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BARON PARKE'S STRENGTH AND WEAKNESS.
- London, 15th December 1850. San—Allow me to express the satisfaction I feel at seeing that you regard with apprehension the rumoured advancement of Baron rarke to a place in. which he must necessarily exercise immense influence on the destinies of Eng- lish jurisprudence,—an apprehension which ought to be shared by all who would not sacrifice justice to logic and convenience to technicality. or indus- try, for learning, for logical power, the eminent judge in question is unrivalled; and all students of law, myself among the number, must feet grateful to him for the brilliant, concise, and systematic manner in which he expounds the most complicated doctrines. Unfortunately, however, lie does not exhibit any deep love of justice, or any practical sense of what is expedient. Law and system are all in all with him ; society and its wants are nothing : ends are lost in means. Like the logicians of the middle ages, his reasoning is perfect., but his premises are sadly defective. Itis now, I believe, beginningto be admitted, that in the cases in which he differed from Lord Abinger the
latter was generally in the right ; and I have no doubt that experience will prove a large proportion of the rules adopted at his suggestion and by his in- fluence to be inconsistent with conscience and with the natural principles of equity. I may menden as instances, his decisions (for they are virtually his) on the liabilities of persons connected with incipient joint stock companies, and on the subject of fraud and misrepresentation. On the latter point it is not too much to say that he has thrown into utter confusion a well-settled system of sound rules, and has divorced law from justice. The decision in the case of Cornfoot a. Fowke, one of many such, is an offence to every rea- sonable lawyer, and almost seems to evince some want of moral perception in its author.
The elevation of such a man to the position of Minister of Justice would, at the present time, when men arc clamouring, and with reason, for speed, economy, and justice in the administration of the law, be fraught with dan- ger, and would in the end increase the odium with which law and lawyers
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