Lord Justice Holker died on Wednesday morning, after being Lord
Justice for only a few months. He is a great loss to English law, and probably to English justice, though his career as a Judge was too short to give any evidence of his powers. Sir John Holker was a man of remarkably independ- ent mind. As a politician he was an extreme Conservative, and even in relation to legal matters he always seemed to in- terpret the law,—the international law, for instance, as to the territoriality of British ships-of-war in relation to the slave who seeks the protection of our Flag in the harbours of a Power which recognises slavery,—in an extremely Conservative sense. But he was a very able legal reformer, as his Penal Code proved ; and on questions like the Bra4laugh question, he took up ground far more tenable and statesmanlike than the rest of hie party. He is to be succeeded as Lord Justice by Sir Ch u les Bowen, the youngest of our Judges, and certainly one of the subtlest-minded amongst them.
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