knighted. In 1678 he became Recorder of London.

A

year or two after he was created Chief Justice of Chester and was appointed to the post of King's Serjeant, which gave him precedence of the Attorney-General in Westminster Hall, receiving also the honour of a baronetcy. In 1683, at the age of thirty-five, he became Lord Chief Justice of England, and two years after he was created a peer as Baron Jeffreys of Wein. In September, 1685, after his return from the "Bloody Assize," he was created Lord Chancellor. He ceased to sit on the Woolsack on the flight of James the Second, and he died in the Tower on 19th April, 1689, in the forty-first year of his age.

While this wonderful career was undoubtedly furthered by all the arts of intrigue and wire-pulling, Jeffreys would not have risen so rapidly as he did, if he had not been possessed of remarkable ability. He had a sweet and powerful voice that at once fixed the attention. He argued points of law with great ability. "He was of bold aspect, and cared not for the countenance of any man." He was famous for his talent in cross-examination, during which he was given to indulging in banter and ribaldry. The grave and religious Sir Matthew Hale, Lord Chief Justice of the King's Bench, fell much under his influence. "Sir George Jeffreys," says Roger North, "gained as great an ascendant in practice over him as ever counsel had over a judge." Lord Campbell says, Jeffreys was particularly good as a nisi prius judge. "His summing up," says Campbell, “in what is called The Lady Ivy's Case, an ejectment action between her and the Dean and Chapter of St. Paul's, to recover a large estate at Shadwell, is most masterly." Speaker Onslow said, "He had great parts, and made a great Chancellor in the business of that Court. In mere private matters he was thought an able and upright judge." He was much abused for his decision in a suit which was instituted to determine whether a large

sum of money belonged to his son's prospective wife, the daughter and heiress of the Earl of Pembroke, or to her father's creditors. He decided in favour of his future daughter-in-law, and strong things were said about his judgment. But he had taken the precaution to call in the assistance of the Master of the Rolls, Mr. Justice Lutwich, and Mr. Justice Powell, and, though an appeal was heard after the revolution, the decree was first affirmed by the Lords Commissioners of the Great Seal and then by the House of Lords. It was thus made clear that the judgment was right.

In conclusion, it may be said that Jeffreys was a striking example of the strong and unscrupulous type of lawyer and judge that has periodically appeared in English history.

"Men, born to be controlled,

Stoop to the forward and the bold,"

and men of the type of Jeffreys generally reach their goal. He believed that the easiest line of advance in the reign of James the Second was to please the king. He believed, no doubt with good reason, that he would best please the king by severity and cruelty in punishing the Monmouth rebellion. He allowed no scruple or sentiment of pity to stand in his way in accomplishing his end. Men of this sort sometimes attain complete worldly success, and die rich and prosperous. It is satisfactory to know that from Jeffreys some retribution was exacted for his inhuman conduct.

J. A. LOVAT-Fraser.

IV. THE KING'S PEACE VERSUS MOB-LAW.

THE

I. THE KING'S PEACE.

'HE statue of Justice with the scales and sword is to those who recognise the origin of all law a correct symbol. The significance of the sword is marked by placing

it, not at the feet, nor as part of the design of the pediment; not even in the left hand but in the right. Tribes and nations, alike in their domestic and foreign affairs, are on their way to the second rate grade, when anything but the sword is in the right hand, whether it be a treatise on philosophy or a ledger, or even the scales of justice. Unfortunately, in making grants for the education of the nation there was one thing the Legislature determined should not be taught; wood-carving and shorthand were eligible, anything, in fact, from A to Z, as long as it was not history. This left the next generation to grapple with social problems, such as the dealing with strike riots, as if they were new phenomena; and as if justice, like wisdom, had sprung full grown from the head of Zeus, that is the central power. No nation forming a loose union under a strong king from a chaos of warring tribes would have made such a mistake, and all nations originated in this way; justice was before the king, before the customs of the race could be declared by the wise men with the assent of the warriors. It emerged not as the Roman lawyers fancied, to give a theoretical sanction to the Prætorian edict, in a lost law of nature, formulated in a state of primæval peace, but when the men of any settlement made a war band for the protection of the weak; and, as the social animals still do, made it desperately unsafe to kill their young, because they were ready to, as the AngloSaxon hearth comrades were,

"Either life forsake

Or the loved one wreak."

To fail in this duty was in the earliest records to incur contempt and the forfeiture of lands; and before all records to be an outlaw to the tribe, a wolf's head whom any man might slay.

In the oldest poem in the language there is an account of an early assize. The king, the aged keeper of the folk, charges the grand jury. He reminds them of the law when,

after provocation and reprisals, brother avenged brother, and the smiting hand made reckoning for feuds enough. The prototype of the sheriff with the posse comitatus is there in the war band, and the thegn that is most trusted. They make cold and painful marches instead of cross-examination and speeches; and the verdict is delivered by the pursuing jury who all the night through cry to the offenders that they are round them, and that in the morning their chief will reach them with the edge of the sword, and hang those, who are not slain, on the gallows-tree to please the birds.

The dream of primæval peace is as old as time and as fresh as fancy. It was sought, before geography had filled the vacant spaces by records of the explorers among the blameless Ethiopians of Homer, as in the western sea, whither Saint Brandan actually voyaged in search of it. Till writers like Sir Henry Maine investigated the past, history almost gave it a habitation and a name in the Golden Age, and social philosophy inheritors in the noble savages, the unspoilt children of nature; while the great jurists of Rome discovered its code in the essentials that they found beneath the varying legal practices of the Italian States. The explorers found no earthly paradise in the unknown oceans, it should have been there, no doubt there were arguments to prove its necessity, as in a lesser degree easier roads for commerce should have been. There were roads to the South to India, there must then be roads by the North. Was there no way to a peaceful sharing of the new commerce for the Dutch and English, but centuries of warfare in the Atlantic? Were there no races of men in the past who did justly without compulsion, and none in the new world with its boundless possibilities? Is there now no possibility of peace but by war? Is a nation justified in exercising force when internal dissensions threaten the peace? An imperium was the supreme authority, bestowed on the chief officers of the republic for the common safety:

can there be a subordinate imperium, an imperium in imperio? Can the International Tribunal at the Hague hold a fretful realm in awe, unless it has an armed force at its disposal, or the decisions of the judge be enforced without the sheriff? These are pressing questions in our time, and cannot be answered without the law that is to be found in history, making clear the origin of justice as it has been and is, and not as some think it should be, the offspring of effortless

virtue.

More than once social philosophers have arisen, who have explained that when nations realise what war will entail, war will automatically cease. Their contention is perfectly

just; it would, however, be strengthened by pointing out that the idea is by no means a new one. It has not only been formulated before, but acted on. All kinds of industry are given up when they cease to pay. There was a siliceous Sheffield at Cissbury on the South Downs in the stone age; the manufacturers of flint weapons were prosperous; but they and their manufactures became out of date with the advent of the makers and wielders of bronze. As long as trade is so undeveloped that duties are very high, it pays to smuggle and to insure against the risk of the cargo being captured. The profits are both great enough to stand the premium, which is paid in Holland or elsewhere, and to tempt men to run the risk of death or imprisonment; but in time with lesser duties, there ceases to be even the necessity for a coastguard. Smuggler, pirate, or viking is not any longer a term of pride; they lose their heroic association and become connected in the popular idea with Execution Dock. The outlaws of the forest become merely the convicts escaped from Dartmoor; the last survivors of freebooting on the borders, whose forces were numbered by thousands, and who were ready to spend huge sums to prevent a comrade suffering the penalty of the law, disappeared when the Wardens of the Marches were no