The most characteristic feature of More's Chancellorship was his prompt disposing of cases. He realized very well that not only must justice be done, but as far as possible it must be done promptly, and the tedious drawing out of cases to great length works injustice, even though they are justly decided after many years. The Court of Chancery in England has become a byword for slowness of procedure and has been satirized on many occasions during the nineteenth {235} century, but already in the sixteenth century there were many cases before the Court that had been dragging on for twenty years, and even more. Delays were mainly due to the fact that Lord Chancellors were occupied with many other duties and did not always feel equal to the task of trying cases and weighing evidence. Undoubtedly some delays had been occasioned by the fact that presents were received, if not by the Lord Chancellor himself at least by court officials, and the longer cases were allowed to drag on the more opportunity was there in them for such irregularities. The clearing up of the calendar of the Court of Chancery marked an epoch in English legal history and is one of our best evidences of More's thoroughly practical character. It is by his death more than anything else that More is admirable. Here was a man of marvellous breadth of interests, to whom life must have meant very much. As a young man he had been brought in intimate contact with the pick of the intellectual men of his time. In early manhood he had been the chosen friend of the best scholars in Europe--men like Colet, Erasmus and Linacre, with international reputations. He had represented his King abroad in important missions before he was forty. He had shown himself a great lawyer in spite of a scrupulosity of conscience that would ordinarily be supposed to make the successful practice of the law extremely difficult. Notwithstanding the most thorough honesty in every activity of life and the absence of every hint even of truckling of any kind to popular or royal opinion, he had been the favorite of all classes. As an author he wrote books that the world will not willingly let die. They are occupied with things that men often push away from them, serious, high-minded, purposeful, yet they are more read now than they were in his own time. He was a philosopher worthy to be placed beside the greatest practical philosopher, and his ideal republic, written in his own profound vein of humor, is a distinct contribution to that form of literature.