Fellows of colleges in the universities are in one sense the recipients of alms, because they receive funds which originally were of an eleemosynary … - John Coleridge, 1st Baron Coleridge

Law grows, and though the principles of law remain unchanged, yet (and it is one of the advantages of the common law) their application is to be changed with the changing circumstances of the times. Some persons may call this retrogression, I call it progression of human opinion.

I for one would never be a party, unless the law were clear, to saying to any man who put forward his views on those most sacred things, that he should be branded as apparently criminal because he differed from the majority of mankind in his religious views or convictions on the subject of religion. If that were so, we should get into ages and times which, thank God, we do not live in, when people were put to death for opinions and beliefs which now almost all of us believe to be true.

I was brought up under a system in which discretion when given was practically absolute. It was the unbroken tradition of Westminster Hall. I believe that system worked justice and saved expense. I hope I may be forgiven if, with what energy remains to me, I strive after many years' experience and drawing near the close of my judicial career, to preserve this unfettered discretion which in my opinion, was given me by Parliament, and which I have never, at least intentionally abused.