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    than what is the joint business of several . One judge relies only upon himself , several rely uj > on each other . One judge feels that the whole merit and the whole responsibility will / lie with him one of several knows that hie has only his alitjuot par * , and f responsibility which is divided is destroyed . ' When four judges are set to try one cause , ( as in the Common Law Courts , and in Lord

    Brougham ' s proposed Court of Appeal , ) the best that happens is , that one judge really decides , using the others as screens , and occasionally as drudges : while it too often happens that not even one of the four gives his whole mind to the subject ; and , perhaps , from the carelessness in making appointments , which is likel y to prevail in nominating not a judge but a fourth part of a judge , not one of the four has a rnind which he can apply , with any prospect of advantage , to a difficult cause .

    A good judicial establishment would consist only of local courts , and one great Court of Appeal , in the metropolis , composed of a sufficient number of the most experienced and skilful judges . Each judge should sit separately to hear causes , but when a point of law has to be settled , then , to secure uniformity of decision , all the judges of the Court of Appeal should sit together .

    And then , touching the forensic strepitus which Lord Brougham thinks of so much importance ; is there any meaning in this loosest of all terms , and what is it ? Surely not , that noise and bustle conduce to excellence , in the operation which , of all others performed by human beings , most demands that the mind be in a cool and collected state . If it be meant that , in the present state of English law , the judge cannot pick out the law applicable to the case without learned lawyers on both sides of the

    cause to suggest it to him , we grant it ; but of such strepitus there will be as much , indeed more , in the hi g hest court , the court of last resort , than in the inferior ones . Wliat is wanted in a judge , besides knowledge of the law , is skill in judging of evidence . As this skill can only be the result of experience , it is most important that a judge in the supreme tribunal should have been a judge in one of the courts below , but nowise that he should be so . If he be fit for the higher duty , it is a mere waste of

    capacity to set him to work in a narrower field , and under correction from a superior . The judges who can be trusted without a superior over them , are not so numerous that the nation can spare any part of their time for acting under other people . We abstain from comment on the very unexpected eulogium ,

    ( as we think it must have been to those who were the objects of it ) which Lord Brou g ham pronounced upon the House of Lords , as the amenders of the absurd legislation of the House of Commons . We have not been observers of Henry Brougham f <> r fifteen years , to learn now , that when once his lips are unsealed he never knows where to stoy > . When his cue was to assail the Lords , he could not restrain within the bounds of dignity his

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    664 Notes on ike Nkto&papers .

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Sept. 2, 1834, page 664, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2637/page/60/