The tenacity of opinion which led him in Tullett v. Armstrong to attempt to prove that he had never held what he in fact was even then overruling, was evinced in several other cases in which he decided (as we think) in conformity with the real justice of the case, but professing all the while to go in conformity with previous decisions, which he endeavoured to twist round to his own view of the case. Thus in Cradock v. Piper1 he decided that a solicitor, who being a trustee, acts as solicitor to the trust, is entitled to his costs as such solicitor: a decision in consonance, we think, with justice, and with real convenience, but certainly contrary to all preconceived notions, and to the practice of all the present generation, founded too upon decisions which even the Lord Chancellor was bound to respect. But rather than give up his opinion he undertakes, in his judgment, to explain away all these decisions, as not having the meaning which everybody else, even though with reluctance, allowed to them. We understand that already some very nice distinctions have been taken on this judgment by a very eminent judge recently appointed. Devisme v. Devisme is another case in which Lord Cottenham, finding previous decisions in the way of the judgment he was desirous of giving (and which judgment we here again consider to be much more equitable than the previous decisions the other way), boldly proceeds to explain away all cases which fetter the declaration of his opinion in a manner which he would have been the last judge to tolerate in another.

One of his remarkable peculiarities (but which also sometimes degenerated into a fault) was a curt, acute way of addressing counsel when making some representation which he conceived to be ill founded, either in facts or logic. No judge would ever less submit to the slightest suspicion of being "bamboozled;" and as soon as any argument was advanced, which he thought ranked under that category, he would embody it pithily in a short sentence or two, and place it before its astonished author, whether in silk or in stuff, to his utter discomfiture. "It is very awkward," observed one of the counsel most frequently employed in his court, "he just puts it to you shortly, and asks, 'Is that your argument?' adding quietly, 'I only want to know-that's all;' and then, when he sees he is right, he sinks back in his chair, and it is all over."

But this quickness of perception in himself rendered him somewhat intolerant of the slower capacities of those with whom he had to deal; and upon them he often, with indecorous abruptness, poured forth the measure of his wrath-an exhibition the 1 1 M Naught. & Gor. 684. 2 Ibid. 336.

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more indecorous, as the expressions which he used in his indignation were often barely intelligible. In fact, in the later period of his reign, his articulation had grown so indistinct,1-his voice had grown so extremely weak, scarcely ever rising above a whisper, and his temper had grown so irritable, that it was no pleasant thing to have to go before him. Nor was it only to the Bar that these failings were a source of difficulty and annoyance. His notorious antagonism to V. C. Knight Bruce was the subject of every-day remark, and occasionally led to very serious mischief. Thus in Ex parte Barber, a petition for winding up the London and Manchester Railway (Remington's Line) was dismissed by V. C. Knight Bruce, on the ground that the company, being only provisionally registered, was not within the Windingup Acts. But Lord Cottenham overruled that dismissal, and made the order; thereby flooding the Masters' offices with winding up these companies, and opening the doors to endless litigation, infinitely better kept away; and finding that his opinion was deemed erroneous, and would probably be evaded, he had sufficient influence and such tenacity of opinion as to procure a clause to be inserted in the next Winding-up Act (for of course there was another in the next session), in which his own view was adopted and made law, to the gain of no good man, and to the great distress of many unwary persons, who, though they at one period of their lives had thought well of some plausible but birth-strangled scheme, never had been guilty of anything worthy of the tortures of the Master's Office.

The same unbounded confidence in his own judgment led him to upset rather than overrule the decisions of other judges as well as of V. C. Knight Bruce. Witness Smith v. The London and North-Western Railway Company, in which he demolished a judgment of Sir L. Shadwell's; but which reversal has been disapproved of since both by Lord Truro and Lord Cranworth. And in one case within our own knowledge, he used such insulting expressions (but which, however, are carefully kept out of the Report) in reversing a judgment of a most estimable judge (whose retirement and the occasion of it has been deplored by the whole profession), that it drew from this latter the remark,"I have no objections to my judgments being overruled; but I am not prepared to have such observations made in open court as he made in that case.

"2

He retained his political bias in all its intensity in his cha

We heard one day a proposal made, by way of a joke, for the bar to present the Chancellor with a subscription-set of teeth. But some such remedy was in sad earnest very much required.

2 Dawes v. Betts, 12 Jur. 709.

racter of Lord Chancellor-or rather, it was when he became Lord Chancellor, and during his tenure of office, that his political bias became matured and an effective motive of action. We do not mean that he imported political bias into the Court of Chancery, so as for a moment to favour either party according to his political antecedents. But he surpassed perhaps even Lord Eldon in political bigotry, and let slip no opportunity of displaying it. A notable sample of this occurred in the first year of his first chancellorship. The Municipal Reform Act had been passed in 1835, by a clause in which, relating to charity property held by the corporations, and providing for the appointment of separate trustees of such property, it was provided that the Court of Chancery should appoint trustees of such trust estates as were not duly separated and conveyed by the 1st August, 1836. Lord Cottenham was but Master of the Rolls and Lord Commissioner when this act passed, and could even himself have scarcely presaged his advancement to the woolsack when that fatal 1st of August, 1836, should have come round. It did so happen, however, that Lord Cottenham and Master Brougham between them (Master Brougham happened to be the Vacation Master in 1836-here, again, it was impossible there could have been any fore-knowledge or contrivance when the act was being framed) had the appointment of the trustees of nearly all the charity estates held by municipal corporations in the country; for, as a matter of course, scarcely any had arranged their affairs by the day in question. The partisan faculties of the persons entrusted with the appointment was manifest by a majority being given, with, we believe, scarcely a single exception, to the Radical party; although, certainly, the municipalities were much rather conservative in their inclinations. Another equally glaring instance was given near the end of his career-qualis ab inceptu -in the appointment of County Court judges. Every one of these, sixty-nine in number, were "good men and true,"— of undoubted Whig principles-with the single exception of a gentleman who had been consulted by Lord Lyndhurst in framing the bill, upon the express promise of a judgeship.

Another striking instance of this partisan feeling was manifested in the O'Connell writ of error case in the House of Lords. Though delivering a judgment contrary to the great majority of the judges, and on a question of criminal law, in which he had never had the smallest experience, his lordship was not ashamed to conclude his judgment in the following memorable words:" The opinion I have now expressed I formed early in the argument at the Bar. I have carefully considered

all that has been urged at the Bar or suggested by the majority of the judges, but I have not found any reason for altering my original opinion." A memorable avowal, which indeed might probably be stereotyped at the close of every judgment he ever delivered,

There has seldom probably been a judge who has left behind him fewer traditional stories. No bon mots, no racy anecdotes have we heard bandied about of his, as of almost every other eminent legal authority. His taste even in youth seems never to have been to the litera humaniores-he closed all connections, even with the University, by taking his name off the books after taking his degree-he was a rugged mass of law and Whiggism, and nothing else. We should praise the bridge that carries us over; and the ex-chancellor knowing right well that he owed his success, first to himself, next to his law, and thirdly to his party, and to nothing else, seems to have given his affections to these three objects in the same order,-and to nothing else.

His efforts in the cause of Law Reform were neither very great nor very successful. He made, it is true, a great speech on the subject of chancery reform in 1836, but he clung to every detail of his plan with the invincible pertinacity which seemed to pervade every action of his life; and when he found it impossible to centre all attention and to support his own plan in every point, he seemed reluctant to assent to reforms which carried out even his own views in part only. The other great effort to which he was a party was embodied in the Orders of 22nd April, 1850, providing the new method of claims in chancery. But his last and fatal illness too quickly followed the issuing of those Orders to allow any criticism to be made upon his views in making this great alteration.

Notwithstanding the utter prostration of his bodily health prevented his almost ever sitting in chancery during the last year of his official career, his mental vigour continued little, if at all, subdued; and his hand still clasped the seals. At last, lured by the bait of an Earl's coronet, he allowed them to devolve into other and more vigorous hands; and immediately left this country, to seek in a milder climate renovated health. But it was too late-a momentary improvement induced him to turn his steps northward-but it was but for a day; and the angel of death overtook him at Pietra Santa, in the territory of Lucca, on his seventieth birth-day.

He is succeeded in his titles and estates by his eldest son, Viscount Crowhurst, now Earl Cottenham.

R. U.

Notes of Leading Cases.

EQUITY.

SECRET-BREACH OF FAITH-INJUNCTION TO RESTRAIN USE OF, OBTAINED BY-INNOCENT PARTY.

Morison v. Moat, 18 Law Times, 28.

THE present will doubtless become a very leading case upon one of those peculiar branches of the jurisdiction of the Court of Chancery which arise from the cognizance it takes of the obligations which conscience and good faith may impose upon parties who are brought before it.

The present case arose out of rather complicated partnership transactions which had taken place between the Morisons and the Moats in respect of a medicine invented by one of the former and known by the name of "Morison's Pills.” The chief material circumstances were these: the father of the defendant had received from the inventor upon his entering into partnership with him the secret of the composition of the pills; both were to be at liberty (under certain restrictions) to introduce a fresh partner into the firm but while the inventor was to be at liberty to disclose the secret of his invention to a partner, the defendant's father was precluded from doing so, and on that undertanding alone was it imparted to him. In fraud of his agreement he disclosed it to the defendant, who had no knowledge of it, except by such disclosure; he had also introduced first one son into the firm, and then substituted the defendant; the inventor had also introduced his two sons, the plaintiffs; various transactions had been entered into, but none materially affecting the rights of the parties; and the inventor and the defendant's father had died. On the expiration of the partnership the defendant used the secret for the purpose of making and selling the medicine, whereupon the plaintiff's applied for an injunction to restrain him from doing so, which was in substance granted by Turner, V. C., who in an elaborate judgment examined the authorities upon this subject. No patent existed in the "Pills," so that there was no property in their composition in any party. The decision was entirely referred to the moral