Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 05.pdf/379

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346
The Green Bag.

salutary effect upon the treasury. Very ardent Liberal); and that although not in many cases of abiding interest have been the highest sense of the term a great law disposed of by the Court for Crown Cases yer, he has made an excellent judge and an Reserved in its comparatively brief life incomparable titular chief of the Courts of time. It may suffice to mention the Fran- Common Law. Of his four learned col conia (R. ï'. Keyn), where the existence leagues the characteristics are more interest and nature of " the three-mile limit," well ing than the biographies. Sir A. L. Smith known to international lawyers, were in issue, was at one time "devil" to Sir Henry and where the late Mr. Benjamin delivered James; he then became one of the junior the most brilliant and sustained argument, counsel to the Treasury, and soon afterward and the late Chief-Justice Cockburn pro ascended the bench as a puisne judge oí nounced the most learned judgment, of the Queen's Bench Division. He served as which English juridical history can boast; one of the Parnell Commissioners, and on The Queen v. Ashwall, where a bench of the recent retirement of Sir Henry Cotton, fourteen judges were evenly divided as to was promoted to a Lord Justiceship of the whether a person who having asked from Court of Appeal. Lord Justice Smith has another the loan of a shilling received from one of the hardest heads among the English that person a sovereign in mistake, took it judiciary, and an incisive intellect, which in the same belief, but shortly afterward acts like an acid solvent on rhodomontade. discovered the error and appropriated the He is revered by all competent counsel. money, could be convicted of larceny; 1 and Mr. Justice Day is the author of a leading, The Queen v. Dudley, where it was held that although now somewhat antiquarian trea two men, who in order to escape death from tise on the Common Law Procedure Acts. hunger killed a boy for the purpose of eat He also was one of the Parnell Commission ing his flesh, were guilty of murder, although ers. His prevailing characteristics are wide at the time of the act they believed, and had mercantile experience and great " strength," reasonable grounds for believing, that it — a term for which no lawyer needs to afforded the only chance of preserving their have a definition. Mr. R. B. Finlay, Q. C., was his favorite pupil at the bar, and suc lives. The portrait accompanying this sketch ceeded to his practice when he went to the presents to our readers the Lord Chief- bench. Of Mr. Baron Pollock it need only Justice Coleridge, Mr. (now Lord Justice), be said that he is the son of the late Chief A. L. Smith, Mr. Justice Day, Mr. Baron Baron Pollock; that he was regarded at the Pollock, and Mr. Justice Charles sitting in bar as an eminently sound junior, with an a quorum of the Court for Crown Cases exceptional knowledge of the mysteries of Reserved. The career of Lord Coleridge the old pleading; and that — Sir John Hudhas already been traced with considerable dleston having now gone over to the ma minuteness in the pages of the " Green jority — he is the last of the Barons of the Bag," and we need only repeat that his defunct Court of Exchequer. Sir Arthur lordship is the son of an eminent common- Charles is a very able commercial lawyer, law judge and the grand-nephew of the but has not yet had the opportunity of earn author of the " Ancient Mariner; " that he ing great judicial distinction. We may not inappropriately conclude was carefully educated at Eton and Oxford, this sketch by describing the constitution where he reaped a perfect harvest of hon ors; that he was a singularly successful and functions of the Court of Criminal barrister and politician (his complexion is Appeal which the Council of Judges now propose that Parliament should establish. 1 The court being equally divided, the conviction The following are the pertinent resolutions : stood. Cf. Reg. v. Flowers, 16 Q. B. D. 646.