Jessel are no longer with us, to Sir Horace Davey the palm of legal pre-eminence must undoubtedly be assigned. In knowledge of law, in subtlety of intellect, in argumentative acumen, he stands first on the roll of the very learned and able body to which he be longs, and his elevation to the highest judicial appointment in the land would be an honor and a source of dignity and strength to the English judicature. On the recent retire ment of Sir Edward Fry from the Court of Appeal, it was rumored, and one may add, hoped, in legal circles that the vacant Lord Justiceship would be conferred on Sir Horace Davey. It has long been the practice of English ministers to consider legal eminence rather than political services in manning the judicial staff. Sir James, now Lord, Hannen, a staunch Liberal, owed the puisnejudgeship with which his distinguished judicial career commenced to a Conservative government. The case of the present Mr. Justice Wright is another instance of the same graceful disregard of party traditions. It was thought that Sir Horace Davey him self would not be by any means averse to stepping from the arena of political, of forensic conflict to the platform of judicial service. But the Government disappointed professional expectation, and Sir A. L. Smith, one of the Parnell commissioners, was made a Lord Justice of Appeal. To enumerate the great causes in which Sir Horace Davey has been professionally en gaged would be an almost impossible task. It would be infinitely easier to enumerate those in which his name does not appear. The period of his greatest forensic activity commenced in 1880, and every volume of the Appeal Cases from that date bears abun dant testimony to his professional position. Alike in Scotch, English, Irish and Colonial appeals, Sir Horace Davey is beyond all question the "favorite" counsel. His pro fessional income is said to average £23,000 a year; and in one memorable year it is alleged to have reached the enormous sum
of £40,000. The following is an imperfect record of a small part of his forensic work : He was counsel for the successful appellant in Blackwood v. Reg. in a case which raised an interesting point as to the lex loci applied to the personal assets of a testator, in November, 1882. In March, 1883, he was again successful, and was highly com plimented by the House of Lords, in Brownlie v. Russell, which turned on the right of a borrowing member of a building society to receive credit for all instalments and pay up the balance of the loan and be relieved of further liabilities when a winding up order had been made. In November, 1883, he was engaged with Mr. J. B. Balfour, Q.C., as counsel for the unsuccessful appellant in the famous Scotch jurisdiction case of Ewing v. Orr-Ewing. In July, 1885, he was counsel in the Aylesford Peerage case. In 1887, he appeared for the successful ap pellant in Caird v. Sims, the locus elassicus as to the existence of copyright in Univer sity lectures.' In more recent years, he has been engaged in the following cases, which are too well known to require any description : Cox v. Hakes, Adam v. Newbigging, and Derry v. Peek. It has sometimes been said that Sir Horace Davey has never addressed a jury. This statement is quite unfounded. We know of one recent case in which the ex-Solicitor-General not only " addressed a jury," but did so with a vigor and success that caused no little surprise and dismay to his common-law brethren on the other side. A similar and equally absurd rumor has lately been circulated with ref erence to Lord Chancellor Cairns, whose speech to the jury in the great Wyndham Inquiry is one of the masterpieces of forensic eloquence. Sir Horace Davey is an accomplished scholar and student of literature. He was a member of the committee that recently undertook the erection of a memorial stone to Robert Browning in Westminster Abbey. In private life he is beloved and admired by
