men of the greatest eminence are
called upon to give up their professional emoluments for the interests
of their country. In my opinion they have no right to refuse their
services; no man has this right when his country calls for them."

But these animadversions did not affect me. I held on to the course
which I had deliberately chosen, and which I thought my labours and
sacrifices in the Tichborne case on behalf of my country entitled me
to enjoy. Let any one who has the least knowledge of advocacy consider
what it was to carry that case to a successful issue, and then condemn
me for not taking a judgeship if he will. I was entitled to freedom
and rest. A judgeship is neither, as one finds out when once he puts
on the ermine. But it requires no argument to justify the course I
took. I was entitled to decline, and I did. There is nothing else to
be said; all other considerations are idle and irrelevant.

A judgeship was, however, a second time offered by Lord Cairns in
1876. This, after due consideration, I accepted, and received my
appointment as a Judge of the Exchequer Court on November 2 of that
year.

The first and most sensational case that I was called upon to preside
over was known as the Penge case. Sir Alexander Cockburn had appointed
himself to try it, on account of its sensational character; but as it
came for trial at a time when the Lord Chief Justice could not attend,
it fell to the junior Judge on the Bench.

I am not going to relate the details of that extraordinary case,[A]
which are best left in the obscurity of the newspaper files; but I
refer to it because it cannot well be passed over in the reminiscences
of my life. I shall, however, only touch upon one or two prominent
points.

[Footnote A: The great sensation of the case was almost overpowered by
the great sensation that "a new power had come upon the Bench." These
are, as nearly as I can give them, the words of one of our most
distinguished advocates, and one of the most brilliant who was in the
Penge case:--

"We felt, and the Bar felt, that a great power had come upon the
Bench; he summed up that case as no living man could have done. Every
word told; every point was touched upon and made so clear that it was
impossible not to see it."

Another distinguished advocate said there was no other Judge on
the Bench who could have summed that case up as Sir Henry Hawkins
did.--R.H.]

"Every person," I said in my summing up, "who is under