sacred duty which he owes his client, knows in the discharge of that office but one per son in the world — that client and none other. To save that client by all expedient means, to protect that client at all hazards and costs to all others, and among others to himself, is the highest and most unquestioned of his duties, and he must not regard the alarm, the suffering, the torment, the destruction he may bring on any other. Nay, separat ing even the duties of a patriot from those of an advocate, and casting them if need be to the wind, he must go on reckless of the consequences if his fate it should unhappily be to involve his country in confusion for his client's protection." Lord Brougham subsequently attempted to explain this wholly indefensible language. " The real truth is," he said, " that the statement was anything rather than a deliberate and wellconsidered opinion. It was a menace, and it was addressed chiefly to George IV., but also to wiser men such as Castlereagh and Wel lington. I was prepared, in case of necessity, that is, in case the bill (for the Queen's divorce) passed the Lords, to do two things : first to resist it in the Commons with the country at my back, but next, if need be, to dispute the King's title, to show he had for feited the crown by marrying a Catholic, in the words of the succession act, as if he were naturally dead." One might be dis posed to regard Brougham's language as simply an instance of the unbridled license which led him to denounce Peel — whose shoe's latchet he was unworthy to unloose — as " the mean, base, fawning parasite" of Wellington. But he afterwards expounded the advocate's duty, as he conceived it, in not wholly dissimilar terms; and — to the credit of the English bar be it said — the exposition was promptly condemned by Chief-Justice Cockburn, who declared that a barrister must exercise his art with the weapons of a soldier and not with the poi soned dagger of an assassin. Brougham became Lord Chancellor in 1830, and played
an important part in the judicial work of the Privy Council, and in the judicial and legislative work of the House of Lords, till 1860. He died on 7th May, 1868. During his chancellorship his utmost energies were applied to securing the enactment of the Reform Bill, and to the support of other ministerial measures, and to the reform of the Court of Chancery, from which he swept away a great number of sinecure places entailing enormous expense on suitors. He took an active part in the creation of the Judicial Committee, and was the author of the Act of 1835, by which the prolongation of letters-patent was brought within its juris diction. Perhaps the judgment of Lord Brougham's that has excited most discus sion was that in Waring v. Waring, where he held that even the least degree of mental disease would destroy testamentary capa city. This doctrine was, however, over thrown by the decision of Chief-Justice Cockburn in Banks v. Goodfcllow. Lord Brougham was not a great lawyer or judge in the sense in which we apply the term to Cairns or Jessel. But he had one of the keenest and brightest intellects and one of the best stored minds ever possessed by man. Another judge who has taken a prom inent part in Privy Council appeals is Lord Penzance (Sir J. P. Wilde). Born in 1 8 16, and educated at Winchester School and Trinity College, Cambridge, Wilde was called to the bar of Lincoln's Inn in 1839, and joined the Northern Circuit. In 1840 he was appointed junior counsel to the ex cise and customs, and soon acquired a large mercantile and admiralty practice. He took "silk" in 1855, was appointed Baron of the Exchequer in 1860, succeeded Sir Cresswell Cresswell in the Court of Probate and Admiralty in 1863, and was raised to the House of Lords with the title of Lord Pen zance in 1869. We shall have to refer to some of his judgments in dealing with the ecclesiastical courts, and the Probate and
