was a warm supporter of Mr. Fox. He spoke frequently, and often usefully, and was generally willing to undertake motions for committees, or amendments, or, indeed, whatever best suited the Opposition tactics of the day. He did not, however, commit himself to much positive legislation, and his attempts in that direction were not happy. His best effort was in 1804, when he opposed the imposition of stamps on law proceedings. In 1806 he did not so well when he brought in a bill for preventing all interlocutory or ex-parte proceedings from being published in newspapers. He afterwards, however, withdrew the bill. He remained, he said, of the opinion that it was a proper bill; "but, as a great number of persons of high station and character, and for whose judgment upon all subjects I have the greatest respect, seem to think that this measure might, in some degree, trench upon the liberty of the press, and as no man holds the sacred principle in higher estimation and value than I do, I should be the last to do any thing which might be thought to have a tendency to bring it into danger.Upon these impressions I wish now to give notice that it is not my intention to press the measure any further." If this bill had passed, it would, indeed, have diminished the size of our newspapers, one half of which is frequently taken up with interlocutory proceedings of a criminal nature. We have said that he voted and acted with Mr. Fox; but the zeal of the patriot began somewhat to cool after having been exposed some years in the dreary regions of opposition, and Serjeant Best is to be added to the (we fear rather long) list of lawyers of easy virtue who have been unable to withstand the approaches of the Court. It is said, indeed, that his resistance was more faint than usual, and that on nearly the first solicitation he surrendered at discretion. His allegiance was to the Prince of Wales, and when he left the Whig party the Serjeant deserted along with him. He soon gained the confidence of many members of the Royal Family, and was highly esteemed by all, and more especially by George the Fourth, William the Fourth, and the present King of Hanover. Nor did he wait long for that earnest which renders the bargain solid and binding. In 1813 he was appointed attorney-general to the Prince of Wales. In 1818 he became Chief Justice of Chester, and on the elevation of Mr. Justice Abbott, in the same year, to the Chief Justiceship of England, the vacant puisne judgeship was given to Mr. Serjeant Best. In that situation he continued until 1824, when, on the death of Lord Gifford, he was made Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, at the express request, it is said, of George the Fourth. In 1829 he resigned this high office, and afterwards, being raised to the peerage by the title of Baron Wynford, gave his attendance occasionally in the House of Lords on appeals, and sometimes in the Privy Council. Some surprise was occasioned by his receiving a retiring pension on his retirement from the Common Pleas, on the ground of a permanent bodily infirmity disabling him from the due execution of his office, and yet immediately afterwards being created deputy speaker of the House of Lords. On Lord Grey's coming into place in 1830, he ceased to hold this office. The health of this eminent person was all through his professional life a source of suffering, annoyance, and interruption to his business. He was a martyr to gout; and, besides being occasionally obliged to leave Westminster Hall for Bath, he was for several years, having no time for exercise, and being unable to ride, reduced to the sad necessity of driving from his house to his court in an open carriage, with a beam of wood so fixed as to interrupt the play of the springs, and cause to others unbearable jolting. He was often for weeks together carried out of this machine of torment in men's arms like a child, and placed at the bar and upon the bench. It is certain that, with many qualifications which were calculated to dispatch the judicial business quickly, and with some of the first requisites of the judicial character, he was upon the whole less eminent on the bench than he had been at the bar. His quickness and his watchfulness were great, his industry exemplary, his freedom from all prejudice, and generally from all partiality, towards the practitioners, as well as from all subjection to their dictation, was commendable. His habits as a leader too enabled him to take large and commanding views of the cases that came before him. But he was, as at the bar, often hasty and rash, nor was he very patient of contradiction when he happened to be in a pertinacious mood. It was singular how immediately he would take an impression, and as singular how easily he would change it; generally speaking, this was his way; but when the obstinate humour was upon him, he certainly showed extreme hastiness of temper as well as of judgment. These infirmities more than counterbalanced his natural capacities and acquired aptitude for the judicial office. But he often distinguished himself on great occasions; and his display of powers as well as of just and humane feeling in the Slavery case 1, will long be remembered in the profession; nor are the merits of his oratory lost even in the record of the Term Reports. The distressing complaint under which he so long suffered, peculiarly irritating to the unhappy patient, not unfrequently led him to display a warmth of manner to the Bar which led to disagreeable collisions. The expressions and ejaculations which then escaped him (but only partially heard) were not always those described by the poet : "Desires compos'd, affections ever even, Tears that delight, and sighs that waft to Heaven: " and for a time in the Court of Common Pleas the Bench was placed in that state of constant conflict with the Bar which always ends in the discomfiture of the judge. In the latter portion of his judicial career, however, this manner was greatly corrected. The opinions which he occasionally expressed bordered on the extreme. He approved of boxing, as distinguished from gouging and kicking as practised in some of the northern counties, and so far we should agree with him; but in Ilot v. Wilkes, given in Chetwynd's edition of Burn's Justice, he was reported to have defended the use of spring-guns, and to have uttered opinions on the game laws which certainly would not now be tolerated. This called forth a bitter article in the Edinburgh Review2, written by the Rev. Sidney Smith. Mr. Justice Best, however, took an early opportunity of denying that he used the expression complained of, and declared he had been grossly misrepresented. When in the House of Lords he was not averse to take 1 Forbes v. Cochrane, 2 B. & C. 448. upon himself the character of a legislator; and finding the current set in favour of the reform of the law, he launched his shallop on the stream. He brought in two bills in 1830, one for preventing the expense and delay of suits in the commonlaw courts, and another for preventing debtors from defrauding creditors by lying in prison or absconding from England; but neither of them passed into law. The former bill contained a provision for subjecting parties to an examination on interrogatories for the discovery of facts or documents in question. His parliamentary exertions were of various and uncertain value, but he never reached the station of either an eloquent speaker or a successful debater. Ever since he entered the House of Lords, he attached himself strongly and continually to the Conservative party, or rather to the portion of that respectable body which professes extreme opinions. In his parliamentary capacity, as at the bar and on the bench, he was thought often of a hasty temper for the moment, yet perfectly good-natured in the main, and never harbouring the least resentment after the contest of the hour was closed. In the year 1794, he married Mary Ann, second daughter of Jerome Knapp, Esq., a bencher of the Middle Temple, by whom he had several children. He is succeeded in his title by William, his eldest son, the present Lord Wynford. Lord Wynford died on the 3rd of March last, at his seat in Kent, having reached the good old age of seventy-seven on his last birthday. 176 ART. X.-LAW REFORM IN INDIA. IN some future number we hope to be able to take a review of the progress that has been recently made in India in the reform of the law. The proceedings and labours of the Law Commission, which has now for many years been there established, are well worthy of a separate notice, and the whole subject of the amendment of the law is exciting much attention and interest in that great Dependency. Indeed, nothing has given us greater pleasure, since we have commenced our own humble exertions in this cause, than to find that we have touched a chord which is vibrating throughout every part of our mighty Colonial Empire. We would this in no boastful or sordid spirit; but it is right that it should be known that, in the short space that has elapsed since the publication of our first number, we have received satisfactory proofs that the desire to amend the law is by no means confined to the mother country. We find, that in directing public attention to law reform, in freely discussing it, and endeavouring to diffuse the truth with respect to it, we are awakening sympathies, and receiving assistance, in a far wider sphere than even we had ever contemplated. say Among the proofs which have reached us of this, we wish to give a brief notice of the answers1 made to questions propounded by the Indian Law Commissioners to certain of the Judges in the Supreme Courts in India,—of whom, at any rate, it will not be said that they take cramped or narrowminded views. Sir Erskine Perry, one of the Judges at Bombay, goes at great length into the expense of proceedings, both at Law and in Equity,-dwelling more especially, so far as the latter is concerned, on the delay at the Master's office, which appears to be no better in Asia than in Europe. To remedy these These are printed in the Bombay Overland Courier, of March 1st. |