the casting vote of a single Irish judge (possibly the least learned of a very learned body,) may give law to the empire, even though it should be contrary to the clear and unanimous opinion of the whole English Bench and Bar.

We are not aware, whether the House itself has ever laid down any rule for its guidance, in a case like that we are contemplating. We know not, that it is precluded, by any positive ordinance, or recognised custom, from examining to-morrow a doubt, which it has been unable to solve to-day; or from disturbing a doctrine, which Irish judges may establish, in opposition to the settled law of their predecessors and contemporaries. But if any such regulation or usage exist, we trust, that some noble and learned peer will bring it under their Lordships' revision; so that it may, at all events, be distinctly known, whether an exact equilibrium of the scales of justice, within the House, amounts to a permanent and irrevocable preponderance beyond its walls.

If it shall eventually appear, that the Court of Exchequer was not bound by the proceedings in the Lords; or that the Lords did not mean to lay down the rule, which the learned Barons understood them to have laid down, the remedy of the party aggrieved is simple. On the other hand, if the judgment in Mr. Catherwood's case be wholly unimpeachable, still, as it professedly related to his marriage, only in the character of a marriage de facto, the question of its validity as a marriage de jure remains still open, and the legal remedy is to be sought in the Ecclesiastical Court, which always had, and still has, exclusive jurisdiction of the lawfulness of marriage, when not under a statute, and when the question of its lawfulness is directly in issue. In that Court, there are various kinds of procedure, to which the injured gentleman might resort. If, for instance, he should institute a suit for nullity of marriage, it would be to be seen, whether Dr. Lushington or Sir Herbert Jenner Fust would pronounce for the nullity, independently of the law of Syria, which may be laid out of the present argument. To hold it null de jure, by the law of England, would, we humbly apprehend, be in direct opposition, not only to Lord Stowell, but to every eminent judge of that Bench, to every author of repute in their Courts, and probably to every opinion, which the learned

Dean of the Arches and Judge of the Consistory themselves ever gave on the point, as counsel at the bar.

Finally, if upon the fullest investigation, it shall be found (contrary to the numerous authorities we have cited) that marriages contracted on or beyond the seas, in places where no local law is known, and where an episcopally-ordained minister is not present, are void, both de jure and de facto, we can only call, with the greater earnestness, on members of the Legislature to rescue British jurisprudence from so gross an inconsistency; and to give Her Majesty's subjects in such situations, the same freedom, which the statute law of their country secures to them at home.

ART. IX. —LORD WYNFORD.

THE subject of this memoir was too distinguished a man to fear the biographer. It is not our intention to write his panegyric, far less to use unnecessary censure. We shall endeavour, in this brief sketch, to trace the chief incidents of his life, and point out his main characteristics; but in attempting this it will be our duty to bring into view as well the shadows as the lights.

William Draper Best was born in the parish of Hasselbury Plucknett, near Crewkerne, in the county of Somerset, on the 13th of December, 1767. He was of a respectable family of that part of the country: the early name of which, it is said, was Basset. He was well connected on both sides. His mother was the daughter of Sir William Draper, immortalised as the antagonist of "Junius." He commenced his education at Crewkerne school, and was sent to Wadham College, Oxford, at an early age. He was originally designed for the church, and had a view to a fellow

It is to him that the happy Letter VII. is addressed, which thus commences:- "An academical education has given you an unlimited command over the most beautiful figures of speech. Masks, hatchets, racks, and vipers, dance through your letters in all the mazes of metaphorical confusion."

ship; but succeeding, somewhat unexpectedly, by the death of a cousin, to a competent estate, he abandoned all thoughts of taking orders, and chose the law as his profession. He entered himself at the Middle Temple, was called to the bar in 1789, and selected the Home circuit, where he soon obtained practice, and in 1800 took the rank of serjeant, and in 1806 that of king's serjeant. His name occurs first in the Term Reports, in the case of Shakespeare v. Peppin 1, a case as to the lord's right to approve, in which it is said Lord Kenyon paid him many compliments on his judicious and learned argument. According to those imperishable records, however, the case seems to have been decided rather by the industry of that great judge than by the merits of the advocate.

As a lawyer Mr. Serjeant Best had no great fame,—as an advocate he stood high. He had even enough of law for use in the common occurrences of nisi prius, and comparing him with his most distinguished contemporaries, though very inferior in this respect to either Gibbs, or Shepherd, or Law, and also to a less profound though sufficient lawyer, Erskine, he stood greatly above Garrow, who was, on the other hand, a far more eminent advocate. Best had many showy, and some useful and even solid qualifications, purely forensic. His activity was unwearied. He was alive, he was wide awake, at every instant of each case, from the cause being called on to the close of the judge's charge, through the whole of which, when not suffered to interrupt, he was by no means a passive listener, for he would, while reading another brief, keep up an intercourse of dumb show with the gentlemen of the jury. But in the management of the case he never slumbered. Naturally of exceeding quick parts, always well acquainted with his brief, never deeming one cause less important or less interesting than another, he gave his client the satisfaction, to all clients, as to all patients, the most pleasing, that of feeling that they were in the hands of one who had no other thought in his mind than their case. Hence few advocates of the day were more popular than he. But this was far from being his only qualification to lead.

16 T. R. 741.

He was a dangerous, because he was a most watchful, and a most enterprising adversary. You could not any more sleep in his neighbourhood than could the Duke while Massena was near, though he might, in the neighbourhood of others, enjoy some repose. But if you never could be sure of his not making some venturous move himself, and were thus kept on the watch, so also you could not venture upon moves in the hope of his eyes being closed. It may almost safely be pronounced, that he never failed to see and to profit by the slip of his adversary; to say that he never, or that he seldom, made slips himself, would be very wide of the truth. In fact, he was not always a safe leader. Circumspect enough to see when his antagonist failed, he took a very narrow, a very one-sided view of his own risks. Bold to rashness, hasty in his resolutions, quick in all his thoughts and all his movements, he was often in dangers wholly needless to be encountered; and though he would occasionally, by desperate courses, escape beyond all calculation from risks both inevitable and of his own seeking, he could not be called a successful advocate. Indeed, so far was this from ever being predicated of him, that with his activity, address, lively manner, good flow of language, happy mode of stating and illustrating, he failed in his purpose more than most men in his eminent position, so that when the fame which he so much enjoyed, and so long retained among clients, led him to some special retainers, Mr. Bolland (afterwards the Baron), hearing surprise expressed at this good fortune, drily remarked, "that he certainly would have had many more, for there were still nearly thirty counties where he never had gone."

During his professional career he was exposed to other risks beside those of losing verdicts, and being convicted in the persons of his clients. of his clients. He was fated to be himself tried for a misdemeanour; and this trouble, for it amounted to no more, he owed to the manly courage, an inherent part of his nature, with which he scorned the attempts of unprincipled persons at extorting money from him by the threats of a prosecution for assaulting a female who had come to consult him at chambers, probably with a view to the further proceedings of her husband. The counsel against him, the late Mr. Cutler Ferguson, though far from having any friendly

feelings towards the Serjeant, always affirmed that the acquittal was most complete.

He was a member of more than one parliament, but never distinguished himself in debate. He acted as one of the managers of the Commons in Lord Melville's case, described by Chief Baron Thompson as "waste of impeachment," which the old judge said he then for the first time saw, though he had often before known "impeachment of waste.” It must be admitted, and it was so confessed at the time by the most zealous friends of the proceeding, and the most attentive by-standers in the profession, that the Serjeant excelled all his colleagues in the readiness, the acuteness, and the resources generally which he displayed. The other lawyers were Sir A. Pigott, Attorney-General, and Sir S. Romilly, Solicitor, both Chancery men, with Mr. Giles, Mr. Holland, and Mr. Morris, men of little experience as leaders at nisi prius. Sir A. Pigott had been a veteran leader, in former times, on the Home circuit, and was a sound, safe common lawyer, but he wanted the Serjeant's nimble readiness. Sir S. Romilly had also, for many years, been out of common-law practice. Mr. Giles had never been above the rank of a well-employed person before he quitted Westminster Hall, on his father's death, where Mr. Jekyll thought he lingered too long after so great an accession of fortune, and told him, on seeing him make a half-guinea motion, “Dan, you are now worth two hundred thousand pounds ten shillings and sixpence." Mr. Morris was an able and a rising man, soon after made a Master in Chancery by his father-in-law, Lord Erskine. Mr. Holland, a very wellinformed and respectable lawyer, had never attained any practice before he entered Parliament. It is not enough to say that, among all these, the Serjeant, a practised nisi prius leader, was, without any question, and beyond all comparison, the first; but it must be added, that he showed the greatest ability on any legal argument which arose, and that, by his winning manner, he ingratiated himself with both the peers and the audience, neither of which bodies is apt to be enamoured of lawyers when they bear a part in political con

tentions.

He entered Parliament as member for Petersfield, and