Morning journal and courier., 1883-04-13
An Intellectual Engine.


 One of the greatest administrative forces in England has disappeared with Sir George Jessel. A more extraordinary intellectual engine than his brain has not been seen at work in our genefatien-- Great as he was as pure lawyer he was GstIi greater in the dis patch of business, for the speed, and the marvellous accuracy on the whole with which he worked at so great speed, were certainly neither rivaled nor approached by any con. temporary of his own. People called him a very strong man, and so he was, but in his own line his swiftness was more marvellous than his strength, and, indeed, sometimes misled him, though it would hardly be just to say that the State would have gained by any substraction from that speed, for his mistakes were rare and trivial in proportion to the efficiency of the industry which his great velocity of thought enabled him to achieve, He was what Carlyle would have called '' 8 great captain of industry" only the industry in which he was captain was 8 learned industry of 8 very high order of delicacy and skill, which it took a man of very singular attachments to superintend and hasten and arrest and appreciate with Sir George Jessel's rareness of discrimina- tion. He had usually mastered the drift of an argument before it was half out of the counsel's mouth, and had taken in the exact drift of deed before any other man would have got at it's general scope and tendency. The igsaoease ssls cuafidenae Nitk which as,
 
 as it so often is, the result of a misleading sanguineness and esgerness of temperament, which makes man leap before he looks, but simply the self-oonfdene of a mind which had found it's anticipations fully verified ten times or oftener for every case of failure.
 And the evidence of this was that Sir George Jessel never even wished to persevere in maintaining false position when once he had discovered it. He was always anxious to acknowledge and correct mistake, for error was vexatious to him not because it was he who had been wrong, but simply because it was error. He had one of those vigorous minds which delight in orderly arrangement and are almost more scandalized to find a fact classified wrongly, if it is their own mis- take, than they are if it be the mistake of another. Imperious as he was in guiding 1 the deliberations or arguments of others, 1t I was the imperiousness of true genius for ] dispatch of business, not the imperiousness of sslf-will. We should like to have seen him | tried as Speaker of the House of Commons, though opinion is as yet hardly ripe for so | strong a curb rein as his over the unbridled l loquacity of some members of the House of l Commons. Still, those who could force him l to consider any point which he had really | overlooked were always rewarded by finding | that he did not make light of it's bearing 1 simply because he had happened to overlook it. His impatience was the impatience of keen, swift mind, scandalized by any need less waste of labor, nor of an excitable mind irritated by opposition. Indeed, no opposi- I ton that was firm and lucid ever ruffied him in the least, in this respect he had the true judicial temper.
 Of course these powers were limited in number, though they were, speaking compar- atively, almost unlimited in degree. Sir George Jessel had not, like the great Jewish | contemporary who achieved still higher ! fame in politics, any unique insight into | ofb may a wa mi n social weapons. He had no great stores of 1 banter or wit at his command. His speeches in Parliament were not of the first order, l even for the speeches of 8 Solicitor General. He was not as persuasive as Sir Henry James ! nor anything like as lucid, in the exposition | of political issues, as Sir Farrer Rerschell. | Marvellous as his powers were, they were probably never shown to less advantage than during his short Parliamentary career. For | in the forms of things he was not master. He was deficient in tact, in the art of literary and popular exposition, and appeals to feel | iugs he either despised or could not under l stand. Even as lawyer, he had not that command of oaustic and ironic dialectic which gave to some of his earlier contem- poraries, like Lord Westbury and Vice Chan ! cellor Knight Bruce, so unique fame. Sir George Jessel's intellect went straight to the wasted time with the apparel in which they were dressed up. He was Titan in his way, but part of his force consisted in his inability to deal with the mere superficial forms of argument, and the necessity he felt himself under of going straight to the true issue. That is why we ventured to call him captain of industry. To sec that wonderful engine { in his brain working at half, less than half, it's usual pressure of steam, as the life in him fiickered low during the struggle of his powerful frame with the last enemy, was 8 strange a painful, but in some sense an inspiring sight for commoner and weaker mortals There was something of the Her cules in Sir George Jessel