at annapolis before revolution 45

McHenry, 247, (1767), and further in 4 Harris &
McHenry, 490,

On perusing the record, I am strongly of opinion that the
judgment of the Provincial Court ought to be reversed, and
that the practice affords no legal reason for maintaining it;
but what may be the opinion of the Court of Appeals, I should
be more confident in predicting, if the judges were lawyers
by profession, than I am on the consideration that they are not.

And that remark is sometimes cited as fixing the
character of the court generally. The judgment
of the Provincial Court was reversed in the case.
But the remark cannot have meant that lawyers
never sat on the court; Dulany himself had sat on
it before that time ;²⁹ and in the long succession of
members we find these lawyers, Henry Jowles,
George Plater, Kenelm Cheseldyne, William
Dent, Richard Lee, Robert Goldsborough, John
Addison, Thomas Bordley, Stephen Bordley, Ed-
mund Jenings, John Brice, Daniel Dulany, the
elder, and Daniel Dulany, the younger, John
Hammond, Charles Goldsborough, John Beale
Bordley, and there were, perhaps, others. But
however great may have been the lack of legal
training on the court at any time, it appears that
knowledge of the law was nevertheless brought to
bear on its decisions as needed. It seems unlikely
that people accustomed to look to the law for their
rights and obligations would ever suffer a court
to adjudicate their controversies without access to
needed knowledge of the law if the knowledge
was within reach, and the practical sense of Eng-
lishmen generally found some method to bring the
law to the court. The House of Lords, prototype

29. He became a member of the Council in 1757.