and had the good fortune to observe the way in which he upheld his office and maintained his rank, could not but feel that he at least was fully alive to what constituted the true dignity of a high judicial officer.

He often complained of the want of communication between the Equity Judges, and said that it was his

it was before heard and decided. Its object and purpose is to correct any error or omission of statement or argument which the parties may have made in presenting the case to the judge. If you believe that the judge would have decided differently if some particular argument or authority (which you were entitled to bring to his attention, but did not) had been addressed to him, your proper course is a rehearing-and the advantage is that all the facts, or all the evidence of the facts having been before heard, the cause is narrowed to the argument, authority, or application, which is to be brought forward on the re-hearing.

In some sense, a re-hearing must necessarily be in the nature of an appeal. The fact or evidence being the same, you may believe that upon other or better argument the judge would decide differently, and the re-hearing gives the opportunity of producing this other or better argument, and in the process there may be said to be an appeal from the judge to himself: but still, where the case and the evidence are the same, and the judge is the same, the proceeding is no more than a re-hearing. Where the case and the evidence are the same, but the judge is different, the proceeding is an appeal. Where the case and the evidence are different, whether the judge be the same or not, the proceeding is neither an appeal nor a rehearing, but a new case, and an original hearing.

In cases of appeal both parties are confined to the same case and evidence which were submitted to the judge appealed from.

In cases of re-hearing the parties are at liberty to enforce the case and the evidence which they have prepared at the time of the original hearing, and might then have produced: and thus it is that in Equity a re-hearing is apt to be converted into a new trial, in which new facts are presented.

The House of Lords, in reference to the Court of Chancery, is a Court of Appeal only. The cases there are discussed and decided on

*

opinion that the Equity Judges ought to meet the Lord Chancellor every morning in a common room, before going into Court, in order that anything special which had occurred might be mentioned and considered; but this he knew was so contrary to the feelings of the Lord Chancellor (Cottenham), who had great jealousy of any interference with his appellate power, that it would never take place during his time at least.

Nothing did Lord Langdale disapprove of more than long vacations.

He thought it better for judges as well

the evidence and circumstances which were presented to the judge on the original hearing, and no new fact is allowed to be produced.

On the contrary, in reference to the Master of the Rolls and ViceChancellor, the court of the Lord Chancellor is properly a court of re-hearing only. The Lord Chancellor is entitled to treat the case precisely in the same manner as the judge at the original hearing might have done. If the parties were, at the original hearing, prepared with evidence which they did not then produce, the fact of its non-production on that occasion is not a valid objection to its production before the Lord Chancellor, and if it be produced, it is manifest that the hearing before the Lord Chancellor is an original hearing, and that he has to decide on facts not produced to the original judge."

* Lord Langdale, though an independent judge, would never act in certain matters without the sanction of the Chancellor, whom he considered his chief; and this reminds me of an anecdote on the subject, which I repeat, as I do not remember to have seen it in print:

"I look upon my Court," said Lord Thurlow, "and that of the Rolls, to be something like a stage-coach, which, besides the skill of the coachman, requires the assistance of an able postilion to lead the fore-horses, and pick out the best part of the road. Now, if I have got an ignorant furze-bush headed postilion, by G-, he may overset the coach, and tumble us into the ditch."

The Master of the Rolls alluded to was Sir Pepper Arden.

as the public, that there should be no settled vacation at all, though he admitted that some relaxation was necessary, both for judge and counsel; he alleged that it would be preferable to close the Courts one day in each week, instead of for three months at a time; or what would be better, that there should be a relay of judges and counsel, so that the Court might be always sitting. But this last he considered impossible at present; and he never liked to press his own opinions against the general feeling in favour of vacations.

One day, on hearing that the Court was to rise on the 2nd of August till the 2nd of November, for the long vacation, he exclaimed with considerable indignation, "The Court is now about to close for a quarter of a it is a scandalous shame-the door of justice never should be closed."

year;

Before Lord Langdale's time the necessary business of the vacation was performed by the Lord Chancellor; and many anecdotes have been told of visits on such occasions to Lord Eldon, at his seat in Dorsetshire. In those days the Master of the Rolls held himself to be an independent judge, and was not in the habit of rendering assistance during the holidays to the Chancellor. Lord Langdale, himself a great disciplinarian, felt the impropriety of this, and from his first appointment he considered himself bound, to the best of his power, and on every possible occasion, to relieve the Chancellor in the discharge of the onerous duties of his office. He knew that the labours of the Chancellor were more than could be properly performed by any one man, and he thought

it hard that to the Chancellor alone the vacation should not be considered sacred. He, therefore, from the time he took his seat at the Rolls to the appointment of the two additional Vice-Chancellors (a period of about six years), regularly performed the duty of vacation Judge alone. After those appointments an arrangement was made by which the Master of the Rolls and the three Vice-Chancellors, each in turn devoted one vacation to the transaction of urgent business.

CHAPTER V.

CONDUCT AS ΤΟ

COMPLAINTS

HATRED OF TRICKERY.

CORUM OF THE ROLLS COURT.

AGAINST OFFICERS OF HIS COURT. ANECDOTE. HIGH MORAL TONE AND DEHIS INDIGNATION AT ANY UNFAIR MODE OF CONDUCTING A CAUSE.-HIS JUDGMENTS COMMONLY WRITTEN OUT BY HIS OWN HAND.-HIS CONDUCT IN CONSENT CASES.HIS CONFIDENCE IN THE STATEMENTS OF COUNSEL. DECIDE ACCORDING TO THE LETTER OF THE LAW.

HIS WISH TO

WHENEVER any complaint was made against any officer of his court, Lord Langdale immediately inquired into it, and generally insisted on the party complaining making an affidavit on the subject; indeed he frequently stopped the cause for that purpose, and in almost every instance it turned out to be unfounded.

I have already stated that he handed over his judgments, as soon as they were given, to the reporter, who always sent them back to him with a "proof sheet" for his corrections. In one case (the Attorney-General v. the Ironmongers' Company) the reporter had printed certain remarks that his Lordship had felt it necessary to make on the impropriety of the Attorney-General holding a brief for any person but the relator, and he remarked that, "the reporter had not done justice to the AttorneyGeneral (Sir John Campbell), who behaved so well-so gracefully he might say-on the occasion, and who