CHAP. VII. by which the Whigs were crushed. The new Premier was a I ought to mention that in a very obliging and good- Lyndhurst's obliging natured manner he now gave me a small place for my clerk, disposition. who had been with me when I was Chancellor in Ireland, and who was cast away along with me in the recent wreck. To excite me to discontent and desertion, he pretended to say that the Whigs were much to blame in leaving me without any retired allowance or provision of any sort. But I was quite content to remain five years working for the public in the judicial business of the House of Lords, and in the judicial Committee of the Privy Council. I had voluntarily waived my claim to the retired allowance of Irish Chancellor, and I had no right to complain. Chancellor On the first day of Michaelmas term, Lord Chancellor Lyndhurst's Lyndhurst again received the Judges and Queen's Counsel fourth at his levee, and led the grand procession to Westminster ship. Hall. He was now in his fourth Chancellorship,-—the first having been under George IV.; the second under William IV., from the accession of that monarch till the formation of Lord Grey's Government, in November, 1830; the third again under William IV., during the hundred days from VII. CHAP. November, 1834, to April, 1835; and, lastly, under Queen Victoria, of whose conscience he was the keeper for five A.D. 1841 years. No Chancellor had received the Great Seal so often from different sovereigns since the Plantagenet reigns. 1846. Lyndhurst talis qualis. In the Court of Chancery he was now exposed to a very. disagreeable comparison; for Lord Cottenham, his immediate predecessor, although very inferior to him in grasp of intellect and general acquirements, was a consummate Equity Judge; and had given entire satisfaction to the Bar and the suitors in the Court of Chancery. Some supposed that Lord Lyndhurst would now show himself (as he might have done) one of the greatest of Chancellors. Between five and six years he had enjoyed entire leisure, and as during the whole of that period he seemed to be in the near prospect of resuming his high office, and eager again to possess it, those who were not well acquainted with his habits conjectured that he was preparing himself for its duties, with which, when he before held it, he had been of necessity imperfectly acquainted. But, in truth, he had been absorbed in political intrigue. He hardly ever attended to the judicial business of the House of Lords; with one exception, he never sat in the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, and he did not trouble himself with reading the periodical reports of the decisions of any of the Equity Judges.* No improvement was discoverable. He took no bribes, and he never was influenced by any improper motive in deciding for one party rather than the other-further than taking the course which was likely to give himself least trouble, and which least exposed him to unpleasant criticism. His excellent good sense and admirable tact kept him out of scrapes. Avoiding danger, he was careless about glory; and *The instance in which he did sit in the Privy Council was an appeal from the Arches on the will of Jemmy Wood, the banker at Gloucester, a case involving property to an immense amount, and attended with very great difficulty. I was counsel for the appellant, and I thought Lyndhurst a Daniel; for the Court, by his advice, decided for my client. But such was Lyndhurst's disinclination to judicial work, that I could not prevail upon him to attend the hearing of the appeal in the House of Lords on which the disruption of the Church of Scotland depended; and this was disposed of exclusively by two peers, Lord Brougham and Lord Cottenham. His presence might have saved a great national calamity. CHAP. VII. 1846. not by any means over-anxious or scrupulous about the business of his Court being disposed of satisfactorily. He sat in the Court of Chancery as little as he possibly could, and A.D. 1841his great object was to shirk the decision of perplexed and difficult questions. Upon appeals from the Master of the Rolls and the Vice Chancellors, he almost always affirmed; by which he had the treble advantage of lessening the number of appeals, of having the good word of the Judge appealed from, and of shunning the necessity for giving reasoned judgments.* his deci sions. It is quite marvellous to find how few and how unim- Paucity of portant are Lyndhurst's recorded decisions in his last quinquennium. They are all comprised in a portion of the first volume of Phillips's Reports, † hardly exceeding in number, and certainly not in weight, the decisions of the Court of Queen's Bench in a single term. After looking over all the Chancery cases Tempore Lyndhurst, the following is the only one I can discover likely to be interesting to the general reader,-" Viscount Canterbury v. the Attorney-General," which was commenced when I had the honour to be first law officer of the Crown. Sutton's case. On the 16th of October, 1834, the two Houses of Parlia- Speaker ment were burnt down, with the Speaker's house and adjoining buildings, constituting the ancient Royal Palace of Westminster. The conflagration was occasioned by the negligence of workmen in the employment of the Commissioners of Woods and Forests, who had made a bonfire of an immense * Lord Lyndhurst's propensity to affirm was the more striking from Lord Cottenham's propensity to reverse. This distinguished Judge did not even acknowledge that there is a presumption in favour of the decree appealed against, and that it ought to stand till the appellate Judge is convinced that it was wrong. He treated every appeal as an original hearing, being governed by the smallest inclination in his own mind in favour of the appellant's side. This was his avowed principle; but the wags in the Court of Chancery went so far as to say that he always presumed the decree to be wrong till the contrary was clearly proved, the odds being two to one against Vice Chancellor Shadwell, and three to one against Vice Chancellor Knight Bruce. From p. 50 to p. 778. The apartments called "The Speaker's House" were first appropriated to the use of the Speaker in the year 1790, by warrant of George III., and George IV. at the time of his coronation occupied them for two days as part of the palace. The crypt of the ancient chapel of St. Stephen, till the fire, had been used as the Speaker's dining-room. VII. CHAP. quantity of "wooden tallies,”-implements by which the accounts of the Exchequer had been kept, as in the reign A.D. 1841- of Edward the Confessor. The Right Hon. Charles Manners 1846. Sutton (afterwards created Viscount Canterbury) was then Speaker of the House of Commons, and this fire destroyed his furniture and plate of the value of 70007., and damaged other property of his to the amount of 30007. He took no steps with a view to obtain compensation during the reign of William IV.; but in the year 1840 he presented a Petition of Right addressed to her Majesty Queen Victoria, setting forth the above facts, and alleging that as this loss had arisen in a royal palace, from the negligence of the servants of the Crown, the petitioner, as of right, was entitled to compensation from the Crown. The Queen gave the answer "Let Right be done," and referred the case to her Lord Chancellor. The allegations of fact in the petition being substantially true, but affording no foundation in point of law for the claim, the Attorney General confessed the truth of them, and "demurred." After I was out of office, the case was very learnedly argued before Lord Lyndhurst on one side by my successor, Sir Frederick Pollock, now Chief Baron of the Exchequer; and on the other side by Serjeant Wilde, afterwards Lord Chancellor Truro. Lord Lyndhurst, having taken time to consider, delivered a very learned and excellent written judgment. He began with considering the true construction of the statute of Anne respecting liability for the consequences of accidental fire, as between subject and subject. He then proceeded to consider how far the claim could be supported against the Crown: "It is admitted that for the personal negligence of the Sovereign neither this nor any other proceeding can be maintained. Upon what ground, then, can it be supported for the acts of the agent or servant? If the master or employer is answerable upon the principle qui facit per alium facit per se, this would not apply to the Sovereign, who cannot be required to answer for his own personal acts. If it be said that the master is answerable for the negligence of his servant, because it may . CHAP. VII. A.D. 1841 be considered to have arisen from his own misconduct or negli- "Another objection urged is, that the petitioner's cause of action arose in the time of the late King; and it is clear that had this been a case between subject and subject, an action could not have been supported-actio personalis moritur cum persona. We are told that a different rule prevails when the Sovereign is a party; but some authority should be adduced for such a distinction. It is true, indeed, that the King never dies; the demise is immediately followed by the succession; there is no interval. The Sovereign always exists; the person only is changed. But if there is a change of person, why is the personal responsibility arising from the negligence of servants (if, indeed, such responsibility exists) to be charged upon the successor, ceasing as it does altogether in the case of a private individual? In the case of a subject, the liability does not continue in respect of the estate; it devolves neither upon the heir nor the personal representative; it is extinct." Having then alluded to the objections arising from the duty cast by Acts of Parliament upon the Commissioners of Woods and Forests respecting the Palace at Westminster, he asked: Assuming that the fire had been caused by the personal negligence of the Commissioners, would the Crown have been liable to make good the loss? They are, indeed, styled 'Servants of the Crown;' but they are, in truth, public officers appointed to perform certain duties assigned to them by the legislature, and for any negligence in the discharge of such duties and any injury thereby sustained, they alone, I conceive, are liable. These officers are appointed by the Crown, and are removable at the pleasure of the Crown; but that circumstance alone will not create any such liability. The Keeper of the Great Seal, and other persons holding high situations in the |