368 HARVARD LAW REVIEW, " The only point on which I have some hesitation is this : I am not certain, if I had been sitting by my own unassisted — I will not say light, but twilight — that I should have come to the same conclusion as to the costs of the trial below. But it is a matter with which my brothers are so much better fitted to deal than I am, that I willingly yield my views about it to theirs." ^ But when it came to a matter of principle he could be firm and independent, though always extremely courteous.^ A good illus- tration is the case of ht re Cape Breton Co.,^ where he began a vigorous dissenting opinion by saying : — " In this case I feel hesitation in differing from my learned brethren, whose knowledge of the doctrines of courts of equity is so much greater than mine, but as I cannot understand the principle upon which relief has been refused, it becomes necessary for me to state my views." ^ Beneath all his courtesy and gentleness of manner, however, there was the strength of a Blackburn or a Jessel. An uncon- scionable case or an idle argument never escaped his severity. See, for instance, his opinion in Brown v. Burdett,^ an administra- tion suit, in which " all the oyster had been eaten, and only the shell remained." And in Thomas v. Quartermaine,^ where a sense- less construction of the Employers* Liability Act was urged in argument, he disposed of the point in short terms: — " An enactment which distinctly declares that a workman is to have the same rights as if he were not a workman, cannot, except by violent distention of its terms, be strained into an enactment that the workman is to have the same rights as if he were not a workman, and other rights in addition. It cannot, in the case of a defect in the employer's works, be distorted into the meaning that a new standard of duty is to be im- posed on the employer as regards a workman, which would not exist as regards anybody else. If the language of the section were not even so precise, the point would be concluded, one might well think, by the obser- vation that, if the act had intended to prescribe some new measure of duty, the least one might expect would be that it should define it. What sort of duty could that be which does not exist at law, and which is not 1 Tomlin v. Luce, 43 Ch. D. 196. 2 Thomas v. Quartermaine, 18 Q. B. D. 685, and Newbigging v. Adam, 34 Ch. D. 582. 8 29 Ch. D. 806.
- For other dissents, in addition to those already mentioned, see Burdick v. Sewell,
13 Q. B. D. 159; Rendall v. Blair, 45 Ch. D. 139; Dreyfus v. Guano Co., 43 Ch. D. 6 40 Ch. D. 267. 6 18 Q. B. D. 685.
