nexact, and
would have been utterly unintelligible to a Roman gentleman of the
Augustan period, did not become law without much opposition from some of
the authorities of Westminster Hall. Lord Raymond, Chief Justice of the
King's Bench, spoke in accordance with opinions that had many supporters
on the bench and at the bar, when he expressed his warm disapprobation
of the proposed measure, and sarcastically observed "that if the bill
paused, the law might likewise be translated into Welsh, since many in
Wales understood not English." In the same spirit Sir Willian Blackstone
and more recent authorities have lamented the loss of Law-Latin. Lord
Campbell, in the 'Chancellors,' records that he "heard the late Lord
Ellenborough from the bench regret the change, on the ground that it had
had the tendency to make attorneys illiterate."

The sneer by which Lord Raymond endeavored to cast discredit on the
proposal to abolish Law-Latin, was recalled after the lapse of many
years by Sergeant Heywood, who forthwith acted upon it as though it
originated in serious thought. Whilst acting as Chief Justice of the
Carmarthen Circuit, the sergeant was presiding over a trial of murder,
when it was discovered that neither the prisoner, nor any member of the
jury, could understand a word of English; under these circumstances it
was suggested that the evidence and the charge should be explained
_verbatim_, to the prisoner and his twelve triers by an interpreter. To
this reasonable petition that the testimony should be presented in a
Welsh dress, the judge replied that, "to accede to the request would be
to repeal the act of parliament, which required that all proceedings in
courts of justice should be in the English tongue, and that the case of
a trial in Wales, in which the prisoner and jury should not understand
English, was a case not provided for, although the attention of the
legislature had been called to it by that great judge Lord Raymond." The
judge having thus decided, the inquiry proceeded--without the help of an
interpreter--the counsel for the prosecution favoring the jury with an
eloquent harangue, no single sentence of which was intelligible to them;
a series of witnesses proving to English auditors, beyond reach of
doubt, that the prisoner had deliberately murdered his wife; and finally
the judge instructing the jury, in language which was as insignificant
to their minds as the same quantity of obsolete Law-French would have