Buller for forgery, and, meeting with the same rigid justice he had before exacted, been convicted. At an early period of his professional life, Mr. Buller gave to the world, in his own name, the first treatise ever published on the law of Nisi Prius; it long continued, as the author intended it should be, a favourite Vade Mecum on circuit; and being published at a time when good treatises were rare, could not fail to enhance highly the legal reputation of the author. Though without much pretension to literary elegance and style, its definitions are given with clear, logical precision; its decisions are noted down with accurate brevity, and his exact method assists, while it never perplexes the learner. It was never affected to be denied, that the work was compiled from a collection of cases made by Mr. Justice (afterwards Lord) Bathurst, for his own use, and that he had given the manuscript to his kinsman to assist him in his studies. They, however, who remember the jejune and feeble talents of Lord Bathurst, may well believe that the treatise when it passed from his hand was a mere shell or skeleton; that it required Buller's plastic and vigorous arm to endue it with sinews, and flesh, and muscle. The jealous rivals, indeed, whom he had outstripped in his profession, affected to represent the publication as a disengenuous attempt to raise a spurious fame, by assuming the title of author of a book which was the work of another. Mr. Buller never condescended to notice the calumny, which was indeed, in the pithy language of Lord Mansfield, too important to be contradicted. From the first, the talents of the young lawyer had attracted the notice of the venerable judge; he had admired his perspicuous and inductive reasoning, his clear method, that perfection of forensic oratory, which says no more than just the thing it ought; his copious reading; and the nice acumen with which he could distinguish between apparently conflicting decisions, and search out the true principles of the law. The father of the King's Bench was aware, that his health and strength would be shortly on the wane, and anxiously sought a colleague on whom he could rely as another self, to whose more youthful vigour he might delegate a portion of his duties when they should become onerous, and on whose judgment he might lean with confidence, in all cases of difficulty and doubt. Accordingly

on the death of Sir Richard Aston, which occurred in Hilary Term 1778, Lord Mansfield strongly recommended Mr. Buller as his successor, and the Chancellor lost no time in offering the vacant judgeship to a young man, then only thirty-two years of age,-an instance, we believe, without parallel in the modern judicial annals of our country. In a pecuniary point of view the offer presented no attraction, the income of a puisné judge of the King's Bench, being then only two thousand two hundred a year, a sum scarcely a fourth of what a counsel in leading practice might expect to realize. He had already received a silk gown, and been appointed second judge on the Chester circuit, and stood at the vestibule of all the public offices leading to distinction. But the proposal had still a great charm to an ambitious and weary man; his constitution, naturally weak, had threatened to give way under those hard task-masters,-the daily toils of his profession,--and he sighed for the comparative repose of the Bench. His hopes, too, were flattered with the promise, that his illustrious patron would, on retiring, exert all his influence in his favour; and, that being associated with him a few years, on his shoulders would descend the mantle which had been worn by the legal seer. After a coy delay, on the 6th of May 1778 he took his seat as junior judge, on the side cushions of the King's Bench. "If any one were arrogant enough at the time," writes Mr. East, in his Introduction to the Pleas of the Crown, "to question the judgment of Lord Mansfield upon that occasion, the very active part which Mr. Justice Buller sustained, in the administration of justice, for more than seventeen years, during which time he sat in the Court of King's Bench; as well as the share which declining health permitted him to take in public business, during the six years he was a judge at the Court of Common Pleas, would most decidedly prove the discernment of that noble and enlightened magistrate, who left the public to regret, as little as possible, the infirmities which prevented the continued exertion of his own splendid talents; when to the abilities of the other judges of his Court, he added the industry, sagacity, quickness, and intelligence, for which his protegé was most eminent. And perhaps the wisdom of Lord Mansfield's recommendation cannot be more strongly evinced than by recollecting, that the whole business of the sittings in West

minster and London, during the last two or three years of his being Chief Justice, was conducted solely before Mr. Justice Buller, in the course of which many great and important questions, extensively affecting the real and commercial interests of this country, were determined by him, with a promptitude and justness of decision which would alone place him very high in rank among those judges whom this country has been used to regard with admiration and reverence." To this. high praise we may add the tributes of two other learned contemporaries. "His speeches from the Bench," we are assured," approached as near perfection as modern example reaches they were models for imitation. He possessed the greatest quickness of apprehension, saw the consequences of a fact, and the drift of an argument, at its first opening, and could immediately reply to an unforseen objection: his perception was almost too quick, it sometimes exposed him to the charge of impatience and petulance. Endued with the greatest inflexibility of sentiment; he was, like Holt, too staunch and systematic a lawyer, to suffer the stubborn principles of law to give way to the milder influences of equity. The animation with which he spoke was imposing and impressive, and the earnestness of his delivery commanded alike attention and conviction. From the distinctness of his voice. not a word was lost, and this gave effect to his language, which was clear and correct, but without any affectation of ornament or classical allusion. His summings up of evidence to jurors were master-pieces of conciseness and perspicuity. Mr. Justice Buller possessed, to a degree that I never saw equalled in any other judge, the distinguishing gift of seeing at a glance, the point on which every case before him turned; he stripped it at once of all circumstances which did not go to the merits, and to these alone he kept the evidence strictly confined. By such means the cause paper was got through at the end of every sitting; and the suitors of the Court were relieved from the anxiety of suspense, the torment of remanets, and the impoverishing punishment of refreshing fees. Precipitancy of decision was imputed to him as a fault, but it was the decision arising from talent, which saw at one view the bearing of the facts on the doubtful points of the case, and the principles of law to which the attention should only

have been directed." The beginning of the year 1788 saw Buller at the summit of his professional eminence, on the point of grasping, in the general expectation of the profession, that power in name of which he had long possessed the reality. While Mr. Justice Ashurst presided in the King's Bench, Judge Buller had in effect been the Chief Justice, in every respect but in possession of the title. The patronage which belonged to the office, it was understood, Lord Mansfield had wholly resigned to him during his retirement. His regulations and rules of Court were uniformly sanctioned by him, and his recommendations to office invariably attended to. In disposing of the business of the Court he was absolute. The passive indolence and inertness of Ashurst left him without control, and Judge Grose had too recently come from the Common Pleas, and was too little acquainted with the practice of the King's Bench, to presume to interfere. His assumption over his senior was noticed by the bar, and one of them having remarked to Cowper, the King's Counsel, how Buller trespassed on the province of Ashurst; "Pooh !" said Cowper, "that's nothing, don't you see," pointing to the senior's rubicund face, "how he himself gives colour to the trespass." Our readers, who are not professional, must be willing to believe that the jest was a good one, for we dare not hazard in their behalf that most forlorn of all Quixotic undertakings, the attempting to explain a joke. Not only over the chief Court of Common Law but over the Court of Chancery also, was Judge Buller at this time called upon to preside. Lord Thurlow in his frequent absences through illness or affairs of state, placed more reliance on Buller than on any other substitute; and, on resuming his seat, would highly eulogize the decrees of one whom he, in common with all the world, felt bound to respect and admire.

In the summer Lord Mansfield resigned, and "a change came o'er the spirit of his dream." The wishes of the venerable peer, to secure which he had exerted all those arts of diplomacy for which he had in earlier life been so famous,--the general hopes of the profession, who contrasted the courteous bearing of Buller with the rough deportment of his rival,—his own high claim from having performed unfeed so long and so ably the arduous duties of the office,—were all alike disregarded. The prime

minister, Mr. Pitt, was one who scarcely ever rewarded any but political services; and even in his judicial appointments had respect for previous merits in Saint Stephen's Chapel. To Buller, except in the remembrance of a few courtesies which that learned judge had shown him on his first Western circuit, he was almost wholly unknown; but Sir Lloyd Kenyon, an honest and admirable lawyer, had served him faithfully for several political campaigns, and had fought his battles, in advocating the Westminster scrutiny, one of the most unwise and unpopular acts during his administration. With characteristic

hauteur he controlled the choice of the Chancellor; and, notwithstanding his curses, muttered loud and deep, insisted on bestowing the second vacant prize, the Mastership of the Rolls, on another staunch political friend, Sir Pepper Arden. The sole reward which Buller got for his valuable labours was the promise of a baronetcy, to which rank he was elevated the following year. That he felt the disappointment keenly could have afforded no surprise; it was not confined to himself—a general feeling of regret was excited among the whole of the King's Bench bar, in whose estimation he stood so very high, not merely for the extent of his legal knowledge, but for his conduct towards them on the bench, and for his general urbanity as a judge. They had no flattering anticipation of courtesy from Lord Kenyon, such as they had been in the habit of receiving from Mr. Justice Buller, and they found their apprehensions not without foundation. Disappointment, however, did not induce the learned judge to resign, or immediately to change his seat to another Court. He resumed his place in the King's Bench, but with evident chagrin and dissatisfaction, which the temper and manners of the new Chief Justice were but little calculated to remove, or to reconcile him to that change of situation which his appointment had occasioned. Too able a lawyer to require the assistance of others to enable him to form an opinion, and too proud to ask it, Lord Kenyon rarely condescended to consult the other judges, or inquire their judgment. He did not wait for their expression of approval or dissent, but made rules absolute or discharged them on his own discretion only. On arguments he pronounced an unhesitating opinion, and left the other judges to agree with him, or differ from him, as they thought