SIR ALEXANDER COCKBURN.
IN Sir Alexander Cockburn, we lose one who, after all due abatement has been made from the rather indiscriminate eulogies of the past week, must be acknowledged to have been a great, and in many respects a typical, Englishman. He came of a Scotch house, and had French blood in his veins ; but his nature, both in its strength and in its weaknesses, was thoroughly English. But he was an Englishman of a particu- lar epoch, who had survived all, or almost all, his contempo- raries, and lived on into a generation with whose ideas and aims he was not altogether at home. His vitality was so per- sistent, his powers so elastic, his resources so varied, that he often seemed as though he were one of ourselves, and we were tempted to forget that he belonged, in spirit as well as in time, to the Palmerstonian era. It was not a mere coincidence that the occasion which inspired his first great effort as a poli- tical speaker, and which revealed to the House of Commons his extraordinary faculty for argumentative rhetoric, was the Don Pacifico Debate. Don Pacifico was a poor creature ; his claims were of the most questionable kind ; Lord Palmerston's interference had been even exceptionally blustering •, and Mr. Gladstone's condemnation of the whole business, to which Cockburn's speech was a reply, correctly anticipated the verdict of history. Yet the debate was one long triumph for Lord Palmerston, and Cockburn's success was as sudden and striking as any in Parliamentary annals. The explanation is that both men were, as they always remained, in hearty sympathy with the ideas which at that time formed the main part of the average Englishman's political gospel, and which were eloquently summed up in the famous " Civis Romanus sum" peroration with which Lord Palmerston ended his speech. To the end of his life, Sir Alexander Cockburn was constantly showing that his mind was under the dominion of the same class of ideas. A man of the widest culture and of excellent literary taste, he had the most sincere reverence for, and was always ready to give sonorous ex- pression to, the common-places of the English Constitution. The "majesty of the Law," the "liberty of the subject," the inviolability of constitutional rights and legal modes of pro- cedure, were themes which excited in him genuine enthu- siasm. The " common form " of the Bench had, in his eyes, real meaning and solemnity. To irreverent and scep- tical bystanders of a later generation, it was sometimes a matter of amusement to watch him clothing with his splendid rhetoric one or another of these well-worn platitudes. But this temper of mind was one which the Chief Justice shared with some of his most eminent predecessors, and has proved very serviceable in liberalising the interpretation and controlling the technicalities of the law. His memorable charge to the grand jury in the case of Nelson and Brand, was only a conspicuous illustration of the spirit of watchful and well-founded jealousy with which he regarded all encroachments upon legal freedom. In the less known case of "Dawkins v. Lord Paulet," where the majority of the Court decided, in accordance with previous authorities, that not even the presence of malice and the absence of reasonable cause can make injurious statements in the report of a superior military officer actionable at the suit of his inferior, the Chief Justice dissented from his colleagues. " I cannot bring myself to think," he said, in the course of a judgment of which the matter and the style are equally characteristic, " that it is essential to the well-being of our military or naval force that where authority is intentionally abused, for the purpose of in- justice or oppression ; where charges are prefered which, to the knowledge of the party preferring them, are intentionally unjust ; where representations are made which the party making them knows to be slanderous and false, the party in- jured—whose professional prospects may have been ruined, and whose professional reputation may have been blasted— is to be told that the Queen's Courts, in a country whose boast it is that there is no wrong without redress, are shut to his just complaint." In this passage, the attitude in which Sir A. Cockburn approached the decisions of inferior tri- bunals, which were constantly being brought before him for review, comes out with unmistakable clearness. That in this land of law and liberty there is no wrong without a remedy, and that no remedies, except or beyond those prescribed by law, are either necessary or allowable, was with him an article of faith. Such a belief, while it quickens the zeal for justice which is the best quality of a Judge, tends to blind the eyes to the imperfections and abuses which arouse the energy of the reformer. In Sir A. Cockburn's case it did more, for it made him a persistent and powerful antagonist of legal reform. The fusion of Law and Equity, the unification of the Courts, and the assimilation of pro- cedure, were changes which he strenuously opposed, and to which, even after their adoption, he never disguised his hostility. It may be admitted that many of his criticisms were justified, and that the new system has not as yet realised all that was expected of it. But that it has effected some considerable improvements, few candid observers will deny. The Lord Chief Justice of England, however, could never bring himself to relish the legislation which had transformed his ancient and illustrious office into that of President of the Queen's Bench Division.
The question whether he was or was not a great Judge will be answered differently, according to the view taken of the requirements of his post. That he was a great lawyer, in the technical sense in which Lord Wensleydale was and Lord Blackburn is so reputed, no one would think of asserting. It is probable, indeed, that few of his predecessors were as deficient in what may be called " black-letter " knowledge as he was, when he first mounted the Bench. It may be doubted, however, whether, in his position, this was a serious disadvantage ; and it is certain that with him, as with Lord Denman, against whom the same complaint used to be made, it was more than counterbalanced by the possession of resources in which he had no rival among his colleagues. His voice and manner were as near perfection as such things well can be. His dignity was so impressive and his courtesy so winning, that the late Dr. Kenealy was probably almost the only man who ever ventured to be impertinent to him. His intellectual gifts were equally remarkable. We doubt whether he has ever been surpassed in that highest department of the art of advocacy, which consists in the telling of a complicated story with perfect lucidity, and without suppression, addition, or comment, and yet in such a way as to lead the mind of the hearer irresistibly, and as it were spontaneously, to the desired conclusion. Sir A. Cockburn's summings-up were, for the most part, efforts of this kind. He held, and we think rightly, that it is the duty of the Judge in charging the Jury to do something more than chop up the evidence into small pieces, and cram it raw down their throats. It was, as a rule, not difficult to gather from his summing-up which way he thought the verdict ought to go. Accordingly, he was not unfrequently accused by stupid people of partiality, when he had in reality only done what every Judge who is determined to prevent the defeat of justice is from time to time bound to do. There is no doubt that he was seen at his best when presiding over a Criminal Court or sitting at Nisi Prius. That he had a weakness for sensational cases must be acknowledged ; but may not the same thing be said of the great Lord Mansfield, and of Lord Campbell, and, indeed, of almost every Judge whose posi- tion has allowed him to gratify his tastes ? In Banc he had the good or the bad fortune to sit for years side by side with the greatest living master of the Common Law. Of the judgments which are recorded in the Reports of the Queen's Bench during the last twenty years, it is no disparage- ment to his memory to say that those of the Chief Justice will not be the most frequently cited. The elaborate learning with which his prepared decisions abound, has sometimes rather the air of having been got up for the occasion. But they display an intellectual grasp, a felicity of expression, a familiarity with other systems of law, and an insight into the principles of general jurisprudence, which are not too common in the English Courts, and which will cause them to be remembered and admired by posterity.
The best tribute to the memory of the late Chief Justice is the feeling, which is, we believe, universal, both in the legal profession and in the country, that his loss has left a blank which cannot be supplied. His many-sided talents, his exu- berant energy, and his brilliant career, prolonged with unabated vigour and success through the life-time of two generations, made him a unique figure among our public men. His name was associated in the popular mind with a very definite and very interesting personality. The people knew him, under- stood him, and were proud of him ; and though a fit successor to his vacant office may not be difficult to find, it will be long before the void which his death has caused will cease to be felt. He was a great judge, and an even greater power.
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