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LEGAL MASTERPIECES.

Answer. These captures were not made in time of war with any power. They were not judged of by the courts of admiralty according to the law of nations and treaties, but by rules, which were themselves complained of, in revenue courts. The damages were afterwards admitted, liquidated at a certain sum, and agreed to be paid by a convention, which was not performed. Therefore reprisals issued, but they were general. No debts due here to Spaniards were stopped; no Spanish effects were seized. Which leads me to one observation more:

The King of Prussia has engaged his royal word to pay the Silesia debt to private men. It is negotiable, and many parts may have been assigned to the subjects of other powers. It will not be easy to find an instance where a prince has thought fit to make reprisals upon a debt due from himself to private men. There is a confidence that this will not be done. A private man lends money to a prince upon the faith of an engagement of honor, because a prince cannot be compelled, like other men, in an adverse way, by a court of justice. So scrupulously did England, France, and Spain adhere to this public faith that even during the war they suffered no inquiry to be made whether any part of the public debts was due to the subjects of the enemy, though it is certain many English had money in the French funds, and many French had money in ours.

This loan to the late Emperor of Germany, Charles VI., in January, 1734-35, was not a state transaction, but mere private contract with the lenders, who advanced their money upon the emperor's obliging himself, his heirs and posterity, to pay the principal with interest, at the rate, in the manner, and at the times in the contract mentioned, without any delay, demur, deduction, or abatement whatsoever; and, lest the words and instruments made use of should not be strong enough, he promises to secure the performance of his contract in and by such other instruments, method, manner, form, and words as should be most effectual and valid to bind the said emperor, his heirs, successors, and posterity, or as the lender should reasonably desire. As a specific real security, he mortgaged his revenues arising from the duchies of Upper and Lower Silesia for payment of principal and interest, and the whole debt, principal and interest, was to be discharged in the year 1745. If the money could not be paid out of the revenues of Silesia, the emperor, his heirs and posterity, still remained debtors, and were bound to pay. The eviction or destruction of the thing mortgaged does not extinguish the debt or discharge the debtor.

Therefore the empress-queen, without the consent of the defenders, made it a condition of her yielding the duchies of Silesia to his Prussian majesty, that he should stand in the place of the late emperor in respect of this debt. The seventh of the preliminary articles between the Queen of Hungary and the King of Prussia, signed at Breslau the 11th of June, 1742, is in these words: "Sa majeste le Roi de Prusse se charge du seul payement de la somme hypotheque sur la Silesie, aux marchans Anglois, selon le contract signe a Londres, le 7me de Janvier, 1734-5." This stipulation is confirmed by the ninth article of the treaty between their said majesties signed at Berlin the 28th of July, 1742; also renewed and confirmed by the second article of the treaty between their said majesties signed at Dresden the 25th of December, 1745.

In consideration of the empress-queen's cession, his Prussian majesty has engaged to her that he will pay this money selon le contract, and consequently has bound himself to stand in the place of the late emperor in respect of this money, to all intents and purposes. The late emperor could not have seized this money as reprisals, or even in case of open war between the two nations, because his faith was engaged to pay it without any delay, demur, deduction, or abatement whatsoever. If these words should not extend to all possible cases, he had plighted his honor to be bound by any other form of words more effectually to pay the money; and therefore he was liable at any time to be called upon to declare expressly that it should not be seized as reprisals, or in case of war, which is very commonly expressed when sovereign princes or states borrow money from foreigners. Therefore, supposing for a moment that his Prussian majesty's complaint was founded in justice and the law of nations, and that he had a right to make reprisals in general, he could not, consistent with his engagements to the empress-queen, seize this money as reprisals. Besides, this whole debt, according to the contract, ought to have been discharged in 1745. It should, in respect of the private creditors, in justice and equity be considered as if the contract had been performed; and the Prussian complaints do not begin till 1746, after the whole debt ought to have been paid.

Upon this principle of natural justice, French ships and effects wrongfully taken after the Spanish war, and before the French war, have, during the heat of the war with France, and since, been restored by sentence of your majesty's courts to the French owners. No such ships or effects were ever attempted to be confiscated as enemy's property here during the war, because, had

it not been for the wrong first done, these effects would not have been in your majesty's dominions. So, had not the contract been first broke by nonpayment of the whole loan in 1745, this money would not have been in his Prussian majesty's hands.

Your majesty's guaranty of these treaties is entire, and must therefore depend upon the same conditions upon which the cession was made by the empress-queen. But this reasoning is in some measure superfluous, because, if the making of any reprisals upon this occasion be unjustifiable,-which we apprehend we have shown, then it is not disputed that the nonpayment of this money would be a breach of his Prussian majesty's engagements, and a renunciation, on his part, of those treaties.

THOMAS ERSKINE.

[Thomas Erskine, youngest son of Henry David, tenth Earl of Buchan, was born in Edinburgh, January 10, 1750. In 1762, the family, for economical reasons, moved to St. Andrews, where Thomas supplemented his mother's instruction by attendance at grammar school and intermittent studies at the university. In 1764 he left Scotland for the West Indies as midshipman on board the Tartar. The navy was never to his liking, however, and two years later he invested the slender patrimony accruing from the death of his father in a commission in the First Royal Regiment of Foot. In 1770 he married Frances Moore, accompanied by whom he then spent two years with his regiment in Minorca. In 1772 he went to London on a six-months leave. He readily obtained admission to society, where, according to Boswell, he "attracted particular attention by the vivacity, fluency, and precision of his conversation." The young soldier was now seized with a desire to enter the legal profession. Encouraged, probably, by his brother Henry's success in Scotland, Erskine entered forthwith as a student at Lincoln's Inn. In 1776 he matriculated as a gentleman commoner at Trinity College, where he won the college prize for English declamation, and received an honorary M. A. degree in 1778. He studied law, first in the chambers of Buller, and afterwards in those of Wood, with whom he remained until 1779. He was a diligent student, and a constant speaker at the debating societies. At length, after many privations, he was called to the bar July 3, 1778. Within a few months after his call, his effort in defense of Capt. Baillie brought him into prominence. He joined the home circuit, and received many retainers. In 1780 his great speech in defense of Lord Gordon placed him in the front rank at the bar. By 1783 he had surpassed all rivals, and had made £9,000, besides paying all his debts. His professional earnings are said to have reached a total of £150,000. In 1783, at Mansfield's suggestion, he received a silk gown; in the same year he was made attorney general to the Prince of Wales, with whom he was on terms of intimacy. On the formation of the coalition government, he entered parliament as the friend of Fox and Sheridan. His first speech in the house was a failure. It is said that, when Erskine rose to speak, Pitt sat, paper and pen in hand, ready to take notes for a reply, but, as the speech progressed, he appeared to lose interest, and finally threw away his pen. This by-play unnerved Erskine, whose fear of Pitt-from which he never recovered-was, as Fox said, "the flabby pa t of his character." His subsequent parliamentary efforts added nothing to his reputation; and after actually breaking down, in 1796, in attempting to answer Pitt's great speech on the rupture of the negotiations Veeder-3.

with France, he seldom spoke. In 1790 he visited France, and imbibed enthusiasm for the French cause. In this year he was returned to parliament from Portsmouth, a seat which he retained until he became a peer. In the meantime, however, he had reached the height of professional popularity in advocacy of freedom of speech. Such was his strength that, in the exigencies of party politics on the death of Pitt, after the seals had been successively declined by Lord Ellenborough and Sir James Mansfield, they were offered to Erskine, and accepted. The appointment was a poor one, for Erskine's power was altogether forensic; besides, he had never practiced in chancery. But with his natural aptitude, and with the assistance of Hargrave, he made a fair chancellor. In the house of lords he was assisted in the hearing of appeals by Lord Eldon and Lord Redesdale, to whom he usually deferred. His chief judicial act was to preside at the trial of Lord Melville in 1806. The chancellorship was the turning point in Erskine's career. After the dissolution of parliament in 1807, he gradually dropped out of public view. He lived the life of an idler and man about town. Unfortunate investments in America and elsewhere exhausted his fortune. He frequented the scenes of his early triumphs at Westminster Hall, expressing regret that he had ever left the bar. He sought diversion in the composition of a political romance in imitation of More's Utopia. In parliament he gave some feeble assistance to Romilly's great reforms, and he took a popular part in behalf of Queen Caroline; but, estranged from the king, discredited by society, and in poverty, his race was nearly run. At various times he had been accused, apparently without foundation, of taking opium. At some time not ascertainable he married at Gretna Green a Miss Mary Buck. In the autumn of 1823 he started for Scotland to visit his brother, the Earl of Buchan, but was taken ill on the way, and died at the residence of his brother Henry's widow in Almondale, West Lothian, November 17, 1823.]

Erskine's reputation has been materially enhanced by the romance of his early life, and the historical significance of the great causes in which he displayed his highest powers. "I had scarcely a shilling in my pocket when I got my first retainer," he related many years afterwards. "It was sent to me by a Captain Baillie, of the navy, who held an office at the board of Greenwich Hospital; and I was to show cause in the Michaelmas term against a rule that had been obtained in the previous term calling upon him to show cause why a criminal information for a libel reflecting on Lord Sandwich's conduct as governor of that charity should not be filed against him. I had met this Captain Baillie, during the long vacation, at a friend's table, and after dinner I expressed myself with some warmth on the corruption of Lord Sandwich as first lord of the admiralty, and then adverted to the scandalous practices imputed to him with regard to Greenwich Hospital. Baillie nudged the person who sat next to him, and asked who I was. Being told that I had just been called to the bar, and had been formerly in the navy, Baillie exclaimed, with an oath, "Then I'll have him for my counsel.' I trudged down to Westminster Hall when I got the brief, and being the junior of