London Legal Letter. The " nothing but the truth " clause of the oath does not suggest to such witness to find out where their knowledge ends, and to stop there, however incomplete the stop page may render their evidence, and how ever the incompleteness may disappoint the examiner and affect his case. For all these evils the antidote is cross-examination, which (to follow the simile) may be regarded as sometimes an aperient and sometimes an astringent, and requires great skill to ad minister in suitable doses, at the right moment, and in the proper way. It is not enough to prescribe the medicine : it must be administered. The administering has been considered
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and discussed ad nauseam, and it would be difficult to make any valuable addition to what has been already said and written on the modus operandi of cross-examination. Above the signature of Lord Bramwell, in a recent number of the " Nineteenth Century," will be found a very spirited defense of the less popular methods of the cross-examiner, and a vindication of the extremest license usually taken by the British bar. We are content to leave this part of the subject to so able and experienced a judge as the dis tinguished lawyer just named, and to confine ourselves to showing the necessity for crossexamination, and the foundations of that necessity. — Seottish Law Review.
LONDON LEGAL LETTER. London, January 4, 1899.
THE Lord Chancellor has acted with commendable promptness in appoint ing a new judge to fill the vacancy created by the retirement of Mr. Justice Hawkins. The new appointee, Mr. Thomas Townsend Bucknill Q. C, will take his seat at the opening of the next term on- the 11th instant, and there will, therefore, be no inconvenience caused by a reduction of the already limited number of judges. The appointment will be acceptable to the bar and will excite very little comment, as it has been generally anticipated. The new judge has had thirty-one years of active practice, of which thirteen or fourteen have been " within the bar," or as Queen's Counsel. He was at one time one of the acknowledged leaders of the admiralty bar, and for some years acted as one of the consulting counsel to the shipping federation and edited the last edition of " Abbott on Shipping." In ad dition to having a good practice in common law work and before arbitration boards, he
has contributed to several journals and reviews, and has been editor of two series of law reports. He has also been, since 1892, a popular member of Parliament, and has had considerable experience in local government affairs, having served as a county alderman from 1889 to 1892. Whether he will make a successful judge remains, of course, to be seen. It is the common experience of every bar, as well in America, I assume, as in England, that a good lawyer and a brilliant advocate does not always make a good judge. The certain qualities which go to make up the "judicial temperament" do not in variably find their best development in the study, or in the exacting work of a busy lawyer. In this country the difficulty is greater than in America, notwithstanding that greater care is exercised in selecting the judges who, with rare exceptions, are taken from the ranks of those who have been longest at the bar and have attained the greatest eminence in successful practice. Here the circuit system and the rotation of
