nless the court in a particular case makes an order to the contrary.

A decision of the court of appeal is final in appeals from the High
Court in bankruptcy, unless leave be given to appeal to the House of
Lords (S 104, Bankruptcy Act 1883), and in divorce appeals, except where
the decision either is upon the grant or refusal of a decree for
dissolution or nullity of marriage, or for a declaration of legitimacy,
or is upon any question of law on which the court gives leave to appeal
(Supreme Court of Judicature Act 1881, S 9); but no further appeal to
the House of Lords lies, even with leave of the court of appeal, on
appeals from the High Court sitting as a court of appeal from county
courts in bankruptcy. With these exceptions there is now a right of
appeal from every order of the court of appeal to the House of Lords.

_The House of Lords._--The House of Lords has for centuries been the
court of last resort, and is still the final court of appeal from the
chief courts in the United Kingdom. The origin of the appellate
jurisdiction of the House of Lords was undoubtedly of that partly feudal
and partly popular character already alluded to, which made the suitor
seek from the high court of parliament the justice denied elsewhere in
the baronial courts or by the king's judges. The lords exercised the
mixed function of jurymen and judges, and, as in judgments on
impeachment, might be influenced by private or party considerations,
debating and dividing on the question before the House. A revolution was
silently accomplished, however, by which the function of reviewing the
decisions of the courts fell entirely to the lawyers raised to the
peerage, while the unprofessional lords only attended to give the
sanction of a quorum to the proceedings, and the House has always had
the right to invoke the assistance of the judges of the superior courts
to advise on the questions of law raised by an appeal. The letters and
memoirs, so late as Queen Anne's reign, show that party or personal
influence and persuasion were employed to procure votes on appeals, as
they have been in later times on railway or other local bills. The last
instance probably in which a strong division of opinion was manifested
among the unprofessional lords was the celebrated Douglas cause in 1769,
when the House was addressed by the dukes of Newcastle and Bedford, but
was led by the authoritative opinion of Lord Mansfield on the effect of
the evidence--an opin