Younger Vesey. Thurlow, as well as the decisions of the lord chancellor, during the same period. They were intended as a supplement to the reports of Brown and the younger Vesey, so far as those reports covered the period embraced by the cases, and they are neat, brief and perspicuous reports, of unquestionable accuracy. A new and greatly improved edition has lately been published in New-York, under the superintendence of one of the masters in chancery. The reports of the younger Vesey extend over a large space of time, and contain the researches of Sir Richard Pepper Arden, as master of the rolls, and the whole of the decisions of Lord Loughborough, and carry us far into the time of Lord Eldon. These reports are distinguished for their copiousness and fidelity. The same character is due to the reports of his successors; and though great complaints have been made at the delay of causes, arising from the cautious and doubting mind of the presenta venerable lord chancellor of England, it seems to be universally conceded, that he bestows extraordinary diligence in the investigation of immense details of business, and arrives in the end at a correct conclusion, and displays a most comprehensive and familiar acquaintance with equity principles. It must, nevertheless, be admitted, that the reports of Lord Eldon's administration in equity, amounting to perhaps thirty volumes, and replete with attenuated discussion, and loose suggestions of doubts and difficulties, are enough to task very severely the patience of the profession. There are recent reports of decisions in other departments of equity which are deserving of great attention. The character of those branches of the equity jurisdicion is eminently sustained; and the reported decisions of Lord Redesdale and Lord Manners, in the Irish court of chancery, are also to be placed on a level, in point of authority, with the best productions of the English bench.b Upon our American equity reports, I have only to observe, • 1826. b The Lives of the Lord Chancellors of England, from the earliest times till the reign of George IV., in 5 vols. 8vo. London, 1846, by Lord Campbell, is the most instructive and attractive work on legal biography that is extant, and equally distinguished for its truth, its candor and its freedom. that, being decisions in cases arising under our domes tic *laws and systems, they cannot but excite a stronger *496 General merit of re I have now finished a succinct detail of the principal reporters; and when the student has been thoroughly initiated in ports. the elements of legal science, I would strongly recommend them to his notice. The old cases, prior to the year 1688, need only be occasionally consulted, and the leading decisions in them examined. Some of them, however, are to be deeply explored and studied, and particularly those cases and decisions which have spread their influence far and wide, and established principles which lie at the foundations of English jurisprudence. Such cases have stood the scrutiny of contemporary judges, and been illustrated by succeeding artists, (1) The reports of judicial decisions, to which the attention of the American lawyer is directed, have become too numerous even to be designated in a limited note. The English reports still retain their high rank in the lawyer's library. The alterations of our forms of pleadings, and in the rules of procedure, and the differences of our political systems, indeed, render many of the English decisions inapplicable to our circumstances; but the mass of legal questions will always remain alike in both countries. The essential principles of civil liberty belong to both; the mode of legislation in each is the same; and the system of evidence, the rights of persons, and the great body of commercial law, are common to England and America. The reports of the courts of England seemed for a while to languish, after the retirement of Lord Ellenborough, but they never exhibited the science of the law in so high and cultivated a state, as at the present time. If it be not presuming in an American annotator to pretend to discriminate among the contemporary decisions, he may point out to the student, among the common law reports, the decisions of the Court of Exchequer, since Baron Parke and his very learned associates became the judges, as worthy of the brightest period of English jurisprudence. Since the last edition of the Commentaries appeared, the Court of Chancery of New-York has ceased to exist, and with it has closed a series of Equity Reports which reflected lustre on the state, and the influence of which has pervaded the jurisprudence of the nation. The reports, containing the decisions of the two distinguished Chancellors of New-York, Johnson's Reports, Paige's Reports, and Barbour's Chancery Reports, comprise the whole system of equity law, and will always be the resort and study of the American lawyer. Of the first of those Chancellors, it is unnecessary to speak to the reader of his volumes. Most of his decisions have been transferred to his commentaries. "Lector, si monumentum requiris, circumspice!" But it may be permitted to the Editor to render his tribute of homage to Chancellor Walworth. It has been his privilege to practice under the Chancellor during his whole term of office, and to observe those high judicial qualities, which have rarely been equalled. If in his demeanour, on the bench, the Chancellor was sometimes open to criticism, it was that only which has been applied to kindred genius, that "he was prevented, by his inconceivable rapidity in apprehending the opinions of others, from judging accurately of their reasonableness." This criticism, however, never approached his matured decisions, embracing the whole circle of equity. Never, perhaps, were so many decisions made, where so few were inaccurate as to facts, or erroneous in law. If it was destined that the Court of Chancery should fall under a reform, which apparently designs to obliterate the history as well as the legal systems of the past, it is a consolation to reflect that it fell without imputation on its purity or usefulness, and that no court was ever under the guidance of a judge, purer in character or more gifted in talent, than the last Chancellor of New-York. and are destined to guide and control the most distant posterity. The reports of cases since the middle of the last century, ought, in most instances, to be read in course, and they will conduct the student over an immense field of forensic discussion. They contain that great body of the commercial law, and of the law of contracts, and of trusts, which governs at this day. They are worthy of being studied even by scholars of taste and general literature, as being authentic memorials of the business and manners of the age in which they were composed. Law reports are dramatic in their plan and structure. They abound in pathetic incident, and displays of deep feeling. They are faithful records of those "little competitions, factions and debates of mankind” that fill up the principal drama of human life; and which are engendered by the love of power, the appetite for wealth, the allurements of pleasure, the delusions of self-interest, the melancholy perversion of talent and the machinations of fraud. They give us the skilful debates at the bar, and the elaborate opinions on the bench, delivered with the authority of oracular wisdom. They become deeply interesting, because they contain true portraits of the talents and learning of the *497 sages of the law. *We should have known but very little of the great mind and varied accomplishments of Lord Mansfield, if we had not been possessed of the faithful reports of his decisions. It is there that his title to the character of "founder of the commercial law of England," is verified. A like value may be attributed to the reports of the decisions of Holt, Hardwicke, Willes, Wilmot, DeGrey, Camden, Thurlow, Buller, Kenyon, Sir William Scott, Grant, and many other illustrious names, which will be immortal as the English law. Nor is it to be overlooked as a matter of minor importance, that the judicial tribunals have been almost uniformly distinguished for their immaculate purity. Every person well acquainted with the contents of the English reports, must have been struck with the unbending integrity and lofty morals with which the courts were inspired. I do not know where we could resort, among all the volumes of human composition, to find more constant, more tranquil, and more sublime manifestations of the intrepidity of conscious rectitude. If we were to go back to the iron times of the Tudors, and follow judicial history down from the first page in Dyer to the last page of the last reporter, we should find the higher courts of civil judicature, generally, and with rare exceptions, presenting the image of the sanctity of a temple, where truth and justice seem to be enthroned, and to be personified in their decrees. LECTURE XXII. OF THE PRINCIPAL PUBLICATIONS ON THE COMMON LAW. Glanville. THE reports of adjudged cases are admitted to contain the highest and most authentic evidence of the principles and rules of the common law; but there are numerous other works of sages in the profession, which contribute very essentially to facilitate the researches, and abridge the labour of the student. These works acquire by time, and their intrinsic value, the weight of authority; and the earlier text books are cited and relied upon as such, in the discussions at the bar and upon the bench, in cases where judicial authority is wanting. One of the oldest of these treatises is Glanville's Tractatus de Legibus Angliæ, composed in the reign of Henry II., in which he was chief justiciary, and presided in the aula regis. It is a plain, dry, perspicuous essay on the ancient actions, and the forms of writs then in use. It has become almost obsolete, and useless for any practical purpose, owing to the disuse of the ancient actions; but it is a curious monument of the improved state of the Norman administration of justice. It is peculiarly venerable, if it be, as it is said, the most ancient book extant, upon the laws and customs of England. It has been cited, and commented upon, and extolled, by Lord Coke, Sir Matthew Hale, Sir Henry Spelman, Selden, Blackstone, and most of the eminent lawyers and antiquaries of the two last centuries. Mr. Reeves says, that In the History of the Borough and Municipal Corporations of the United Kingdom, by Messrs. Meriwether & Stephens, (vol. i. Int. 18,) all that is contained in the earlier Saxon laws, and in those of William I. and Henry L., and the charters of those periods, is said to be in a great degree repeated in Glanville, and again in Britton. Ibid. vol. i. p. 476. Dr. Irving, in his Introduction to the Study of the Civil Law, p. 93, says that Glanville's treatise is under considerable obligation to the civil law. |