English Judicial Character worthy of repetition. In a case where his own interests were involved, the King sought to overawe the judges of Eng land and to commit them to a certain course in advance. The other judges expressed compliance. Coke's answer was: "When the case happens, I shall do that which shall be fit for a judge to do." It was the noblest illustration of the independence that marked his whole life. Yet, admirable as was Coke's con duct, it has many parallels in English judicial history. The time has not come often since those days of intensified royal prerogative when the test would have been similarly applied, but, to the credit of the English bench, few of the judges who have succeeded Coke would have been less true to duty. Lord Chelmsford's firm refusal, at a much later time, to submit to interference at the hands of Disraeli with his judicial appointments, is but one of a number of instances showing that Coke's spirit has ever since been alive in England. Sir Matthew Hale, that modest, virtuous man who gravely warned his grandchildren against the evil influence of "pledging healths," is in many re spects the antithesis of Coke, the grim, militant lawyer, who, with all his merits, neither possessed nor cultivated those gentler virtues for which Hale was so conspicuous. But they stand on com mon ground in the high conception of a judge's duty that both held and exem plified. Hale's views were expressed in a series of rules for judicial conduct which he composed and closely followed. They embody the essentials of strict uprightness, industry, independence, selfrestraint, and that rarer quality of the open mind, which, in his words, is to be not "prepossessed with any judgment at all, till the whole business and both parties be heard." He has given an example to both judges and lawyers in
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the practice that he observed of speaking "in few words and home to the point." No purer character is to be found in England's judicial annals, and perhaps none have been more learned and en lightened. His virtues stirred the heart of the Puritan Richard Baxter to write of him in words of unmeasured praise, in part as follows: "Sir Matthew Hale, that unwearied student, that prudent man, that solid philosopher, that famous lawyer, that pillar and basis of justice — (who would not have done an unjust act for any worldly price or motive) — ... that pattern of honest plainness and humility, who, while he fled from the honors that pursued him, was yet Lord Chief Jus tice of the King's Bench, after his long being Lord Chief Baron of the Exche quer; living and dying, entering on, using, and voluntarily surrounding his place of judicature with the most uni versal love, and honor, and praise, that ever did English subject in this age, or any that just history doth record." All lawyers do homage at the shrine of Holt. In America there is a custom to speak of the "Great Chief Justice." In England, though no single judge stands out with such pre-eminence, prob ably the name of Holt as naturally rises to the thoughts when this term is used as that of Marshall does in this country. He stands for strength, for soundness, for courage, for common sense. He lived at a time when witchcraft and supernatural appearances were yet be lieved in, and the individual who announced himself as the messenger of the Almighty, charged with a demand that a nolle prosequi be granted for a certain prisoner then awaiting trial, had reason to hope that he might overawe the Chief Justice. But Holt, observing that the Almighty would never have
