and he prepared to assume, if possible, such a position as might by its intrinsic honour, as well as by many collateral advantages, justify him in demanding the official dignity to which he now obviously aspired. Mr. Brougham accordingly resolved to contest, on liberal principles, the great county of York. The most reasonable objections to his claims were, that he had no connection whatever with the county, and that his professional avocations might essentially interfere with the effectual discharge of his duties to so large and important a constituency. All scruples, however, soon vanished before his pre-eminent talents and unparalleled energy, his fidelity to the cause of freedom, and the love which he bore to the people of England. On the 23rd of June, 1830, a meeting of the liberal party was held at York, and a resolution adopted, in which was embodied an invitation to Mr. Brougham to take the field as a candidate for the representation of the county. Hints were even dropped that, to enhance his triumph, their favourite should be returned without personal expense being incurred by him. This suggestion, however, it is only fair to say, did not originate with Mr. Brougham.1 On the 26th of July he issued an address to the freeholders of Yorkshire.2 All the antecedents to his triumph were flattering to him. The impression produced by the spirit which prevailed in the meeting at York, strengthened by the result of an interview which he had with a deputation from the West Riding, left him no doubt that "the highest honour which a subject of these realms could receive from the hands of his fellow-citizens was about to be conferred upon him unsolicited; for he had neither written nor spoken on the subject to a single person connected with that vast county." Such was his own language. He concealed not his exultation at the prospect before him: on the contrary, he avowed his delight at the boundless prospect of honour and usefulness which opened before him when once he reached the commanding eminence then in view. Nor can there be the slightest doubt that the invitation from Yorkshire, resting, as it did rest, solely on the merits of Mr. Brougham, was a glorious homage paid to 1 Vide the Times for 28th July, 1830. public virtue; to talents, industry, and patriotism; for he was known to the electors only by his devotion to civil and religious liberty, by his inextinguishable hatred to slavery, under whatever name it might be veiled, and of whatever race it might be the curse. He promised to rest not from his labours until all mists were dispersed from the eyes of the ignorant, and the chains had dropped from the limbs of the slave. He subsequently addressed the electors at Leeds and at Huddersfield, and on neither occasion did he betray anything approaching to bashfulness, while he enlarged on the prodigious extent of his labours and the spotless purity of his motives. He reminded all that the first vote which he had given in the House of Commons was in favour of the liberty of the press, and the last, down to that period, had been for the abolition of negro slavery; and that the entire interval had been filled by zealous speeches and steady votes on behalf of the rights, the interests, and the privileges of his fellow-subjects. Mr. Brougham met with a cordial reception throughout the county. On the 3rd of August the election began; and he harangued the electors on the usual topics-on his unabated devotion to the principles which he had always held sacred, from which no temptations in his political or professional capacity had moved him, and from the open assertion of which the frown of a court could not scare him. Mr. Brougham was returned as one of the members for Yorkshire: he stood second on the poll. Conscious of the proud position to which he had been elevated, Mr. Brougham must have been impatient for the opening of the first Parliament in the reign of King William IV. Within a few days after the commencement of the session he made his famous attack 3 upon the Duke of Welling On 13th July, 1830. 2 Members returned to serve in Parliament - Ebor, York County: The Rt. Hon. George William Frederick Howard, of Castle Howard, in the said county of York, commonly called Lord Viscount Morpeth; Henry Brougham, of Brougham, in the county of Westmoreland, Esq.; the Hon. William Duncombe, of Horton Pagnell, in the said county; Richard Bethell, of Rise, in the said county, Esq." London Gazette, for 1830, part ii. p. 1831; 26th August, 1830. The numbers for the candidates respectively were, for Lord Morpeth, 1,464; for Mr. Brougham, 1,295; for Mr. Duncombe, 1,123; for Mr. Bethell, 1,064; for Mr. Stapylton, 94. 3 8th November, 1830. Vide H. P. D, 3rd ser. vol. i. pp. 277, 278. 2 ton; who, he lamented in language of keen sarcasm, had rendered himself, by his declaration against every species of reform, so unpopular, that he considered it prudent not to venture into the heart of the city of London.1 Among other topics which, from day to day, attracted the attention of Mr. Brougham, he had taken the earliest opportunity (2nd of November, 1830) of giving notice that he intended, on that day fortnight, to call the attention of the House of Commons to the question of Parliamentary Reform. On the 15th of November, however, the ministry was left in a minority on the Civil List; and, on the day following-being the day which had been appointed for Mr. Brougham's motion-Sir Robert Peel announced to the House that all the members of the government considered themselves as holding office only until their successors should be appointed. Mr. Brougham appears to have been, at that juncture, in an extremely equivocal position; for, after having, on the 16th of November, expressed his reluctance to have the discussion of Parliamentry Reform postponed, and having openly declared that no change in the administration could by any possibility affect him, he, on the 22nd of the same month, entered the House of Lords, under the administration of Earl Grey, as Baron Brougham and Vaux, and as Lord High Chancellor of England. 3 1 London was at that period in a state of great excitement: we allude to the occasion when the King had been advised to decline fulfilling a promise which he had given to dine with the Lord Mayor on the 9th of November. 2 For example, the state of public business in the House of Commons, H. P. D. 3rd ser. vol. i. p. 6; comp. ibid. p. 132 (3rd November, 1830), and p. 265; the Local Jurisdiction Bill, ibid. pp. 359, 362, 363; breach of privilege (10th November), p. 360; the Civil List, ibid. p. 454. The family of Vaux derived its name from a district in Normandy, its original seat. At a period so early as the year 794 a branch of the Vaux's is found in Provence. Harold de Vaux, lord of Vau, in Normandy, having, for religious purposes, conferred his seignory upon the abbey of the Holy Trinity, at Caen, settled along with his three sons in England; and in tracing the descendants from the youngest of these sons, we meet with Jane Vaux, who, in the year 1553, married Thomas Brougham, the lineal ancestor of Lord Brougham. Another alliance appears to have been formed between the family of Vaux and that of Brougham; for, about the beginning of the eighteenth century, Peter Brougham married Elizabeth, daughter and co-heiress of Christopher Richmond, Esq., of Highhead Castle, in the county of Cumberland, and this Christopher was grandson and heir of John Vaux, of Catterlia, through his mother Mabel Vaux. (Vide" Burke's Dict. of Peerages Extinct, &c.," sub voce "Vaux.") The motto of Lord The period comprised between the month of November, 1830, and the month of November, 1834, is that during which the public appearances of Lord Brougham reflected upon him less credit than he contrived to secure throughout the preceding or subsequent stages of his career. Of his great capacity for the rapid acquisition of knowledge there can be no doubt. The shade which, we think, fell for a time over his hitherto bright path, was thrown across it, not so much from ignorance of many doctrines of equity, or the practice of the Court of Chancery, as from the temper and tone which he occasionally assumed, and which some men ventured to think originated in his consciousness of the superiority, within their own particular sphere, of more than one of the eminent counsel who were, from day to day and from hour to hour, watching and commenting upon the doctrines laid down by him, as well as the technical proceedings sanctioned or condemned by him. The law, it has often been remarked, is a jealous mistress; and it may fairly be questioned whether the multifarious occupations of Lord Brougham in other fields of literature and science could be compatible with the successful cultivation of that department of jurisprudence, which it was his duty, in the discharge of his high judicial functions, to administer. At the same time, it must be admitted, that men thoroughly conversant with the law of real property, and with the rules of practice, felt pleasure in addressing Lord Brougham as a judge. His kindly disposition, with one lamentable exception, beamed forth on all occaBrougham, Pro rege, lege, grege, has been long borne by the family. It is to be seen in an old apartment at Brougham Hall, of the age of Elizabeth. It can scarcely be necessary, we should think, to remind any of our readers of the witticism suggested by this motto in allusion to Lord Brougham's supposed democratic tendencies: Pro rege, lege grege. Never was there a happier substitution of a verb for a noun, It was rumoured (Vide Law Quarterly Mag. vol. v. pp. 253, 254) that he spurned the office of Attorney-General; and most assuredly a man who had so long and successfully led his party was entitled to reject the offer of any subordinate office. We have somewhere read that the rightful heir to the throne of his "Magnificent Majesty the King of Siam," was, about the year 1831, his Highness Prince Momfenoi, which, being interpreted, signifies Prince of Heaven, Junior-a position in the Whig mythology which Mr. Brougham had no ambition to occupy. 1 "The expectation of the Bar," said Mr. Lynch, "was very great; and so, alas! has been the disappointment." "His judicial demeanour," said another, "is a perpetual counterfeit of the Great Seal." VOL. LIII. NO. CVI. G sions, while his acuteness, his wonderful facility in analyzing the various authorities, and expertness in applying them to any case which happened to be under consideration, were all conspicuous. He possessed in a remarkable degree the faculty which he himself ascribed to Lord Lyndhurst, that of "splitting the nut, throwing away the husk, and getting at the kernel." His judgments were the result of much thought, and were generally, in respect of arrangement and style, prepared with great care. In short, the language in which Lord Brougham characterized the decisions of Lord Erskine is, perhaps, not inapplicable to his own: these "have never been charged with a worse fault than the inevitable one of his not being master of the ordinary practice of the Court." He had, no doubt, read excellent treatises, in which are expounded the principles of equity; but he was utterly inexperienced in the practical application of the doctrines. Lord Brougham has, many years ago, we venture to say, read "Blondel's Book of Bombs;" but even he would shrink from conducting, on the faith of such knowledge, the siege of Sebastopol. Even the judges of the Court of Session in Scotland, whose opinions were occasionally brought under the notice of Lord Brougham in the discussion of appeals, had reason to complain of the abruptness of tone and harshness of spirit with which allusion was made to them; and, notwithstanding the faithful attention which he uniformly bestowed upon this branch of his judicial duties, there was a studied disparagement of the opinions of the late Lord Justice-General Boyle, on the one hand, and on the other, a marked partiality for the opinions of his Whig friends for instance, of Lord Jeffrey,3 " Lord Bacon, in one of his Essays, slyly remarks that “gradual rising to the pinnacle of promotion is by a winding 1 Vide Russell and Mylne, Rep. vol. ii.; Mylne and Keen, Rep. passim ; "Select Cases decided by Lord Brougham in the Court of Chancery in the years 1833, 1834, edited from his Lordship's MSS., by Charles Purton Cooper, Esq., Barrister-at-Law, 1835." This work failed to supersede the Reports of Mylne and Keen, 2 Vide "The Speeches of the Right Hon. Lord Erskine, at the Bar and in Parliament, with a Prefatory Memoir by the Right Hon. Lord Brougham," 1847; particularly the Memoir, p. xx. 3 Vide the case of Maxwell and Co. appellants, v. Steevison and Co. respondents (4th April, 1831); Comp. Law Q. Mag. vol. vii. p. 232. |