Chapter II (6)

The attacks of Junius were not without effect on Parliament. A motion was made in the House of Commons for "a committee to inquire into the proceedings of the judges in Westminster Hall, particularly in cases relating to the liberty of the press." In the House of Lords Lord Chatham and Lord Camden re-echoed the charges of the House of Commons, and while the latter warned noble lords how they received the opinions in that House of the "most experienced lawyers" upon questions of law, the former, in his accustomed style, threatened to ring again and again "the alarm-bell of liberty," until he "could rouse the people to a proper sense of their injuries." Stung by persecution Lord Mansfield suffered himself to be betrayed into unaccountable error. Intimating one day that he had something of importance to bring to the notice of the House, he moved that their Lordships should be summoned to receive the communication. The appointed day arrived, and the attendance of peers was unusually large. Lord Mansfield rose amidst profound and anxious silence. Lord Chatham and Lord Camden had calumniated the judges, and they were now no doubt to be the objects of a vote of censure. Nothing of the kind. Lord Mansfield simply informed the House that he had left a paper with the clerk assistant containing the judgment of the Court of King's Bench in the case of "the King against Woodfall," and then, to the astonishment of every one, resumed his seat. Lord Camden rose and inquired whether the noble lord intended hereafter to found any motion on his paper? Lord Mansfield answered "No," and the House proceeded to other business. The very next day Lord Camden resumed the subject. He regarded the conduct of the Chief Justice as a challenge against himself, and he at once accepted it. In direct contradiction to Lord Mansfield he maintained that his doctrine was not the law of England. He had considered the noble lord's "paper," and had not found it very intelligible. He begged to propose four questions to the noble and learned lord, to which he required categorical answers, that their lordships might know precisely the points they had to discuss. The questions were submitted, and Lord Mansfield, instead of meeting them, "with most abject soothings," as Horace Walpole gleefully says, "paid the highest compliments to Lord Camden." He had the highest esteem for the noble and learned lord who thus attacked him, and had ever courted his esteem in return. He had not expected this treatment from his candor. It was unfair; he would not answer interrogatories. The reply was a signal for relentless torment. Not a peer interposed on his behalf. Distressed by his misery, Lord Mansfield sat down, remained still, and in sheer pity for their prey the dogs were called off.

In 1778 Lord Chatham died, and from the departure of the great commoner until his own decease Lord Mansfield occupied a more conspicuous place as a judge than as a politician in the public eye. He continued to display upon the bench, as heretofore, the keenest perception, a resolute obedience to the dictates of justice, high incorruptibility, great learning, and thorough self-devotion to his beloved and chosen occupation. He has been largely accused of favoring, in his early manhood, the designs of the Pretender, yet, from the beginning to the close of his public life, his fidelity to the reigning family could not be called in question. He has been charged with gratifying prerogative at the expense of law, yet the liberty of the law was never more perfect, the rights of the subject were never more secure, than during his long tenure of the judicial office. He has been stigmatized by Junius as an oppressor of men's consciences, yet no man of his time regulated his conduct with a stricter regard to the humanizing principle of religious toleration. Had Lord Mansfield been faithless to the people his death would never have been regarded as an irreparable loss by the whole country; had he been a bigot, the world would never have lost the treasures which it is said were consumed in the house burnt to the ground by zealous Protestants eager to take the life as well as to destroy the goods of Lord Mansfield, for no other reason than that he chose to hold the scales of justice fairly and steadily between Protestant and Catholic.

In his 82d year, having been absent scarcely a day from court, Lord Mansfield retired to Tunbridge Wells for the benefit of his health. The year following he resigned his office. For six years longer he lived in dignified retirement, occupying himself in his garden, or refreshing his mind with the works that had charmed and instructed his youth. To the last he retained his memory, and, dying without a pain at the close of the century, the man who had spent his happiest evenings with Pope was destined to listen to all the horrors of the French Revolution, in common with thousands living at the present hour. Lord Mansfield's death was mourned as a national calamity; his remains were deposited in Westminster Abbey, and they lie close to those of the Earl of Chatham. After the stormy conflict of a glorious life, the two schoolboy rivals lie side by side in silent and everlasting repose.

We have freely stated the one great deformity of Lord Mansfield's character; his quailing before Lord Camden is but a solitary instance of the fault that tarnished his otherwise brilliant career. When we have said that the Chief Justice acted unconstitutionally in continuing in the Cabinet whilst he held the Judicial office, and that, admitted to the friendship and confidence of his sovereign, he did not scruple to exercise power without official responsibility, we have confessed to the most serious offenses with which he is chargeable. It is not, however, to dwell upon these blemishes of true greatness, or to indulge in idle panegyric, that we have occupied so large a portion of valuable space, and intermixed with the living doings of today one striking record of the buried past. The life of Lord Mansfield is nothing to us if it yields no profitable instruction and contains no element of usefulness for the generation to whom our labors are addressed. Is it wholly unnecessary to place at this moment before the bar of England so noble a model for imitation so sublime an ideal for serious contemplation as that offered in the person of the Earl of Mansfield? Is it impertinent to warn our lawyers, that, without confirmed habits of industry, temperance, self-subjugation, unsullied honor, vast knowledge, enlightened and lofty views of their difficult yet fascinating profession, and a love of the eternal principles of truth and justice, incompatible with meanness and degrading practice, true eminence is impossible, and imperishable renown not to be obtained? Never, at any other period of our history, has it been so necessary to urge upon the students of the law the example of their worthiest predecessors. The tendency of the age is to lower, not to elevate, the standard set up by our ancestors for the attainment of preeminence. That our giants may not be stunted in their growth--that the legal stock may not hopelessly degenerate--Chief Justice Campbell does well to impress upon his brethren the patient and laborious course--the high and admirable qualities--by which Chief Justice Mansfield secured his greatness and his fame.

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[From Blackwood's Magazine.]

MY NOVEL; OR, VARIETIES IN ENGLISH LIFE.

BY PISISTRATUS CAXTON.