A judgeship was, however, a second time offered by Lord Cairns in 1876.  This, after due consideration, I accepted, and received my appointment as a Judge of the Exchequer Court on November 2 of that year.

The first and most sensational case that I was called upon to preside over was known as the Penge case.  Sir Alexander Cockburn had appointed himself to try it, on account of its sensational character; but as it came for trial at a time when the Lord Chief Justice could not attend, it fell to the junior Judge on the Bench.

I am not going to relate the details of that extraordinary case,[A] which are best left in the obscurity of the newspaper files; but I refer to it because it cannot well be passed over in the reminiscences of my life.  I shall, however, only touch upon one or two prominent points.

[Footnote A:  The great sensation of the case was almost overpowered by the great sensation that “a new power had come upon the Bench.”  These are, as nearly as I can give them, the words of one of our most distinguished advocates, and one of the most brilliant who was in the Penge case:—­

“We felt, and the Bar felt, that a great power had come upon the Bench; he summed up that case as no living man could have done.  Every word told; every point was touched upon and made so clear that it was impossible not to see it.”

Another distinguished advocate said there was no other Judge on the Bench who could have summed that case up as Sir Henry Hawkins did.—­R.H.]

“Every person,” I said in my summing up, “who is under a legal duty, whether such duty was imposed by law or contract, to take charge of another person must provide that person with the necessaries of life.  Every person who had that legal duty imposed upon him was criminally responsible if he culpably neglected that duty, and the death of the person for whom he ought to provide ensued.  If the death was the result of mere carelessness and without criminal intent, the offence would be manslaughter, provided the jury came to the conclusion that there had been culpable neglect of the duty cast upon the individual who had undertaken to perform it.”

With regard to the evidence of one of the witnesses who was said to be an accomplice, so that it was necessary that she should be corroborated, I said a jury might convict without it, but recommended them strongly not to take for granted her evidence unless they found there was so much corroboration of her testimony as to induce them to believe she was telling the truth.

As to one of the accused, I said:  “If she had no legal object to fulfil in providing the deceased with the necessaries of life, the mere omission to do so would not render her guilty; but if she did an act wrongfully which had a tendency to destroy life, but which was not clone with that intention, she would be guilty of manslaughter.”

The jury found a verdict of guilty against all, but with a strong recommendation in favour of one, in which I joined.