mors of the many, and
his unquestioned spotless integrity. During a portion of his lengthened
judicial career Lord Mansfield held a seat in the Cabinet, but nobody
thought of questioning the purity of his judgments on that account.
Toward the close of his judicial life Lord George Gordon was tried for
Inciting the rioters who set fire to Lord Mansfield's house and destroyed
his property. Lord Mansfield was the presiding judge on that memorable
occasion, and it was upon his exposition of the law of high treason to
the jury, and after his summing up, that Lord George Gordon was
acquitted.

"The benefits conferred by this accomplished judge upon the Court and
upon its suitors," says one of his biographers,--

"Were manifold and substantial. He began by at once so regulating the
distribution of the business, as to remove all uncertainty of the matters
which should be taken up each day, and to diminish both the expense, and
the delay, and the confusion of former times. He restored to the whole
bar the privilege of moving in turn, instead of confining this to the
last day of the term. He almost abolished the tedious and costly practice
of having the same case argued several times over, restricting such
rehearings to questions of real difficulty and adequate importance." The
benefits conferred upon the country were far greater. Burke, once quoting
an argument of Solicitor-General, Murray, said that "the ideas of Murray
go to the growing melioration of the law by making its liberality keep
pace with the demands of justice and the actual concerns of the
world--not restricting the infinitely diversified occasions of men and
the rules of natural justice within artificial circumscriptions, but
conforming our jurisprudence to the growth of our commerce and our
empire."

The statement is just, and a finer panegyric it were impossible to write.
Our limits, unfortunately, enable us only to indicate the achievements of
Chief Justice Mansfield; but such indications must be given, however
briefly. He found the common law of England a reproach, and, according to
Professor Story, "he put England, America, and the whole civilized world
under the deepest obligations" by the permanent improvement which he
effected in the system. During the reign of George II. England had become
the greatest manufacturing and commercial country in the world, but her
jurisprudence had, in the meanwhile, made no provision whatever for the
regulation of commerc