Volume 81 / Part 2 / Book 3 — LORD ST LEONARDS.[8]

LORD ST LEONARDS.^[8]

Some little time ago might have been seen in the corner of a weekly legal periodical the following brief intimation: “Early in January 1857 will be published the Thirteenth Edition of Sugden’s Law of Vendors and Purchasers of Estates, with important additions. This Edition will contain between eleven and twelve hundred cases, in addition to those in the last Edition.... The Author has bestowed great pains on this Edition.” The book now lies before us; and in the preface we find this observation: “Every case cited I have perused in the original Report, and every line of the book has been written by myself,” that book being a royal octavo volume of 720 closely-printed pages, and those cases—as we vouch, after curiously counting the table of cases—amounting to upwards of four thousand six hundred! And who, it may be asked, is this very laborious author? No other than Lord St Leonards, so lately Lord High Chancellor, now in his seventy-fifth year, yet having the inclination and the power, mental and physical, thus to occupy the intervals of leisure occurring in the discharge of his judicial and legislative duties as a member of the House of Lords! The career of such a man we commend to the studious attention of some future historian of the Lives of the Lord Chancellors; and in the mean time shall supply him with some authentic materials, collected in the course of careful inquiry, and personal observation.

We believe that England never before saw, living at once, three such remarkable subjects for the portraiture of some future Lord Campbell, as the three ex-Chancellors now adorning the House of Lords—Lords Lyndhurst, Brougham, and St Leonards,—Lord Campbell himself being a distinguished member of that House, for a brief space Lord Chancellor of Ireland, and now the learned and upright Lord Chief Justice of England. At some future time we may ourselves attempt sketches of Lords Lyndhurst, Brougham, and Campbell; but our present concern is with that one of the aforesaid three ex-Chancellors whose name stands at the head of this article. Without attributing to him the attractive and dazzling characteristics of Lords Lyndhurst and Brougham as orators and statesmen—the latter, too, a prodigy of versatility and power—we shall, by a plain narrative of facts, establish the pretensions of Lord St Leonards to be regarded as a great lawyer, whose name will be ranked with those of Lord Hardwicke and Lord Eldon; while, in several respects, his career is more remarkable and more instructive than that of either. The race of great lawyers in England is but too evidently dying out. Perhaps we see the last of them in Lord St Leonards, who may be said to have exhibited as great legal, as the late Duke of Wellington military, genius. And the former has this signal characteristic, that throughout the whole of his long, arduous, and distinguished career as advocate, judge, and legislator, he has never intermitted the labours of legal authorship; but brought forth works of practical and profound erudition, contributing to develop law as a science, aiding the studies, and facilitating the practice and administration of that law, by every member of the profession. Under this fourfold aspect, therefore, of author, advocate, judge, and legislator, we propose to exhibit a sketch of the life and labours of Lord St Leonards,—tracing him from his first book and his first brief, to his last edition of that first book; to his last brief; to his last judgment as Lord High Chancellor; and the most recent of a long series of Acts of Parliament, of the highest practical importance, contributed by him to the Statute-book.

Edward Burtenshaw Sugden was born in the year 1781; and having duly entered himself a student of Lincoln’s Inn, such was the use he had made of his time, and such his marvellous aptitude for the acquisition of legal knowledge—for which, indeed, his intellect may be said to have exhibited a sort of elective affinity—that before he had reached his twenty-second year, as he himself has left on record,^[9] he had written his Vendors and Purchasers of Estates—which was published in February 1805,—i. e. in his twenty-fourth year! It is an octavo volume of 461 pages. We have seen a copy of it bearing the date 1805; and no person, competent to judge, can read its terse and thoroughly practical exposition of the leading principles applicable to so difficult and unwieldy a subject, without wondering how the youthful author could have acquired the requisite knowledge and facility in using it. He was a pupil of the late eminent conveyancer, Mr Duval, but we are not aware at what age he entered the chambers of that gentleman. Let us now, however, leap over a good half-century, and look for a moment at the account of this early performance, given by its author on the 10th of this present January 1857, in the highly interesting preface to the edition now under consideration:—

“After the lapse of half a century since the first publication of this work, I am about to send forth a thirteenth edition of it. Determined at my outset in life to write a book, I was delighted when I hit upon the subject now before the reader—the Law of Vendors and Purchasers. The title promised well; and many portions of the law had not previously been embodied in any treatise. Modern law-treatises were indeed few at that period. When this work was announced for publication, nearly the universal opinion was that it would be a failure, as the subjects to be considered were too multifarious for one treatise. Nothing dismayed, I laboured diligently; and with the aid of Lincoln’s Inn library, in which a considerable portion of the book was written—for my own shelves were but scantily furnished—I at length finished the work in its original shape. My courage then failed me. The expense of publication was certain, and success I thought more than doubtful; and it was not without some difficulty that I could be persuaded to refrain from committing the manuscript to the flames, and to join with a bookseller in incurring the risk of publishing it at half profit and loss, as it is termed. As soon as the book was printed, another bookseller bought my interest in the edition, and thus relieved me from my obligations. The amount I received as the price of the edition was small, but I have never since received any sum with anything approaching to the same satisfaction. The book was certainly the foundation of my early success in life.”

Who does not envy the veteran (not lagging lazily on the stage) this retrospect, and thank him for a glimpse of his autobiography? He proceeds to tell us that this first edition was sold “at once;” that a greatly enlarged one was published in June 1806—both before he was called to the bar; the third in a year afterwards, in 1808; the fourth in 1813; and five new and very large editions at regular intervals of four years, till 1834;—“all these six appearing,” he continues, “while I was in full practice at the bar, and could ill afford the time required to re-edit the work.” On returning from Ireland, in 1835, after his first Chancellorship, “I had,” he says, “for the first time in my professional life, full leisure, and revised the whole work with great care;” and published a tenth edition, in three volumes royal 8vo, in 1839. “While yet a second time in office in Ireland” (as to which we shall have by-and-by to say much that is interesting), “I prepared and published, on the 1st May 1846” (that is, while holding the Irish Seals), “the eleventh edition, compressed into two volumes.” A twelfth, in a greatly compressed form, in one small octavo volume, a work of very great labour, appeared in June 1851,—every portion, including even index and table of cases, being his own exclusive personal handiwork. Six months afterwards he became Lord Chancellor of Great Britain; and now, at the opening of the new year, 1857, we have, as a sort of parting gift, of infinite value to the profession of the law, this thirteenth edition, “the last,” he says, though he is in full health and vigour, “that I can expect to publish.... To restore the work to its original shape as a treatise, and at the same time preserve its character as a concise and practical view of the subject” (the form which the twelfth edition had assumed), “I have spared neither time nor labour.” Those only can judge of the labour and time required for such a task, who are in the habit of perusing all the voluminous reports of our many courts. The twelfth edition contained some five hundred cases not quoted in the eleventh; and upwards of twelve hundred cases are included in this thirteenth which were not in the twelfth. “This collection of cases is the fruit of upwards of half a century of research and labour;—every case” (as we have seen), “I have perused in the original report, and every line of the book has been written by myself. I doubt not that there are errors which have escaped me, but I have endeavoured to leave behind me this, my first work, in a shape in some sense worthy of the acceptance of the members of the profession to which I have the honour to belong; and I know, by a long experience, that I may safely rely on their indulgence.” Such is the first glimpse we obtain of Edward Sugden, starting on his career as an author,—during half a century’s overwhelming labour and anxiety as a Chancery counsel, as an active member of the House of Commons, and as thrice a Lord Chancellor. Blackwood’s Magazine is not the fitting expositor, in detail, of this great law-treatise, stamped by the unanimous and uninterrupted approbation, for half a century, of the whole legal profession, of every rank—by judges, counsel, and solicitors, alike in courts of law and equity. We think there must at this moment be extant some thirty or forty thousand copies of the various editions of the “Vendors and Purchasers;” and we entertain little doubt that, as soon as this last is seen, no member of the profession, who can afford to procure it, will be long without doing so. To the general reader we may intimate that this work is of an intensely practical character; and the art of condensation which it manifests can go no further. Its sweep is immense. The gifted author exhibits the power of grasping the whole subject, however extensive and complicated, and yet applying accurate—and the latest—legal knowledge to the minutest exigency,—from the terse, clear, cautious, and yet decisive enumeration of the profoundest principles of equity, down to a question of costs,—in all the variety of subdivisions of that somewhat expensive luxury,—whether as “costs” simpliciter, or as “costs, charges, and expenses!” Probably no book of the kind has ever stood on a lawyer’s shelves, or was constantly in hand, in which so few errors have been detected; while able and experienced lawyers could point to great numbers of opinions and doubts from time to time expressed by the author, which have afterwards been sanctioned by judicial decision, and are always entertained and canvassed with the utmost respect—the respect due to one bringing the results of vast practical and scientific knowledge and experience to bear upon the ordinary exigencies of litigation. It has facilitated the labour, and alleviated the anxieties and responsibilities of tens of thousands of practitioners during half a century:^[10] and those of 1857,—students as well as practitioners—now see a new edition, thoroughly remodelling the work, and adapting it to existing exigencies with scrupulously conscientious personal care and labour, by an author who so lately administered justice as Lord High Chancellor, to the admiration of all.

Shortly after the original appearance of this work, its author, then seeking practice as a conveyancer under the bar, received a Case for his opinion, in consequence of a solicitor’s having cancelled the work. Mr Sugden’s opinion differed from that which, though given by an eminent counsel, had dissatisfied his client, and proved to be correct. In a short time he found himself in large and rapidly increasing business. Two years after the appearance of his book, namely in 1807, he was called to the bar; and the first trace of him in the reports is to be found in the 14th volume of Vesey Junior’s Reports of Cases in Chancery, p. 302, on the 18th March in that year, in the case of Browne v. Like, which was, in fact, the first case he ever argued, and before that very eminent judge, Sir William Grant, then Master of the Rolls. Mr Sugden’s senior on that occasion was Sir Samuel Romilly, who left him to open the case. He has since said, that when he first rose, at the corner of the back bench in that dusky little court, his knees shook under him; but if this were so, he disguised his nervousness, and spoke, as we have heard, with apparent calmness and self-possession,—so effectually arguing the first of the two points in dispute, and the main one, that, on his proceeding to the second, to his surprise, Mr Richards, subsequently Chief Baron of the Exchequer, who led for the defendant, turned round and told him that they should abandon that point; thereby so encouraging the young counsel, that, in a more lively and confident frame of mind, he proceeded to his second point. His opponents were unable to answer his lucid argument; and after a few words in reply from Sir Samuel Romilly, the court decided in favour of the plaintiff, and thus enjoyed Mr Sugden his prædulce decus primo certamine! This his first case was a small affair in point of the property involved, but has its special interest, as far as he is concerned—not only as occasioning his maiden effort, but because it affected a branch of the law which, not long afterwards, fell under his vigorous assault, as most vexatious and oppressive—the enrolling of Annuities. The facts were shortly these: An uncle had bequeathed to his niece, for her sole and separate use, a life interest in the dividends on a small sum in the Funds, vested in trustees for that purpose. Soon afterwards she married, and, with her husband’s concurrence, bonâ fide sold to Mr Sugden’s client, for £140, twenty pounds a-year of the aforesaid dividends; but no memorial of the deed of sale was enrolled according to the Act then in force, and since repealed. The two questions were, whether the lady had power to sell these dividends? and whether the transaction was a “sale, out and out,” or the grant of an annuity? in the former case requiring no enrolment. The first point was given up,^[11] and the second decided against the defendant. Mr Sugden’s second case in court, as far as we have been able to trace him, was the well-known one of Sloane v. Cadogan, in the Rolls Court in the year 1808. His own outline of his elaborate argument is to be found in the appendix to the “Vendors and Purchasers.” Those clients of Mr Sugden who are still living, tell of the peace of mind which ensued their securing his services as their conveyancer; so prompt, correct, decisive, was he as an adviser, and, as a draftsman, neat, concise, and elegant. In his case, confidence was not a plant of slow growth. His practice grew apace in chambers, and he began more and more frequently to appear, not only in courts of equity, but in those of common law, to argue questions connected with conveyancing, and the law of real property: quickly conciliating the respect of opponents, and of the bench, by his exact and extensive knowledge, and masterly use of it. Great as was the pressure of his chamber practice, and constantly increasing as were his appearances in court, Mr Sugden yet found time to prepare two new editions of his “Vendors and Purchasers,” as we have seen, in the years 1806 and 1808, that of the latter year in a far more systematic form than any of the former had exhibited, being, as he now tells us, “the first divided into sections, with the placita numbered.” And as if even all this were not sufficient, the selfsame year 1808 saw another important work of his, of a much higher order than his former one, as of a more abstruse and scientific character—his Treatise on Powers. This elaborate and systematic work, which we regard as eminently characteristic of its author’s legal genius, at once elevated him—now in his twenty-seventh year—to a conspicuous position in the foremost rank of living lawyers. It has ever since continued a text-book of the highest repute—we might almost say, though in its authors lifetime, of authority—and has passed through seven large editions, every one prepared by the indefatigable author, who, in his preface to the first edition, modestly pleaded, “as an excuse for any inaccuracies in it, the necessity of devoting his time to other labours, from which moments were snatched for this performance.” He is here speaking of his labours as a conveyancer in full practice, whose toils are severe and unremitting; requiring a close exclusive attention, if he would not run the risk of making shipwreck of his reputation by perilling, or actually sacrificing, the important interests confided to his skilled experience. To such a master of his art as Mr Sugden, these toils would be lightened as far as their troublesome nature admitted. The Practical Treatise on Powers, we regard as one of the most remarkable performances on record in the literature of the law, especially as that of a conveyancer comparatively so youthful. The attempt to give a mere general reader a fair notion of what the lawyer means by “powers,” would be about as hopeful as to explain to a young lady the doctrine of differential calculus. To form an idea of this kind of “Power,” he must be apprised of the nature of “Use,” of a “Trust,” of the old common law, and after a great statute. Blackstone, that exquisitely elegant expositor of everything susceptible of exposition, declared it “impracticable,” in the plan of his Commentaries, “to pursue the doctrine of Uses through all the refinements and niceties which the ingenuity of times abounding in subtle distinctions, deduced from this child of the imagination;” “a notion transplanted,” he elsewhere tells us, “into England from the civil law about the close of the reign of Edward III., by means of the foreign ecclesiastics, who introduced it to evade the statutes of mortmain.” Would our non-legal readers set out with us, if we were so disposed, to follow this ignis fatuus? Doubtless they would be as unwilling to follow as we to lead. Suffice it to say, therefore, that the introduction of Uses and Trusts produced a great revolution in the transfer and modification of landed property, forming “a law whereupon,” says Lord Bacon, in his Reading on the Statute of Uses, “the inheritances of this realm are tossed at this day, like a ship upon the sea, in such sort that it is hard to say which bark will sink, and which will get to the haven.” It has, however, constituted the main-spring of the delicate and complex machinery of the conveyancer—to whose craft, directly or indirectly, fortunate reader! you are indebted at this moment for the safe enjoyment of your estates, however small, however large. Yet it would be interesting to an historical and reflecting reader, to contemplate the great wrestling-match between the Legislature and the astute Chancery lawyers of the day—how each in his turn defeated the other, and how it ultimately contributes to the present division between our systems of law and equity. “Uses” and “Powers” are the means by which our existing method of “settling” real estates is effected and maintained, enabling, as they do, the possessor to chalk out the future enjoyment of it in as many contingencies, and for as long a period, as the policy of the law admits; and no little of the intricacy of the existing system is due to the exacting ambition or far-seeing beneficence of owners of property. Now, “Sugden on Powers” forms a sine quâ non of the practical conveyancer; and if the student, after acquiring a knowledge of the doctrine of Uses, of which that of Powers, says St Leonards, is only a branch that has greatly surpassed in growth its parent stock, he will find that three-fourths of his difficulties have vanished. We heard some years ago, and now know it as a fact, that the late Sir Robert Peel once laughingly told Sir Edward Sugden, at dinner, that he had, from what he had heard of the difficulty of this book, regarded it as a sort of legal Euclid; and having ascertained, he said, that the third section of the first chapter was the Pons Asinorum of lawyers, he had resolved to master it! So having sat down for that purpose, he succeeded, as he averred, and had found out all about borrescimus referentes!—“Scintilla juris.” The aforesaid section has the inviting heading—“Of Scintilla Juris,” a matter which has exercised, harassed, and well-nigh split the heads of a whole army of judges—of Lord Bacon even, who seems to speak of it, Sir Edward tells us, in a contemptuous tone. Sir Edward himself characterises it as a fiction, invented by perverse astuteness to escape a difficulty which itself only had created. When a man had indicated the future enjoyment of his property, in certain specified contingencies, the antique conveyancer, putting on a pair of huge magnifying-glasses, fancied he detected in that man, who himself imagined that he had exhausted himself of all connection with the property, a lambent spark of interest—a mere metaphysical entity—a momentary seisin, adequate to “feed the use.”

“Over this invention,” says a masterly living writer on conveyancing (Mr Hayes), “the old judges cast the veil of Latinity, and prudently withdrew it, under the learned appellation of ‘Scintilla juris,’ from profane examination! Westminster Hall resounded with the debate. The speeches of the eleven judges, who delivered their opinions seriatim, occupied six days! The Lord Chief-Justice Popham declared that not to cherish the scintilla juris would be to cast the whole commonwealth into a sea of troubles, and endanger it with utter confusion and drowning.” “The commonwealth,” adds the sarcastic writer, himself a first-rate conveyancer, “had little to fear, but common sense was in imminent danger of perishing between the conflicting elements of fire and water.”

The “Scintilla” has learned advocates and opponents to this hour; among the latter being Lord Bacon, Lord St Leonards, Mr Fearne, Mr Butler, Mr Preston, and Mr Hayes—a sort of legal galaxy. Still, however, to change the figure, the indurated stump of this doctrine retains a sort of tenacious vitality in the prolific subsoil of legal ingenuity. While thus dismissing a matter, savouring, as the unlearned and irreverent reader might presumptuously imagine, somewhat of the mighty dispute between Tweedledum v. Tweedledee—let us intimate that the “Treatise on Powers” is divided into nineteen elaborate chapters, each distributed into sections, so disposed, and so treating an extensive and complicated subject, as to be almost equally adapted for elementary and practical purposes. It is a masterly combination of legal subtlety with the strongest common-sense, applied with the utmost exactness to practical exigencies—not, as he himself intimated, perversely suggesting doubts, but supplying solutions for real difficulties. Of these solutions it were easy to cite many instances of judicial adoption, such as will readily occur to any well-informed professional reader.

“The author regrets,” he says, in the preface to the sixth edition (1836), “that he has upon so many points differed from persons for whom he entertains unfeigned respect, but he has rather considered the principle of the rule than the weight due to the authority by whom it was pronounced; and his own erroneous impressions may readily be corrected; for it is but in few instances that he has given an opinion without stating the reasons upon which it is grounded.”

And in another part of the same preface to this, his favourite performance, occurs the following interesting passage:—

“We have many admirable treatises; but, for the most part, our legal authors want either experience or time, and it ever must be so; for if a man do not write on law while he is young, he probably never will; and if at an advanced period he revise his early productions, with the advantage of reputation and increased experience, time, without which nothing important can be accomplished upon legal subjects, is no longer at his command. And, besides, a counsel in actual practice can seldom write freely upon decisions in which he has been engaged. If he find fault with a decision against him, it may be imputed to partial or perverted views; and if he disapprove of any in which he has been successful, the criticism from such a quarter might afford the groundwork of an appeal.”

The third edition (1821) was dedicated, by permission, to Lord Chancellor Eldon, than whom no one entertained a greater respect for the learning of the author,^[12] who thus justly and eloquently eulogised that great judge:—

“I felt the presumption of addressing such a request”—to be allowed to dedicate to him the work—“to a judge who has so often excited the admiration of the Bar, by a display, without effort, of an extent of knowledge in every branch of jurisprudence, which the life of man appears to be insufficient to acquire. If these considerations deterred me from making the application, I was encouraged to it by that judicial mildness and gravity—that urbanity and attention to the youngest counsel in the Court—the true mark of a great mind—which operate so powerfully to make your Lordship beloved by the Bar, and soften the splendour which profound knowledge, high character, and dignity shed around you.”

In the year following that which saw the third edition of the “Vendors and Purchasers,” and the first of the “Treatise on Powers”—namely, in the year 1809—Mr Sugden found time to write a valuable little work for the guidance of lay gentlemen in the management of their estates, entitled “A Series of Letters to a Man of Property, on Sales, Purchases, Mortgages, Leases, Settlements, and Devises of Estates;” in a thin octavo volume, consisting of twelve letters, all of a practical character, perfectly intelligible to a non-professional man, and admirably calculated to enlighten him as to the nature of these all-important transactions. This work, which passed through six large editions, has been long out of print; and but for the wise saw concerning “the last straw which breaks the camel’s back,” we might venture to intimate that Lord St Leonards would confer a very great favour on the lay public by reproducing these letters, adapted to the existing and greatly-altered state of our laws. We regard a work of this description, undertaken as it was by a lawyer of first-rate attainments and practice, as a very unassuming and disinterested service rendered to those who stand not a little in need of it. Three years afterwards—namely, in the year 1811—Mr Sugden gave to the profession an edition of the posthumous work of Chief Baron Gilbert on “Uses and Trusts”—which derived all its real value from the careful revision and “Introduction” of the accomplished Editor. These notes and introduction are of a most elaborate character, ably epitomising the law to which they relate,—chiefly to springing and shifting uses, and the law of perpetuities.

Between the years 1812 and 1836, we find Mr Sugden, from time to time, publishing pamphlets on subjects of great practical importance—such as the mischievous operation of the then (1812) existing Annuity Act, which, as we have already intimated, he succeeded in getting expunged from the statute-book, as productive of intolerable vexation and ruinous litigation—himself drawing the act (53 Geo. III. c. 141) in the ensuing year which repealed it, and substituted a better system.^[13] Other subjects to which he thus addressed himself were the improvement of the administration of justice in the Court of Equity; the law of wills; the rate of interest and redeemable annuities; the appellate jurisdiction of the Court of Chancery and the House of Lords (1835); and on the late Mr Humphreys’ proposal to repeal the Laws of Real Property, and substitute a new code (1826), which Mr Sugden encountered with great power. His pamphlet, which was very elaborate, attracted much attention, and passed through three editions. With the exception of these minor and intermitting literary exertions, and preparing new editions of his great works, we now lose sight of Mr Sugden as an author—thus, as it were, only occasionally showing his head above the deep waters of Chancery practice—till a period to which we must in due time refer.

During his practice as a conveyancing counsel for about eight years, he more and more frequently varied its oppressive monotony, by going into courts of law to argue questions relating to real property. It was about the year 1812 that he took to arguing special cases in the Common Courts—a work at that time of great labour and anxiety, and very little profit. His first case may be seen reported as Goodtitle v. White, 15 East’s Reports, p. 174 (A.D. 1812). Here he was pitted against and defeated his formidable brother conveyancer, Mr Preston. In 1815 he argued in the same court, Wright v. Barlow, 3 Maule and Selwyn’s Rep. 512, but could not succeed in inducing the court to overrule one of its own decisions. In the latter year he argued the celebrated case of Doe v. Jesson, 5 Maule and Selwyn’s, 95, and again failed to convince the court; but on appeal, Lord Eldon and Lord Redesdale reversed the decision, on grounds suggested and argued by Mr Sugden. Another case argued in the same year, and reported in the same volume (p. 482), was that of Doe v. Roach, in which, after an arduous argument, Mr Sugden convinced Lord Ellenborough, and succeeded. He continued to argue cases in the Common Law Courts till the year 1822, when he finally relinquished the practice. All the cases reported in the latter year are reported in the fifth volume of Barnewall and Alderson’s Reports. One of them, Beard v. Westcott, p. 801, affords an excellent specimen of his close and lucid reasoning. Here he not only again defeated his astute opponent, Mr Preston, but prevailed on the King’s Bench to differ from the Common Pleas, though the opinion of the latter had been supported by the judgment of the Master of the Rolls, Sir William Grant. Three other cases, in courts of equity, afford instructive specimens of the power of this great legal reasoner—Bengough v. Edridge, 1 Simon’s Rep. 207, 227; Cholmondley v. Clinton, 2 Merivale, 221, 241; Lord Deerhurst v. The Duke of St Albans, 5 Madd., 243.^[14] He at length began to consider whether he would not altogether quit chamber for court practice; a very bold step, indeed, for one who, with a large family to support, was realising an ample income, which he was about to surrender, perhaps for ever. It may be well imagined that this afforded matter for anxious and painful deliberation. His chambers were crowded with pupils, his tables groaned under “papers,” and most, if not all, the leading solicitors were his confiding and devoted clients—bringing him far more business than he could by any effort conscientiously dispose of, and which he therefore declined. A distinguished member of the profession besought him with the utmost, and almost tearful urgency, not to take a step which he believed, with many others, would prove fatal to his prosperity. We have heard that the late Vice-Chancellor of England, then Mr Shadwell, made no secret of his opinion, that Mr Sugden’s appearance at the bar would be a complete failure; he at length made up his mind, and passed the Rubicon. Shortly before he did so, he said to our informant, an eminent living Queen’s Counsel, with whom he was one night walking home, “I am going to give up conveyancing, and go to the bar. I don’t know whether it will answer, but I will try.” This was said with an air of great resolution; and it is for us to tell the issue. The intrepid aspirant after forensic honours found himself in a moment deserted by almost every client of importance, who appeared to feel personally offended at being, as it were, suddenly left in the lurch by their favourite conveyancer, on whom they had been accustomed to rely so long and so implicitly. For a very short time the forebodings of evil appeared being realised; and he had to sit in court, day after day, witnessing his once stanch clients pouring their briefs into the hands of other counsel, without vouchsafing a solitary one to the new-fledged one! Whatever inward mortification or apprehension he but too probably experienced, he concealed; saying, perhaps, within himself, If the great solicitors will not have me, perhaps some small one may, one fine day, give me an opportunity of showing that they will not slight me with impunity. By-and-by came Mr Sugden’s opportunity; he was intrusted by a “small” solicitor with a “small” brief; and it may be supposed with what perfect preparation such a man would come into court. On his consummate knowledge of the law of real property he consciously stood, as upon a rock; and his rigorous logic enabled him to wield that knowledge with irresistible effect. It did not take long to show those former clients, who stood aloof from him, that they were making a mistake—which we may be sure their deserted counsel would give them more and more frequent opportunities of feeling. A few exhibitions of his easy mastery over business, his steady self-possession and resolution, and the influence he was visibly acquiring over the court, soon began to put a different complexion on matters; and the commiserating smile, perchance, of supercilious rivals somewhat suddenly began to settle into an expression of something like a well-founded anxiety! Mr Sugden advanced rapidly into practice of the highest class. Every moment, during which he was not actually employed in court, he might have been seen sitting there answering cases, generally of an intricate and troublesome kind, buried in their details, undisturbed by all the hubbub around him, for he was always distinguished by the power of abstraction. All was thenceforth plain sailing. His old clients became as anxious to secure his services in court, as formerly in chambers. A few years afterwards—namely, in the year 1822—he received a silk gown from Lord Eldon, thereby taking another decisive step in advance, surrendering junior for leading business. In this year, also, appeared, edited wholly and elaborately by himself, the sixth edition of his “Vendors and Purchasers”—though how he found time to do so, at such an anxious crisis of his fortunes, and with such uninterrupted demands on his time and energies, it is not easy to discover. His silk gown was a splendid success, silencing sneers and whispering disparagements from every quarter. A consummate knowledge of the principles and details of real-property law, and conveyancing, and equity; rapidity of perception; conscientious devotion to the interests of his clients; imperturbable coolness and self-possession; the pith and brevity of his arguments, and lucid exposition of the most involved facts—all combined to invest his advocacy with such charms in the eyes of anxious solicitors and their clients, that retainers were soon showered on Mr Sugden from all quarters—and it was almost always a race between rival solicitors who should first retain him!

As though his cup of labour were not yet brimful, on the 20th February 1828 Mr Sugden was elected a member of Parliament for the borough of Weymouth and Melcombe Regis, after a ten days’ expensive and harassing contest. He was returned twice afterwards for the same place, once on being appointed Solicitor-General. Mr Sugden sustained three other severe election contests, one for the Rape of Bramber in 1826, and two for the borough of Cambridge, against the present Lord Monteagle. He also sate for the borough of St Mawes (extinguished by Schedule A) during the period of the Reform Bill debates, and twice for Ripon, after his first retirement from the office of Lord Chancellor of Ireland, in 1835, as we shall presently mention,—representing that borough at the time of his second and final acceptance of the Irish Seals, in 1841. We doubt whether any man ever underwent greater labour than Mr Sugden throughout the harassing but prosperous twelve or thirteen years following his attaining the rank of King’s Counsel, particularly during the period of his sitting in the House of Commons. We first saw him one morning in the court of Sir Lancelot Shadwell, then the only Vice-Chancellor; and, without at first knowing who he was, were forcibly struck by his care-worn countenance. His manner was calm, but he looked harassed, as though he had sate up the whole night. And perhaps he had! He has often been known to return to his house, then in Guildford Street, Russell Square, from the House of Commons, at three o’clock in the morning, having been engaged incessantly in court all the previous day till he went to the House; and at six o’clock his servant would bring candles to his bedside, when he would sit up to read his briefs. At a quarter to nine o’clock he would be seen at Westminster, holding five or six consultations before ten o’clock, when the Lord Chancellor’s and Vice-Chancellor’s courts opened; then he was retained probably in every case in either court, which he would be addressing incessantly. At the rising of the court, a little after four, he would betake himself to the House of Commons, and remain here often till two o’clock in the morning, or later, reading his briefs in a room at the coffee-house at Bellamy’s of that day, during the intervals of his attending the debates, snatching a hasty dinner at any moment that served. Once he returned home at half-past six o’clock in the morning, and went to bed till eight o’clock, when he rose to prepare for such another day as the one before! How mortal flesh and blood—how any mortal brain, could stand such tear and wear as this, seems a mystery; but he was blessed with a fine constitution, and was of temperate and abstemious habits. The income which he derived from these labours, as may easily be believed, was very large. His fees were often enormous. The business rejected at his chambers’ door must have amounted to many thousands a-year. In the great case of Small v. Attwood he received four thousand guineas, and accepted the retainer only very reluctantly, and after having several times refused it. To protect himself as much as possible, he refused, for a long time, for any consideration, to go into other courts than his own, and never would give an opinion on a case, except in consultation with another counsel. The facility with which he despatched business was most remarkable; and that not cursory and slovenly reading of his papers, but really mastering and exhausting them. One evening after dinner, without leaving the room, he began to read his briefs for the ensuing day, which was a “Motion” day; but those intrusted to him were generally of difficulty and importance. He continued reading brief after brief as long as they were supplied to him, in successive bags, by his clerk. Having at length despatched them all, he saw himself surrounded with so many as astonished himself. He had the curiosity to count them; and in three hours and a half’s time he had thoroughly read thirty-five! By this time it was eleven o’clock; and instead of dropping exhausted into bed, he called a coach, and went down to the House of Commons! We have heard that when this little feat was recalled to his recollection, he vouched for its truth; but added, with a smile, that he never could have attacked such a number of briefs, had they been brought before him all at once, instead of in successive bagfuls! But what, after all, is such a life as this, but one of splendid slavery?

In the year 1829, Mr Sugden was appointed Solicitor-General, succeeding the late amiable and learned Sir Nicholas Tindal, on his receiving the appointment of Chief-Justice of the Common Pleas,^[15] thereby, of course, superadding to his private professional labours the onerous cares of office. He received, as usual, the honour of knighthood, but did not retain office long. Passing over an interval of five years, we arrive at the year 1834, when Sir Edward Sugden’s name appears for the last time that we have been able to discover in the Law Reports, as counsel. He had ceased to attend the Rolls Court long before he retired from the Bar; and his last argument in the Vice-Chancellor’s Court is that of Cash v. Dean and Chapter of Ely, 7 Simon’s Rep. 211 (A. D. 1834); and his last before the Lord Chancellor was the well-known case of Kennedy v. Green, 3 Myhere and Keen, 699, in the same year. At the close of his judgment in this latter case, Lord Brougham, as Chancellor, took leave of the Bar. The seventh volume of Simon’s Cases, above referred to, incidentally affords some evidence of the extent, at that time, of Sir Edward’s business: the volume contains thirty-five cases, of which he appeared as counsel in twenty-seven! On quitting the Bar, he returned fees exceeding a thousand guineas.

On the 13th January 1835 Sir Edward Sugden was induced^[16] to accept the appointment of Lord Chancellor of Ireland; a post, however, which he filled only three months, but long enough to exhibit the highest judicial qualities, and to cause general regret at being deprived of such services. On returning from Ireland he found himself, as we have seen, “for the first time in his professional life, in full leisure,” seizing the opportunity thoroughly to revise his “Vendors and Purchasers,” of which, in 1839, he published a new edition—the tenth—in three royal octavo volumes. In addition to this, he read and critically examined every reported decision of all the courts of law and equity. In 1837 he reappeared in the House of Commons as member for the borough of Ripon, taking an active part in the more important subjects of legislative discussion, particularly those with which he was so pre-eminently qualified to deal. In the month of October 1841, however, he finally retired from the House of Commons, on being appointed a second time Lord Chancellor of Ireland—a post which he occupied till the month of July 1846. We believe we speak the universal opinion of the Irish Bar, and indeed of the general public of Ireland, that it was a fortunate day that saw this great and upright magistrate a second time in its supreme seat of justice, to occupy it for a period of five years. We feel justified in attributing, not now for the first time, the utmost weight to the judgment of the Bench and Bar of Ireland. They are acute, dexterous, and learned, and capable of appreciating thoroughly a display of the highest judicial qualifications. Sir Edward himself declared on one occasion, recently, that he could never mention the Bar of Ireland but in cordial terms of affection and respect; and that, when he finally quitted Ireland, he had experienced not one unkind or disrespectful expression towards himself, nor witnessed any personal disagreement among themselves. He was undoubtedly exact and severe in maintaining that order in his court, without which, while justice is administered with difficulty, judicial decisions may fail to command the prompt respect and consideration which are their due. Himself profoundly attentive to what went on, involving such important interests, he also required that counsel should receive no interruption, and that they should address themselves, with all due brevity and closeness, to the real points at issue. An attentive and watchful Bar has a most salutary effect on both judge and counsel; and a court gravely and decorously ordered in all things, produces a fitting impression, as well on the public as on even the most disappointed suitor. Sir Edward’s great reputation as an equity lawyer stimulated counsel to make fitting exertions, and a protracted desultory volubility found no encouragement or even toleration in the court of Lord Chancellor Sugden, whose presence put even the ablest of his Bar on their mettle: while his deep attention repaid their pains in preparing and condensing their arguments. We are not, however, left to the expression of our own opinion. His first chancellorship lasted for only three months,—viz. from the 13th January to the 22d April 1835; and on the latter day, after having pronounced an important judgment, with a view to securing the due and economical administration of justice in the courts of equity, the Attorney-General rose and asked if his lordship intended to sit again? and being answered in the negative, thus addressed the Chancellor:—^[17]

“My Lord, I should do great injustice to my own feelings, and, I am persuaded, to those of the Bar of Ireland, if I allowed your lordship to retire from that seat without attempting, however feebly, to convey to your lordship the impression of the deep sense which we entertain of the eminent ability and dignity of demeanour with which you have discharged the important duties of your high office. Short as has been the period of your lordship’s elevation, it has afforded ample opportunity for the display of judicial powers of the highest degree of excellence. Had that period been still shorter—had it been limited to the observation of a single day—it would have been sufficient to have impressed us with an indelible conviction of the profound, extensive, and accurate learning, the patience and discrimination, the masterly exposition and application of the authorities and principles of equity, and, above all, of the ardent love of justice, and elevated tone of moral feeling, which marked and distinguished your judgments. I have only to add our acknowledgments for your uniform urbanity and kindness, and to assure your lordship that you bear with you our regret at your retirement, and our most anxious wishes for your future happiness and welfare.”

To this affecting address the Chancellor, declaring that he had been “totally unprepared for it,” made a brief and dignified reply,^[18] acknowledging the uniform kindness and attention of the Bar; after which one of the most eminent of the solicitors rose and expressed their concurrence in the sentiments which had been so eloquently expressed by the Bar.

Sir Edward Sugden’s second return to Ireland as Lord Chancellor afforded him a more extended opportunity of exhibiting judicial and administrative power. It is perhaps needless to say, that he manifested throughout the same acuteness, strength, stretch, and exactness of legal judgment, which had elicited, at the close of his former brief tenure of the Seals, the spontaneous and weighty approbation of all legal circles in Ireland. Every one of his judgments appealed from, was affirmed by the House of Lords, with the exception of two, and a single point in a third. The propriety of even these few reversals, however, is gravely questionable, and is denied by Sir Edward himself; who elaborately examines the grounds on which they proceeded, in his Treatise on the Law of Property, as administered in the House of Lords,^[19] and thereby enables those who are competent to do so, to pronounce an opinion for themselves.

Two of his judgments in the year 1843 were attended by incidents so remarkable, as testified to us by those who were present and vouch for the facts, that we mention them. In the case of Box v. Jackson, Drury’s Reports 42–85, the case was deemed by the Chancellor of such difficulty and importance, that he requested the present distinguished Lord-Justice of Ireland, Mr Blackburn, then Master of the Rolls, to assist him in hearing it. On a subsequent day the decision was given—the Master of the Rolls reading an elaborate written judgment; at the close of which the Chancellor, “without the assistance of a single note of any sort,”^[20] says our informant, “proceeded instanter to deliver his judgment, extending over seventeen pages, and comprising at once a luminous and minute critical examination of a long series of decisions, by Lord Hardwicke and other great authorities, from the year 1739 to 1818!” The point was, whether, by analogy to a fine at common law, the court had power to take the consent of a married woman, and by force of it give effect to a transfer by her of her equitable reversionary interest in stock: the Chancellor deciding, concurrently with the Master of the Rolls, in the negative. Immediately after delivering this judgment, the court adjourned for the usual brief interval; and on the Chancellor’s return, the whole Bar rose up to do him honour! The other case is that of Stackpoole v. Stackpoole, 4 Drury and Warren’s Rep. 320; in which, at the close of a learned argument by the most eminent counsel in Ireland, on the Chancellor’s inquiring whether the parties wished him to decide the question, or send a case to a court of law, and being informed that “it was the general wish that his lordship should decide the case at once,” he did so instanter, and elaborately, though it happened that he had not taken a single note of any argument, or case cited by counsel!^[21] Such an effect had the Chancellor’s promptness and felicity of judgment in delivering his vivâ voce judgments, that, on his beginning to deliver written judgments, the present Mr Justice Moore, on the part of the Bar, requested him to continue delivering judgments vivâ voce. It must not, however, be supposed that the Chancellor of Ireland was so absorbed with his judicial, as to be unmindful of the important duties devolving upon him in his administrative capacity. It were equally invidious and unjust to make or insinuate comparisons between Sir Edward Sugden and his predecessors or successors, in this latter case, or in any other respect; but all practical professional people in Ireland know under what obligations the public were placed, by their Chancellor, during the period referred to. In conjunction with the then Master of the Rolls, Mr Blackburn, he consolidated all the Orders of the Irish Court of Chancery, repealing all preceding ones, so as to render it unnecessary any longer to refer to a long series of Orders, many of them obscure, and totally inconsistent with each other. This proved a great relief to the suitor, and was a work of much labour; but, undoubtedly, no little had been previously accomplished by Lord Plunket. Another great benefit conferred by the Chancellor, was in respect of the grievous burthens inflicted upon suitors in equity, under the name of Searches for Incumbrances. He put an end to this grievance by issuing an order allowing solicitors a sufficient fixed charge for such searches; while their costs in other matters were placed on a new and equitable footing, as between them and their clients. Again, tenants of land, over which Receivers were appointed by the Court of Chancery, were subjected to serious hardships, in respect of the payment of their rents, or the reduction of them in hard times. These evils were effectually redressed by orders, and otherwise, of the Chancellor. Various other beneficial changes in the existing order of things were introduced by the Chancellor, beyond our province here to specify, but the effect of which is felt to this day. Infinitely to his honour were his unintermitted and powerful exertions in behalf of lunatics. The public minutes and orders, after his visits to the public and private asylums, where he made, personally, minute and laborious inquiries, pointing out what required a remedy, and affording that remedy where he had the power, would fill a not inconsiderable volume. He took a special interest in the district asylums, and in the proceedings for the custody of criminal and pauper lunatics. Nothing, in fact, relating to this unhappy class of our fellow-creatures, escaped the humanely watchful eye of the Chancellor, who issued orders calculated to subject the proceedings of all in authority in these institutions to publicity and responsibility. It is difficult sufficiently to estimate the amount of benefit thus conferred upon this large and deplorably afflicted class, and who, as will hereafter be seen, appear to have been always subjects of Sir Edward Sugden’s special solicitude, both judicial and legislative.

How it may be now, we profess not to be able to say; but it is well known that the magistrates of Ireland occasioned the Chancellor, at the troublous time of which we are speaking, almost as much anxiety and trouble as his judicial duties. He instituted an order of procedure in appointing magistrates, which operated most advantageously; his evident object being to conciliate the respect of all classes for the vigorous and faithful administration of justice, as well by these as by all other functionaries. He superseded magistrates without hesitation, whatever their position or influence, if he thought that the public interest required it; of which a memorable instance is on record, greatly to his honour, in respect of his resolute and impartial spirit. We allude to his dismissal of a nobleman of the Chancellor’s own political party, and his agent and brother magistrate, from the commission, for intemperate conduct towards each other on the bench. The matter was brought before the House of Lords, but the Government upheld their Chancellor with a high hand. It was, however, in the Repeal year, 1843, that the greatest amount of anxiety and responsibility was thrown on the Chancellor of that then distracted portion of the empire. In compliance with the views of the Government, he refused to appoint any man a magistrate who belonged to the Repeal Association; and in consequence of their acts and speeches, superseded on the same day Lord French and Mr O’Connell. A storm was of course the immediate result. The Chancellor’s letter conveying their dismissal was read in the House of Lords by Lord Brougham, who defended Sir Edward in a generous spirit, amidst repeated cheering; and it was indeed a most satisfactory and conclusive statement of the principles on which Sir Edward had proceeded. Acting upon them, he almost immediately afterwards removed numerous other magistrates, amongst whom were Mr Morgan John O’Connell, and Mr Smith O’Brien, for presiding at tumultuous Repeal meetings. When Mr Daniel O’Connell seemed bent on raising the standard of civil war at Clontarf, on the 8th October 1843, the Lord-Lieutenant (Earl De Grey) and the Chancellor went to England, to consult definitively with the Government on the threatening state of affairs; but on hearing of the meeting so appointed, returned instanter to Ireland. They pronounced the meeting illegal, and took steps so formidable and decisive, that Mr O’Connell and his agitation were crushed together. All this, however, is matter of history—that of a very momentous period. The calmness and strength of the Chancellor’s judgment, backed by his immense reputation, rendered a service to the menaced cause of order and good government never to be forgotten.

His judicial and administrative duties not being sufficient to satisfy this helluo laborum—as surely we may with justice style him—he devoted himself at every spare moment to the systematic revision of his “Treatise on Vendors and Purchasers,” and the compression of it into two volumes, instead of the three into which it had swollen in the preceding edition.

In July 1846, Sir Edward a second time resigned the Irish seals, with the regret and applause of the whole country, and especially of the legal profession. His administration of justice was pronounced to be unequalled in Ireland, even organs of public opinion not favourable to his party giving him in several respects the palm over no less a distinguished predecessor than Lord Redesdale. “He never,” says one of these now lying before us, “mixed himself up in the party-politics of the country: he had no followers or connections there; was ruled by no clique, and ear-wigged by no favourites. He was distinguished as a great Chancery reformer as well as a great Chancery judge. He reformed the Master’s offices, and established a tribunal for the taxation of costs. In matters of lunacy, and in the Accountant-General’s department, he introduced large and sweeping changes, some of which have been followed in England by Lord Cottenham.”

Relieved from the pressure of judicial and parliamentary business, Sir Edward betook himself to his lovely retreat on the banks of the Thames—Boyle Farm; but how his leisure for the next three years was spent, is attested by a large royal octavo volume of nearly 800 pages, now before us, entitled A Treatise on the Law of Property, as administered in the House of Lords, published on the 11th January 1849. We doubt whether any more remarkable work has been given to the legal profession during the present century, having regard to the qualifications of its author, the pains he has bestowed on it, and the commensurate interest, difficulty, and importance of the subject-matter. The general reader must needs take this for granted, as we have no means of giving him detailed proofs of our assertion. Imagine a lawyer like Sir Edward Sugden, who, previously to having been twice made Lord Chancellor of Ireland, as we have seen him, had been facile princeps as a real-property and equity lawyer at the bar for nearly forty years,—dealing with every case of the least importance,—sitting down with the pressure upon him of his own reputation, and a delicate sense of responsibility; imagine, we say, such a man devoting all his faculties to the task of weighing in the critical balance every decision of the supreme Court of Appeal during the last thirty years, with a view to developing them into a systematic treatise on the Law of Real and Personal Property, in respect of all the great moot-points started and disposed of during that long interval by this august tribunal, and thereby placing that law on a solid foundation! We know of no book entitled to be studied with greater attention and deference by any lawyer, from a Lord Chancellor, Chief-Justice, and Judge, down to the ranks of such of the junior bar as are capable of understanding and appreciating a performance of so high an order. Not a case is here dealt with which has not been evidently mastered in all its bearings, as if the writer had had the responsibility of adjudicating upon it: the facts and arguments, often of rare complication and difficulty, are in every instance stated by himself, and with so much brevity and clearness as to bring the point at issue at once before competent eyes. Take, for instance, the great case of Doe v. Perratt, decided by the Court of King’s Bench in 1826, occupying fifty-two pages in the fifth volume of Barnwell and Cresswell’s Reports; and seventy-one in the sixth volume of Manning and Granger—argued twice before the House of Lords, with the opinions of the judges, summoned to attend, declared by Lord Cottenham so much at variance, that “it was impossible that authority could be more equally divided.” The whole history of the case, the points of difference, and the main point itself, are disposed of with masterly precision in fewer than eight pages; whereas, without such assistance, it would require any man many hours to master the case; “a careful study of which,” concludes the author, “though it may perplex the student, will amply repay his trouble.” We had marked no fewer than twenty-one cases, all of greater or less permanent interest and importance, thus admirably dealt with, explaining difficulties, and pointing out where they are open to grave doubts; but, we are bound to say, without losing sight of the deference due to the exalted tribunal on whose decisions, nevertheless, he is sitting in judgment—moreover, he who was destined so soon after himself to occupy the Woolsack. To two only of the cases referred to can we briefly allude, as richly repaying the best attention which the reader can bestow upon them. The first is Gibson v. D’Este (pp. 614, 649), which is, so to speak, placed on the rack of an excruciating legal criticism, and demonstrated, as we think, to be a faulty decision. The other case is that of Howard v. Lord Digby (p. 162), also disapproved of by the author, all after a rigorous examination. It is highly interesting, if for no other reason, for exhibiting a vivid contrast between the characteristic methods of dealing with legal subjects, by Lord Brougham and Lord St Leonards; the one vigorous, graphic, and even dramatic—the other dry and cold, but with a certain Saxon purity and vigour about his style of expression. The subject is that of the right to pin-money; and Sir Edward has for once deviated so very far from his wont, as to enliven his work by an interesting note from his learned and accomplished friend Sir George Rose, as to the origin of pin-money. To a great extent, the author, as he explains, has relied on his own copious and authentic notes of the arguments in cases where he was himself engaged as counsel—and gives us, thus, accounts of cases decided between 1821 and 1826, not elsewhere to be found reported. The subjects are classified as relating to contract deeds, and settlements; testamentary dispositions; powers, in deeds as well as wills; and the rights and liabilities of lessors and lessees, mortgagers, and mortgagees, vendors and purchasers, husbands and wives. How long the author was occupied with preparing this work we know not; but we think no other living man would have ventured to do so under ten or even twenty years’ deep consideration. But where is he that could bring to bear upon the task such vast stores of experience and learning? Shortly after the appearance of this magnum opus, the Times newspaper (10th Dec. 1850) commenced a leading article with the following allusion—equally applicable at the present moment, and for the last five years—to the veteran in repose:—

“The name of Sir Edward Sugden is at once the ornament and reproach of the legal annals of this country. Unrivalled in the depth and minuteness of his knowledge of the more abstruse branches of the law, unequalled for logical power and critical acumen in discharging the duties of an advocate, a writer of the rarest excellence, a judge of unwearied diligence, and of authority second to none, he has been condemned by the vicissitudes of party and our wretched system of political judgeship, to pass the latter years of his valuable life in comparative obscurity and retirement; and this has happened at a time when great lawyers and great men of all kinds are growing scarce among us. Mediocrity is, if backed by party influence, everywhere triumphant, while one of the greatest legal geniuses that has ever adorned the bench, is carelessly flung aside, as if the country were too affluent in talent to require the aid of his extraordinary abilities!”

The occasion of this article was a speech delivered the day before at a county meeting in Surrey by Sir Edward Sugden—the only time in his life, as he stated, of his having done so—on the subject of the Papal Aggression. “That speech,” continues the editor, “appears to us one of the best which has been delivered on the occasion; combining a spirit of toleration and charity with a masterly exposure of the hollow sophisms of the Romanists and their pseudo-liberal apologists, and an exposition of the law showing indisputably that whatever difficulty may lie in the way of punishment, there is no doubt that an offence has been committed.” The speech in question deserved this eulogy, and had instant and great weight with the country at large, and the Legislature.

In less than a month’s time afterwards, Sir Edward Sugden made a second public appearance of quite a new sort—to vindicate the law of the land, which he himself had presumed to make such, against certain groundless accusations by Mr Dickens, in one of his tales, in a chapter headed “The Martyrs of Chancery.” The sprightly and gifted novelist had fluttered into the dusky regions of fact and law, with which he was necessarily unfamiliar; and he, as well as others who laboured under similar misconception on the subject of imprisonment for contempt of court, was at once silenced by Sir Edward’s lucid and authoritative account of the true state of the case.^[22] To that subject, however, we shall have to advert again, in considering Sir Edward Sugden in another phase—that of legislator.

So determined was Sir Edward to illustrate the modest motto he had chosen—Labore vinces—that the same year, 1851, of which we have been speaking, beheld two more elaborate works of his appearing respectively in the months of June and December. The former was An Essay on the New Real Property Statutes, of the last few years, in one small octavo volume—a work so highly esteemed as to find its place at once in every lawyer’s library. The latter was a Concise and Practical View of the Law of Vendors and Purchasers of Estates, being a condensation of the two large volumes of the existing work into one octavo volume of upwards of 700 pages, being “an attempt,” as he states in the preface, “to compress the whole of the law on this important subject, into as narrow a compass as appeared compatible with accuracy and distinctness”—for which purpose “many portions of the original work have been rewritten, and every proposition added or retained, has been anxiously considered. The references, in some places, occupy nearly as much space as the text in its compressed form; but the writer was unwilling to deprive the student and the practitioner of any portion of a collection of cases which,” he adds, “it has required many years and much reading to bring together.” He also added no fewer than five hundred new cases! This work was not long in following the fortune of its predecessors, and was in time succeeded by that admirable contribution to legal literature, which appeared at the commencement of the present month of January, and of which we have already spoken. We have compared it with the “Concise View,” and the edition at large which that concise view followed, and have no hesitation in expressing our opinion that the alterations introduced are of great magnitude, and materially enhance the value of the work as a comprehensive, accurate, and authoritative statement of the law on this all-important subject. The second chapter, for instance, is entirely new, consisting of an elaborate and luminous exposition of “Sales to Railway Companies,” and containing “the law, so far as it places a Company, and an owner of land, in the relation of vendor and purchaser” (p. 57). The work is, in short, a perfect masterpiece of practical jurisprudence, more worthy than ever of the deference which has been paid to it for so long a series of years by even judicial authorities.^[23] Before, however, quitting Sir Edward in his literary capacity—seeing him, as an ex-Lord High Chancellor of Great Britain devoting himself as patiently and laboriously to the re-editing and reconstruction of his earliest publication, as if his professional interests and reputation depended upon it entirely—let us offer one word of suggestion to those whom it may concern. Let a young gentleman, who has just donned his wig and gown, study to imitate the example of this great living sage; and if he must turn author at a period when he is really only commencing as learner, let him well consider the nature of the work which he proposes to offer to a learned profession. Let it not consist of hasty and flimsy comments on newly-enacted statutes, or on heads of law already bristling with text-books; but let a real want be looked for, and then let due time and consideration be devoted to supplying it. Thus it was that Edward Burtenshaw Sugden planted the acorn which he has lived to see flourishing in full vigour as the oak.

Within little more than a year after the Times newspaper had pointed to Sir Edward Sugden’s name as at once “the ornament and the reproach of the country,” that name had ceased to be a reproach; for the month of February 1852—within only a few weeks of his laborious appearance as an author, on the formation of the Earl of Derby’s Administration—saw Her Majesty deliver the Great Seal into his hands, those of as profoundly learned a Chancellor as ever served any of her predecessors. When, as Lord St Leonards, he first took his seat at Lincoln’s Inn, the spacious hall was so densely crowded with professional men, collected to see and do honour to the greatest lawyer of the age, that numbers were unable to get within the doors. The new Chancellor settled into the office, as it were, in a moment, as quietly as if he had occupied it for years. In fact, a more thoroughly businesslike Chancellor never held the Great Seal, as all with whom he had to do found out very soon. His practical penetrating sagacity, and boundless learning, rendered the appearance before him of the most able and experienced counsel, a matter, for them, of serious moment. They were somewhat peremptorily taught to come to the point as soon as possible, before one who puffed away the chaff from the wheat in a moment; who was always ready for work, and looked askance at suggested adjournments or postponements. The first appeal case before him in the House of Lords, on the 10th March 1852, only a week after he had taken his seat on the Woolsack, was that of De Beauvoir v. De Beauvoir (reported in the third volume of the House of Lords’ Cases, p. 524), involving the right to nearly six hundred thousand pounds, dependent on the construction of a singular and obscurely-worded will. The matter was argued at great length by eminent counsel; but when they, and all others, expected that the Chancellor would, as had been usual, ask for the “papers,” and “take time to consider,” he rose from the Woolsack, and delivered at once an admirable judgment, luminous and conclusive, occupying nearly twenty pages of the printed Report—going at length into, ably commenting on, and felicitously distinguishing a number of cases cited—as may be seen on reference to the report; which, we have personally ascertained from the learned reporter who took it down in short-hand, is given as it fell from the Chancellor’s lips. One of the most eminent solicitors in England recently observed, that he was concerned in an appeal arising out of a suit of many years’ standing, which had gradually become so complicated that neither counsel nor solicitor could really understand it! After lengthened argument before the Lord Chancellor, he rose from the Woolsack, as our informant and all others supposed, to move that judgment should be postponed to a future day; but—“nothing of the sort,” said the solicitor; “he immediately began to deliver judgment, which sounded as if he were reading off a chapter of his book on Powers. He cut us up root and branch. I saw only too clearly where we had all gone wrong; and had not a word to say, though he dismissed our appeal with costs!” How Lord St Leonards discharged his duties in his own court, it may be safely left to every practitioner in it to say. His manner was somewhat dry and quiet, but had real judicial dignity. Nothing could exceed the patience and attention with which he listened to every counsel who really addressed himself to the merits of the case under consideration, but who, at the same time, had knowledge and tact enough to see how early and tenaciously the Chancellor had grasped these merits, and to shape his course accordingly. No suitor ever had to complain that his case, how tangled and multifarious soever, had not been completely ransacked in quest of its merits, down to even the minutest details. And conclusive evidence of the sterling quality of the judgments which he pronounced—not after time taken to consider, but at the close of the argument—is afforded by the fact, that not one of them was reversed, or even qualified, on appeal. There is one interesting passage to be found in the evidence of Lord St Leonards himself, before the Lords’ Appellate Jurisdiction Committee of last session:—

“I could not myself have performed the duties of the office which I filled, except by disposing, as far as I was competent, of the cases as soon as the argument had closed; for otherwise I should have had the whole arguments operating and weighing upon my mind, night and day, till I had disposed of them; and the effect was, that there was no delay in giving judgment. Despatch is not undue haste. With a knowledge of the law on the part of the judge, and undivided attention to the arguments, I believe that, in a great majority of cases, a perfect master of the law may dispose of the greater proportion of them as soon as the arguments are closed.”^[24]

In the great case of Egerton v. Brownlow,^[25] we are not certain whether Lord St Leonards delivered a vivâ voce or a written judgment; but there it is, on record, a fine specimen of judicial reasoning applied to a question lying, however, very nearly on the confines of legislation. Before quitting Lord St Leonards in his judicial capacity, we must indicate the great service he did by his several rules and orders, whenever he deemed them necessary, in order to improve and quicken procedure in equity. Short, too, as was his tenure of the Great Seal, he disposed of such patronage as fell to his lot with a scrupulous regard to individual fitness, of which we could cite several instances of gentlemen promoted without any solicitation whatever, and to their own surprise. In another particular the conduct of Lord St Leonards is worthy of observation,—his objection to the facile and profuse creation of Queen’s Counsel, against which, as having a mischievous and derogatory tendency, he appears to have long set his face. In 1835, in his letter to Lord Melbourne on the Appellate Jurisdiction, we find him saying,—“I believe the true way to recruit the Inner Bar is not by batches, but by steadily advancing individuals, as their claims appear, by the exhibition of talents, learning, good conduct, and a command of business;” and he traces one cause of “the evil of excessively long speeches by counsel, to the great competition at the bar, since the number has received such large additions.” Acting uniformly on these principles when in Ireland, he did not wait to be solicited for a silk gown, as for a favour, by any gentleman possessing proper claims, but at the proper moment offered it to him; thereby infinitely enhancing its significance and value. While holding the Great Seal in England, he found the Inner Bar full, and did not appoint a single Queen’s Counsel.

In considering Lord St Leonards as a legislator, it is not our intention to dwell on his parliamentary speeches, though they have been many and important. That against the bill of 1853, imposing duties on succession to property, as well as the protest which he entered in the Journals of the House, appears to us unanswerable. His speech on projected improvements in the administration of the law, on the 16th November 1852, gave universal satisfaction; and that on life-peerages, on the 7th February 1856, was a calm but excruciating exposure of not only the impolicy, but the illegality of that step. The speeches, indeed, on that subject, of the Earl of Derby, Lord Lyndhurst, Lord St Leonards, and Lord Campbell, will ever reflect bright credit on the hereditary branch of the Legislature.

In sketching the character of a late luminary,^[26] we “asked, with sorrowful sincerity and reluctance, what did he ever do to advance the interests of the profession to which he belonged?—and what page in the Statute-Book attests his handiwork?” In the case of the distinguished person now before the reader, the former question has been abundantly answered in the foregoing pages; and the latter admits of as conclusive and triumphant an answer, by a simple reference to the chief acts of parliament for which Lord St Leonards is responsible, and many of which were drawn by his own hand. We have taken some trouble to insure correctness,—but if we have made any material errors or omissions, we must trust to some future opportunity to correct them. Those which we cite will be found of an eminently practical character, conferring great and permanent advantage on the community, and redressing evils with which his vast knowledge of business, and unwavering watchfulness, peculiarly qualified him to deal.

(1.) The Annuity Act of 1813 (statute 53 Geo. III., c. 141), itself recently repealed, together with the Usury Laws, was drawn by Lord St Leonards, following out those views which he had urged in his pamphlet of 1812. That act had the signal merit of putting an end to a floodtide of ruinous and disgraceful litigation, for which Mr Sugden richly deserved the thanks of the country. (2.) The statute 6 Geo. IV., c. 93 (1825), to “render valid certain decrees and orders at the Rolls Court,” rendered necessary in consequence of Chief Baron Richards and other judges having sate during Sir Thomas Plumer’s illness at the Rolls Court, without legal authority. To avert the public scandal of avoiding so many important judicial acts, Mr Sugden, with Lord Eldon’s consent, prepared this bill, which became a law at the close of the session in which it had been introduced. (3.) The next statute is one reflecting peculiar lustre on the name of its framer—that of 1 Will. IV. c. 36 (1830)—in itself a code, having for its main objects to prevent long and continued imprisonment for contempt; to afford assistance and relief to parties poor and ignorant; and prevent obstinate parties from impeding the course of justice after the decree or order of the Court. This act was, two years afterwards, greatly extended by (4.) Stat. 4 Will. IV. c. 58. Had these been the only acts for which the country is indebted to Lord St Leonards, he would have earned an enduring title to their gratitude.

Having humanely provided a legislative remedy, he made the noblest personal efforts to carry it into prompt effect, frequently visiting the Fleet Prison—(how he found the time is hard to understand)—seeing and conversing with the impoverished prisoners, giving them wise advice, and himself actually paying, out of his own purse, the costs for which they were incarcerated, so as to procure their immediate discharge—and even assisting them afterwards! The scandal of throwing a man into prison for not “answering,” and then leaving him there to rot out the rest of his life, thank Heaven, can no longer exist. When Chancellor of Ireland, Sir Edward Sugden extended this admirable measure to that country, by (5.) Stat. 5 & 6 Will. IV. c. 16 (1835), the Government taking charge of the bill. (6.) Stat. 1 Will. IV. c. 46 (1830), amending the laws relating to Illusory Appointments, restored the law to its original state, putting the rule at law and in equity on the same footing with respect to appointments: a provision removing at once a prolific source of litigation, and enabling a parent or trustee to act so as best to meet the exigencies of a family, and give children aid and provision in proportion to their actual wants. (7.) Stat. 1 Will. IV. c. 47 (1830), consolidates and amends the law for payment of debts out of real estate—one of great importance, and a considerable step in advance, the Legislature having since gone still farther in that direction. (8.) Stat. 1 Will. IV. c. 60 (1830), is another act of great importance, investing courts of equity with ampler powers than they had possessed, with regard to trustees and mortgagees, and enabling them to make a perfect title to whatever they sold. This act Sir Edward undertook at the request of Lord Eldon; and the Legislature have since gone much farther in that direction. (9.) Stat. 1 Will. IV., c. 65, extended to Ireland by (10) 5 and 6 Will. IV., c. 17, arms courts of equity with very useful powers over the property of infants, married women, and lunatics. (11.) Stat. 2 and 3 Vict., c. 11, extended to Ireland by (12.) Stat. 7 and 8 Vict., c. 90, with careful modifications, conferred a vast boon on purchasers, and greatly facilitated the transfer of land—providing as it did a complete registration of various kinds of incumbrances, collected in one office, and allowing them to be searched for a mere nominal sum—a shilling. These acts were (in 1855) followed by (13.) Stat. 18 and 19 Vict., c. 15, conferring on purchasers further important provisions for their protection. (14.) Stat. 5 and 6 Vict., c. 123, for the first time required private lunatic asylums to have a licence, and placed them under salutary restraints and supervision. This act had to encounter fierce opposition, but succeeded, followed up, as we have already seen, by the Chancellor’s vigilant personal attention, in greatly ameliorating the condition and management of lunatics. (15.) Stat. 8 and 9 Vict., c. 115, appointed a taxing-master for the Irish Court of Chancery, thereby greatly relieving the overburdened Masters of the Court. This has since been carried much farther. (16.) Stat. 15 Vict., c. 24, after a vehement opposition, put an end to an evil utterly intolerable, and has proved one of the greatest blessings to the people, afforded by modern legislation. It puts an end to the incessant defeat of wills by petty technical objections, embracing every evil conceivable to occur through haste, ignorance, or accident. The editors of the new edition of the Standard Text-Book on Wills (Jarman), omit a long chapter of decisions of this kind, as “it is almost impossible that the validity of any will should hereafter turn upon them.” (17.) Stat. 15 Vict., c. 48, amends the law relating to the property of lunatics. (18.) Stat. 15 Vict., c. 80, abolishes the Masters’ offices, and expedites the business of the Court of Chancery. (19.) Stat. 15 Vict., c. 86, amends the practice and course of proceeding in the Court of Chancery. (20, 21, 22.) Stat. 16 and 17 Vict., c. 70, is for the regulation of proceedings under commissions of lunacy, and consolidating the former acts,—and itself constitutes a most important code; c. 96, for regulating the care and treatment of lunatics; c. 97, consolidating and amending the laws relating to lunatic asylums for counties and boroughs, and the maintenance and care of pauper lunatics. When these three acts were passed, Lord St Leonards declared, in his place in the House of Lords, that no other country possessed such excellent provisions for the care of lunatics and of their property—and none more minutely and anxiously careful than those which secure the welfare of pauper lunatics. He might have added, that the preparation of these enactments entailed upon himself protracted and exhausting labour. (24) Stat. 16 and 17 Vict., c. 98, provides for the further relief of suitors in the Court of Chancery, appropriating its unclaimed funds to the relief of the suitors, to whom they properly belong. This, also, is a very important act. Lastly, (25.) Stat. 17 and 18 Vict., c. 60, has for its humane object to make more effectual provisions for preventing cruelty to animals.—Here ends, as far as we know, the catalogue of Lord St Leonards’ contributions to the Statute-Book of his country: twenty-five in number, and those not showy, rash, and slovenly, but deeply-considered and skilfully framed; the result of great forensic and judicial experience, or, in some instances, masterly developments of alterations and improvements contemplated by others. We are, moreover, inclined to consider Lord St Leonards largely entitled to credit for the original suggestion of that bold enactment which called into existence the Incumbered Estates Court in Ireland. Unless, indeed, we are mistaken, he lately claimed the paternity of that measure, in speaking in the debate for renewing the powers of the Commissioners. It is said that in his original sketch of the proposed Court, transmitted to the late Sir Robert Peel, he observed that the Court ought to exist only until the mischief should have been remedied; that it was, as regarded property, what the suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act was with reference to personal liberty. It is, however, undoubtedly possible that the existing scheme may have been devised by the Government before they became possessed of Sir Edward Sugden’s communication to Sir Robert Peel; though this has not hitherto been asserted. And these legislative labours have been continued during a long series of years, while Lord St Leonards was either burthened with enormous practice at the bar, or absorbed with judicial cares as twice Chancellor of Ireland, and afterwards of England (his is the only instance on record of such promotion;) or as a law-lord sitting on Appeals; or engaged from time to time writing profound and universally accepted treatises on the law, or carefully adapting them to successive variations in that law. The patience, the self-denial, the indomitable industry and resolution with which his great endowments and acquirements have been and continue to be devoted to the service of his profession and of his country, will enshrine his name in the memory of his countrymen, long after he shall have passed away from the scene of his untiring exertions. As author, advocate, judge, and legislator, he appears to exhibit a combination of claims to our respect and gratitude, that is unique.

Printed by William Blackwood & Sons, Edinburgh.