In the supreme court of the United States the standard established by Marshall and Story has been maintained in uninterrupted succession. It will be sufficient to mention such names as Grier, Campbell, Curtis, Miller, Bradley, and Gray.

LORD MANSFIELD.

[William Murray, first Earl of Mansfield, fourth son of Viscount Stormont, was born at the Abbey of Scone, 1704. He was educated at Oxford, where he took high rank as a scholar. In 1727 he received his B. A. degree, and won the university prize, in competition with William Pitt, for a Latin poem on the death of George I. Having proceeded M. A. in 1730, he was in that year called to the bar at Lincoln's Inn. He got rapidly into practice, and in 1742 was made king's counsel and solicitor general. In parliament he soon became the acknowledged leader of the House. In 1754 he became attorney general, and two years later lord chief justice of the king's bench. In 1756 he was sworn of the privy council, and was offered, but declined, the great seal. On two occasions he held the seals of the exchequer. In 1776 he was advanced to an earldom. Ill health compelled him to resign office in 1788. He died in 1793, and was buried in Westminster Abbey.]

Lord Mansfield was accustomed to refer his advancement to his fortunate birth. He was fortunate indeed in that respect, but it was the fortune of an opportune time, rather than the inheritance of rank and station. He came into office at a critical period in the history of English law, when the rapid development of commerce, the changed relations of the individual to society, and the expansion of the rights of property, had originated new necessities. It was indispensable that the law should expand to meet them. To the demands of this high occasion Lord Mansfield was entirely equal. The principles which he laid down, and the precedents which he established, are the principles and precedents which, in the main, govern the administration of the law in the present day. Moreover, no judge ever impressed so forcibly upon the jurisprudence of his country the peculiar qualities of his own mind. Many of the most important branches of modern law derive their character from his genius, and remain enduring monuments of the admirable manner in which his powerful mind created a system of law adapted to all the exigencies of civilization. Of his work at the bar we have few records. We know, however, that his Scotch connection carried him rapidly into

practice. In 1732, within two years of his call, he argued the case of Paterson v. Graham in the house of lords. In 1737 he won great reputation by his opposition to the proposed disfranchisement of the city of Edinburgh on account of the Porteous riots; and his successful defense of Mrs. Cibber, the celebrated actress, in the action brought against her by her husband, the scoundrel son of Colley Cibber, brought him into general prominence. The Duchess of Marlborough became an influential client. Pope, Bolingbroke, and Warburton were his friends. Pope has perpetuated his friendship and admiration in many a line. Mansfield confined his practice to the chancery courts, and the contemporary reports of Atkyns bear ample evidence of his application and learning. His speech as solicitor general in prosecution of Lord Lovat, in 1747, is one of the few speeches by him which have been authentically preserved. Although this speech is little more than a concise and lucid statement of the evidence, it brought him a singular compliment from the defendant, who, it seems, was a distant connection. "I heard him with pleasure, though it was against me," said Lord Lovat; and then, after apologizing for his own speech, he concluded: "I had need of my cousin Murray's eloquence for half an hour, and then it would have been more agreeable."

During his career at the bar he established a great reputation as a parliamentary orator. He had improved an early talent for declamation at Oxford by assiduous study of the classical models. He translated the orations of Cicero into English, and then back into Latin. He declaimed in his chambers before a mirror, with Pope as a critic. By such cultivation he acquired an elocution which became famous. His articulation was slow and distinct, and his voice is said to have been sweet in all its tones. His eloquence was always of an argumentative, metaphysical cast. It was subtle and insinuating, rather than forcible and overpowering. Walpole says: "He had too much and too little of the lawyer. He refined too much and could wrangle too little for a public assembly." As a parliamentary orator it was inevitable that he should be compared with his great rival Pitt. There was a strong contrast between the impetuous, passionate, and imperious Pitt and the calm, plausible, and graceful Scotch lawyer. Mansfield excelled in lucidity of statement and force of argument, but he was incapable of those bursts of fiery eloquence with which his great rival awed and charmed. He sought not to drive, but to lead; not to overwhelm the mind by appeals to the feelings, but to aid and direct its inquiries. Lord Shelburne says that Mans

field's oratory "resembled a full and tranquil river which rolls onward with even current, always transparent, and never chafed by rock or tempest. Pitt's was like a mighty torrent, which was sometimes turbid and obscure, sometimes spent itself in wayward digressions, but, where it poured forth all its strength, was irresistible." In Macaulay's characterization: "Mansfield far surpassed Pitt in correctness of taste, in power of reasoning, in depth and variety of knowledge. His parliamentary eloquence never blazed forth into sudden flashes of dazzling brilliancy, but the clear, placid, mellow splendor was never for an instant overclouded." He was lacking, however, in moral character. Though wanting neither energy nor courage, he quailed under the assaults of Pitt and Camden. As a statesman he undoubtedly took an excessive view of the royal prerogative, especially in the dispute with the American colonies.

Although Blackstone had just summarized the legal system of the day from the standpoint of one who regarded it as the perfection of human wisdom and experience, the time was ripe for change. The common-law system which had sprung up during Norman and Plantagenet times may have been fairly adapted to the needs of a community in which land was the only property worth considering. But in the reign of George II., England had become the leading manufacturing and commercial country of the world, while neither the legislature nor the judiciary had made any systematic effort to develop her jurisprudence. When, therefore, questions arose respecting the bargain and sale of goods, affreightment of ships, marine insurance, and bills of exchange, no one knew how they were to be determined. Upon such questions, the law reports furnished no guide, swarming as they did with controversies over trial by battle, customs of manors, etc.

His work as a judge merits unqualified praise. The period of the Revolution, which had seen so many improvements in the public laws and in the law relating to real property, was mainly a period of legislative activity. The common-law judges, in particular, seemed to have a peculiar aversion to the discussion of general principles. A notable exception was Chief Justice Holt, who, with great sagacity and boldness, led the way to some of the most important improvements by his well-known judgment in Coggs v. Bernard, in which the law of bailments is expounded with philosophical precision. "I have said this much on the case," he said in concluding that opinion, "because it is of great consequence that the law should be settled on this point; but I don't know whether I may have settled it, or may not rather have

unsettled it. But, however that may happen, I have started these points, which wiser heads in time may settle." It was this work which Mansfield carried on to such great perfection, moulding the law in accordance with the needs of a rapidly expanding commerce and manufacture. "His ideas go," as Burke said, "to the growing inclination of the law, by making its liberality keep pace with the demands of justice and the actual concerns of the world; not restricting the infinitely diversified occasions of men and the rules of natural justice within artificial circumscriptions, but conforming our jurisprudence to the growth of our commerce and our empire." At the Guildhall, where he trained and attached to himself a select body of jurors, who were regularly impaneled for mercantile causes, and taught him the usages of trade, he did much, by his instructive grasp and power of formulating the general principle underlying particular cases, to convert the various and conflicting customs of merchants into something like a rational system of law. "Before that period," said his colleague Buller, in Lickbarrow v. Mason, "we find that in courts of law all the evidence in mercantile cases was thrown together. They were left generally to the jury, and they produced no established principle. From that time we all know the great study has been to find some certain general principles which shall be known to all mankind, not only to rule the particular case, but to serve as a guide for the future. Most of us have heard these principles stated, reasoned upon, enlarged, and explained, till we have been lost in admiration of the strength and stretch of the human understanding." When he was raised to the bench, the contract of insurance was little known, and a few important nisi prius decisions were all that was to be found on the subject. Yet this branch of the law grew under his administration into a system. In many other branches of the law the same progress is observable, particularly with reference to evidence and procedure. He put a stop to the interminable delay that characterized the old trial procedure. Cases were continued only for cause. Reargument was refused in all but exceptional cases, and judgment followed the verdict without unnecessary delay. He rationalized the law of evidence, and turned it to practical use. "We do not sit here," he informed the bar, "to take our rules of evidence from Siderfin and Keble." The technicality which required a deed to be indented he abrogated by holding any deed an indenture which had not its edge mathematically straight. In the case of Perrin v. Blake he departed from the narrow rule in Shelley's case.1 His

11 W. Bl. 672.