ABSTRACT
James Wilde, Baron Penzance (1816–1899) was called to the bar in 1839. He built a legal career on the northern circuit and at Westminster. In 1860, he became a judge of the court of exchequer and was created Baron Penzance in 1869. He had experience of sitting at Assizes. He was an active peer, concerned with issues of social change, though he seldom took part in judicial cases in the House of Lords. The penalties were too high, too much of a distant long-stop, to affect the practice of the courts. The reports published in the newspapers, although extremely able and faithful, are mere skeletons of what has passed in the courts, and readers of the public prints may very well come to the conclusion that there has been undue severity, whereas if they had heard the whole of the evidence they would have been perfectly satisfied.
