788 V. BENCH AND BAR of law reform which seems to have been the one continuous purpose of his Hfe, but also contrived to make so much of a case of official delinquency in the distribution of the patronage of his office that Westbury resigned after a vote of censure. It may suffice to say that his personal honor was in no way involved. Since Westbury's day other men, better suited by temperament for the patient diplomacy by which alone radical legislative action is attained, have car- ried on the work of law reform which he began ; and as the outline of his splendid conception is gradually filled in by accomplished fact, it becomes us to remember him for his aspirations as well as for his actual achievements. The law reports contain about two hundred and fifty cases in which Lord Westbury formulated an opinion. In read- ing them, one is struck with his facility in stripping cases of complicated and bewildering detail, and reducing them to simple, intelligible propositions. Impatient of authority, he sought to ground his conclusions upon elementary prin- ciples. It is common to find in his work such opening state- ments as these : " My lords, we are all exceedingly glad when, in a collection of miserable technicalities such as these which are before us here, we can find our way to something like a solid and reasonable ground of decision " (5 E. & I. App. 25). " There is no difficulty at all in the matter, and if the general rules of law were more steadily kept in view it would be unnecessary to range up and down a variety of decisions, because those rules would afford the best answer and secure the removal of every difficulty " (5 E. & I. App. 529). His skill in exposition was of the highest order. His statement of the principles of extra-territorial jurisdiction in Cookney v. Anderson, 32 L. J., Ch, 427, is a good illus- tration of his style and method. Although his lack of re- spect for authority sometimes led him to go somewhat be- yond the mark, his mental acuteness was restrained, in the exercise of his judicial functions at least, by good sense.* • For example, in Overend v. Gibbs, 5 E. and I. App. 495, he offers the following sensible reflection: " I think it would be a very fatal error in the verdict of any court of justice to attempt to measure the amount of prudence that ought to be
