Others have were sons of clergymen of scanty means. begun life in alien professions, yet, notwithstanding their false start, have easily recovered lost ground in after life. Lord Erskine was first in the navy and then in the army, before he became a barrister, Lord Chelmsford was originally a midshipman. Now a large number of men with antecedents as unfavourable to success as these, and yet successful men, are always to be found at the Bar, and therefore I say the barristers are themselves a selected body; and the fact of every judge having been taken from the foremost rank of 3,000 of them, is proof that his exceptional ability is of an enormously higher order than if the 3,000 barristers had been conscripts, drawn by lot from the general mass of their countrymen. I therefore need not trouble myself with quoting passages from biographies, to prove that each of the Judges whose name I have occasion to mention, is a highly gifted man. It is precisely in order to avoid the necessity of this tedious work, that I have selected the Judges for my first chapter. In speaking of the English Judges, I have adopted the well-known "Lives of the Judges," by Foss, as my guide. It was published in 1865, so I have adopted that date as the limit of my inquiries. I have considered those only as falling under the definition of "judges" whom he includes as such. They are the Judges of the Courts of Chancery and Common Law, and the Master of the Rolls, but not the Judges of the Admiralty nor of the Court of Canterbury. By the latter limitation, I lose the advantage of counting Lord Stowell (brother of the Lord Chancellor Eldon), the remarkable family of the Lushingtons, that of Sir R. Phillimore, and some others. Through the limitation as regards time, I lose, by ending with the year 1865, the recently-created judges, such as Judge Selwyn, brother of the Bishop of Lichfield, and also of the Professor of Divinity at Cambridge. But I believe, from cursory inquiries, that the relations of these latter judges, speaking generally, have not so large a share of eminence as we shall find among those of the judges in my list. This might have been expected, for it is notorious that the standard of ability in a modern judge is not so high as it used to be. The number of exceptionally gifted men being the same, it is impossible to supply the new demand for heads of great schools and for numerous other careers, now thrown open to able youths, without seriously limiting the field whence alone good judges may be selected. By beginning at the Restoration, which I took for my commencement, because there was frequent jobbery in earlier days, I lose a Lord Keeper (of the same rank as a Lord Chancellor), and his still greater son, also a Lord Chancellor, namely, the two Bacons. I state these facts to show that I have not picked out the period in question, because it seemed most favourable to my argument, but simply because it appeared the most suitable to bring out the truth as to hereditary genius, and was, at the same time, most convenient for me to discuss. There are 286 judges within the limits of my inquiry; 109 of them have one or more eminent relations, and three others have relations whom I have noticed, but they are marked off with brackets, and are therefore not to be included in the following statistical deductions. As the readiest method of showing, at a glance, the way in which these relations are distributed, I give a table below in which they are all compactly registered. This table is a condensed summary of the Appendix to the present chapter, which should be consulted by the reader vhenever he desires fuller information. TABLE I. SUMMARY OF RELATIONSHIPS OF 109 JUDGES, GROUPED INTO 85 FAMILIES. 21 Two and three relations (or three and four in family). (Bathurst, Earl, see Buller). Blackburn Blackstone F. Us. B. g. S. N. 2.. Buller and Bathurst, Earl U. u. N. Lechmere Nares. Parker (E. of Maccles field) and Sir Thomas P. u. PS. PP. S. UP. Pepys (E. of Cottenham) G. g. B. 2 B. S. GN. gF. 2 S. Scarlett (Lord Abinger) Sutton (Lord Manners) 2. .Wilde, Lord Truro, and nephew 2. Willes, Sir J. and son Willmot. 2. Windham, Sir W. and brother Four or more relations (or five and more in family). 4. Atkyns, Sir R. and three others. 1 The kinship is reckoned from Sir Samuel Romilly. 26 3. Viz. Finch (Earl of Nottingham), Twisden, 2. Herbert, Lord Keeper, and son Lyttleton 1. F. 2 S. US. GN. PS. (?gN.) 2 S. 2 US. 2 U. 3 US. S. F. 2 S. 2 B. B. F. u. g. pS. 3. Viz. 2 Montagu and 1 North (Ld. Guilford) G. B. 25. 2 N. 2P. NS. 5NS. (North, see Montagu.) 2. Pratt, Earl Camden, and Sir J. Somers, Earl (but see Yorke) Trevor, Lord. (Trevor, Master of the Rolls, see Jeffreys.) 2. Yorke, Earl Hardwicke and son; also, in 3 B. 2 N. p. 2 S. 2 P. PS. Several remarkable features in the contents of this table will catch the eye at once. I will begin by shortly alluding to them, and will enter more into details a little further on. First, it will be observed, that the Judges are so largely interrelated, that 109 of them are grouped into only 85 families. There are seventeen doublets, among the Judges, two triplets, and one quadruplet. In addition to these, might be counted six other sets, consisting of those whose ancestors sat on the Bench previously to the accession of Charles II., namely, Bedingfield, Forster, Hyde, Finch, Windham, and Lyttleton. Another fact to be observed, is the nearness of the relationships in my list. The single letters are far the most common. Also, though a man has twice as many grandfathers as fathers, and probably more than twice as many grandsons as sons, yet the Judges are found more frequently to have eminent fathers than grandfathers, and eminent sons than grandsons. the third degree of relationship, the eminent kinsmen are yet more rare, although the number of individuals in those degrees is increased in a duplicate proportion. When a judge has no more than one eminent relation, that relation 1 The kinship is reckoned from the Lord Keeper. In 2 Ditto, from Chief Justice the first Earl of Manchester; the two nephews are William, Ch. B. E., and the Earl of Sandwich; the two grandsons, the Earl of Halifax and James, Ch. B. E. The genealogical table in the Appendix to this chapter, will explain these and the other kinships of the Montagu family is nearly always to be found in the first or second degree. Thus in the first section of the table, which is devoted to single relationships, though it includes as many as thirtynine entries, there are only two among them (viz. Browne and Lord Brougham) whose kinships extend beyond the second degree. It is in the last section of the table, which treats of whole families, largely gifted with ability, that the distant kinships are chiefly to be found. I annex a table (Table II.) extracted from the preceding one, which exhibits these facts with great clearness. Column A contains the facts just as they were observed, and column D shows the percentage of individuals, in each degree of kinship to every 100 judges, who have become eminent. A. Number of eminent men in each degree of kinship to the most eminent man of the family (85 families). B. The preceding column raised in proportion to 100 families. C. Number of individuals in each degree of kinship to 100 men. D. Percentage of eminent men in each degree of kinship to the most eminent member of distinguished families; it was obtained by dividing B by C and multiplying by 100. E. Percentages of the previous column reduced in the proportion of (286 — 24,1 or) 242 to 85, in order to apply to families generally. That is to say, 286 Judges, less 24, who are included as subordinate members of the 85 families. |