Men of the highest character
and calibre being employed at large salaries as heads of these
departments, have given adequate satisfaction, as has been proved by
the prosperity of the Corporations. The recompense of the heads of
these various departments, requiring as it does men of the greatest
commercial understanding, is said to be in some instances fabulous.
In the early quarter of the present century and indeed in the latter
part of the nineteenth, the undercurrents of many movements were
already stirring the surface of the placid stream in which for so many
centuries had been flowing the course of justice. Those curious relics
of a medieval, age, the law courts, still at so recent a date,
retained many of the forms, characteristics, and usages of a time
when knights fought in plate armor and indulged in the mimicry of
battle, urged on by the glamor of chivalry. The very terms and the
legal phraseology of the period implied the jousts, tournaments, and
ordeal by battle of a romantic and self-deceptive age.
The universal world war that resulted in such an immense change of
social and economic values contributed naturally to the destruction
and abandonment of old forms and structures.
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