Personal Recollections of English Law Courts. ward (for only too short a time), on the bench. Palmer was a strange study. He seldom read papers or took notes in court, but sat gazing earnestly in front of him, ab sorbed in thought, and usually fidgetting with something in his fingers, now twisting and retwisting, and then twisting again, a piece of red tape, or perhaps building cas tles with wafers on the back of his hand, as if that were the work he was absorbed in. But he was "all there" all the time, ready to spring up in a moment and correct a mis-quotation of a judgment, or to cite a more recent decision. He was perhaps the most careful and painstaking leader the Chancery bar has ever known. After Palmer and Selwyn came others, Hobhouse, Macnaughten, and then Jessel. One well-known figure in the Rolls Court at the close of the sixties was poor Southgate, on whose once handsome figure, paral ysis played such cruel havoc, laming one leg, depriving him of the use of one hand, distorting his face, rendering his speech thick, and indistinct. Yet his genius ena bled him to triumph over these cruel imped iments until in his day he led in the Rolls Court. Then, after one long vacation, he slipped out of sight and I never heard what became of him, but there was a rumor of softening of the brain. I first saw Jessel as a junior in his own
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chambers — short, sharp, decisive, even then. When he was raised to the bench he gradu ally, but quickly, earned the reputation of getting through more work and doing it bet ter than any other judge on the bench. I will describe a scene in his court. It is " petition day "; there are one hundred petitions down on his list for hearing; about midday he is half way through his paper; the name of one petition is called in its order, and a young junior rises: — "If your lordship pleases, my leader, Mr. Chitty, is engaged in the Appeal Court, and there are some difficult points which I should be glad for him to argue before your lordship. Will you allow the matter to be placed at the end of the list?" "No, Mr. , I read the papers at home last night. I see no difficulty about it; you are entitled to your order, if you will file an affidavit verifying such and such facts. Next case." I have got rather beyond the sixties; but it was in the sixties that I first saw and spoke to Jessel. There were giants in those days; at least it seems so to me, and some how I fail to see any giants of the old form now. I take it to be an aphorism that the courts of really great judges are the best nursery grounds for successful barristers; and so the race of giants is perpetuated.
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