The ancient practice of particular trades confining themselves for the most part to spot, as in old London, would, in many instances, be about as convenient in London of the present day as a whole street of post-office receiving-houses, or the crowding together of all the members of the medical profession in neighbourhood. The old custom may, however, still be traced faintly in some cases, and stronger in others; and in a great capital this will always be the case. So long, for instance, as the , the Stock Exchange and the shall exist, their vicinity will necessarily be the centre of the great monetary and commercial interests. Not less distinct and well defined, perhaps even more so, is the law quarter of London. Of the attorneys in England who practise in the superior Courts of Law and Equity at , above reside in London, and of them have their offices within half a mile of . country attorneys employ out of the above-mentioned London attorneys, to transact their court business; and -thirds of the practise within a quarter of a mile of . Again, legal firms act as agents for above country attorneys,

The Courts of Law, though for ages they have sat at , have not had the effect of drawing the law-offices after them, because it was absolutely necessary that these offices should be situated in the midst of the law district, that is, in or about the Inns of Court. Still, the fact that -tenths of the whole court business of the country is conducted in offices a mile and a mile and a half from the Courts at Hall is a remarkable . In respect nothing can be more appropriate than the situation of the Courts of Law at , the ancient seat of the Kings of England. The origin of these Courts may be traced to a period when the elements of the constitution were in their simplest state, and when legislative, administrative, and judicial functions were discharged more immediately by the Sovereign, assisted by the

wittena-gemote,

common pleas,

My Lord,

The Courts of Equity, which have jurisdiction in cases where an adequate remedy cannot be had in the Common Law Courts, are not confined to Hall. The Lord Chancellor, the Master of the Rolls, and the Vice-Chancellor, have their Courts there; and they sit at in term-time; but in the intervals, the Lord Chancellor and Vice-Chancellor sit at , and the Master of the Rolls, the equity judge in point of rank, at the Rolls in . In additional vice-chancellors were appointed by Act of Parliament; and the vice-chancellor is now distinguished by the title of Vice-Chancellor of England. The Lord High Chancellor was originally a sort of confidential chaplain, or, before the Reformation, confessor to the King, and keeper of the King's conscience. In his capacity of chief secretary he was the adviser of his master in various temporal matters; he prepared and made out royal mandates, grants, and charters, and, when seals came into use, affixed his seal. The appointment to the office takes place by the delivery of the great seal. The authority of Lord Chancellor and Lord Keeper were made the same by an Act passed in ; and the last Lord Keeper was Lord Henley, in . From a small beginning the office of Lord Chancellor became of great dignity and pre-eminence, and he now takes rank above all dukes not of the blood-royal, and next to the Archbishop of Canterbury. Before the Reformation the Lord Chancellor or Lord Keeper was usually an ecclesiastic. The last churchman who filled the office was Williams, Archbishop of York, who was Lord Keeper from to . In the same century the Earl of Shaftesbury, who was neither an ecclesiastic nor a lawyer, was appointed Lord Chancellor. The jurisdiction with which the Lord High Chancellor is invested originated in the discretionary power of the King, whose special interference, as the fountain of justice, was frequently sought against the decisions of the Courts of Law, and also in matters which were not cognizable by the Common Courts. The Lord Chancellor also exercises important political functions, and has a seat in the cabinet. He resigns office with the party to which he is attached. The Court of Chancery is a name which properly belongs to the Lord Chancellor's Court and the Vice-Chancellor's Court together, but it is most frequently applied to all the Courts of Equity. The office of Vice-Chancellor is only of recent origin, having been created in , and in , as already mentioned, additional vice-chancellors were appointed. The Master of the Rolls, another of the Judges in Equity, who has a separate Court, is an officer of great antiquity. He takes precedence next to the Lord Chief Justice of the King's Bench, and before the Vice-Chancellors. The Master of the Rolls has the power of hearing and determining originally the same matters as the Lord Chancellor, with a few exceptions; but his orders or decrees must be signed by the Lord Chancellor before being enrolled. The Vice.Chancellor has nearly the same powers. Appeals (strictly speaking re-hearings) are made both from the Rolls and the Vice-Chancellor's Court to the Lord Chancellor, whose court of late years

locked up

The public entrance to the Courts at is at the northern end of Hall. is the Queen's Bench, next the Court of Exchequer, the Court of Common Pleas, the Lord Chancellor's Court, and the Rolls Court. Few strangers omit paying a visit to the Courts of Law. The Courts themselves are very far from possessing any imposing architectural character; but the interest of the scene is independent of factitious circumstances. This spot has been the seat of justice for nearly a years; and the history of our judicial tribunals, from the period when the sovereign dispensed justice in his great hall to the present time, is full of instruction as well as of interest. But strong as may be the which a visit to the courts may excite, the associations connected with the administration of justice will command respect wherever the tribunal may be fixed. The purity and dignity of our judicial procedure is no longer sullied by the vulgar abuse and clamour of a Jefferies to beat down the defence of an innocent man. The time has gone by since the sovereign (Queen Elizabeth) could say of a criminal that

she would have him racked to produce his authority ;

is covered all over with the armour of the law.

The profession of the law is by which a man may rise to the highest stations in this country; and not a few of those who have at last succeeded have been on the point of retiring from the contest, when fortune has unexpectedly smiled upon them. Lord Camden and the Earl of Eldon both experienced a lucky turn in their affairs when they had almost abandoned the hopes of advancement. Some, again, have enjoyed an almost uninterrupted career of success. The sudden illness of a leader has given them an opportunity for the display of their abilities, while but for such an occurrence they might long have remained in obscurity.

Earl Camden, the son of Chief Justice Pratt, was called to the bar in his year; and continued to wait in vain for clients for long years, when he resolved to abandon Hall for his College Fellowship; but at the solicitation of his friend Henley, afterwards Lord Chancellor Northington, he consented once more to go the Western Circuit, and through his kind offices received a brief as his junior in an important cause. His leader's illness threw the management of the case into Mr. Pratt's hands, and his success was complete. After years' lucrative practice he was made Attorney-General, and, years after, in , raised to the Bench as Chief Justice of the Common Pleas. He had entered Parliament in , being then in his year, but did not gain much distinction. The honours of the Senate flowed in upon him at a later period of his life, after he was made Lord Chancellor, in , and raised to the peerage. In he voted against his colleagues, on Wilkes's case, a circumstance which necessarily led to his removal from the woolsack. During the remaining years of his life he was entirely a political character, and upon every occasion the right arm of Lord Chatham, after whose death, in , he rarely took any part in debate. In , when above , he addressed the House in an able and energetic speech on the celebrated measure of Lord Erskine, commonly, though erroneously, says Lord Brougham, called Mr. Fox's Libel Act, which established the right of juries in libel cases in opposition to the slavish doctrines of the day.

Two

years after he descended to the grave, full of years and honours, the most precious honours which a patriot can enjoy, the unabated gratitude of his countrymen, and the unbroken consciousness of having through good report and evil firmly maintained his principles, and faithfully discharged his duty.

the fancy respecting the coronation oath which so entirely obtained possession of George III.'s mind, and actuated his conduct during the whole discussion of Irish affairs.

Then he has not left a worse man behind him,

Came down with an assurance unknown to all besides, perhaps even to himself not known before, and in his place undertook the defence of the king's right against his son and his partisans;

And when I forget my sovereign may my God forget me!

without,

any struggle, or even apparent reluctance.

His mind and his habits were eminently judicial; and it may be doubted if, taking both the externals and the more essential qualities into the account, that go to form a great judge, any

one

has ever administered the laws in this country whom we can fairly name as his equal.

He restored to the whole bar the privilege of moving in turn, instead of confining this to the last day of the term. He almost abolished the tedious and costly practice of having the same case argued several times over, restricting such re-hearings to questions of real difficulty and adequate importance ..... The cases were so speedily and so well dispatched, that the other Courts of Common Law were drained of their business without the channels of the Court of King's Bench being choked up or overflowing.

There is little room for doubt,

that in trials for libel he leant against the freedom of discussion, and favoured those doctrines long current, but now cried down by statute, which withdrew the cognizance of the question from the jury to vest it in the Court.

Among all the great names who have been the ornament of the Courts of , few are more popular than that of Erskine. His parliamentary talents have, in Lord Brougham's opinion, been underrated; but it is, he remarks, to the Forum and not the Senate that we must hasten if we would see, in his element and in his glory, this great man,

beyond all comparison the most accomplished advocate and the most eloquent that modern times have produced.

Juries have declared that they felt it impossible to remove their looks from him when he had riveted and, as it were, fascinated them by his

first

glance; and it used to be a common remark of men who observed his motions, that they resembled those of a blood-horse; as light, as limber, as much betokening strength and speed, as free from all gross superfluity or incumbrance. Then hear his voice of surpassing sweetness, clear, flexible, strong, exquisitely fitted to strains of serious earnestness, deficient in compass, indeed, and much less fitted to express indignation, or even scorn, than pathos, but wholly free from either harshness or monotony. All these, however, and even his chaste, dignified, and appropriate action, were very small parts of this wonderful advocate's excellence. He had a thorough knowledge of men, of their passions and their feelings; he knew every avenue to the heart, and could at will make all its chords vibrate to his touch.

Erskine's argumentative powers,

were of the highest order; clear in his statements, close in his applications, unwearied and never to be diverted in his deductions, with a quick and sure perception of his point, and undeviating in the pursuit of whatever established it; endued with a nice discernment of the relative importance and weight of different arguments, and the faculty of assigning to each its proper place, so as to bring forward the main body of the reasoning in bold relief, and with its full breadth, and not weaken its effect by distracting and disturbing the attention of the audience among lesser particulars. His understanding was eminently legal: though he had never made himself a great lawyer, yet could he conduct a purely legal argument with the most perfect success; and his familiarity with all the ordinary matters of his profession was abundantly sufficient for all the purposes of the Forum. His memory was accurate and retentive in an extraordinary degree; nor did he ever, during the trial of a cause, forget any matter, how trifling soever, that belonged to it. His presence of mind was perfect in action, that is, before the jury, when a line is to be taken upon the instant, and a question risked to a witness, or a topic chosen with the tribunal, on which the whole fate of the cause may turn. No man made fewer mistakes; none left so few advantages unimproved; before none was it so dangerous for an advocate to be off his guard, for he was ever broad awake himself, and was as adventurous as he was skilful, and as apt to take advantage of any the least opening as he was cautious to leave none in his own battle. But to all these qualities he joined that fire, that spirit, that courage, which gave vigour and direction to the whole, and bore down all resistance. No man, with all his address and prudence, ever adventured upon more bold figures, and they were uniformly successful; for his imagination was vigorous enough to sustain any flight; his taste was correct and even severe, and his execution felicitous in the highest degree .... His acquaintance with the English tongue was so perfect, and his taste so exquisite, that nothing could exceed the beauty of his diction, whatever subject he attempted.

His speaking was hardly more perfect than his examination of witnesses, the art in which so much of an English advocate's skill is shown; and his examination-in-chief was as excellent as his cross-examination,--a department so apt to deceive the vulgar, and which yet is, generally speaking, far less available, as it hardly ever is more difficult than the examination-in-chief or in reply. In all these various functions, whether of addressing the jury, or urging objections to the Court, or examining his own witnesses, or cross-examining his adversary's, this consummate advocate appeared to fill, at

one

and the same time, different characters; to act as the counsel and representative of the party, and yet to be the very party himself; while he addressed the tribunal to be also acquainted with every feeling and thought of the judge or the jury; and while he interrogated the witness, whether to draw from him all he knew, and in the most favourable shape, or to shake and displace all he said that was adverse, he appeared to have entered into the mind of the person he was dealing with, and to be familiar with all that was passing within it. It is by such means that the hearer is to be moved and the truth ascertained; and he will ever be the most successful advocate who can approach the nearest to this lofty and difficult position.

simple, natural, and amiable; full of humane feelings and kindly affections.

The chief defect of Lord Ellenborough's judicial character, not unconnected with the hastiness of his temper, also bore some relation to the vigour of his understanding, which made him somewhat contemptuous of weaker men, and somewhat overweening in reliance upon himself. He was not sufficiently patient and passive, as a judge ought habitually to be. He was apt to overlook suggestions, which, though valuable, might be more feebly urged than suited his palate. He was fond of taking the case prematurely into his own hands. He dispatched business with great celerity, and, for the most part, with success. But causes were not sifted before him with that closeness of scrutiny, and parties were not suffered to bring forward all they had to state with that fullness and freedom,

which alone can prevent misdecision, and ensure the due administration of justice. But in bane, where full time has been given for preparation, where the Court can never be taken by surprise, where, moreover, the assistance of

three

puisne judges is ever at hand to remedy the chief's defects and control his impatience, this hasty disposition and warm temperament were comparatively harmless, and seldom produced mischievous effects to the suitor. At

Nisi Prius

it is far otherwise; for there a false step is easily made, and it may not be easily retraced.

That he had all the natural qualities, and all the acquired accomplishments, which go to form the greatest legal character, is undeniable. To extraordinary acuteness and quickness of apprehension he added a degree of patient industry which no labour could weary, a love of investigation which no harshness in the most uninteresting subject could repulse. His ingenuity was nimble in a singular degree, and it was inexhaustible; subtlety was at all times the most distinguishing feature of his understanding; and, after all other men's resources had been spent, he would at once discover matters which, though often too far refined for use, yet seemed so natural to the ground which his predecessors had laboured and left apparently bare, that no

one

could deem them exotic and far-fetched, or even forced. When, with such powers of apprehending and of inventing, he possessed a memory almost unparalleled, and alike capable of storing up and readily producing both the most general principles and the most minute details, it is needless to add that he became

one

of the most thoroughly learned lawyers who ever appeared in

Westminster

Hall, if not the most learned; for, when it is recollected that the science has been more than doubled in bulk, and in variety of subjects has been increased fourfold, since the time of Lord Coke, it is hardly possible to question his superiority to the great light of English jurisprudence, the only man in our legal history with whom this comparison can be instituted.

It would be no exaggeration at all to assert that Lord Eldon's judgments were more quickly formed, and more obstinately adhered to, than those of any other judge who ever dealt with such various, difficult, and complicated questions as he had to dispose of.

Constitution, Government, and Laws,

Pictorial History of England

Having had doubts upon this will for

twenty

years,

not doubt enough

his judgment was of the highest cast; calm, firm, enlarged, penetrating, profound.

They who deal with such causes as occupied the attention of this great Judge have this advantage, that the subjects are of a nature connecting them with general principles, and the matter at stake is most frequently of considerable importance, not seldom of the greatest interest. The masses of property of which the Consistorial Courts have to dispose, are often very great; the matrimonial rights on which they have to decide are of an interest not to be measured by money at all; but the questions which arise in administering the law of nations comprehend within their scope the highest national rights, involve the existence of peace itself, define the duties of neutrality, set limits to the prerogatives of war.

His style was peculiar; it was that of the closest and severest reasoning ever heard in any popular assembly; reasoning which would have been reckoned close in the argumentation of the Bar or the dialectics of the schools. It was, from the

first

to the last, throughout, pure reason, and the triumph of pure reason. All was sterling, all perfectly plain; there was no point in the diction, no illustration in the topics, no ornament of fancy in the accompaniments. The language was choice, perfectly clear, abundantly correct, quite concise, admirably suited to the matter which the words clothed and conveyed. In so far it was felicitous, no further; nor did it ever leave behind it any impression of the diction, but only of the things said; the words were forgotten, for they had never drawn off the attention for a moment from the things; those things were alone remembered. No speaker was more easily listened to; none so difficult to answer. Once, Mr. Fox, when he was hearing him with a view to making that attempt, was irritated in a way very unwonted to his sweet temper by the conversation of some near him, even to the show of some crossness, and (after an exclamation) sharply said,

Do you think it so very pleasant a thing to have to answer a speech like that?

The Court in those days presented a spectacle which afforded true delight to every person of sound judgment and pure taste. After a long and silent hearing--a hearing of all that could be urged by the counsel of every party-unbroken by a single word, and when the spectator of Sir William Grant (for he was not heard) might suppose that his mind had been absent from a scene in which he took no apparent share, the debate was closed--the advocates' hour was passed--the parties were in silent expectation of the event--the Hall no longer resounded with any voice--it seemed as if the affair of the day, for the present, was over, and the Court was to adjourn, or to call for another cause. No! the Judge's time had now arrived, and another artist was to fill the scene. The Great Magistrate began to pronounce his judgment, and every eye and every ear was at length fixed upon the bench. Forth came a strain of clear unbroken fluency, disposing alike, in most luminous order, of all the facts and of all the arguments in the cause, reducing into clear and simple arrangement the most entangled masses of broken and conflicting statement; weighing each matter, and disposing of each in succession; settling

one

doubt by a parenthetical remark; passing over another difficulty by a reason only more decisive that it was condensed; and giving out the whole impression of the case, in every material view, upon the Judge's mind, with argument enough to show why he so thought, and to prove him right, and without so much reasoning as to make you forget that it was a judgment you were hearing, by over-stepping the bounds which distinguish a judgment from a speech. This is the perfection of judicial eloquence; not avoiding argument; but confining it to such reasoning as beseems him who has rather to explain the grounds of his own conviction than to labour at convincing others; not rejecting reference to authority, but never betokening a disposition to seek shelter behind other men's names, for what he

might fear to pronounce in his own person; not disdaining even ornaments, but those of the more chastened graces that accprd with the severe standard of a Judge's oratory.

The wisdom of our ancestors.

Here are

two

or

three

good rooms; this is my dining-room; my library and bedroom are beyond; and I am told,

there are some good rooms up-stairs; but I never was there.

The name of Romilly at once commands respect and admiration. His career and merits are too well known to require notice here; but the contrast which Lord Brougham has drawn between the technical and what was contemptuously called the

speculative lawyer,

The great triumph of Sir Samuel Romilly was a sore stumbling-block to technical minds. A free-thinker upon legal matters, if ever any existed; accomplished, learned, eloquent, philosophical; he yet rose to the very head of his profession, and compelled them to believe what Erskine had failed to make them admit--that a man may be minutely learned in all the mere niceties of the law, down to the very meanest details of Court Practice, and yet be able to soar above the higher levels of general speculation, and to charm by his eloquence and enlighten by his enlarged wisdom, as much as to rule the Bench and lead the Bar by his merely technical superiority.

We have passed over the names of many distinguished men-Hardwicke, Kenyon, Dunning, and others--who have been illustrious at the bar and on the bench, and whose field of fame was the Courts at Hall.--No doubt there would be some violation of the by the removal of these courts to any other site; but it is satisfactory to know that respect and veneration for our judicial tribunals do not depend upon any sentimental feelings, but on the moral influence which attends the righteous discharge of their duties by thejudges. Lord Langdale, the present Master of the Rolls, when examined before a parliamentary committee, said,--

I have seen the Vice-Chancellor of England sitting in a dense crowd in the council-room of

Lincoln's Inn

; I have seen him sitting in the auctionroom above the Masters' offices, and in different committee-rooms of this house. I have seen the Chief Baron of

the Exchequer

sitting in a kind of hut erected in

Westminster

Hall on the site of what was the Court of King's Bench; but I have never known that there was any want of respect for the Judges, nor do I think that the place in which they sit can have any material effect upon their dignity.

sites have been mentioned as suitable for a building which should contain under roof all the Courts of Law and Equity. Each of these sites is of course in the law quarter of the town; being ; another the Rolls Estate, close to ; and the a space between

[n.389.1] Lord Brougham's Statesmen of the Reign of George III., i. p. 180.

[n.392.1] Statesmen, vol. i. p. 105.

[n.392.2] Ib. 236.

[n.395.1] Statesmen, ii., 64.

[n.398.1] Statesmen, i. 212.