work to which every member of the bench is subject, imposes on the judges a varied assortment of duties; each variety of these duties every judge is expected to perform with equal ability, whatever his tempera ment, his intellectual capacity or his pre vious professional experience. He may go straight from a practice at the admiralty bar or in the commercial courts to try crime, and, although able to grasp the most intricate legal problems, finds him self embarrassingly confronted with prob lems of human nature with which he is out of touch, and a practice in which he has had no training. He may, on the other hand, have had a large experience of crime and have been a successful advocate in classes of civil work in which his talents were recognized by a large number of clients, and yet be quite incapable of try ing the intricate and important cases that arise in a commercial community. Two recent appointments illustrate this diffi culty. Mr. Justice Phillirriore while at the bar was the acknowledged leader of the ad miralty practice, and was rarely seen else where except in the ecclesiastical courts. He was and is a most pronounced church man of the advanced school of those who adhere to the Catholic doctrine as to di vorce, and the remarriage of divorced per sons. Shortly after his appointment to the bench, sitting as a vacation judge, he found in his lists for the day a large num ber of cases from the divorce court in which decrees absolute were to be entered. Being conscientiously opposed to divorce, he was reluctant to enter these decrees, and yet as a judge he could not avoid executing the law. He therefore preceded his judgment in these cases by a dissertation on the wrongfulness of the system, and the reluctance with which he complied with it. The incident excited a good deal of com ment at the time, and will doubtless pro voke attention in higher quarters.
Recently at Liverpool, on circuit, he presided at the trial of an army officer, who was indicted for having assisted a young woman to produce a miscarriage which, it was alleged, resulted in her death. The circumstances were pathetic and such as to attract the attention of the country generally, and to arouse a great deal of sympathy for the officer as well as for the family of the young woman. The officer was in the south of England at the time the young woman died in the north. It was alleged that by letter he had either encour aged her to procure the miscarriage, or at least had acquiesced in it, but at the trial it was not proved that her death was the re sult of the drugs she had taken; both of the eminent physicians called for the pros ecution having admitted that there was nothing to show whether death resulted from natural causes or not, while in her dying declaration she positively asserted that not only had the accused had nothing to do with her act, but that he tried to dis suade her from it. In the face of this, and in commenting on it in his summing up, Mr. Justice Phillimore volunteered the sug gestion that this deathbed declaration might have been due to various motives; among others, a desire to shield her lover. The jury, who, in criminal cases in this country, are largely influenced by the judge's com ments, returned a verdict of guilty of mur der, and the judge sentenced the unhappy officer to be hanged. Fortunately the sen tence was commuted to a comparatively short term, but an agitation which has pop ular support is working for the release of the prisoner. Upon another occasion, also, upon circuit, Mr. Justice Phillimore, who was trying a prisoner, after expressing his belief that the accused had committed perjury in giving evidence in his own behalf, inflicted a pun ishment for the crime for which the jury had found the prisoner guilty, and another term of punishment for the perjury which
