systematic poisoning by a man named Palmer; and he took a leading part in the 'Hepwood cause'-a dispute for the possession of a great Lancashire property, in which half the peers and nobles of England appeared as witnesses on one side or the other-a dispute almost as interesting to the public of its day as the Tichborne claim of our present time. Sir Alexander Cockburn proved himself beyond all cavil one of the greatest English advocates of his generation. There was, moreover, a masculine breadth of view in him which raised him above the rank of the mere pleader. He seemed to have some claim to be regarded as in his sphere a great man, and not merely a clever talker. His style is singularly fascinating. It is always rather hazardous to attempt to convey to an audience a notion of what a foreign orator is like, by comparing him with some one familiar to them; but, if I may make the venture, I would say that Cockburn, in personal appearance and in oratorical manner, reminds me more of Mr. Wendell Phillips than of any American orator I have heard. Exceeding facility, grace, and strength; the light play and the rapid penetration of a rapier-these are the qualities with which one is chiefly impressed who listens to the eloquence of Cockburn. One is not, perhaps, to undervalue the thought and care which must have gone to the production of those masterpieces of force and grace. A certain class of steady-going lawyers always shake the head of doubt and disapproval over Cockburn, and suggest that politics and not law ought to have been his business. Perhaps this is true. Probably Cockburn is not a great lawyer, except where political questions come to be involved with law; and the lawyer is really greatest who takes the broadest and most citizen-like view. I can well believe that when, after a very few years of parliamentary success, he left the House of Commons for the bench, becoming first Chief-Justice of the Common Pleas and then Lord Chief-Justice of England, Sir Alexander Cockburn soon began to look back, with yearning and regret, to the stirring scenes of the political arena amid which he made his fame. His career always seems to me to have become a sort of splendid mistake. His success on the bench is rather like a skilful tour de force than the natural occupation of such talents and temperament. Twice since he became Lord Chief-Justice he has had an occasion fit to call forth his political talents, and to prove his deep sympathies with the principles of constitutional liberty, and his courage in their vindication. The first was in the case of the officers put on trial for carrying out the savage policy approved of by Governor Eyre in the Jamaica massacre, when Chief-Justice Cockburn spoke out in language of the noblest eloquence and in the faithful spirit of constitutional law, of liberty, and of humanity. The other occasion was when, during the last Session of Parliament, the Government raised to the judicial bench a perfectly deserving man, Sir Robert Collier, under conditions and for a purpose which seemed like a trifling with, if not a downright evasion of, the spirit and meaning of the law. Then again Sir Alexander Cockburn spoke out, although himself an earnest liberal, against this error of a liberal ministry. So angry were the ministers with this act of manly independence, that the Duke of Argyll in the House of Lords actually applied the term 'ribald' to the protest of the Chief-Justice. The word was as ridiculously misapplied as it was offensively uttered. Cockburn's protest was simply a dignified and firm remonstrance, and to call it ribald was as preposterous as to call it Chinese. The Duke of Argyll, when he came to himself, apologized for his extravagant and almost inexcusable language, and the whole spirit and sense of the English public went with the independent and fearless judge. Sir Alexander Cockburn's is indeed a nature profoundly sympathetic. In his sense law is made for man and not man for law; the principles of freedom and of humanity are to be the rulers and not the toys of governments and of nations. He will always stand high above the level of the mere lawyer. The very impulsiveness which sometimes unwise to drier minds is one of his titles to public admiration. It does not affect his judgment of a legal question; it only affects his tone and manner of expression. Moreau said he succeeded as a soldier only because he was before

seems

all things a citizen. I think Cockburn will be eminent as a judge because he is before all things a citizen, and let me add, a lover of liberty.

""A very bad character-unredeemed by a single fault,' is the epigrammatic description which a great living English statesman is said to have given lately of his rival. No such description will apply to Sir Alexander Cockburn, for he, as I have already hinted, is reported to have faults enough to endear him to his imperfect human brothers. But it might be applied, perhaps, in perfect good nature, to the new Lord Chancellor of England, Sir Roundell Palmer-probably, on the whole, the greatest English lawyer now living. No one ever heard a word said against Sir Roundell Palmer. All parties alike acknowledge his pure, unblemished character. His word carries influence in every debate; his authority on legal questions is all but supreme. His personal character is so highly spoken of, that one wonders how it happens that he is not a dull man. He is praised as steadily and as uniformly as Old Grimes, and yet he is a man of the highest intellect. He edits hymn-books and even composes hymns. He renounced office a few years ago rather than have anything to do with molesting a Church, even though it was the Irish Established Church. He is, in fact, a sincerely pious and devout man, with whom conscience is supreme in little things as well as in great. The late Lord Chancellor, Lord Hatherley, was likewise a man especially conscientious, pure and good, but he was not much of a lawyer, and his virtues were greater than his gifts of intellect; whereas Roundell Palmer has hardly a peer among lawyers and scarcely a superior among men of brains. He is an admirable debater, almost as fluent as Gladstone himself, whom, in some points of character and temperament, he considerably resembles. He brings great knowledge to bear on every subject he handles, and, therefore, always commands the profound attention of the house. He has a far better judgment than Gladstone, but he wants Gladstone's fire and force. He is so careful not to go wrong, not to overstate or misjudge any thing, that his speeches never have the impulse of genuine eloquence. His voice and manner of speaking are very much against him-or, at all events, would be so with any listener unaccustomed to that peculiar House of Commons style which he has so completely adopted. That lachrymose sing-song which for some inscrutable reason has become the tone of the House is especially noticeable in Sir Roundell Palmer. A stranger in the gallery, hearing him speak on some ordinary question, might very easily imagine, at first, that he was pronouncing a funeral oration over some dear departed being, and that his voice was choking with sobs. I sat one evening of last Session in the gallery of the House of Commons while Sir Roundell Palmer was speaking, and I was so much impressed by this peculiarity, that I performed for my own amusement a curious little experiment. I drew back so far that only the tones and not the words of the speaker could reach me, and the effect was precisely as if I had been listening to somebody sobbing out a sad lament. Add to this that Sir Roundell Palmer looks particularly grave and even doleful, and dresses with the austere neatness of an undertaker, and it will be understood how the eye bears out the ear in keeping up the curious illusion. Sir Roundell Palmer will, I should think, be a genuine influence in the House of Lords, whither, of course, he will be removed as Lord Chancellor. He is, on the whole, better fitted for that atmosphere than for the stormier scenes of the House of Commons. I do not fancy that he is a man who has in him much of the joy of the strife. As Lord Chancellor, too, he will be in a position to press on some of the schemes of law reform which he has at heart; for sedate and measured as he is, Sir Roundell Palmer is a bold and thorough law reformer. His is indeed one of those finer temperaments in which intellectual power supplies the place of physical or animal courage, and forces weakness itself into enterprise.

"Sir Roundell Palmer's name and present position have brought us naturally into the society of Lord Chancellors. On the right of the Lord Chancellor's seat, and with his back to the public galleries, there sometimes rises in debate now a man who when he occupied the place made the woolsack seem the seat

to

of the scorner. He is worth observing. He is a stout, florid, handsome man, with closely-shaven face, rather fat cheeks, and smooth shiny forehead. He is nearly bald, but is otherwise well-preserved, for he is seventy-two years of age. He is a man of saintly or perhaps oily expression-somewhat like a sleek and handsome Mr. Pecksniff. When he begins to speak it is with eyes half closed and look of benignant humility. His voice is naturally acrid in its tone, but he manages to edge out his words with such elaborate meekness that they carry a suggestion of self-abasement and sanctity in every syllable. He has hardly spoken a sentence when a laugh runs round the House--the peculiar kind of laugh with which great men greet an ill-natured gibe which yet they cannot help applauding. For this saint-like personage never opens his mouth but to squirt some little spray of venom or vitriol on somebody. Every sentence tells; and every sentence stings. When the speaker has something peculiarly bitter and personal to say, he nearly closes his eyes, subdues his voice to its blandest tone, and so shapes the expression of his mouth that it seems as if, to use a vulgar old saying, butter would not melt in it. This is Lord Westbury, once Lord Chancellor, twice Attorney-General, known at the Bar and in the House of Commons as Richard Bethell; one of the ablest lawyers in England, and perhaps the most advanced of all our law reformers; a man of powerful and penetrating intellect, owner of a great head, a cold heart, and the sharpest tongue that ever scathed an adversary. Lord Westbury is a perfect master of vitriolic sarcasm. He is far too clever at it, for he is always tempted display his talent, and it has always made him enemies. His bitter sayings are constantly being told in London Society. Roebuck, who used to be accounted one of our prime fences in political sarcasm, attacked him once in the House of Commons, but was made nothing of in a few minutes. Half-a-dozen words blandly edged out between the corners of Bethell's mouth made even Disraeli once seem positively ridiculous. When as Chancellor he entered the House of Lords, Westbury was once heavily assailed by the late Lord Derby, the Tory leader (Westbury, of course, was a Liberal), who was the great orator and gladiator of his party. But Westbury did, with half-closed eyes and aspect of mediæval saint, pour out such a flood of corrosive acid over the Tory chief and his followers, that the latter would not sit patiently under it, and the House of Lords became positively tumultuous. Lord Westbury, however, is under a sort of cloud. People say all manner of things about his private life; there was a taint of partiality or more than partiality in some of his appointments, when he held the office of Lord Chancellor; and, in fact, the House of Lords actually passed a vote of censure on his conduct and compelled him to resign the place. There were excuses for him; he was dragged into a discreditable course by endeavouring to uphold a worthless scamp, one of his sons; but the censure of the House of Lords closed his career. He is old now, and doubtless disappointed. Few people like him ; many have at all times detested him. He was always unsparing; and public opinion did not spare him when, perhaps, there was much to be pleaded in his behalf. Evil report almost always pursues him, even now that he is old. His integrity, his moral character, his dealings with his family, with his friends, with his servant-every thing about him has been disparaged by hostile opinion, except intellect, his knowledge of law, and his power of sarcasm. He has probably the greatest intellectual force of any lawyer who has made a way in Parliament in my time; for Bethell, like Sir Roundell Palmer, brought into the House a fame already won at the bar, and fully sustained in Parliament the repute he had earned in the Courts. But I suppose his career must, on the whole, be reckoned a failure. His climax was a disgrace. He rose only to fall."

Duty of Creditor in a continuing Guarantee for the Fidelity of an Agent. There is an important passage on this subject in Professor Bell's Commentaries, which has been illustrated and enforced by a series of decisions, some of which were given by the House of Lords. Professor Bell says (vol. i. p. 363) :- "The cautioners on their part trust to the bank protecting themselves by vigilance, and by the observance of the ordinary regular precautions. It seems to result from these considerations that the Bank ... will not be entitled to relief of sums allowed to accumulate by long-continued irregularities, and the neglect of the ordinary and regular course of accounting. Where, for example, the ordinary and regular accountings of an agent are neglected to be transmitted or allowed to be sent full of obvious errors; where his accounts are not checked; where he is permitted to go on with a series of transactions, augmenting continually a balance which ought to have been kept down; the Bank will scarcely be allowed to take recourse against the cautioners. But this must have its limits; for cases may easily be imagined where the agent has so exercised his lawful powers, as to incur, in unfavourable times, a responsibility which cannot at once be rectified, which it is the interest of all parties gradually to reduce, and which the Bank cannot suddenly check, or take public notice of without doing incalculable mischief. And certainly it cannot be said that cautioners are entitled to require a bank on the occurrence of every difficulty or embarrassment in the conduct of the agency to correspond with them; or at once to wind up the responsibilities and dealings of the agent, and stop the operation of such a delicate machinery." An important application of this doctrine in which the leading Scotch cases (Smith v. Bank of Scotland, 1 Dow. 296; Railton v. Matthews, 3 Bell's Ap. 56; Hamilton v. Watson, 4 Bell's Ap. 67, etc.) were referred to and discussed, occurred lately in the Court of Queen's Bench in the case of Phillips v. Foxhall, 41 L. J., Q. B. 293; 27 L. T. Rep. N. S. 231. The plaintiff declared on a guaranty by defendant, dated 8th June 1869, against loss which plaintiff might sustain through any breach of duty of one Smith, an employé of plaintiff, and whose duty it was to collect moneys. The defendant pleaded among other things, that prior to the 12th of November 1869, the said Smith had failed to pay over moneys collected by him; that plaintiff discovered, on or about the 12th of November, the said defalcations, and without communicating them to defendant, agreed with said Smith to retain him in service on his paying certain monthly instalments in liquidation of the sum defaulted. The defendant alleged that he was entirely ignorant of said Smith's defalcation, and by reason of the non-disclosure of them to him, was unable to revoke his guaranty, as he would otherwise have done. He paid into Court a sum sufficient to satisfy plaintiff's loss between the date of the guaranty and the 12th of November. Defendant's plea was demurred to on the ground that the acts alleged did not discharge defendant's liability. The Court sustained the plea, and said: "We think that in a case of a continuing guaranty for the honesty of a servant, if the master discovers that the servant has been guilty of acts of dishonesty in the course of the service to which the guaranty relates, and if, instead of dismissing the servant, as he may do at once, and without notice, he chooses *to continue in his employ a dishonest servant, without the knowledge or consent of the surety, express or implied, he cannot afterward have recourse to the surety to make good any loss which may arise from the dishonesty of the servant during the subsequent service."

Cross-examination to Credit.-Apropos of some recent cases of this kind of cross-examination, Mr. Fitzjames Stephen, the legal mentor of the Pall Mall Gazette, writes some paragraphs in that journal which are worth remembering and practising. He says, in the course of his paper:-"The client tells his attorney some lie about a witness against whom he has a spite. The attorney passes it on to the counsel, and unless the counsel is a man both of experience and principle, he is but too apt to regard this, however wrongly, as an instruction which relieves him from all responsibility in the matter, and compels him to throw in the face of the witness an insult which may not only deeply wound his or her feelings, but permanently injure his or her reputation. We do not at all forget, nor are we disposed in any degree to underrate, the good feeling and principle of legal practitioners, or the influence of the bench in checking abuses of their legal powers. No lawyer in either branch of the profession who had either the feelings of a gentleman or any sort of position or reputation to lose, would degrade himself by slandering or insulting those who must from the nature of the case submit to his insult or his slander without defence or reply. When such conduct does take place it is sure to provoke indignant rebukes from the Bench, and it is to these circumstances that we owe it that English courts of justice are not, in fact, regarded with the horror with which they assuredly would be regarded if the parties used to their utmost their legal right of raking up every incident in the past life of every witness and every lying scandal which has ever been circulated by an enemy with respect to them, and flinging the whole in their faces in the confidence that imputations which may happen to be true, will inflict moral injury on the reputation of the witness, and that even if the imputation is utterly false some of the dirt can hardly fail to stick." It is suggested that the Court should have absolute discretion to permit or forbid the putting of any question. And it is worth considering whether this permission should not be obtained before any cross-examination to credit is begun at all. It is a question for the judge whether a witness's evidence is of such a kind that his credibility ought to be attacked.

A Code of the Law of Nations. --An association in New York for the purpose of framing such a code has obtained the opinions of a great many supposed authorities on the subject. Count Sclopis considers the difficulties of such codification great but not insurmountable. Viscount D'Itajuba thinks that the plan most likely