pair of stairs: if factions prevail, it is good to adhere to one party while a man is climbing to honour, and to reduce himself to a balance when he has attained the same." The former part of this worldly admonition Lord Brougham, upon the whole, accepted: to the latter portion of it he turned a deaf ear; for, down to the present hour, he has not succeeded in "reducing himself to a balance." While sitting as Chancellor at the head of the Courts of Equity, neither was his knowledge such as to command the confidence of the Bar, nor was his manner such as to conciliate favour or indulgence for his defects. The feeling of respect, however, which the members of the English Bar cheerfully and almost instinctively accord to the judges of the land proved his best shield, and, with one or two exceptions, "expressive silence mused his praise." 1 But the barons of England are men of another stamp; and when Lord Brougham imported into their hereditary assembly a spirit to which they were totally unaccustomed, the collision not unfrequently was fatal to the dignity of the Speaker of the House of Lords. He was, for a time, the Ishmael of the peerage; "a wild man; his hand being against every man, and every man's hand against him." Before a man, we have heard, is admitted to an office in the Wesleyan Society, the question is put, "If you should find any, thing you disapprove of in our management or discipline, will you quietly leave the body, and not agitate?" Now, Lord Brougham, knowing that the Lords are far from being Methodists, was not inclined to yield tacit obedience or submit to gentle ejection; and accordingly he was exposed to the necessity of encountering, by turns, the high-toned pride of Londonderry,1 i Vid. H. P. D. 3rd ser. vol. iii. pp. 1704, sqq. (20th April, 1831): vid. also another childish squabble between the same noble personages (14 September, 1831). Lord Brougham having painted Don Miguel as being "Tyrannus quo neque tætrius, neque fœdius, nec Dîs hominibusque invisius animal ullum cogitari potest," et cet. (Vid. also his speech in the House of Commons on the 1st June, 1829, in which he was, while reviewing foreign affairs, very severe on Don Miguel), the Marquis of Londonderry, regretting that he could not pretend to the scholarship of the Chancellor, described his lordship in the language of Shakspeare thus: "He doth bestride this narrow world T 2 the stinging acerbity of Wynford,1 or the direct thrusts of the mild and pious Henry of Exeter; and in such conflicts, every one who saw him was apt to exclaim :— In clypeum assurgat, quo turbine torqueat hastam. His change of fortune, indeed, removed him not, for a single He likewise expressed his belief that Lord Brougham had been introduced to the Upper House for the express purpose of assisting those who, when confounded, wished to be silent an assertion which Lord Holland declared to be extremely irregular; whereupon the Marquis of Londonderry reminded the House of the noble and learned lord having once spoken of braying his (the Marquis of Londonderry's) head in a mortar, and expressed his belief that it would be a great blessing to the constitution if the noble and learned lord would allow himself to be brayed in a mortar first. A similar scene occurred on the 21st of April, 1834 (H. P. D. 3rd ser. vol. xxii. pp. 1003, sqq.), between the Marquis of Salisbury and Lord Brougham. The former noble lord, having risen to order, was flatly told by the Chancellor that "it would be a good rule if noble lords, before they called others to order, would but condescend to catch a glimpse-some faint glimmer of the meaning of those they interrupted." The Duke of Wellington, too, was innocently entangled in the meshes of this quarrel; but he extricated himself in his usual direct, pithy way. Lord Brougham had alluded to his Grace as being guilty of making second speeches; the latter rose and said, "I never did: I deny the statement of the noble and learned lord." "It does not follow," continued the Chancellor, "that, because the noble Duke denies what I say, he is not guilty of it." The Duke reiterated his contradiction, and the Marquis of Londonderry reprobated the discourteous conduct of the Chancellor. Lord Brougham appeared to take special delight in tormenting Lord Wynford, who, even as Mr. Serjeant Best, was never remarkable for longsuffering patience. He was hot and hasty on the Bench, and extremely cross-grained in the House of Lords: "I do not know a man I prize above Siccus Dentatus-yet he's a crabbed man." We decline to extend this note by recording these ebullitions of petulance. Vide H. P. D. 3rd ser. vol. xix. pp. 357, 358 (9th July, 1833), when Lord Wynford complained of Lord Brougham having alluded to "an inaccuracy which would have done honour to the late Chief Justice of the Common Pleas." Compare another scene between the same parties (15th May, 1834). 2 Vide H. P. D. 3rd ser. vol. xxiv. pp. 285, 286: compare pp. 290 and 298, sqq. where the Bishop of Exeter explains. The Lord Chancellor complained of the too frequent and offensive introduction of the name of the Supreme Being in the discussion of the Church of Ireland Commission; but no one was more apt than Lord Brougham himself to introduce irreverently in his speeches a set form of exclamation, such as "Good God!" "Good heavens!" We may be allowed to add, that Lord Brougham betrayed a bad taste, when he, without the slightest provocation, contrasted the Duke of Cumberland, as being "illustrious" by courtesy of the House of Lords, with the Duke of Wellington, who was 66 illustrious ,, by his actions. H. P. D. 3rd ser. vol. xx. p. 590 (14th August, 1833). Vide week, from the turmoil of political feud and battle. The shafts of the enemy followed him in his retreat. A serene translation of such a man to a higher sphere must have been considered an anomaly in the moral world; but now exalted, he, in a mood of tranquil self-satisfaction, listened to and looked back upon the tempest through which he had triumphantly passed, and almost loathed the earth-born vapours which he had left far behind. Scarcely had he begun to feel himself warm on the woolsack, when he discovered that for him it was not to be a bed of roses. Thorns sprung up on every side, and repose there was none. While we admit that consistency is the only available test of honest conviction, the attempt to fasten upon Lord Brougham a charge of gross inconsistency, if not of systematic hypocrisy, was at once ungenerous and absurd; and although certainly Mr. Croker would not, as Sir James Mackintosh seemed to imagine, have shrunk from an open and manly exposition of his views in the presence of the party whose conduct he arraigned, he nevertheless failed to establish, through the medium of vituperation and contemptuous sneers, a case of grave impropriety against the Lord Chancellor. The story may be told in few words. Mr. Spring Rice having moved1 that a new writ should be issued for Knaresborough, which had, in consequence of Mr. Brougham's return for the county of York, ceased to be represented in Parliament, Mr. Croker reminded the House of certain declarations which it was, not without reason, alleged, had been publicly made by "the learned gentleman," with reference to the impossibility of his being one of a ministry which he well knew was, at the very time, in process of formation; and, in spite of Lord Brougham's subsequent denial, there cannot be a shadow of doubt that words to that, or very nearly that effect, actually fell from his lips. Mr. Croker, therefore, charged the Lord Chancellor with having been guilty of "shuffling" intrigue, and, moralizing upon the value of character to public men, as being part of the wealth of England, he impressed upon the Commons the absolute necessity that the integrity of the "keeper of the king's conscience" should be above all suspicion, and that his conduct and motives of action 1 23rd November, 1830; H. P. D. 3rd ser. vol. i. p. 636. ought to be fair and unclouded before the eye of the world. He then alluded to language which had been reported in the newspapers,' and which amounted to a positive announcement, on the part of Mr. Brougham, that, if returned for Yorkshire, he should accept no office whatever, and would prefer the service of the people to the possession of power. Another count in Mr. Croker's indictment was, that the House of Commons had not been treated with due respect, inasmuch as the Chancellor had not seized the first opportunity of informing the House that he had accepted an office which precluded the possibility of redeeming certain pledges which he had given respecting two questions of vital importance to the community, and notices for the discussion of which still stood on the order-book of the House of Commons. Mr. Croker was perfectly right in condemning and taunting a ministry which could be influenced by any menaces, or indirect hints of vengeance, which Mr. Brougham, while working for his own interests and asserting his just claims, may have skilfully thrown out. His declarations were simply, as Mr. Croker himself suggested and seemed to believe, intended to spur on the lazy gratitude of the First Lord of the Treasury; and the notion that Mr. Brougham, or any other sane man, would spontaneously and saucily have pushed aside from him the Great Seal, when offered, is quite chimerical. His statements may, perhaps, have been too general and somewhat unguarded; but they were such as, under all the circumstances, called neither for the savage reprobation of Mr. Croker, nor the impotent apology of Sir James Mackintosh, nor the eloquent adulation of Mr. Macaulay, nor the whining corroboration of Lord Leveson Gower. His defence might have been safely left to Lord Brougham himself. Three days afterwards2. he summarily disposed of the allegations against him as being misrepresentations. He distinctly denied that he had on any occasion stated, as his intention, that he would not sever himself from the constituency of Yorkshire; but, at the same time, he admitted that he had never contemplated the possibility of his being persuaded to quit the high position to which the free 1 The Morning Chronicle, among others. 2 26th November, 1830; H. P. D. 3rd ser. vol. i. pp. 673, sqq. holders had elevated him. No one, he observed, could have been more astonished than he himself was at his appointment to the Great Seal; and he solemnly avowed that, in accepting his high office, he had not been dazzled by the gew-gaw splendour which surrounded it, but solely influenced by a hope that, knowing honesty and consistency to be absolute necessities in his nature, he might, in the new field which opened up in prospect before him, have enlarged opportunities of serving his king and his country. Lord Brougham's vindication of his language and acts was unaffected, calm, and dignified. His temperate and subdued tone, however, was, as we have seen, ere long exchanged, as much probably in consequence of the constant provocation which he received, as from his own inherent foibles, for a far less conciliatory spirit; and yet in the war of words he never seemed to feel that he was out of order or out of temper. Lord Brougham, like Bottom, could "roar you as gently as any sucking dove;" but, in point of fact, the French proverb, il vaut mieux plier que de rompre, was no article in the creed of the Lord Chancellor. Break him, his foes might; bend him, they could not. We do not write at random when we express an opinion that Lord Brougham was, from the period when he first appeared as Lord Chancellor, too apt to disregard unnecessarily the conventional usages of the House of Peers, and to forget the circumspect gravity, which is always becoming in a public man, occupying so prominent and responsible a position in the State. He was perfectly right in clearing his judicial character from any misrepresentations which had been circulated respecting the mode in which he disposed of Scotch Appeal cases; for, in doing so, he not only vindicated himself, but upheld the respectful consideration due to the judges of the Court of Session in Scotland. It had been rumoured that in nearly all the Scotch appeals carried before the House of Lords, subsequently to Lord Brougham's accession to the Seals, the decisions of the Court below had been reversed. This statement he satisfactorily proved to be an error. Still less do we think Lord Brougham culpable in the distribution of the |