The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1851-04-22 00:00:00

DEATH OF LORD LANGDALE

Scarcely a month has elapsed since the late Master of
th.. Rolls took his final leave of the court and the bar over
which he had so long presided, and already we are called
upon to record the melancholy close of a life which had
been exhausted in the severest labours of the judicial ser-
vice. Lord Langdale expired on Good Friday, at Tun-
bridge-wells, whither he had repaired about a fortnight
ago for the benefit of his health. The over-exertion of
his prolonged attendance in the Court of Chancery bad
produced a degree of exhaustion from which he was una-
ble to rally. His faculties, which had remained unim-
paired to the last moment of his judicial duty, collapsed
under that repose which came too late. A paralytic stroke
followed, and though hopes had at one time been enter-
tained that change of scene and complete rest would re-
vive his lordship's vital powers, " the silver chord was
already loosened and the bowl was broken at the foun-
tain." -

Henry Bickersteth, Lord Langdale, was born on the
18th of June, 1783, in the county of Westmoreland,
where his father belonged to the clans of the small landed
gentry of the north of England. He had consequently
not yet completed his 68th year. Originally destined for
the medical profession, in which he had already com-
pleted his studies with success, he visited the continent
with the family of the late Earl of Orford ; and it was
by the advice of those discerning friends that he was
induced to embark on the more ambitious career in which
his remarkable talents already promised him no ordinary
success. He entered Caius College, Cambridge, where
he took his degree as Senior Wrangler in 1808. Three
years afterwards he was called to the bar by the Society
of the Inner Temple, and he engaged at once in the
arduous duties of his profession.
Thioughout the whole course of his life Lord Langdale
was ardently devoted to the cause of liberal opinions, and
although he figured but little at any time in the arena of
party politics, no man pursued with greater enthusiasm
the work of reform, or brought a more subtle intellect to
bear upon the great problems of social and legal improve-
ment.

Assiduous in his devotion to his professional duties,
Mr. Bickersteth rose to great eminence in the Equity
Courts, to which he confined his practice ; and perhaps
at the period of his career to which we are now adverting
a higher estimate ‘1 as formed of his powers than his
judicial performances subsequently warranted. Indeed,
it may be said that his personal reputation stood even
higher than his forensic weight and celebrity amongst the
party which had at that time been recently summoned to
the councils of the empire. Probably it was with a view
to the services Mr. Bickersteth was expected to render in
the cause of law reform, and possibly in part to supply
the loss which had recently been sustained b; the rupture
of the Whig Cabinet with Lord Brougham, that the
equity counsel was suddenly appointed on the 19th of
January, 1836, to succeed Lord Cottenham as Master of
the Rolls, and was at the same time called to the House of
Peers. By an unusual exception to the course of high
legal preferment in this country, his lordship had thus
risen to one of the most honourable and important posts
in his profession without having mingled in active poli-
tical life, and without having either sat in the House of
Commons, or held the office of a legal adviser to the
Crown.

But a few months had elapsed after his accession to
the Mastership of the Rolls when Lord Langdale de-
livered his remarkable speech on the administration of
justice in the Court of Chancery, and on the appellate
jurisdiction of their lordships' House. To the opinions
expressed in that speech, and in favour of the division of
the duties of the Great Seal, Lord Langdale constantly
adhered ; but when the occasion arrived at which it
might have been possible for him with more robust health
and greater energy to carry these plans into execution,
his time of action was already verging to its close. Upon
the resignation of Lord Cottenham last year, the Great
Seal was more than once tendered to Lord Langdale by
the head of the present Administration ; but though he
consented to act as First Commissioner, and actually sat
for a short time in the Lord Chancellor's Court and in
the House of Lords in that capacity, the intense applica-
tion to which the state of the Court of Chancery had
condemned him forbade any further stretch of his powers,
and he longed only for that repose which the expiration
of 15 years' uninterrupted judicial service entitled him to
claim, though not to enjoy.
As a judge, the reputation of Lord Langdale has at
times fallen somewhat below what was expected of him
in the earlier years of his professional life. He wanted
that boldness of judgment and self-guiding energy
which has enabled our greatest lawyers to apply and
even to frame the results of scientific analysis with
instinctive felicity and precision. But he was unsur-
passed in the lucid and methodical exposition of the
facts with which he had to deal. His elaborate and
cautious dissection of every case before him led him by
a safe though slow process to the discovery of truth ; and
the subtlety of his logical powers enabled him to unravel
with indefatigable accuracy, the most intricate chain of
reasoning. His labours as a reformer of the Court of
Chancery fell infinitely short of his intentions and his
desires, though even these powerfully and systemati-
cally contributed to the new rules for the removal of
delays, the reduction of costs, and the abolition of need.
less formalities. But the philosophical lawyer was baffled
by the duties and obligations of the active judge. No
man ever sat in that court who was more anxious to reform
its abuses, and the last disappointment of his life was the
production by Lord John Russell of the miserable
Chancery Bill of the present session.
Lord Langdale brought to his office a personal dignity
not inferior to that which it conferred upon himself, for
he was a man earnestly devoted to truth and justice—his
whole life was unsullied by the suspicion of a job or of
subservience to any but the loftiest motives of action.
He preserved the simplicity of his manners and his love
, of literature in the residence on the confines of Richmond-
park, where of late years he exclusively resided, and in
the gardens or library he had himself formed. Younger
and more active men have already succeeded to the func-
tions he so recently discharged, but amongst the lawyers
who have filled the chief offices of their profession, and
who might have filled the highest of all, none leaves purer
fame than the late Master of the Rolls.
His lordship married late in life the Lady Jane Harley,
oldest daughter of the late Lord Orford, by whom he
leaves one daughter ; his peerage, therefore, becomes
extinct.
, The deceased was brother of the late lamented Rev.
Edward Bickersteth and of Robert Bickerstetl, Esq., the
eminent surgeon of this town, who was with his lordship
at the time of his death.