421 As a public prosecutor, in an age of sedition and political unrest, he was conspicuous for his fairness. Both in the House of Commons and in the House of Lords, he exercised im mense influence over the minds of his col leagues and fellow members. He acted as a great conciliatory force, not only in the Cabinet, but in his relation with the Crown. Sir George Jessel considered him to have been the greatest equity lawyer that ever held the seals, putting Lord Cairns second, and Lord Kldon in a rather low place. Hardwicke's chief defect as Chancellor was his habit of requiring cases to be reargued, and of postponing indefinitely the delivery of his judgments. A still worse eminence in this bad practice was obtained by Lord Eldon. It became a fruitful source of those arrears which have harassed and discredited the work of subsequent Chancery judges so seriously. In the time of Hardwicke there was a strong movement among equity law yers in favor of greater definiteness in the principles on which the Court of Chancery acted, and he did his best at once to encour age this movement and to confine it with in proper limits. " Some general rules," he said, " there ought to be, for otherwise the great inconvenience of jus vagum ct incertum will follow, but yet the praetor must not be so absolutely and invariably bound by them as the judges are by the rules of the common law, for if he were so bound . . . he must pronounce decrees which would be materially unjust, since no rule can be equally just in the application to a whole class of cases that are far from being the same in every circumstance. This might lay a founda tion for an equitable relief even against decrees in equity and create a kind of superfectation of courts of equity." The most noteworthy of Hardwicke's decisions are Chesterfield v. Janssen, in which he analyzes the various kinds of frauds against which equity would relieve, and Penn v. Baltimore, a case described by Hardwicke himself as "worthy the judicature of a Roman senate
rather than of a single judge," in which he held that it was within the jurisdiction of the court to grant specific performance of an agreement as to real property situate in America, comprising two provincial govern ments and three counties.
LORD THURLOW. Edward Thurlow was the son of an Eng lish rector. Born at Ashfield, in Suffolk, in 1732, he was educated at King's School, Canterbury, and Caius College, at Cam bridge, from whose books, to avoid expul sion, he was obliged to withdraw his name in 175 1. The incident which led to this denouement was amusing and characteristic. As a punishment for some act of insubor dination, Thi1rlow was told to translate a paper of the Spectator into Greek. He per formed his task, but instead of taking his pencil theme, as he ought to have done, to the Dean of his college, he left it with the tutor. The Dean called upon him for an explanation, whereupon Thurlow stated that he had acted not disrespectfully, but with a compassionate desire to save the Dean from being puzzled. In fairness to Thurlow it should be recorded that he afterwards made the amende honorable for this and other de linquencies. When he became Chancellor he sent for his old superior, and on his entering the room where he was, said, adopting an insolent query of his under graduate days, " How d'ye do, Mr. Dean?" "My lord," was the answer, " I am not now a Dean, and do not deserve the title." " But you arc a Dean," Thurlow replied, handing him a paper of nomination, " and so con vinced am I that you will do honor to the appointment, that I am sorry any part of my conduct should have given offence to so good a man." Thurlow was called to the bar in 1754, and joined the Home Circuit. Although he gained considerable credit and a little prac
