Of the Duke of Argyll's violent, vigorous, and very imprudent
speech we have said enough elsewhere ; he certainly took upon the Government all the responsibility which previous speeches had attempted to fix on the Lord Chancellor, but added little to the discussion except invective against the Lord Chief Justice. Lord Westbury, in his blandest accents, said that the Lord Chancellor in appointing Sir R. Collier to the Common Pleas would say to himself, " I am doing that which is quite right, and within my power ;" that the Prime Minister in appointing a Judge of the Common Pleas to the Judicial Committee would add, " I am doing that which is quite right, and within my power," and yet that " these two rights made together an insufferable wrong," and "these two acts of public propriety constituted the grave impro- priety which they were then discussing." He put Mr. Justice Wiles out of the case as a man who knew nothing of that higher law of equity which alone condemned this act, and recommended Sir Roundell Palmer to use Mr. Justice Willes' ignorance to illustrate the need for a better legal education. He described the Lord Chancellor's act as the fraudulent use of a statatable power for purposes not contemplated by the statute, and was altogether as blandly disagreeable as he could be.
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