A Century of English Judicature. should be insensible to public opinion who has to discharge a public trust. . . But there is a consideration far higher than that. It is the satisfaction of your own internal sense of duty, the satisfaction of your own conscience, the knowledge that you are fol lowing the promptings of that still, small voice which never, if we listen honestly to its dictates, misleads or deceives—that still, small voice whose approval upholds us even though men should condemn us, and whose approval is far more precious than the hon or or applause we may derive, no matter from what source. . . . Listen to that, g-entlemen, listen to that; do right, and care not for anything that may be thought or said or clone without these walls. In this, the sacred temple of justice, such considera tions as those to which I have referred ought to have and can have no place. You and I have only one thing to consider; that is, the duty we have to discharge before God and man according to the only manner we should desire to discharge it,—honestly, truly, and fearlessly, without regard to any consequences except the desire that this duty should be properly and entirely ful filled." Among other canses célebres in which he presided were the Matlock will case; the "Wainwright murder case, a leading case on circumstantial evidence; the convent case of Saurin v. Starr, an action by a sister of mercy against her mother superior for as sault, and Reg. i1. Gurney, a famous case of fraud and conspiracy. By way of disparagement it was said that Cockburn acquired his knowledge of legal principles from sitting on the bench beside Ги slice Blackburn. Beyond doubt Black burn's vigorous intellect was the ruling power in the Queen's Bench throughout Cockburn's service; but with his great nat ural acquisitive powers and assiduous ap plication Cockburn certainly acquired a firm prasp of the fundamental principles of the law. If the scope and activity of his intelli gence and the variety of his pursuits to
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some extent impaired the fullness and ac curacy of his knowledge of its details, his keen insight and knowledge of the world, acquired through cultivation, travel and ex tensive intercourse with all classes of men, frequently saved him from pitfalls into which the less worldly would have fallen. On the whole, his influence has perhaps been felt more in the impulse and direction which he gave to certain topics than in any direct contribution to its formal contents. The doctrine of partial insanity may be directly traced to his efforts. This doctrine was formulated by him in defending M'Xaghten. in 1843, and the advisory opin ions rendered by the judges to the House of Lords in a subsequent investigation of the case lent support to his theory. In the subsequent case of Banks i: Goodfellow, 5 Q. B. 549, he applied the doctrine to testamen tary cases in terms which have since been almost universally accepted. His reason ing is that whatever may be the psycho logical theory as to the indivisibility of the mind, every one must be conscious that the faculties and functions of the mind are vari ous and distinct, as are the powers and func tions of our physical organization. The pathology of mental disease shows that while, on the one hand, all the faculties, moral and intellectual, may be involved in one common ruin, as in the case of the rav ing maniac, in other instances one or more only of these faculties may be disordered, leaving the rest undisturbed—that while the mind may be overpowered by delusions which utterly demoralize it, there often are, on the other hand, delusions which, though the offspring of mental disease, and so far constituting insanity, yet leave the individual in all other respects rational and capable of transacting the ordinary affairs of life. On the law of libel—particularly with re spect to the public press—Cockburn made a durable impression. In the leading case of Wason r1. Walter. 4 О. В. 73, he established the reservation in favor of privileged pub lications on its true foundation : i. e. that the
