Chapter V (7)

Parliament now opened to his ambition. Lord Thurlow, at Lord Weymouth's request, offered him Weobly, a borough in his patronage, (extinguished by the Reform Act of 1832.) Scott accepted the offer, on the condition that he should be left independent in his opinions. Thurlow said the "he had stipulated that already." Scott went down to the borough accordingly, made a "long speech," which the electors said they expected from him, "as he was a lawyer: it being also a treat which they had not enjoyed for thirty years." Lord Surrey, (afterwards Duke of Norfolk,) a prodigious reformer--a profession which, however, did not prevent him from constantly dabbling in the intrigues of electioneering--had harangued against him at Hereford, while Scott retorted at Weobly by smartly saying--"That though then unknown to them, he hoped he should entitle himself to more of their confidence, than if, being the son of the first Duke of England, he had held himself out to them as a reformer, whilst riding, as the Earl of Surry rode, into the first town of the county, drunk, upon a cider-cask, and talking in that state of _reform_!" Lord Surrey had been his client, and on meeting him in France afterwards, good-humouredly said--"I have had enough of meddling with you; I shall trouble you no more."

An odd incident, valuable to those who value foresightedness in this world's affairs, occurred at the time Scott was lodged at the vicar's, Mr Bridges. He had a daughter, a young child, and he said--"Who knows but you may come to be chancellor. As my girl can probably marry nobody but a clergyman, promise me you will give her husband a living when you have the seals." His answer was, "My promise is not worth half-a-crown; but you may have my promise." In after life, the child, then in womanhood, walked one morning into the chancellor's drawing-room, and claimed the fulfilment of his promise. It was duly performed, and she married.

There is perhaps no subject of human interest more entitled to an anxious and solemn curiosity, than the sentiments of a man of powerful and fully furnished mind in the immediate prospect of death. The coming change is so total and so tremendous, alarm and a sense of the unknown are so natural, that to find unpresuming confidence, and virtuous constancy of heart, in that awful time, cheers human nature. William Scott, always distinguished for great capacity and remarkable acquirements, about this period being seized with an illness, which he thought mortal, writes these memoranda on the verge of the grave:--

My great comfort is, to write on to my dearest Jack, and about my wife. Act for me. _Wife, child_. She knows I recommend her to your care.

Object of my life, to make my sisters easy.

Save ------ from ruin if we can.

Protect my memory by your kindness. Life ebbs very fast with me. My dying thoughts are all kindness and fraternal love about you.

While sensation remains, I think on my dearest brother, with whom I have spent my life. I die with the same sentiments. As the hand of death approaches, it is a consolation to think of him. Oh, cherish my wife! If you loved me, be a brother to her. You will have trouble about my affairs; you will not grudge it. Oh, take care of _her_! I leave you that duty. It is the last relief of my failing mind. Cherish my memory. Keep ----- from ruin, if you can, by any application of any part of my child's fortune that is reasonable. Once more, farewell! God bless you.

These are affecting testimonials, and show singular tenderness of heart and truth of attachment; for they were written, to be transmitted only in case of death. Those who in after times saw Lord Stowell on the bench, the solemn, and even the stern depository of justice, could scarcely imagine, in that searching glance and compressed lip, the softness of heart which those fragments indicate. Death may be a great subduer of the fierce spirit of man as it approaches; but their language is not the phrase of puling softness, or pusillanimous alarm; it is at once calm and fond, collected and fervid. The writer's natural and honourable feelings are all alive at the moment when the last pang might seem to be at hand; and though nothing is said of his Christian hopes, (probably because the care of his family demanded more urgent consideration than his personal conceptions,) language like theirs could scarcely have come but from a Christian. His disorder was a violent bilious fever, which exhausted him so much that his recovery was slow. But to those who are in the habit of consigning their friends to "inevitable death" on every infliction of disease, it may excite some useful doubt of their own infallibility, to know that this dying man, then thirty-eight, survived for half a century, dying in his ninety-first year.

But the whole biography is a warning--especially against despondency. Who could suppose that, after Lord Eldon's success up to this point; his distinction on the principal circuit; the compliments of the judges; the respect of his seniors in the profession, some of them very remarkable men; his silk gown in the days of Erskine; his seat in Parliament; and, more than all, the consciousness which men of large faculties naturally have of their suitableness, and almost their certainty, to command fortune at some tine or other; we should find the future peer and chancellor desponding? Yet what but deep complaints of his cloudy prospects could have produced this reply from his clever friend Lee, (who, within three weeks' became Attorney-General?)

DEAR SCOTT--Your letter, which I received this minute,
was a very cheering one to me. But _keep up your
spirits_, and let it not be said that a good
understanding, and an irreproachable life, and an
uncommon success, and every virtuous expectation, are
insufficient to support tranquility and composure of
mind. _If you are cast down_ who is to hold up? In a few
days I hope to meet you in good health and good heart;
and, in the mean time, remain your faithful and
affectionate.

(Nov. 1783) "J. LEE."

On the opening of the session, great popular feeling was excited against the coalition. The furious invectives which Fox had been for some years heaping on Lord North's luckless head, were now flung upon his own. Traitor, liar, swindler, were "house-hold words;" and Fox, with all his ability, and that happiest of all ability for the crisis, great constitutional good-humour, found himself suddenly overwhelmed. In the House he was still powerful; but, outside its doors, he was utterly helpless. Like the witches recorded in some of the German romances, though within the walls chosen for their orgies they could summon spirits, and revel in their incantations uncontrolled, yet, on passing the threshold, they turned into hags again. But as if to make the coalition still more odious in the popular eye, there was presented the most resistless contrast to both its chiefs in the young and extraordinary leader of the Opposition, Pitt; with the ardour of youth and the wisdom of years, at once master of the most vigorous logic, and the loftiest appeal to the public feelings; honoured as the son of Chatham; and yet, even at that immature period of his life and his career, still more honoured for the promise of talents and services which were to throw even his own eminent predecessor into the shade.

But North, apart from the cabinet, was always delightful. He had more of easy pleasantry in his manner than any favourite of English recollection. Lord Eldon, in his anecdotal book thus tells--"Lord North had gone, at the Prince of Wales's desire, to reconcile the King to him. He succeeded, and called on the Prince to inform him of his success. 'Now,' said he, 'let me beseech your Royal Highness in future to conduct yourself differently. Do so, on all accounts; do so, for your own sake; do so, for your excellent father's sake; do so, for the sake of that good-natured man, Lord North; and don't oblige him again to tell the King, your good father, so many lies, as he has been obliged to tell him this morning'"

Lord Eldon's personal narrative is a sort of comment on the whole public history of his time. Why did not such a man write his own "Life and Times?" Intelligent as are the Volumes before us, the personal conceptions arising on the personal knowledge, would have been invaluable as experience. His view of transactions in their embryo, in their full growth, and in their impression on the general policy and progress of the government, would have formed an important lesson for statesmanship to come. But what an indulgence must it have furnished to the national curiosity, which, seeing the origin of all things in individual character, justly regards the eminent characters of that day as the founders of every remarkable change which has shaped the constitution in our own! Public life has never before or since abounded in such variety, strength, and brilliancy of character. A combination of talents of the very highest order was exhibited in both the Lords and Commons; and it would actually seem as if this combination were preparatory to the tremendous demands which, before the close of the century, were to be made upon the wisdom, the courage, and the constancy of the British legislature. And why should there not be such preparation? We see preparation a principle in the whole course of nature. We see, in the formation of individual character, a preparative, and sometimes a most distinct and powerful one, for the duty which the coming crisis is yet to demand; and why shall not legislatures, as well individuals, be placed in that condition of effectiveness, and trained to that exertion of power, which is subsequently to be required for the providential deliverance of nations? It is remarkable that the discussions in which parliament at this period was engaged, though local, and of course altogether inferior to those comprehensive struggles which were to follow, were yet of a nature singularly calculated to call forth practical ability. There never was a period since the Revolution of 1688, in which party was so vigorously brought into conflict, in which personal interests gave so strong a stimulus to the association of principles, in which office so rapidly shifted hands, and power was so much the creature of reputation. Thus the whole character of this period was an appeal to popularity; an appeal of all others the most calculated to bring out every latent faculty of the orator, the constitutionalist, and the statesman. A still greater period, unknown and unexpected by every man, was to have the advantage of this preparation. The French Revolution, which burst with such irresistible violence over the Continent, was to find the ramparts of public principle and legislative wisdom repaired and strengthened in England, and those ramparts manned with defenders who had learned the use of their weapons in the mock conflicts of peace, and, when the day of danger came, showed themselves invincible.

The India bill broke down the Coalition ministry; it was the most insolent experiment ever made on the constitution--a compound of republican daring and despotic power. It would have made the king a cipher, and parliament a slave. The exclusive patronage of India would have enabled the minister to corrupt the legislature. The corruption of the legislature would have made the minister irresponsible: the constitution would thus have been inevitably suspended, and the national liberties incapable of being restored except by a national convulsion. But those evils were happily avoided by the manliness of the king and the loyalty of the lords. The India bill was thrown out in the House of Lords on the 17th of December. The king lost no time in giving effect to this discomfiture. At the extraordinary hour of twelve o'clock on the following night, an order was sent to the two secretaries of state, North and Fox, that they should deliver up the seals by his majesty's command; adding the contemptuous injunction, that they should send them by the under-secretaries, the king not suffering a personal interview.

Pitt was placed at the head of the new administration as first lord of the treasury and chancellor of the exchequer. Thurlow was again made lord chancellor, and Kenyon and Arden attorney and solicitor-generals. In the debates on the India bill, one of Sheridan's pleasantries is recorded. As Fox's majorities declined, it was hinted by his party that John Robinson, the secretary of the treasury, was purchasing the votes. On Sheridan's making the charge without naming the supposed culprit, a great outcry arose in the House of "Name him, name him!" "Sir," said Sheridan, addressing the Speaker, "I shall not name the person; it is an invidious and unpleasant thing to do; but don't suppose that I could find any difficulty in naming him: I could do it as soon as you could say _Jack Robinson_."

Pitt having waited with consummate judgment, though against the advice of all his supporters, until Fox had worn down his majorities in the House, and totally disgusted the nation, dissolved the parliament. The measure was triumphant; an unequaled Tory majority was returned in the next session, and the Whigs were extinguished as a party for nearly twenty years. Lord Eldon records a curious acknowledgment of Fox with respect to the power of the pencil. "Sayers's caricatures," said he, "did me more mischief than the debates in Parliament or the attacks of the press." Lord Eldon observes that the prints of Carlo Khan; Fox running away with the India House; Fox and Burke quitting Paradise when turned out of office, and similar publications, had certainly a vast effect on the public mind. Let HB triumph on this, and make his claim on the ministry. Scott was again returned for Weobly, and gives a curious instance of the slight incidents by which elections are sometimes determined. In crossing the country from Lancaster to the hustings at his borough, he stopped at the last stage to have his hair dressed. The hairdresser asked him whether Sir Gilbert Elliott was not one of the seven kings--a name of ridicule given to Fox's seven proposed commissioners for India. "Because," said the man, "there is a Sir Gilbert Elliott a candidate for the borough; and we are all agreed that, if he is one of the seven kings, we will have nothing to say to him; and as we wish to be sure about it, and as you must know, sir, excuse my freedom in asking whether he really is one of the seven kings." Scott answered that he certainly was. The hairdresser immediately made proclamation of the fact, and Sir Gilbert was totally defeated.

Very curious instances of character occur in the experience of counsel. Lord Eldon gives one of them as occurring to himself. "Once," said he, "I had a very handsome offer made to me. I was pleading for the rights of the inhabitants of the Isle of Man. Now I had been reading in Coke, and I found there that the people in the Isle of Man were no beggars," (the words are, 'The inhabitants of this Isle are religious, industrious, and true people, without begging or stealing.') "I therefore do not beg their rights, I demand them. This so pleased an old smuggler who was present, that when the trial was over, he called me aside and said, 'Young gentleman, I tell you what, you shall have my daughter if you will marry her, and one hundred thousand pounds for her fortune.' That was a very handsome offer, but I told him that I happened to have a wife who had nothing for her fortune, therefore I must stick to her." In December of this year 1784, Johnson died. "He was a good man," said Lord Eldon; "he sent me a message on his death-bed, to request that I would make a point of attending public worship every Sunday, and that the place should be the Church of England."

An excellent anecdote, illustrative of the advantages of knowing some thing of every thing, is given on a trial at Carlisle. Bearcroft, a celebrated advocate, was brought down on a special retainer of three hundred guineas, in a salmon fishery cause. Scott led on the other side; and at a consultation held the evening before, it was determined to perplex Bearcroft, by examining all the witnesses in the dialect of Cumberland, and, as it appears, in the _patois_ of the fishermen. Accordingly, when Scott began to cross-examine his first witness, who said a good deal out the salmon good and bad, he asked whether they were obliged to make _ould soldiers_ of any of them. Bearcroft asked for an explanation of the words, which Scott would not give him. He then asked the judge, who answered that he did not know. After a squabble, the phrase was explained; but nearly every other question produced a similar scene. The jury were astonished that neither judge nor Bearcroft understood what they all understood so well, and they inferred from Bearcroft's ignorance that he had a rotten cause. The consequence was, that Bearcroft lost the cause; and he swore that no fee should ever tempt him to come among such a set of barbarians as the Cumberland men again.

An _ould soldier_ is made by hanging up in a chimney a salmon caught out of season, when the fish is white instead of red, and it acquires by hanging the colour of an old red coat.

Cross-examination may sometimes produce peril to the performer. At the assizes, Scott once examined a barber severely. The barber got into a great passion, and Scott desired him to moderate his anger, and that he should employ him to shave him as he passed through Kendal to the Lancaster assizes. 'The barber said, with great indignation, "I would not advise you, lawyer, to think of that, or risk it."

Scott's reputation was now rising year by year, in both Parliament and his profession; and Lord Mansfield's resignation, in 1788, of the chief-justiceship of the King's Bench making a general move in the higher orders of the bar, Scott was appointed solicitor-general, Kenyon being appointed to the chief-justiceship, and the attorney-general, Arden, succeeding to the Rolls. On this occasion he was knighted. A melancholy event soon gave him the most public opportunity for the display of his official faculties. In the autumn of 1788, the king was attacked with disorder of the mind, and the great question of the regency necessarily came before Parliament. The Whigs, who regarded the Prince of Wales as their dependent, if not as their dupe, insisted on his succession to the unlimited prerogatives of the sovereign; the Tories insisted, on the other hand, that Parliament alone had a right to confer the regency and to assign its powers, though they admitted that the choice, in the present instance, ought to fall upon the Prince of Wales. A question of this importance naturally brought out all the ability on both sides. Pitt and the solicitor-general took the lead on the side of limitation, and the prince ultimately accepted the regency on their terms. It became unnecessary, however; for, while the bill was in the House of Lords, a communication was made by the chancellor, that the king's health was in a favourable state.

His majesty was able to return to business in March.

Lord Thurlow had been universally charged with carrying on an intrigue with the Opposition, for the purpose of continuing in office under the regency. Lord Eldon's belief is introduced against that charge; but there can be no doubt whatever that the charge was universally rumoured at the time; that anecdotes confirmatory of the fact were told in every direction; that no known attempt was ever made to answer them; and that, from the period of the regency, an alienation arose, which finally determined his dismissal by the minister. The well-known boast of the chancellor's loyalty to the incapacitated king, which produced such animadversion in the House, and such burlesque out of it--Burke's ridicule of his official sensibilities, "the iron tears down Pluto's cheeks," were all founded on the public belief of this intrigue. And it is certainly no answer, at the end of half a century of uncontradicted opinion, to say that no formal accusation on the subject was made on the king's recovery, when the whole subject of the regency had become alike distasteful to both sides of the House--to Ministers, from delicacy to the king; and to Opposition, from a sense of failure.

Soon after Scott became solicitor-general, the king, at Weymouth, said, "Well, I hope your promotion has been beneficial to you?" He asked his majesty if he meant his professional income. "Yes," said the king, "in that and in other respects." Scott told him that he must lose by it about £2000 a-year; and on the king expressing surprise, he said "That the attention of the law-officers was called to matters of international law, public law, and revenue law--matters which, as they were not familiar to them, took up a good deal of their time, and that the fee usually given to the solicitor-general with the government cases was only three guineas, while those from private cases were from ten to twenty-five." "Oh!" said the king, "then for the first time I comprehend what I never could understand, why it has always been so difficult to get any opinion from my law-officers."

At the close of the session of 1792, Lord Thurlow gave up the great seal. "What it was," said Lord Eldon afterwards, "that occasioned the rupture between Lord Thurlow and his colleagues, I never could find out." We here see an instance of the ignorance in which a high official was content to remain, on a subject which might naturally and fairly excite his curiosity. It is obvious that he wished to keep himself out of the mêlée and took the best probable way of doing so, by asking no questions. But a dilemma arose out of this resignation to Scott himself. Pitt sent for him, and said, "I have a circumstance to mention to you, which, on account of your personal and political connexion with Lord Thurlow, I wish that you should first hear from myself. Lord Thurlow and I have quarreled, and I have signified to him his Majesty's commands that he should resign the great seal." Scott replied, that he was not at all surprised at the event which had taken place; but added, that he owed too great obligations to Lord Thurlow to reconcile it to himself to act in political hostility to him, and he had also been too long in political connexion with the minister to join any party against him; so that nothing was left but to resign his office, and make his bow to the House of Commons. Pitt argued against this, and finally induced him to consult Lord Thurlow. Thurlow at once told him, that to resign would be a foolish thing; adding in the spirit of a prediction, which was afterwards strikingly realized, "it is very possible that Mr Pitt, from party and political motives, at this moment may overlook your pretensions; but, sooner or later, you, _must_ hold the great seal. I know no man but yourself qualified for its duties."

If the ex-chancellor was complimentary to Scott, it notoriously was not his habitual style; the fierceness of his tone was well known. His language of Loughborough, who succeeded him, was savagely contemptuous. On one occasion, when the latter was speaking with considerable effect on a subject on which Lord Thurlow had an adverse opinion, though he did not regard himself as sufficiently master of it for direct refutation, he was heard to mutter, "If I was not as lazy as a toad at the bottom of a well, I could kick that fellow Loughborough heels over head, any day in the week."

Thurlow told the Prince that though Loughborough "had the gift of the gab in a marvellous degree, he was no lawyer;" and added, "in the house of Lords I get Kenyon or somebody to start some law doctrine, in such a manner that the, fellow _must_ get up to answer it, and then I leave the woolsack, and give him such a thump in his bread-basket that he cannot recover himself."

The solicitor-general was now growing rich, and he purchased for L.22,000 the manor of Eldon, a property of about 1300 acres in the county of Durham. He was an "improving landlord," and for several years he expended the income of the estate on planting--which at once much increased its value, and added to the beauty of that part of the county of Durham.

In 1793, he ascended another step in his profession, by his appointment to the great office of attorney-general, in succession to Sir Archibald Macdonald, who was made chief baron of the exchequer. The new attorney-general was soon summoned to the highest exercise of his abilities, his learning, and his courage; he commenced office in the midst of national convulsion.

The Revolution of France, which had been growing violence and havoc for the last four years, had now arrived at its height. The change, beginning with popular reform in 1789, had, in 1793, been consummated in regicide. The republic proclaimed in the year before, within three months had darkened into a democracy. The general alarm of the continental kings; combined them in an attempt to overthrow a government which threatened them all; the attempt was found to result only in consolidating its power; and, in the first year of war, France presented to the disaffected of all nations, the tempting spectacle of a land in which the foremost prizes of power had fallen into the hands of men of the humblest condition; and in which those men humbled to the dust the proudest diadems of Europe. Obscure pamphleteers, country advocates, monks, and editors of struggling journals, were suddenly seen in the first offices of state, wielding the whole power of the mightiest kingdom of the Continent, absorbing its revenues, directing its armies, and moving in the rank of princes among the proud hereditary sovereignties of the world. To the crowd of unprincipled men, engendered by the habits of European life, and their consciousness of abilities fully equal to those which had won such opulent enjoyments and lofty distinctions in France, the success of the Revolution was an universal summons to conspiracy. On the Continent that conspiracy was, according to the habits of the people, crafty and concealed. In England, equally according to the habits of the people, it was bold and public, daring and defying. Great meetings of the population were held in the open air; committees of grievance were appointed; correspondences were spread through the country; the whole machinery of overthrow was openly erected, and worked by visible hands. Even where secresy was deemed useful by the more cautious or the more fearful, it was of a different character from the assassin-like secresy of the foreign insurgent; it was more the solemn and regulated observance of a secret tribunal. The papers which have transpired of those secret committees have all the forms of diplomacy, combined with a determination of language, and an intensity of purpose, which would do honour to a nobler cause. But the contest was now at hand, and on three men in England depended the championship of the monarchy. These three were the King, the Minister, and the Attorney-General. There were never three individuals more distinctly, and we shall scarcely hesitate to say, more providentially, prepared to meet the crisis. George III., a sovereign of the most constitutional principles, and of the most unshaken intrepidity; William Pitt, the most sagacious and the most resolute statesman that England had ever seen, formed by his manly eloquence to rule the legislature, and, by his character for integrity, to obtain the full confidence of the empire; and Sir John Scott, at once wise, calm, and bold, profoundly learned in his profession, personally brave, and alike incapable of yielding to the menaces of party or the corruptions of power. It is not to be forgotten, as a portion of that genuine public respect which in England is always withheld from even the most shining personal gifts, when stained by private profligacy, that those three were wholly and alike above the breath of slander. The king, eminent for domestic virtue; Pitt, unstained by even an imputation; and Scott, fondly attached to his wife and family.

In January 1793, the cruel murder of the innocent and unfortunate Louis XVI. had been perpetrated by the National Convention--an act which Napoleon long afterwards pronounced "a grand political error; sufficient to stamp the government not merely with guilt, but with infatuation." The French minister at the Court of St James's was ordered to leave the country, and war was proclaimed. The revolutionary committees in England now assumed increased activity. Communications were established between them and the Jacobin government; and while France prepared for War, English republicanism prepared for revolution. The time of the struggle was fully come. The English minister now buckled on his armour. A succession of vigorous measures employed the legislature during the whole period; they were fiercely combated, but they were all ultimately carried. Opposition never exhibited more brilliant parliamentary powers. Fox was matchless in declamation, alternately solemn and touching; Sheridan, Grey, and a long list of practised and indefatigable talent, were in perpetual debate; but Pitt, "with huge two-handed sway", finally crushed them all. The classic illustration of Hercules destroying the Hydra, was frequently used to express the solitary prowess of this extraordinary man in resisting the multiplied, wily, and envenomed attacks of his opponents; and he realized the fable to the full--he not merely crushed the heads, but he seared them. He extinguished that principle of evil increase, by which all the efforts of foreign governments had been baffled in their contests with Jacobinism; and in the midst of an empire at all times inclined to look with jealousy on power, and at that moment nervous for the suspended privileges of its constitution, Pitt utterly extinguished the Whigs. Fox was defeated so hopelessly, that he gave up Parliament altogether, and his party followed his example. Pitt had not merely cut down the statelier trunks of Opposition, but he had swept away the brushwood, and smote the ground with sterility. His bold enterprise had not merely taken the citadel Of faction by storm, and driven its defenders, faint-hearted and fugitive, over the face of the land, but he had sown the foundations with salt. The total solitude of the Opposition benches, during the greater part of the minister's political life, was the most unequivocal and striking evidence ever given to ministerial supremacy.

The services of the attorney-general were in another less wide, but not less important province. On the Continent, the conspirators against the state would have been thrown into dungeon for life, or shot. In France, the idol of the revolutionist of all countries, they would heave been carried before a mob tribunal, their names simply asked, their sentences pronounced, and their bodies headless within the first half hour. In England, they had the benefit of the law in all its sincerity, the assistance of the most distinguished counsel, the judgment of the most impartial tribunal, and the incalculable advantage of a trial by men of their own condition, feelings, and passions. On the 28th of October, at the Old Bailey, commenced the trial of Hardy, one of the secretaries of the chief treasonable society. The bill brought in by the grand jury had included twelve. The charges were those of "compassing the death of the king, and the subversion of the government." Hardy was a shoemaker, a man of low attainments, but active, and strongly republican. His activity had made him secretary to the London Corresponding Society, and by its direction a member of a similar body, named the Society for Constitutional Information. The direct object of all those societies was the same--to summon a national convention, which must, of course, supersede Parliament. As those societies grew more mature, instead of becoming more rational they exhibited more savage ferocity. Placards were distributed in the form of a playbill, announcing, "For the Benefit of John Bull, La Guillotine," or, "George's Head in a Basket." The airs of their meetings were Ca Ira and the Marseillaise. Attempts were made to corrupt the army. It was openly declared in their harangues, that it was "impossible to do any thing without some bloodshed, and that Pitt's and the King's heads would be upon Temple Bar." The sentiment was general, but at the conclusion of the especial harangue in which this atrocious language was first used, the whole meeting rose up, and shook hands with the madman by whom it was uttered.

The attorney-general's speech on this occasion was masterly; English jurisprudence had never before witnessed so striking a combination of refined knowledge with clear arrangement and unanswerable facts. It had one disadvantage, it was overwhelmingly long; it lasted nine hours, a period, if not beyond the strength of the advocate, palpably beyond any power of attention in the jury. But even this disadvantage arose from an honourable public feeling. The judges who examined the papers declared them to be high treason. The warrants of commitment had declared them to be high treason. Lord Eldon, in his "anecdotes" of this period, says, that, "after this, he did not think himself at liberty to _let down_ the character of the offence." An additional and still stronger reason is given, that "unless the _whole_ evidence was laid before the jury, it would have been impossible that the country should have ever been made fully acquainted with the danger to which it was exposed. And it appeared to him more essential to the public safety that the whole of those transactions should be published, than _that any of these individuals should be convicted_." This was a sentiment which does honour to the memory of a great man. He had been urged by his fellow counsel, and probably by others, to bring the accused to trial only for a misdemeanour, in the expectation of thus being sure of a verdict. But he determined to bring the case before the jury in its true shape, be the result what it might. It has been rumoured that this, too, was the opinion of Pitt, in contradiction to that of some of the cabinet. With that pre-eminent man the blood of these criminals could never have been the object. No servant of the British crown was ever less chargeable with cruelty. But the true object was, to expose the treason; to prove to the nation the actual hazards of revolutionary intrigue, and to extinguish conspiracy, however the conspirators might escape. The consequence amply justified this bold and candid determination. _The_ conspiracy was crushed; all conspiracy was crushed. Nothing of the same degree of guilt, nor even of the same shape of guilt, ever recurred. The lesson was not the less complete, for its sparing the country the sight of the abhorred scaffold. The conspirators, though successively acquitted, were so warned by their peril that they never sinned again. All, if not converted, sank into total obscurity. The nation, freed from this nightmare, started up in fresh vigour, and began, with a unanimity in its heart, and irresistible strength in its hands, that illustrious battle for Europe, which accomplished the liberation of mankind.

The attorney-general had now given such undeniable proofs of fitness for the highest rank of his profession, that office seemed to fall to him by right of universal acknowledgment; and on a vacancy in the Common Pleas, he was promoted to the chief-justiceship in 1799, and at the same time raised to the peerage by the title of Baron Eldon. It is an instance of the dutiful and affectionate nature, which long connexion with the world and the pride of success--the two strongest temptations to heartlessness--could not extinguish, that he made a point of writing the first letter which he signed with his title to his aged mother. In this interesting document, after mentioning his double promotion, and attributing it, "under the blessing of Providence," to the lessons of virtue which he had received from his parents; he adds--"I hope God's grace will enable me to do my duty in the station to which I am called. I write in some agitation of spirits; but am anxious to express my love and duty to my mother, and affection to my sisters, when I _first_ subscribe myself, your loving and affectionate son, ELDON."

Lord Kenyon, then chief-justice of the King's Bench, pronounced a panegyric on this promotion, congratulating the profession, and especially those who practised in the Common Pleas, on the appointment of one who would probably be found "the most consummate judge that ever sat in judgment."

The step from the office of attorney-general to the presidency of one of the courts, has been not unusual; but, as modern experience has shown, it is by no means a necessary procedure. In Lord Eldon's instance, it received the universal approval of the bar. But he held the chief-justiceship only for a year and a half, when he was raised to the summit of the bar, and sat down lord chancellor.

We hasten over the melancholy details of the following period. The labours of the attorney-general were light and cheerful compared with the toils and responsibilities of the chancellor; the disturbed state of the king's mind; the growing difficulties of that millstone round the neck of English legislation, the Popish claims; the retirement of Pitt, and the general alarm of the nation at its external hazards, formed a trial of unexampled severity to all public men. The death of the Great Minister in 1806, (23d of January,) at length broke up the Tory administration; the Whigs assumed power, and Lord Eldon, of course, resigned the Seals.

But the mere official routine of a chancellor's life is tremendous. Lord Eldon's account of one of his days, shows at what a price the honour of the Seals must be purchased. In one of his letters he says--"Mine has been no easy life. I will tell you what once happened to me. I was ill with the gout, it was in my feet, and so I was carried into my carriage, and from it was carried into court. There I remained all the day, and delivered an arduous judgment. In the evening, I went straight from my court to the House of Lords. There I sat until two in the morning, when some of the lords came and whispered to me, that I was expected to speak. I told them that I really could not, that I was ill, and could not stand. It was an important question, (the peace of Amiens,) I forgot my gout, and spoke for two hours. Well, the House broke up, I was carried home, and at six in the morning I prepared to go to bed. My poor left leg had just got in; when I recollected that I had important papers to examine; so I put on my clothes, and went to my study. I examined the papers; they related to the Recorders' Report, which had to be heard that day. I was again carried into court, where I had to deliver another arduous judgment. Again went to the House of Lords, and it was not till the middle of the second night that I got into bed!" Such desperate performances do not occur every day in the life even of lord chancellors; but the judicial labours, combined with the political, are too heavy a task for the body or the mind of any man.

The Whigs are never destined to a long supremacy. They have never come into power but in some perverted state of the public feelings. There must be some terror, or some infatuation, in the public mind, before it calls in the quack; but the moment that sees quiet succeed to disturbance, and the nation has recovered its composure, always sees the Whigs driven out of office. The death of Fox, in 1806, unquestionably deprived the party of a great popular name, but the whole strength of Whiggism survived. It was in full possession of power, and the late dissolution had filled Parliament with its adherents; still its old fate prevailed. Like ships floating over the land only by the help of an inundation, when the waters return to their channel the ships remain, only to be broken in pieces, the Whig government was broken up never to be restored, until a new convulsion in France, producing a corresponding convulsion in England, brought them into office, after a lapse of another quarter of a century.

In March 1807, a bill having been prepared as a preliminary to the Popish concession, the king pronounced it contrary to his coronation oath, and insisted on its withdrawal; the Whigs consented; but the king further insisting on a pledge that they would attempt no similar measure, they demurred, and his majesty instantly dismissed them, amidst the general rejoicing of the empire. The Duke of Portland was placed at the head of a new ministry, and Lord Eldon received the Seals.

We have now seen his lordship secure in that station which he was to retain until the close of his useful and vigorous life; we shall, therefore, abandon politics, and turn to his more numerous recollections of incident and character.

Lord Eldon as a warrior. "During the war," says his lordship, "I became one of the Lincoln's Inn volunteers--Lord Ellenborough, at the same time, being one of the corps. It happened, unfortunately for the military character of both of us, that we were _turned out of the awkward squad for awkwardness_! I think Ellenborough was more awkward than I was; but others thought that it was difficult to determine which was the worse." His brother William, however, was a smart officer, and commanded a corps.

Of Chief-Justice Eyre, whom he succeeded in the Common Pleas, he told--"Eyre once demanded of Wilkes, why he abused him so unmercifully in his speeches to the Livery while he was Recorder, though in private he expressed a regard for him?"--"So I have," said Wilkes, "and it is for that reason I abuse you in public. I wish to have you promoted to a judgeship."

"When Sir Robert Henley was keeper of the Great Seal, and presided in the House, he was often indignant at seeing his decrees reversed, while, not being a peer, he was not entitled to support his decisions. In the famous case of Drury and Drury, his decision having been reversed, though the bar then and still pronounced it valid, the lord keeper was very angry; and, in driving home, his coachman checked the horses. He asked--'Why he did not drive on?' The man saying--'My lord, I can't. If I do, I shall kill an old woman.'--'Drive on,' cried Henley; 'if you do kill her, she has nothing to do but to appeal to the house of Lords.' He was afterwards made lord chancellor, and this habit of reversals came to an end."

On his quitting the chancellorship, and accepting the inferior office of lord president, the Archbishop of Canterbury congratulating him on his removal from an office of unceasing fatigue to one of so much quiet, the ex-chancellor not being at all satisfied with the difference of the emoluments, answered very sulkily, "I suppose, now, you would think I was extremely civil and kind if I were to congratulate your grace on a transition from Canterbury to Llandaff."

Taylor, an extravagant personage who called himself a chevalier, and who professed extraordinary skill in the diseases of the eye, dining one day with the bar on the Oxford circuit, related many wonders which he had done. Bearcroft, a little out of humour at his self-conceit, said--"Pray, Chevalier, as you have told us a great many things which you have done, try to tell us something which you cannot do." "Nothing so easy," said Taylor; "I cannot pay my share of the dinner-bill; and that, sir, I must beg of you to do."

Lord Thurlow's oddity and abruptness, both sometimes amounting to brutality, were the constant source of amusement--at least to all but the sufferers. On a trial in which an attorney gave evidence respecting the will of a man whose death was in question, the attorney, after some puzzling, said--"My lord, hear me, the man is dead; I attended his funeral; he was _my client_." "Why, sir," said Thurlow, "did you not mention _that_ at first? a great deal of time and trouble might have been saved. That he was _your_ client is some evidence that he was dead; nothing was so likely to kill him."

At Buxton, Thurlow lodged with a surgeon, opposite to a butcher's shop. He asked his landlord whether he or his neighbour killed the most.

Thurlow, on being asked, how he got through all his business as a chancellor, answered--"Just as a pickpocket gets through a horse-pond. He _must_ get through." Dunning, when a similar question was put to him, answered in much the same spirit, though in a more professional style. "I divide my business into three parts: one part I do; another does itself; and the third I leave undone."

In 1807, Lord Eldon purchased the estate of Encombe in the Isle of Purbeck, for which he paid between £52,000 and £53,000, comprising a mansion with 2000 acres, a fertile valley, with a fine sea view.

In 1809, the charges brought by Colonel Wardle against the Duke of York excited great public interest. The very sound of malversation in high employments excites all the feelings of a nation with whom character is the first requisite; and the rumour that the Duke had been a party to the sale of commissions in the army by Mrs Clarke, with whom he had formed an unfortunate connexion, produced a public uproar. After discussions and examination of witnesses, which lasted six weeks, and brought infinite obloquy on the Duke and his defenders, the House of Commons resolved, by 278 to 196, that the charge of corruption, or even of connivance, against the Duke, was wholly without foundation. Upon this clearance of his character, the Duke resigned the command of the army; a subsequent motion for a censure on his conduct, was negatived without a division. The Duke of York was, beyond all question, clear of any knowledge of the practices of the very ingenious person with whom he associated, but few men have ever paid more dearly for their offence. The storm of public abuse which poured on him for months, must have been torture; and his resignation of office must have stung every feeling; and even his pecuniary sacrifice during the three years of his retirement, must have been severely felt by a prince with a narrow income for his rank. That loss could not have been less than £50,000. In 1811 he resumed the command. We must hasten to the conclusion. Lord Eldon, after witnessing the two great changes of the constitution, the Popish bill of 1829--which he calls the "fatal bill," and which he had resisted with all his vigour and learning for a long succession of years--and the Reform bill of 1832, at length found that period coming to him which comes to all. Retiring from public life, he devoted himself to his study, the society of a few old friends, and those considerations of a higher kind which he had cultivated from early life, and which returned to him, as they return to all who reverence them, with additional force when their presence was more consolatory and essential. But old age naturally strips us of those who gave an especial value to life; and after seeing his brother Lord Stowell, and Lady Eldon--his Elizabeth, for whom he seems to have always retained the tenderness of their early years--taken from him, he quietly sank into the grave, dying in 1838, January 13th, aged 87. He deserved to rest in peace--for he had lived in patriotism, integrity, and honour.

The three volumes exhibit a research which does much credit to the intelligence and industry of Mr Twiss, their author. They abound in capital anecdotes, but a few of which we have been able to give--possess passages of very effective writing--and form a work which ought to be in the library of every lawyer, statesman, and English gentleman.