Page:Harvard Law Review Volume 10.djvu/381

LORD BOWEN'S JUDICIAL CHARACTERISTICS. 355 Chancellor Westbury, for instance, such a master of legal maxims, appears in Lord Bowen's work rather in the production of a total effect or artistic whole. He had great skill, however, in the use of graphic, often humorous illustration. Witness his forcible illustration in the Mogul Steamship Company case,^ of the ex- pedient of merchants of sowing one year a crop of unfruitful prices in order by drawing competition away to reap a fuller harvest of profits in the future ; and his query, in the same case, whether it would be an indictable conspiracy to drink up all the water from a common spring in time of drought. Among other noteworthy instances, see his illustration in Hutton v. West Cork Ry. Co. ,2 of sending down all the porters at a railway station to have tea in the country at the expense of the company; his success in lay- ing the issue bare in Thomas v. Quartermaine,^ by his illustration of the builder employed to make repairs; his query in Carlill v. Carbolic Smoke Ball Co.,* whether every one who sought to find a dog for a reward must sit down and write a note to the owner accepting the proposal ; his illustration of being waylaid in Pall Mall, in Magnus v. Queensland National Bank; ^ and his refer- ence to the Apostles' spoons in Saunders v. Weil.^ His general method of procedure in an exhaustive opinion was to state at the outset in a few words the point in issue, and the circumstances under which it arose ; then to examine the principles involved ; following with the citation of authorities, and, finally, the application of the whole in the decision of the case at issue.'^ The issue in Mogul Steamship Co. v. McGregor^ is stated thus : — "We are presented in this case with an apparent conflict or antimony between two rights that are equally guarded by the law, — the right of the plaintiff's to be protected in the legitimate exercise of their trade, and the right of the defendants to carry on their business as seems best to them, provided they commit no wrong to others. The plaintiffs com- plain that the defendants have crossed the line which the common law permits; and inasmuch as, for the purposes of the present case, we are to assume some possible damage to the plaintiffs, the real question to be 1 23 Q. B. D. 598. « 18 Q. B. D. 694. 6 37 Ch. D. 479. 2 23 Ch. D. 654. * [1893] I Q- B- 265. « [1893] I Q- B- 474- ■^ Maxim Nordenfelt Gun & Ammunition Co. v. Nordenfelt, [1893] ' Ch. 631; Mogul Steamship Co. v. McGregor, 23 Q. B. D. 611; Svensden v. Wallace, 13 Q. B. D. 69. 8 23 Q. B. D. 611.