journey from the reign of Ethelred to that of George IV., I find this Chancellor alone without an accuser; without an enemy; without a detractor; without any one, from malice or mistake, to cavil at any part of his character, conduct, or demeanour. While in no respect deficient in judicial gravity and dignity, the flowing courtesy of his manners seems to have won all hearts. Well acquainted with the most abstruse branches of the law of real property, he had himself heard delivered in court all the important judgments of Lord Harcourt, Lord Cowper, Lord Macclesfield, Lord King, and Sir Joseph Jekyll, and he knew familiarly the most minute details of practice, which are only to be learned thoroughly by experience, and to which there was then hardly any printed guide. In addition to these qualifications, he was energetic and indefatigable in business, punctual in his hours of sitting-till he had subdued his arrears, eager to avoid, instead of to make, a holiday, and to postpone, instead of hastening, the adjournment of the Court. He was under the influence of no leader at the bar, and he on no occasion showed peculiar favour to any counsel, unless to those who required encouragement from their modesty and timidity. He never even incurred a suspicion of corruption in the disposal of office or of undue influence in his decrees."

Some of his decisions are to be found in Peere Williams,

also was received with loud cheering, and was rendered even more interesting by the manner in which the Queen joined in it. Holding a glass of port wine in her hand, she stood up all the time, and drank it off to the bottom. His Royal Highness, in a peculiarly distinct voice, returned thanks, and said he had received her Majesty's commands to propose Prosperity to the Honourable Society of Lincoln's Inn,' which was drunk. Soon after the Queen, accompanied by the ministers and benchers, withdrew, amidst loud cheering. Her Majesty and her party retired into the council-room; from whence, after her carriage had been summoned, she came again into the Hall, and, accompanied by the Treasurer and benchers, she proceeded amidst loud cheering into her carriage, and departed.

"It is further to be noticed that Prince Albert, on withdrawing after the feast, put on a student's gown over his Field Marshal's uniform, and so wore it on returning from the Hall."

Albert was in due form called to the Bar, and was elected a Bencher.

On the grand day of the following Trinity Term, his Royal Highness dined in the Hall as a Bencher-when he most gracefully entered the dining hall, after Henry Tancred, Esq., M.P. for Banbury, the Treasurer. Such intercourse tends to strengthen the throne, and to perpetuate the liberties of the people

u It is related of him, that he much valued a maxim taken for the motto to a law book, published by Judge Jenkins. "The common law has been from the beginning of the world, for it is common reason;" and that "he quoted and avowed this maxim from the bench whenever any thing repugnant to it was offered from the bar." But I think he was too sensible a man to set up for law his own notion of what was reasonable or unreasonable, expedient or inexpedient. It was well said by Mr. Justice Burrough, " Public policy is an unruly horse, which, if a Judge unwarily mounts, ten to one he is run away

Afterwards, his Royal Highness Prince with."

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but his chief reporter is Forrester, a barrister who practised before him, and has left us an octavo volume, entitled, "Cases Tempore Talbot." This gentleman, with an adequate share of professional knowledge and accuracy, possessed little skill in composition, so that he gives us a very faint notion of the lucid reasoning and felicity of illustration universally ascribed to the Judge whose fame he ought to have perpetuated.

I can do little more than show how Lord Chancellor Talbot disposed of a few of the principal questions which came before him. He first decided that the Court will assist a testamentary guardian to prevent an improper marriage of an infant heir. The son of the late Lord Raymond, Chief Justice of the King's Bench, while a boy of seventeen, was about to marry a Miss Chetwynd. Thereupon his guardians, under his father's will, filed a bill in the Court of Chancery, and presented a petition, stating that it would be a great disadvantage to the minor to marry at this time, and that it had been necessary to keep him in close custody to prevent his marrying, and praying that the Lord Chancellor would give such directions as he should think fit for the benefit of the minor. Lord Chancellor: "I am glad that this application has been made. The Court will prevent the marriage if it has the power to do so. It is admitted that the young lady is of a good family, and it is not shown what fortune the young peer has, so that I cannot tell whether this be a Smithfield bargain or not; but his age is improper for marriage; that is the consideration which weighs most with me, and upon which I think myself bound to interfere. In order to strengthen the hands of the guardians, I order them to retain the Lord Raymond in their care and custody, and that they do not permit him to marry without the consent of the Court. But it has been said that it would be very cruel and unnatural in a father not to suffer his daughter to marry to her advantage, and she would have reason to blame him for it ever after. Now, to prevent that charge upon Mr. Chetwynd, I order him not to suffer his daughter to marry the Lord Raymond without the consent of the Court-which prevents any imputation or charge upon Mr. Chetwynd from the lady, or any body else; since, if there be any fault in it, it will fall upon the Court, and I shall be very willing to bear it.'

In Cray v. Rooke, he had to determine whether a bond which a testator had given to his mistress should be set aside; and if not, in what order and from what fund it should be satisfied.

* The Lord Raymond's case.-Cas. Temp. Talbot, 58.

After great deliberation, he held that, as it had not been obtained by fraud, it should not be set aside in favour of the legitimate children or heir; that it should not be paid out of the personal estate until after simple contract debts; but that it should be paid out of the real estate if the personal estate should fall short."

The question arose in Heard v. Stanford, "whether, if a man marries a woman of large personal property which comes to him by the marriage,-after her death he is liable for the debts due from her before marriage?" It was strongly urged that, as he would be liable for them during her life, her fortune in his hand should be considered equitable assets for the benefit of her creditors. Lord Chancellor: "The question is, whether the husband, as such, be chargeable for a debt of his wife after her death, in a court of Equity? As, on the one hand, the husband is liable to all his wife's debts during the coverture, though he did not get one shilling portion with her; so, on the other hand, it is as certain that if the debt be not recovered during the coverture, the husband is no longer chargeable as such, let the fortune he received with his wife be ever so great. The case, perhaps, may be hard, but the law has made it so,-that it may be equal on both sides, as well where the husband is sued during the coverture for a debt of his wife's with whom he had no fortune, as when by her death he is discharged from all her debts, notwithstanding any fortune he may have received in marriage with her. So is the law; and the alteration, if desirable, is the proper work of the legislature only."

In Barbuit's case it was debated "whether a foreign minister resident in England, by engaging in commerce, forfeits his privilege not to be arrested, and whether a foreign consul is privileged as a minister." Barbuit, commissioned by the King of Prussia "to do what his Prussian Majesty should think fit to order with regard to his subjects trading in Great Britain," exercised the trade of a tallow-chandler in London, and, being imprisoned under an order made in a Chancery suit, he claimed, as an ambassador, to be discharged. Lord Chancellor : Though this is a very unfavourable case, yet if the defendant is truly a public minister, I think he may insist on his privilege after allowing the suit to go on ten years against him without objection; for the privilege of a public minister is to have his person sacred and free from arrests, not on his own account, y Cas. Temp. Talbot, 155. Z Heard v. Stanford, Cas. Temp. Talbot, 173.

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but on the account of those he represents: and this arises from the necessity of the thing, that nations may have intercourse with one another in the same manner as private persons, by agents, when they cannot meet themselves. And if the foundation of this privilege is for the sake of the prince by whom an ambassador is sent, and for the sake of the business he is to do, it is impossible that he can renounce the privilege introduced not for his own benefit. He may deserve to be thrown into prison, but we must protect the state which he represents. The exception in the statute of Anne of persons trading, relates only to the servants of ambassadors, for the parliament never imagined that the ambassadors themselves would trade. The question is, whether the defendant be a public minister? If he had been accredited to negotiate a commercial treaty, he would have been so. It is of no weight with me, that he was not to concern himself about other matters of state. The commission need not be general to entitle him to protection. But this person is not to transact affairs between the two Crowns: the commission is to assist his Prussian Majesty's subjects here in their commerce. Although he is called an agent of commerce, I do not think that the name alters the case. At most he is only a CONSUL, and it is the opinion of Barbeyrac, Wiquefort, and other writers on public law, that a Consul is not entitled by the Jus Gentium to the privileges of an ambassador. I therefore cannot discharge him."a

In Duke of Somerset v. Cookson, from a desire to do complete justice, he a little stretched his authority by holding that a bill in Equity lies to compel the preservation and the delivery to the right owner of a valuable piece of art. The plaintiff, as lord of the manor of Carbridge in Northumberland, having a grant of treasure trove," was entitled to an antique silver altar dug up there, which had a Greek inscription upon it, and was dedicated to Hercules. The altar had been purchased by the defendant with notice of the claim to it, and he threatened to deface it or melt it down. On a demurrer to a bill filed by the Duke for an injunction, and to have the altar delivered up to him, it was objected that the remedy was at law by action of trover or of detinue; that Equity had not yet gone farther than to allow a suit for the recovery of title deeds, which savour of the realty; and that if the present plaintiff were to succeed, State satisfied his creditors, and he was discharged.

a Cases Temp. Talbot, 181. But, to please the Prussian Government, the Secretary of

all actions of trover and detinue would be turned into bills

in Chancery. But Lord Talbot held, "that this suit was maintainable on the ground that the thing sued for was matter of curiosity and antiquity; that it would be very hard if a person who wrongfully gets possession of such a relique might destroy or retain it, paying the intrinsic value of it; and that the law being defective in this respect, such defect is properly supplied in Equity."t

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One other case of general interest I find to have been decided by him,-Hunter v. Murray-in which the question arose, whether, since the Union with Scotland, under a writ of ne exeat regno, a party might be prevented from going into that part of the United Kingdom." Lord Chancellor: "This, in its origin, was a mandatory writ to prevent the King's subjects from going into foreign parts to practise treason with the King's enemies: but since, it has been made ancillary to the jurisdiction of this Court, that persons residing within the realm of England may be compelled to do justice to their fellow subjects. How can I alter the terms or the operation of the writ by reason of the legislative Union with Scotland, which in no respect enlarges or affects the jurisdiction of any Court in England? It is dangerous to alter established forms. I will make no order, but leave parties to proceed in the old beaten path."

These specimens of Lord Talbot's decisions may not exalt him in our view above the level of modern Vice-Chancellors, but by his contemporaries he was regarded almost as a superior being. -His great despatch, and the admirable manner in which he comported himself, caused a prodigious influx of business into his Court, and "Chancery" having for the first time in England become a popular word, it was said that " a new era had begun in the administration of Equity." I ought likewise to mention to his credit, that he powerfully assisted the inquiries which were going on respecting the taking of excessive fees from the suitors, and that he had important measures in preparation for correcting judicial abuses. Thus was Lord Talbot successfully labouring as a magistrate, and if his life. had been spared I make no doubt that the praise of perfecting our equitable system would have been bestowed upon him still more loudly than it has been upon his successor.

b Peere Williams, 390.

Hunter v. Murray, Cas. Temp. Talb. 196. d In mentioning the universal satisfaction

which Lord Talbot gave as a Judge, perhaps I ought to have excepted old Sarah Duchess of Marlborough; but, as we say in Scotland,