London Legal Letter. for anything more uncomfortable and ugly than a full-bottomed wig has never been de signed for the head of a human being. Portraits of judges before the Restoration show that their ancient lordships wore no wigs, but contented themselves with a coif, or velvet cap, or dignified their heads with a three-cornered hat. It is sometimes said that the judges of our own time should im prove upon this old custom of relinquish
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ing their wigs in favor of their natural hair. We will not stay to inquire into the un known quantity which their lordships would have to be in favor of; but we earnestly hope that judges and barristers will long continue to keep their horse-hair on, and to preserve the impressive appearance, the picturesque dignity, and desirable distinction bestowed upon our courts by wigs and gowns. — Law Gazette.
LONDON LEGAL LETTER. London, Nov. 4, 1891. doubt that the courts are increasingly anxious to '"PHE long vacation ended Michaelmas Term discourage new trials; which are perhaps as often .*- was ushered in with the usual pageantry. as not merely vexatious. The Lord Chancellor entertained the Judges and In my August letter I alluded to the new Queen's Counsel to breakfast — a late one, by the scheme of legal instruction which has been way — at the House of Lords; and thereafter our launched by the Council of Legal Education. judicial lawgivers and eminent advocates journeyed Among the new teaching functionaries whom the scheme establishes are six " readers," at a salary in state from Westminster to Temple Bar, march ing in procession up the long and stately Central! of .£350 Per annum. It was certain that competi Hall of the High Court of Justice, — the judges to tion for these posts would be severe, but no one their respective courts, the counsel to their briefs. ' was prepared for the solid legion of seven hundred A large concourse of ladies and the general public applicants which the junior bar has furnished. What invariably graces these proceedings; for even in i a vision of unemployed talents this presents, — England the Lord Chancellor in his robes of state, young fledglings with their wigs still spotlessly white, preceded by the mace, the pursebearer, and at a few college honors and prizes in the background, tended by the rank of his official retinue, the judges struggling for a leadership with gray-haired men following. — those of Appeal and Equity in black whom thirty years of patient and unremunerative and gold, those of the Queen's Bench in scarlet study has never brought nearer to fortune; many, and ermine,— is not a spectacle to be enjoyed every it need hardly be said, possessed in but small day. There is every prospect of a busy session; measure of the very special qualifications required cause lists in all departments are very full, and by those who would engage in the rare art of im before next autumn the profession will have reaped parting knowledge to others. These appointments another ample fruitage. Attention has been di are only for a period of three years. rected to the extraordinary diminution which has It is now that Legal Debating Societies recom taken place in the number of applications for new mence their discussions. The most prominent are trials. There are only ten this term; formerly there the Hardwicke, the Union, and the Westminster. would have been between seventy and eighty. The The first mentioned society restricts its membership reason for this is probably the fact that new trial to barristers; but in the Union and Westminster, al applications are now heard by the Court of Appeal; though barristers very largely predominate, any one, until quite recently, when an act was passed affect whatever his profession or business, is eligible as a ing the charges, they were disposed of by a Divi member. The debates are on general topics; purely sional Court. A Divisional Court consists of two legal disputation is left to one or two less known de judges, whose function may roughly be described bating bodies. The Hardwicke and Union meet in as that of hearing inferior appeals. There is no the Inner Temple Lecture Hall; the former is the
