have to remain satisfied with the odd moments of the Admiralty judge. It was plainly, however, more than ridiculous that commercial men should be unable to have their legal business satisfactorily transacted by the Queen's Bench Division, to which it properly belonged; it would have shown a total incapacity to recognise a public demand had the lead given by the Admiralty Court not been followed. The result was that at the beginning of 1895 it was announced that commercial causes commenced in the Queen's Bench Division were assigned to Mr. Justice Mathew, not only for trial, but in order that he might have control over them from their commencement. This was, as we have already pointed out, in reality the establishment of a Commercial Court. Nor did Mr. Justice Mathew allow the opportunity thus given to him to re-establish the confidence of the mercantile community in the Common Law Courts of England to pass by. He disapproved of dilatory interlocutory proceedings, and by the exercise of sound common sense, and from a contempt for mere legal technicalities, he put an end to the interlocutory applications which in many cases caused so much expense and had so little effect on the result of the litigation.

The Court has continued on the same lines, though it has to some extent lost its early judicial individuality, and its scope has been enlarged. It is now a general Commercial Court instead of one which had jurisdiction over a limited class of cases arising out of shipping and insurance contracts. Finally, it must be regarded as fixed in English procedure-a remarkable instance of the haphazard and yet on the whole effective manner in which legal changes have occurred in this country in all times.

It is worth while, however, to take note of this Court from another point of view-as emphasising a change which has occurred in procedure in the last fifty years. The Commercial Court is the most emphatic illustration which can be given of what may be called business procedure as distinguished from legal procedure of the desire of the judiciary that litigation should be as little technical as possible. There are still some useless technicalities visible, not comparable, however, to those which were to be seen before the Common Law Procedure Act of 1854, and the Judicature Act of 1873, and several other modern measures. The changes introduced in the Commercial Court would startle a practitioner under the old régime (a); pleadings are not necessary, points of claim and defence being frequently ordered in place of formal claims and defences, documents which are not strictly proved are admitted in evidence, as are written statements containing hearsay matter. These and other details emphasise a popular revolt against legal technicality, and a desire to have disputes settled quickly and without formalities. The Commercial Court, in fact, responds to popular opinion, and it marks the culminating point of the reaction against technicality in procedure which has been visible for more than half a century, and the first step of which in regard to the Common Law Courts was the passing of the Common Law Procedure Act, 1854. It has influenced the procedure of other

(a) In the case of Biddell v. Clemens, Hirst & Co. (27 T. L. R. p. 47), Mr. Justice Hamilton decided a case on his personal knowledge of the meaning of a mercantile term. This decision was reversed by the Court of Appeal, on the ground that a commercial custom must be proved as a fact by evidence.

Courts, for what is right in one Court cannot primâ facie be wrong in another, and thus a general tendency has grown up to conduct litigation with as little formality as possible. Rules of procedure too strictly construed may be a constant menace to justice; construed reasonably, they make it proceed decently and in order. Such is the object of modern English procedure. The judicial point of view in the last quarter of a century, more especially since the creation of a Commercial Court, has in fact diametrically changed, and the Judicature Rules, voluminous though they are, being capable of alteration at any time, have lent themselves to this new movement, for they can be amended so as to prevent undue technicality whenever a necessity for so doing is proved. We have thus reached a period in English legal history, when procedure is on the whole no more than sufficient to enable litigation to be conducted on well-ascertained lines, and is subordinate to the redress of private wrongs. That there are improvements in existing procedure is not to be denied, but the Commercial Court, with its "short cuts" and absence of technicalities, is always at hand a constant object lesson of the advantages of common sense and rapidity in litigation, and a remarkable illustration of the trend of the direction of public opinion since the year 1873 in regard to legal procedure. As a reversion to a system which flourished in mediæval times, it is of peculiar interest to the student of the history of English

law.

CHAPTER X.

THE VICTORIAN LORD CHANCELLORS, AND THEIR INFLUENCE

ON ENGLISH LAW.

THE lives of the eminent men who filled the high office of Lord Chancellor of England during the reign of Queen Victoria are remarkably illustrative of the trend of the English legal system, and of its personal characteristics, during a period which is now a well-defined historical epoch. The Victorian age has so many distinctly marked attributes extending over many years that it is now obviously a definite period, coinciding with the rule of a single sovereign. The lawyers who occupied the Woolsack during the reign of Queen Victoria differed remarkably in personal character, in mental qualities, and in legal attributes; but these differences help to create a complete picture alike of the lawyers of the age and of the system under which they flourished. From the point of view of the legal historian, it is important to form some estimate of the influence of this group of judges and statesmen--the heads of the English judiciary—on law and procedure during this long space of time.

This period, so far as concerns the office of Lord Chancellor, was to some extent one of transition. In England

changes proceed so gradually that one is apt to overlook the effect of a slow transition; it is clear, however, that the office of Lord Chancellor is now less judicial and more administrative in its nature than it was at the beginning of the reign of Victoria. The holder now fulfils more political and fewer judicial duties. Lord Cottenham during the last tenure of his Chancellorship "devoted his time almost entirely to judicial work, seldom appearing in the Cabinet." To-day a Chancellor who found his strength insufficient for judicial and political work would regard himself as bound to devote such vigour as he possessed to the service of the House of Lords in debate, and to the assistance of his colleagues in Council. The difference in the strain of political and administrative work in the last and present centuries is made more clear when we bear in mind that the Chancellor was not only a member of the House of Lords, and as such a member of the highest Court of Appeal, but that he was also an equity judge of first instance and a judge of appeal from the Vice-Chancellors. He had therefore at the beginning of the period to fulfil three judicial functions. Those of a judge of first instance were considerably lightened when in 1842 two additional Vice-Chancellors, as the Chancery. judges were called, were appointed during the last Chancellorship of Lyndhurst. But though the Lord Chancellor was then relieved to some extent of one part of his work— for the disappearance of the Chancellor as a judge of first instance was gradual-this increase in the number of primary Chancery judges at the same time increased his duties as a judge of appeal, and rendered sooner or later a new appellate tribunal inevitable. This body came into being under the Chancellorship of Lord Truro in 1851.