798 V. BENCH AND BAR competent equity lawyer, and the reports contain some excel- lent expositions by him of various branches of real property law. Bacon, the last of the vice chancellors, was a man of varied accomplishments, not the least of which was the lit- erary skill which makes his opinions such entertaining read- ing. (c) Probate, Divorce and Admiralty Courts The outcry against the ecclesiastical administration of probate and matrimonial affairs at length became too for- midable to be resisted. The inefficiency of most of the judges, the variations of practice and procedure, the ex- pense, the delay, the frequently inconsistent and mistaken views of law and of fact adopted by the different authori- ties, the anachronism of a system which permitted civil rights to be decided by judges neither appointed by nor responsible to the Crown, called loudly for reform. The humorous absurdity of many of the ancient abuses have been preserved in lasting caricature by Dickens in " David Cop- perfield." The practical objection to the jurisdiction was that, in the absence of its power to bind the heir in relation to land, there might be a decision one way in the ecclesiastical courts as to personal property, and another at common law as to real estate, arising out of the same document. It seems incredible that such a state of affairs could have lasted for centuries. With respect to matrimonial affairs the conditions were quite as unsatisfactory. The abuses of the procedure of the ecclesiastical courts had affected the trial of these causes to such an extent that redress was practically denied to persons of moderate means. To obtain an absolute divorce resort had to be made to Parliament, and the cost of carrying a bill through both Houses was practically prohibitive. Justice Maule brought out the incongruities of the law with charac- teristic irony in passing sentence in a bigamy case. " I will tell you," he said, addressing the prisoner, " what you ought to have done under the circumstances, and if you say you did not know, I must tell you that the law conclusively presumes
