THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 RIVERSIDE 
 
 Ex Libris 
 ISAAC FOOT
 
 
 
 
 london,. TubUskeJ, fy Jo**. Murray, .ft? jiUejma^e- Street. 1883.
 
 A LIFE 
 
 LORD LYNDHURST 
 
 FROM LETTERS AND PAPERS IN POSSESSION 
 OF HIS FAMILY. 
 
 BY SIR THEODORE MARTIN, K.C.B. 
 
 LONDON : 
 
 JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET. 
 
 1883.
 
 LONDON: 
 PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED, 
 
 STAMFORD STREET AND CHARING CROSS.
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 IT has been said of men truly eminent, that they 
 "think too meanly of themselves or their work to 
 care much to be personally remembered." Such men 
 early begin to feel how infinitely insignificant is the 
 individual |n relation to the history past and future 
 of the race of which he may for a time have been 
 a distinguished and influential unit ; and, as the years 
 go by, and they look back upon the experience of a 
 long life, this feeling is pretty sure to become a settled 
 conviction. It was so with Lord Lyndhurst. " What 
 have I been," he would say, when pressed by his family 
 or friends to furnish them with materials for his bio- 
 graphy, ' ' but a successful lawyer ? I have been three 
 times Chancellor, and I have tried to do something for 
 my country in my place in Parliament. But what is 
 there in that to make the world desire to know anything 
 about me hereafter ? " Acting on this conviction, he 
 took care that no diaries of his own should survive to 
 gratify curiosity, and upon principle destroyed almost 
 every letter or paper of a confidential nature, which, 
 could have thrown light upon his official life, or his 
 relations with the leaders in society or politics, with 
 whom he was intimately associated. 
 
 So far, therefore, as he could, he made a complete 
 biography of himself impossible. Lord Campbell has 
 said, that in answer to his request to Lord Lyndhurst
 
 IV PREFACE. 
 
 that he would supply him with materials for a life to 
 be included in the ' Lives of the Chancellors,' Lord 
 Lyndhurst replied, " Materials you shall have none 
 from me ; I have already burnt every letter and paper 
 which could be useful to my biographer ; therefore 
 he is at liberty to follow his own inclination." His 
 future biographer made the mistake of construing 
 this answer too literally. He could not possibly have 
 written of Lord Lyndhurst as he did, if he had not 
 felt assured that no private papers were left to rise 
 up in judgment against him. 
 
 However much Lord Lyndhurst's family might 
 have desired to respect his wish that no life of him 
 should be given to the world, this was rendered im- 
 possible by the publication of Lord Campbell's book. 
 Forming as it does a portion of the voluminous 
 series of his ' Lives of the Chancellors,' which comes 
 within the category of unhappily long-lived books 
 denounced by Charles Lamb, "which no gentleman's 
 library should be without," his biography of Lord 
 Lyndhurst, in the absence of any life authorised by 
 Lord Lyndhurst's family, might in future years be 
 accepted as an authentic memorial of the man whose 
 story and character it professes to depict. Fortunately 
 not all Lord Lyndhurst's papers had been destroyed. 
 Some had been carefully kept by his friends; and of his 
 correspondence in his early years with his elder sister 
 and her husband in America, large portions had been 
 preserved. These have recently been recovered, and, 
 together with his own letters to his father and mother, 
 they have thrown valuable light upon his character 
 and early career. Since his death, too, the publica- 
 tion of memoirs and diaries by his contemporaries has 
 become available to illustrate important passages in 
 his life. From these and such information as might be
 
 PREFACE. V 
 
 gleaned from his surviving friends, it seemed possible 
 to construct an authentic record of his life, and this 
 has accordingly been attempted in the present volume. 
 The difficulty of the present biographer's task has 
 been greatly and unpleasantly increased by the cir- 
 cumstance that at every stage he has been compelled 
 to call attention to the mis-statements of fact, with 
 which Lord Campbell's biography abounds. But this 
 was unavoidable. Many of his misrepresentations 
 have crept into general circulation, and been reiterated 
 by writers, who had probably neither the means nor 
 the inclination to institute original inquiries. The 
 impression thus produced could only be displaced by 
 dealing with these misrepresentations in detail. The 
 writer has, therefore, not been free to follow the course 
 which would probably have been more acceptable to 
 his readers, as it would certainly have been more 
 agreeable to himself, of tracing the career of Lord 
 Lyndhurst without reference to what had already been 
 written about him. The weight and authority of one 
 who had himself been a Lord Chancellor, writing of 
 his predecessors, could not, however, be disregarded. 
 It was indispensable, in justice to the memory of 
 Lord Lyndhurst, to show that Lord Campbell's self- 
 imposed task had not been discharged with the 
 regard to accuracy and to impartiality which are the 
 first duties of a biographer, but the neglect of which 
 becomes wholly inexcusable in a man, whom his voca- 
 tion in life and the long exercise of judicial functions 
 might have taught to sift his facts, to distrust his own 
 prejudices, and above all to deal out justice, and to 
 maintain truth. To show this has given the present 
 writer much pain ; but he has felt bound to disregard 
 all personal feeling in fulfilment of his duty to the 
 very remarkable man whose life and character he has
 
 vi PREFACE. 
 
 endeavoured to the best of his ability to present in 
 their true colours and aspect. 
 
 For the assistance rendered to him in placing 
 Lord Lyndhurst's letters at his disposal, he has to 
 express his grateful acknowledgments to the Duke of 
 Wellington, to Lord Derby, to the Right Hon. W. E. 
 Gladstone, and to Mr. Francis Barlow. He is much 
 indebted to Sir Edmund Beckett for the interesting 
 sketch of Lord Lyndhurst's domestic life, published 
 in the last chapter of this volume, which was obtained 
 from its accomplished writer by his kind intervention. 
 He has also to tender his thanks to Lord Denman, 
 Mr. A. Hayward, the Rev. Whitwell Elwin, Dr. James 
 Macaulay, and Mr. Alfred Montgomery, for important 
 information. Had Lord Beaconsfield's papers been 
 accessible, letters of Lord Lyndhurst's of value to 
 a biographer might no doubt have been obtained. 
 The executor, Sir Philip Rose, was about to select 
 them for this purpose, when he was seized with fatal 
 illness.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 John Singleton Copley, R.A., Lord Lyndhurst's father His work 
 Comes to England Is followed by his wife and family Visits 
 Italy Settles in London Young Copley's education His 
 career at Cambridge 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 Copley appointed Travelling Bachelor Goes to America Unsuc- 
 cessful Efforts to recover Family Estate in Boston Makes Tour 
 through United States and into Canada Correspondence 
 Letters as Travelling Bachelor 34 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 Copley returns from America Takes M.A. Degree Studies under 
 Mr. Tidd Becomes a Special Pleader Marriage of Miss Copley 
 to Mr. Greene of Boston, U.S. Copley's Correspondence with 
 Mr. and Mrs. Greene 68 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 Copley called to the Bar Goes on the Midland Circuit His early 
 struggles His political opinions misrepresented Persevering 
 industry First great success in defending Luddite Rioter at 
 Nottingham Becomes Serjeant-at-Law Death of his father . 99 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 Remarkable case of Boville v. Moore Copley's care in getting up 
 his cases Trial of Watson and others Spa Fields Riots 
 Copley's successful defence of Watson Unfounded charge of 
 indolence in preparing for this Trial Is retained for Govern- 
 ment in Trial of Brandreth and others Enters Parliament 12 1
 
 Vlll CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 First speech in Parliament Misrepresented by Lord Campbell 
 On Dissolution returned for Ashburton Made Chief Justice of 
 Chester Marriage Birth and death of daughter Becomes 
 Solicitor- General His speeches in Parliament Triumphant 
 defence in action Macirone v, Murray. . . . . .148 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 Cato Street Conspiracy Trial of Thistlewood, Ings, and others 
 Copley's speeches Queen Caroline Discussions in Parliament 
 on her case Bill of Pains and Penalties Proceedings in House 
 of Lords Brougham's, Denman's and Copley's speeches. . 172 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 Copley becomes Attorney-General His Forensic Style, and Mode 
 of conducting Cases Discourages Prosecutions of the Press 
 Becomes Member for Cambridge University Introduces Bill 
 for Chancery Reform Appointed Master of the Rolls Speech 
 on Catholic Disabilities Canning offers him the Chancellor- 
 ship Becomes Lord Lyndhurst. - . . -- i - nnfr . 196 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 Lyndhurst's First Chancellorship His Cordial Relations with 
 Canning Continues as Chancellor under Lord Goderich's Ad- 
 ministration Campbell applies for, and receives Silk Gown 
 Denman's application for Patent of Precedence Difficulties 
 with the King Duke of Wellington becomes Premier Lord 
 Lyndhurst continues as Chancellor Relations with Wellington 
 and Peel Gives Appointments to Macaulay and Sydney Smith. 219 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 Wellington Administration Lord Lyndhurst's great influence in 
 it Prosecutes for Calumnies Speeches on Corporation and 
 Tests Acts Repeal Bill On Roman Catholic Disabilities Bill- 
 Change of views on latter Reasons for them Collision with 
 Lord Eldon Their subsequent reconciliation. . . . 243
 
 CONTENTS. ix 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 Fall of Wellington Administration Lyndhurst appointed Chief 
 Baron of Exchequer Correspondence on the occasion with 
 Wellington and others Raises the Reputation of his Court 
 His Qualities as a Judge Case of Small v. Attwood Reform Bill 
 Agitation Second Reform Bill rejected by House of Lords 
 Lyndhurst's Speech Third Reform Bill Ministry resign, and 
 resume Office on failure of Wellington to form Administration 
 Reform Bill passed. . . . . . . . .271 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 Speech on Local Courts Bill Described by Mr. S. Warren Death 
 of Lady Lyndhurst Melbourne Administration in difficulties 
 Failure to form Coalition with Peel Death of Lord Spencer 
 Duke of Wellington called in by King to form Administration 
 Holds office until Peel's return from Italy Lyndhurst again 
 Chancellor. .......... 306 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 Municipal Reform Bill Opposed by Lord Lyndhurst Attacked by 
 Lord Melbourne and Lord Denman for having once held Radical 
 opinions Vindicates himself Lord Lyndhurst's relations with 
 Sir Robert Peel No foundation for statement that he had at 
 any time sought to supersede Peel. 330 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 Irish Municipal Corporations Bill Opposed by Lyndhurst Vindi- 
 cation by him of his Speech in Opposition Replies to Sheil, 
 O'Connell and Lord John Russell Bill defeated Lyndhurst 
 opposes Government Measures of Legal Reform His reasons 
 First Review of the Session Death of his Mother Letters from 
 the Duke of Wellington and Lord Brougham .... 345 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 Irish Municipal Corporations Bill Opposed by Lord Lyndhurst 
 Attack by Mr. Sheil Lord Lyndhurst's answer Death of 
 William IV. Accession of Queen Victoria Lord Lyndhurst and 
 Mr. Disraeli Marries Miss Goldsmith Speech on Juvenile 
 Offenders Bill Visit of his sister to England Second Review 
 of the Session Fall of Melbourne Ministry Lyndhurst again 
 becomes Chancellor . . . . . -- . A . 373
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 Lord Lyndhurst as a Judge Promotes Legal Reform Speech in 
 favour of Copyright Bill His Defence of Irish Lord Chancellor 
 Longing for Retirement Illness Sir R. Peel's Anxiety 
 Failure of Lord John Russell to form a Ministry Peel resumes 
 Office Lyndhurst remains as Chancellor Speech on Charitable 
 Trusts Bill Bill defeated Government Coercion Bill rejected 
 Ministry resigns Lyndhurst's Delight at Release from Office . 394 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 Unsuccessful attempt to reunite the Conservative party Attack by 
 Lord George Bentinck Lord Lyndhurst's reply Communica- 
 tion with Lord Stanley as to future policy of the Opposition 
 Life at Turville Park His social circle Speech on Canada Bill 
 for compensating losses in Rebellion Failure of Sight Tem- 
 porary Retirement from public life Is operated on for cataract 
 Sight restored ......... 416 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 Lord Lyndhurst's great reputation Refuses again to take office in 
 1852 Threatened with loss of sight Speaks on Baron de Bode's 
 Case Couched for cataract Speaks on Oaths Bill Active for 
 Legal Reform Opposition to Russian encroachments on Turkey 
 Visits Paris in 1855 Opposition to Life Peerages Amend- 
 ment of Law of Divorce ........ 440 
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 Lord Lyndhurst's speeches on Divorce Bill, and Lord Campbell's 
 Bill for suppressing Obscene Publications His rebuke to Lord 
 Campbell Speeches on Oaths Bill, and Bill for Suppression of 
 Street Music Recommends Lord Campbell to Lord Palmerston 
 for Chancellor His speech on National Defences Its great 
 effect throughout the country Correspondence with Lord 
 Campbell Great Speeches on Naval Defences, and on Paper 
 Duties Bill 470 
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 
 Outbreak of Civil War in America Lyndhurst's deep interest in 
 it Visits Mr. Nasmyth, and sees his Lunar Landscapes His
 
 CONTENTS. xi 
 
 literary criticism Opinion of him by Lord Granville Broug- 
 ham's estimate of Lyndhurst Peel on LyndKurst^-Reception at 
 Dinner at Lord Campbell's Sketch of his private life His 
 religious studies and convictions Illness and death Opinions 
 of the Press Letters from the Queen, "ConT'Brougham, and Lord 
 Derby Campbell's 'Life of Lyndhurst' Opinions of Baron 
 Pollock and others. ^"^T ""* . . . . . . 496 
 
 APPENDIX. ......... 523 
 
 INDEX 528 
 
 PORTRAITS. 
 
 LORD LYNDHURST. From a picture by G. Richmond, R.A. 
 
 Frontispiece 
 
 LORD LYNDHURST. ;TAT 89. From a photograph by May all 
 
 to face p. 440
 
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 MEMOIR 
 
 OF 
 
 LORD LYNDHURST. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 John Singleton Copley, R.A., Lord Lyndhurst's father His work 
 Comes to England Is followed by his wife and family Visits Italy 
 Settles in London Young Copley's education His career at 
 Cambridge. 
 
 Ix 1766, when Benjamin West, the first artist 
 whom America sent to Europe, had been for some 
 time established in London, he was surprised to receive 
 a picture of rare beauty, which reached him without 
 the name or the address of the sender. It represented 
 a boy seated at a table, on which was a squirrel, which 
 he held by a chain. The dreamy expression of the 
 boy's face, and the easy grace of his attitude, were not 
 more remarkable than the skilful distribution of the 
 light and shade, and the richness and transparency of 
 colour. "What delicious colouring ! worthy of Titian 
 himself ! " West is reported to have exclaimed on first 
 seeing the picture ; and he was more than puzzled to 
 divine which of his countrymen could have produced 
 a work of such exceptional excellence. For he felt 
 sure that from America it must have come, as the 
 wood on which the canvas was stretched was American 
 pine, and the squirrel one of the flying squirrels
 
 2 JOHN SINGLETON COPLEY. CHAP. i. 
 
 peculiar to its western forests. Some days later his 
 conjecture was confirmed by a letter from the painter, 
 from Boston, Massachusetts, requesting West's good 
 offices to get his work shown upon the walls of the 
 Exhibition of the Society of Incorporated Artists. 
 His name, John Singleton Copley, had not then been 
 heard in England ; but so great were the merits of this 
 specimen of his powers, that, contrary to the rule of 
 the Society, which excluded works by other than its 
 members, it was admitted into the Exhibition, and at 
 once established his reputation among his English 
 brethren. 1 Their interest in the work was increased 
 when it came to be known that Copley was a self- 
 taught artist, who had never been out of his native 
 city of Boston, and had consequently never seen a 
 picture by any of the great masters. It was natural, 
 that he should seek an introduction to England 
 through his countryman West, a man of about his own 
 age, 3 who had, like himself, worked his way to 
 -excellence by the force of genius and industry before 
 coming to Europe in 1 760 ; and West, who proved a 
 valuable friend, when Copley came to London some 
 years afterwards, would no less feel a natural pride in 
 being able to communicate to his countryman the 
 favourable verdict which the best English judges had 
 pronounced upon his work. 
 
 Encouraged by this success, Copley next year sent 
 to the Exhibition of the Society of Incorporated 
 Artists, of which he was now admitted a member, a 
 full length portrait of a young lady with a bird and a 
 dog. This, like his picture of the previous year, for 
 
 1 The picture appears in the Society's Catalogue for 1766 as "A Boy with a 
 Flying Squirrel," by " Mr. William Copley, of Boston, New England." All 
 Copley's biographers have erroneously given 1760, instead of 1766, as the date. 
 
 2 Copley was born at Boston, 3rd July, 1737 ; West, ia Chester County, 
 Pennsylvania, loth October, 1738.
 
 1767. JOHN SINGLETON COPLEY. 3 
 
 which his half-brother had sat, had an interest beyond 
 that of mere portraiture, which might have made them 
 welcome additions to any gallery, and they were sent 
 over in the hope of their being sold. 1 Sold they 
 probably were, and at prices higher than they could 
 have commanded in America. But, however much 
 Copley's ambition was flattered by the reports which 
 reached him from London, motives of prudence made 
 him pause in yielding to the desire he felt to get into 
 the more congenial atmosphere, in so far as art was 
 concerned, of England, and to visit the great European 
 galleries, where he might measure his own powers 
 against those of the masters of ancient and modern 
 art. " I would gladly," he writes from Boston, 
 " exchange my situation for the serene climate of Italy, 
 or even that of England ; but what would be the 
 advantage of seeking improvement at such an outlay 
 of time and money ? I am now in as good business as 
 the poverty of this place will admit. I make as much 
 as if I were a Raphael or Correggio ; and three 
 hundred guineas a year, my present income, is equal 
 to nine hundred a year in London. With regard to 
 reputation, you are sensible, that fame cannot be 
 durable where pictures are confined to sitting rooms, 
 and regarded only for the resemblance they bear to 
 the originals. Were I sure of doing as well in Europe 
 cs here, I would not hesitate a moment in my choice ; 
 but I might in the experiment waste a thousand 
 
 1 A letter is quoted by Allan Cunningham, in his life of Copley, from the artist 
 to a correspondent in England, Captain Bruce, who admired his works, in which 
 he says : " Both my brother's portrait, and the little girl's, or either of them, I am 
 quite willing to part with, should anyone incline to purchase them, at such a price 
 as you may think proper." The picture of the boy with the squirrel, which Allan 
 Cunningham says Copley never surpassed " for fine depth and beauty of colour," 
 came again into the hands of the painter, and was most highly prized by Lord 
 Lyndhurst, in whose house it occupied a conspicuous place till his death. It was 
 sold at his sale (March 5, 1864) for 230 guineas, and is now in the possession of 
 Mr. James S. Amory, of Boston, U.S. 
 
 B 2
 
 4 JOHN SINGLETON COPLEY. CHAP. I. 
 
 pounds and two years of my time, and have to return 
 baffled to America. Then I should have to take my 
 mother with me, who is ailing. She does not, however, 
 seem averse to cross the salt water once more, but my 
 failure would oblige me to recross the sea again. My 
 ambition whispers me to run this risk ; and I think 
 the time draws nigh that must determine my future 
 fortune." 
 
 In 1768 Copley sent over two portraits for 
 exhibition in London. The idea of coming to settle 
 there was still present to his mind ; but it appears 
 from one of his letters to Benjamin West, that he left 
 to his countryman's more experienced judgment the 
 decision, whether or not the time was ripe for his 
 coming to Europe. Copley begs him not to let " his 
 benevolent wishes for his (Copley's) welfare " induce 
 a more favourable opinion of his works than they 
 deserved. If West's answer should be in favour of 
 his visiting Europe, he begs it may be sent at once, 
 otherwise he might have to remain in Boston another 
 year, when his mother might be too infirm to accom- 
 pany him, and he could not think of leaving her. 
 " Your friendly invitation to your house," he adds, 
 " and your offer to propose me as a member of your 
 Society, are matters which I shall long remember." 
 
 Either West's advice was in favour of delay, or, 
 what is more probable, Copley's marriage in 1769, 
 made it necessary to postpone the European visit. 
 The new responsibilities which his marriage involved, 
 and the birth of two children the elder a daughter, and 
 the younger, John Singleton Copley, the future Lord 
 Lyndhurst, Chancellor of England in rapid succession, 
 led to still further delay. Besides, his mother and his 
 half-brother were entirely dependent upon him ; and, 
 before he could proceed to Europe, the means had
 
 1774- JOHN SINGLETON COPLEY. 5 
 
 to be earned by his pencil both for the expense of 
 his tour and the maintenance of his family during his 
 absence. Accordingly it was not till 1774 that he 
 found himself in a position to carry out the plan 
 which he had long meditated. In leaving America 
 for Europe his movements were probably quickened 
 by the apprehension that the angry feeling towards the 
 mother country which had for some time existed there 
 might result in a state of things, in which people would 
 have neither the desire nor the means to give money 
 for pictures, and therefore that no time was to be lost 
 in seeking a professional opening elsewhere. 
 
 Although born in Boston, Copley was not of an old 
 American family. His father, Richard Copley, was a 
 native of county Limerick ; his mother was Mary 
 Singleton, a daughter of John Singleton, Esq., of Quin- 
 ville Abbey, county Clare, a scion of an old Lancashire 
 family which had settled in Ireland in 1 66 1 . After their 
 marriage, Richard and Mary Copley emigrated from 
 Ireland to Boston in 1736, and in the following year 
 Richard Copley died, leaving only one son, John 
 Singleton Copley, the future artist. In 1747 (May 22) 
 the widow married Mr. Peter Pelham, of Boston, who 
 died in 1751, leaving one son, Henry Pelham, the 
 original of the picture, " The Boy with the Squirrel," 
 who shared when a young man, his half-brother's en- 
 thusiasm for art, and even practised it with so much 
 success as to have his pictures admitted to the Royal 
 Academy ; but who subsequently abandoned art as a 
 profession and settled down in Ireland as the manager 
 of Lord Lansdowne's estates there. In 1769 (Nov. 16) 
 John Singleton Copley married Miss Susannah Farnum 
 Clarke, daughter of Richard Clarke, a Boston mer- 
 chant. By the mother's side she was descended from 
 Mary Chilton, who, in 1620, came from England in
 
 6 LORD LYNDHURSTS MOTHER. CHAP. I. 
 
 the Mayflower, and of whom tradition tells, that she 
 jumped from the boat and waded to the shore, and 
 was thus the first woman of the party to set foot on 
 American soil. Her father, Richard Clarke, as agent 
 for the East India Company, was the consignee of 
 the cargoes of tea which were thrown into the sea at 
 Boston (December 16, 1773), by citizens disguised 
 as Mohawk Indians, in protest against the recently 
 imposed Tea Duties a symptom of the smouldering 
 discontent with English legislation which was soon 
 afterwards to burst into the flames of Civil War. 
 Copley sympathised strongly with those who resisted 
 the imposition of imperial taxes upon America. But 
 when he left that country he was obviously of the 
 opinion that the differences with the mother country, 
 serious as they were, would ultimately be arranged * 
 as indeed it seems now clear that, but for the absence 
 of a conciliatory spirit in the English Government, 
 they might have been without a bloody strife and 
 severance of the two countries. Had he not so 
 believed, it cannot be thought that he would have left 
 those who were so dear to him to be exposed, without 
 his support, to all the casualties and miseries of a civil 
 war. 
 
 The agitation produced by the introduction into 
 Parliament by Lord North of the Boston Port Bill 
 was at its height when Copley sailed from Boston in 
 June 1744. He reached London on the loth of July, 
 having visited Canterbury Cathedral on the way, 
 of which all he has to say, in a letter to his wife the 
 next day, is that "it is a very curious building, and 
 
 1 This is apparent from the terms of a letter by him to his wife from Parma, 
 July 22, 1755. By this time, however, things had gone so far that he writes : 
 "Whoever thinks the Americans can be easily subdued is greatly mistaken. . . . 
 It is now my settled conviction that all the power of Great Britain will not reduce 
 them to obedience."
 
 1744- COPLEY, SENIOR, COMES TO ENGLAND. 7 
 
 contains several monuments no less so." The 
 country through which he passed, he adds, 
 
 Is surpassingly beautiful. . . . You see a succession of fields of 
 grain, beans, grass, &c., without either fence or hedge to 
 protect them, yet not a spear is trampled upon any more 
 than if the trespass would bring immediate destruction on 
 the offender. Every house with the ground around it, 
 however small and humble, is as neat as possible ; really, in 
 comparison with the people of this country, in the way of 
 living, we Americans seem not half removed from a state 
 of nature. Nor do I find the travelling dear; the whole 
 expense of coming seventy-two miles only amounted to three 
 guineas, my food being as good and well served as any 
 gentleman could wish, and my carriage as comfortable as 
 any chariot in Boston, the horses equally good, and well 
 driven by the postilion ; all are changed at every stage. 
 
 Copley was cordially welcomed by his brother 
 artists. West, who had the year before been 
 appointed Historical Painter to the King, took him to 
 Buckingham House to show him the Royal pictures, 
 and went about with him to all that was best worth 
 seeing in London. Strange (afterwards Sir Robert), 
 the great engraver, called upon him. So did Sir 
 Joshua Reynolds, and at his hospitable board, Copley 
 made the acquaintance of several of the leading men 
 of the time. Both Reynolds and West did their best 
 to procure sitters for their Transatlantic rival, even 
 during the brief period that he could remain in London 
 before setting out for the Continent. Considering the 
 political attitude of England towards America at this 
 time, it is somewhat singular that his sitters were the 
 very persons who might have been expected to look 
 with the least favour upon an artist from Boston, the 
 centre of rebellious American feeling, and who himself 
 made no secret of his opinions as to the injustice of
 
 8 J. S. COPLEY, SENIOR, CHAP. i. 
 
 the tea and other obnoxious duties. Lord and Lady 
 North, the ugliest couple, by general consent, in 
 England, and consequently a severe test of his skill, 
 sat to him ; and at the request of Governor Wentworth, 
 the King and Queen promised, if, indeed, they did not 
 actually give, him sittings for their portraits. 1 His days 
 in London, few as they were, for he left on the 2ist 
 of August, were turned to account with the energy 
 which marked his character. The way he had been 
 received was sufficient to show that a career was open 
 to him in England. " I might have begun many 
 pictures in London, if I had pleased," he writes to his 
 wife from Rome (October 26, 1774), "and several 
 persons are awaiting my return to employ me. Mr. 
 Wentworth will keep his commission for the portraits 
 of their Majesties for me." To have so quickly made 
 a name among a new and critical public speaks strongly 
 for the man and his genius ; and bears out the 
 language of his more distinguished son, in writing of 
 him in 1827. " Considering that he was entirely self- 
 taught, and never saw a decent picture, with the 
 exception of his own, till he was nearly thirty years of 
 age, the circumstance is, I think, worthy of admiration, 
 and affords a striking instance of what natural genius, 
 aided by determined perseverance, can accomplish." 
 
 The few pictures of a high order which Copley 
 saw in London only stimulated his desire to become 
 acquainted with the masterpieces of ancient and 
 Italian art. He was now of an age, and sufficiently 
 master of his art, to profit by what they could teach 
 him, without becoming perplexed by the varieties of 
 style, or losing anything of his own individuality 
 
 1 These portraits seem to have been begun at this time, but not finished till 
 after Copley's return from Italy. They are now in Old Wentworth House, 
 Portsmouth.
 
 1774- VISITS ITALY. 9 
 
 in the desire to follow established methods. But 
 time was precious, with a family on his hands, and 
 affairs in Boston presented an aspect that was growing 
 more critical every day. He had left England, un- 
 certain whether to return to America, after his Italian 
 tour, or to bring over his family to England, and fix 
 his residence in London. But he had not been long 
 in Italy before a decision was forced upon him by the 
 rapid progress of events in America, which he now saw 
 was likely to result in a total rupture with the mother 
 country. He learnt to his satisfaction that the idea 
 of removing to England was not distasteful to his wife. 
 Soon after his departure she had found herself most 
 uncomfortably placed in Boston, where her father, Mr. 
 Clarke, was obnoxious from his Royalist proclivities, 
 and the turmoil of preparations for the impending 
 Revolution had already begun. " I find," Copley 
 writes to her from Rome (Oct. 26, 1774), "you will 
 not regret leaving Boston. I am sorry it has become 
 so disagreeable. I think this will determine me to 
 stay in England, where, I have no doubt, I shall meet 
 with as much to do as in Boston, and on better terms." 
 The prospect, however, was far from cheering, for it 
 threatened the loss of a property called " Beacon 
 Hill," of about twelve acres, on which the best houses 
 in Boston now stand, but which was then a farm, with 
 some houses upon it, in one of which the Copley family 
 resided. In the same letter he says 
 
 As for my property in Boston, I cannot count it anything 
 now. I believe I shall sink it all ; it is very hard, but it 
 must be submitted to. ... I wish I had sold my whole place ; 
 I should then have been worth something ; I do not know 
 now that I have a shilling in the world. 
 
 The next letter from his wife was decisive. In
 
 10 COPLEY, SENIOR, IN ITALY. CHAP. I. 
 
 replying to it from Rome (December 4, 1774), 
 Copley says 
 
 Your situation must be very unpleasant ; the daily ex- 
 pectation of bloodshed must render every thoughtful person 
 unhappy. You have answered a question I asked in my last, 
 namely, " Whether you wished me to go to Boston, or if you 
 should come to England." You seem desirous of the latter. 
 This makes me very happy. . . . Should I now return to 
 America, I should have nothing to do, and I cannot think 
 of going back to starve with my family. 
 
 The next few months, full as they were of anxiety 
 about his family and friends in Boston, were devoted 
 to the earnest study of the best works of art in Genoa, 
 Florence, Rome, Naples, Parma, and others of the 
 Italian cities. As might have been expected in one 
 who had already conquered most of the secrets of 
 colour and chiaroscuro, Copley seems to have concen- 
 trated his attention chiefly on the finest works of 
 statuary in Naples and in Rome. He was conscious 
 of his own shortcomings as a draughtsman, and in one 
 of his letters to his wife (Florence, June 9, 1775), he 
 expressed a truth which cannot be too often repeated. 
 "A thorough knowledge of the human body, with a 
 fine taste to give to all characters the particular forms 
 that suit best with each, is absolutely necessary to the 
 character of a great and original artist." Time did 
 not permit of his making all the studies from the 
 antique which he wished ; but he purchased casts of a 
 few of the finest statues in Rome "for even in 
 Rome," as he says truly, " the number of the very 
 excellent is not great," and had them sent to his 
 address in England, where, having been badly packed, 
 they arrived in a mass of fragments, a disappointment, 
 which Lord Lyndhurst used to say, " he never ceased 
 to feel during the whole course of his life."
 
 1775- COPLEY, SENIOR, IN ITALY. II 
 
 When in Parma, on his way back to England, news 
 reached him which caused him the most serious alarm. 
 He writes (July 2, 1775) to his wife 
 
 By a letter from London, I was informed, since I wrote 
 you, that what I greatly feared has at last taken place. 
 The war has begun, and, if I am not mistaken, the country, 
 which was once the happiest on the globe, will be deluged 
 with blood for many years to come. It seems as if no plan 
 of reconciliation could now be formed ; as the sword is drawn 
 all must be finally settled by the sword. I cannot think that 
 the power of Great Britain will subdue the country, if the 
 people are united, as they appear to be at present. I know 
 it may seem strange to some men of great understanding that I 
 should hold such an opinion, but it is very evident to me that 
 America will have the power of resistance until grown strong 
 to conquer, and that victory and independence will go hand 
 in hand. 
 
 The same views, the soundness of which events 
 were soon afterwards to prove, were expressed even 
 more strongly in another letter by Copley to his wife 
 a few days later (July 22, 1775), where he says 
 
 Whoever thinks the Americans can be easily subdued is 
 greatly mistaken ; they will keep their enthusiasm alive till 
 they are victorious. You know, years ago, I was right in 
 my opinion that war would be the result of the attempt 
 to tax the colony. It is now my settled conviction that 
 all the power of Great Britain will not reduce them to 
 obedience. 
 
 He had said in a previous letter to his wife (July 2), 
 that he should not be surprised to learn that some 
 of their friends, " having thought it best to come to 
 England to avoid the calamities of war, had arrived 
 there, and that she was with them." When he wrote 
 this, Mrs. Copley had already been some weeks in 
 England, having sailed from America on the 27th of
 
 12 COPLEY FAMILY ARRIVE IN ENGLAND. CHAP. i. 
 
 May, and reached Dover on the 28th of June. She 
 brought with her two of her children, the eldest, 
 Elizabeth, born in 1770, and John Singleton, the 
 second, born at Boston on the 2ist of May, 1772. 
 The third, a boy, who appeared after Copley had left 
 Boston, remained behind in the care of Copley's mother, 
 Mrs. Pelham, being too young and delicate to bear the 
 fatigue of the voyage. He died soon afterwards. 
 
 Copley was still in Parma hard at work in copying 
 Correggio's St. Jerome, for which he had received a 
 commission from Lord Cremorne, when the tidings 
 reached him of the safe arrival of his family in 
 England. " I am doubly happy," he writes to his 
 wife (July 28), " that I was saved the anxiety I 
 should have endured had I known that you and the 
 dear children were on the sea. . . . My thoughts were 
 full that you should come, but my dear mother ought 
 not surely to have remained. I wish I had written to 
 her more pressingly, for no time in the year could be 
 more favourable. I so wish I could gather her and 
 Harry [his half-brother Henry Pelham] from that 
 miserable place" (Boston). 
 
 Copley was thus relieved from one great anxiety. 
 His wife and children were safe on English ground, 
 and well cared for by her brother-in-law, a Mr. 
 Bromfield, who was resident in London. Here Mrs. 
 Copley was soon afterwards joined by her father, Mr. 
 Clarke, from Canada, where he had some time before 
 been driven to seek refuge from the fury of the Boston 
 populace. Copley could now complete his work in 
 Parma with greater ease of mind, and wind up his 
 artistic tour by a visit to Venice. There he spent 
 some time, and then came back to England by way of 
 Germany and the Low Countries. It was not how- 
 ever till December (1774) that the family circle was
 
 1776. MRS. COPLEY. 13 
 
 completed by his arrival in London. Had he yielded 
 to the promptings of his heart merely, love for his 
 wife and children would have made him curtail his stay 
 abroad. But he had to think of the importance to his 
 future professional career of the knowledge which the 
 picture galleries and public buildings of the Continent 
 could alone place within his reach, and he therefore 
 remained to complete studies which he could scarcely 
 hope to have an opportunity of again prosecuting on 
 the spot. 
 
 Copley was most fortunate in his wife. She had 
 great personal attractions, the record of which is pre- 
 served in many of his finest pictures. But to these she 
 added the charm of a highly cultivated and independent 
 mind, warm affections, and the power of so governing 
 her household, that she won, and kept to the last, the 
 love and devotion both of her husband and of her 
 children. How Copley loved her in the early days of 
 their marriage is shown in a charming passage of one 
 of his letters to her from Genoa (October 8, 1774). 
 "Could I address you," he writes, "by any name 
 more dear than that of wife, I should delight in using 
 it when I write ; but how tender soever the name may 
 be, it is insufficient to convey the attachment I have for 
 you." To him she was always beautiful, and as the 
 years went on, his love was deepened by the daily 
 proofs she had given him of her fine qualities of heart 
 and mind in regulating his household, in bringing 
 light into it by her bright, cheerful, patient spirit, and 
 in binding parents and children together by ties of 
 mutual affection, which neither lapse of years nor 
 change of circumstances could alter or relax. 
 
 A family group, painted by Copley a very few 
 years after his return from Italy, presents this admi- 
 rable woman under the most attractive aspect. By
 
 14 THE FAMILY PICTURE. CHAP. I. 
 
 this time a boy and a girl had been added to the 
 family. The four children, with their mother, her 
 father Mr. Clarke, and Copley himself, are all intro- 
 duced into the picture. The central point of interest 
 is Mrs. Copley, who is seated on a couch with her then 
 youngest daughter lying across her lap, while she bends 
 towards her eldest boy, the future Chancellor, who is 
 standing by her side, and looking up to claim a share 
 of her caresses with a tender, smiling earnestness, that 
 speaks volumes for the depth of the attachment be- 
 tween the mother and her boy. What we see of this 
 in the picture, Copley had obviously often seen in his 
 home. It was emblematic of the deep affection which 
 bound the mother and her distinguished son to each 
 other through life. 
 
 In her memoir of the artist Copley, 1 Mrs. Amory, on 
 the strength of the family tradition, says of the boy 
 
 In childhood no inducement could lure him from her side. 
 He would follow her on the round of daily duty with the most 
 tender affection ; and when that beloved parent had attained 
 within a couple of years to the great age at which he himself 
 died, the sacred bond was still unbroken, she idolizing him, 
 and esteeming it the peculiar blessing of her favoured lot 
 that her pilgrimage on earth had been protracted long enough 
 to witness that success of which his father was privileged to 
 see only the promise. 
 
 The " Family Picture " hung upon the wall of 
 Lord Lyndhurst's dining-room until his death, and his 
 dying eyes rested upon it. "See, my dear," he said to 
 his daughter, as he pointed to it from his bed ; " see, 
 my dear, the difference between me here and there ! " 2 
 
 1 " The Domestic and Artistic Life of John Singleton Copley, R.A. By his 
 granddaughter, Martha Babcock Amory. Boston, 1882." Mrs. Amory was the 
 daughter of Copley's eldest daughter. She died in i8Sl. 
 
 2 After Lord Lyndhurst's death this picture passed into the hands of Mr.
 
 1779- COPLEY'S PICTURES. 15 
 
 This picture, when first painted, was greatly ad- 
 mired, and helped to sustain the reputation which 
 Copley quickly established after his return to London. 
 He soon obtained numerous sitters for portraits upon 
 what were in those days considered handsome terms. 
 But what gave him a higher position among the 
 painters of the day were his pictures of dramatic or 
 historical interest. The earliest of these, " A Youth 
 Rescued from a Shark," illustrative of an accident 
 which occurred to Mr. Brooke Watson, when a young 
 man, in the harbour of Havannah, was exhibited in 
 1779; and in the fine mezzotint of Valentine Green 
 kept its place on many a wall in England down to 
 very recent times. 1 Still more admired were his 
 pictures of the collapse of Lord Chatham in the 
 House of Lords (April 7, 1778), generally known as 
 "The Death of Chatham," 2 although he did not in 
 
 Charles S. Amory, of Boston, U.S. It was last publicly seen in England at the 
 Great Exhibition of 1862, and was sold for 1000 guineas after Lord Lyndhurst's 
 death. 
 
 1 This picture was presented by Copley to Christ's Hospital School. 
 
 2 Copley has recorded in his picture an incident in this scene which had become 
 forgotten until recalled to notice by the publication in 1845 of the contemporary 
 letter from Lord Camden to the Duke of Grafton, preserved in the Duke's MS. 
 Memoirs, and subsequently by Lord Stanhope in his History of England, vol. vi. 
 p. 45. Ed. 1853. "Lord Chatham," Lord Camden writes, "in attempting to 
 rise and reply to the Duke of Richmond, fell back upon his seat, and was to all 
 appearance in the agonies of death. This threw the whole house into confusion ; 
 every person was upon his legs in a moment, hurrying from one place to another, 
 some sending for assistance, others producing salts and other reviving spirits, 
 many crowding about the Earl to observe his countenance, all affected, most part 
 really concerned, and even those who might have felt a secret pleasure at the 
 accident yet put on the appearance of distress, except only the Earl of M., who sat 
 still, almost as much unmoved as the senseless body itself." The only Earls of 
 M. present that day were Lord Marchmont and Lord Mansfield. Lord Brougham 
 thought Lord Marchmont was the person meant, Lord Campbell thought it was 
 Lord Mansfield (" Lives of Chief Justices," vol. ii. p. 507). Lord Stanhope 
 took the same view, and supported it by reference to the fact that Lord Chatham 
 had, in his last speech, when arguing against the fears of a foreign invasion, 
 attacked Lord Mansfield on the ground of his alleged early Jacobite leanings. 
 " Of a Spanish invasion," he had said, " of a French invasion, of a Dutch invasion,
 
 1 6 COPLEY'S PICTURES. CHAP. i. 
 
 fact die till a month later (May n); and "The 
 Death of Major Pierson," in repelling the attack of the 
 French at St. Heller's, Jersey, on the 6th of January, 
 1 78 1. 1 Both these fine examples of Copley's powers 
 as a historical painter are now in the National Gallery. 
 Here also is a small replica, by Copley himself, of a 
 large picture of " The Repulse and Defeat of the 
 Spanish Floating Batteries at Gibraltar " (September, 
 13, 1782), which he painted for the Corporation of 
 London. Another of his historical pictures, now in 
 the Public Library of Boston, U.S., which attracted 
 great notice at the time, and is a monument of 
 Copley's painstaking industry, is Charles I. demand- 
 ing in the House of Commons (4th of January, 1642) 
 the surrender of Hampden, Pym, Hollis, Hazelrig and 
 Strode. The moment chosen for the picture is when 
 the Speaker Lenthall, dropping on his knee, gave 
 the memorable answer to the king : "I have, sire, 
 neither eyes to see, nor tongue to speak in this place, 
 but as the House is pleased to direct me, whose 
 servant I am, and I humbly ask pardon that I can- 
 not give any other answer to what your Majesty is 
 pleased to demand of me." This work, commenced 
 in 1785, contained no fewer than fifty-eight likenesses, 
 all of which were studied from original contemporary 
 
 many noble lords may have read in history ; and some lords," here he looked 
 keenly at Lord Mansfield, "may perhaps remember a Scotch invasion." A 
 reference to Copley's picture settles the question ; in it Lord Mansfield retains his 
 seat, looking as Lord Camden describes him. The circumstance is the more 
 remarkable, as his figure does not appear in the sketch for the picture, which now 
 hangs beside the finished work in the National Gallery. 
 
 1 Painted in 1783 for Alderman Boydell, for his gallery. When this was 
 dispersed, it was bought back by Copley, and remained in the house in George 
 Street till Lord Lyndhurst's death, when it was purchased for the National Gallery 
 for 1500 guineas. The woman flying from the crowd in terror, with the child in 
 her arms, was painted from the nurse of Mr. Copley's family ; the figure between 
 her and the wall, with the upraised arm, is Mrs. Copley ; the boy running by the 
 nurse's side is young Copley.
 
 i ;8o. THE COPLEY FAMILY. 17 
 
 portraits, either sent to Copley by their owners, or 
 sought out by him in the country houses where they 
 had been preserved. As in the other pictures already 
 mentioned, the subject is treated with great spirit, 
 and unusual skill is shown in the disposition of the 
 numerous figures. Other pictures, of either historical 
 or romantic interest, were from time to time pro- 
 duced with more or less success, and, while they kept 
 Copley's name prominently before the public, com- 
 manded prices which, with those received for portraits, 
 very early placed the artist in a position of comfort- 
 able independence. The popularity of the fine en- 
 gravings by Bartolozzi, Heath, Sharpe and others from 
 his historical works, added to his income, while the 
 highest honours of his profession were accorded by his 
 election as a Royal Academician so early as in 1779. 
 
 From Leicester Fields, 1 where Copley lived for some 
 time after his return from the Continent, he removed to 
 a small but commodious house, No. 25 George Street, 
 Hanover Square, of which he purchased the fee-simple. 
 Here the rest of his life was passed in the active prac- 
 tice of his art. With his brush in his hand, every care 
 and anxiety, Lord Lyndhurst has recorded, were for- 
 gotten. On his death, in 1815, this house became the 
 property of his son, who also continued to live in it, 
 except for a short interval, till his death, and who loved 
 it dearly as the home where he himself, and those he 
 loved best, had spent their happiest hours. Here the 
 three youngest members of the family were born, two 
 girls and a boy, and here this boy, and the elder of 
 these girls, died of scarlet fever in 1785. This breach 
 in the family circle deeply affected their mother, who 
 did not for many years recover from the blow ; and the 
 
 1 Lord Lyndhurst had a lively recollection of having seen the Gordon Riots in 
 June 1780 from the windows of his father's house. 
 
 C
 
 1 8 YOUNG COPLEY AT SCHOOL. CHAP. i. 
 
 warmth of feeling with which Lord Lyndhurst occa- 
 sionally referred to it, showed how deep was the im- 
 pression which the loss of his young companions had 
 made upon him at the time. Mrs. Copley's father, 
 Mr. Clarke, was an inmate of the house till his death 
 in 1795; and it continued to be Mrs. Copley's home 
 till 1836, when she died at the ripe age of ninety-one. 
 Family tradition speaks of young Copley as a boy 
 of great vivacity and humour, contrasting strongly 
 with his father's contemplative and visionary cast of 
 mind and the calm and somewhat serious tempera- 
 ment of his mother. 
 
 "Friends from this side of the Atlantic," Mrs. Amory 
 writes, " carried back to Lord Lyndhurst the tales they had 
 heard of his boyish pranks, and how his father would reprove 
 him, and exclaim, ' You will be a boy, Jack, all your life ! ' 
 At which the aged statesman would gently smile, as the 
 memories of his youth rushed on his mind, and answer, ' Well, 
 I believe my father was right there.' " 
 
 He was educated at a private school at Chiswick, 
 kept by Dr. Home, father of Sir William Home, some 
 time Attorney-General and afterwards Master in 
 Chancery. " The doctor," Lord Lyndhurst writes, in 
 a memorandum jotted down by him in his ninety-first 
 year, "was a good classical scholar, and infused into 
 us a fair proportion of Latin and Greek." Dr. Home 
 obviously thought highly of his pupil, for in a letter to 
 a friend (Mr. Charlewood, of Trinity College, Oxford), 
 he writes (Nov. 23, 1789), "Copley is on the point 
 of leaving us and entering at the University, as he 
 believes, but whether Oxford or Cambridge I know 
 not. He is a prodigiously improved young man." 
 Early he acquired the habit, so conspicuous in after 
 life, of thoroughly mastering and fixing with precision 
 in his memory whatever engaged his attention, whether
 
 1789. HIS LOVE FOR ARCHITECTURE. 19 
 
 in science or in literature. To his elder sister, to 
 whom he was in the habit of repeating his lessons in 
 the classics, he used to say, " No matter whether you 
 understand the text or not, be sure I make no mistake 
 in a single word, or even in an accent." From the 
 first he showed great aptitude for mathematics, and also 
 for mechanical science ; and, living as he did in the 
 midst of artists, he availed himself of the opportunities 
 which were open to him of attending the lectures on art 
 by Sir Joshua Reynolds, Barry and others. Speaking 
 (4th March, 1859) in the House of Lords, on a motion 
 in regard to the Royal Academy, he referred with 
 satisfaction to the days when he attended these 
 lectures, " when he was very much associated with 
 the proceedings of the Royal Academy, and intimately 
 acquainted with many of its members." 1 He used 
 to tell of being present at one of Reynolds's lectures, 
 when an alarm arose that the floor was about to 
 give way, and Burke, who was among the audience, 
 appealed to them to be calm, and not to accelerate the 
 catastrophe by a rush. He had no gift for the painter's 
 art ; but in his early days he wished to become an 
 architect. For this vocation he had a natural genius, 
 and to the end of his days retained his love for it. 
 When far advanced in years, he would amuse Lady 
 Lyndhurst, when visiting at some of the great country 
 houses of his friends, by pointing out their defects of 
 design and arrangement, and showing how advantage 
 might have been taken of site and other circumstances 
 to produce structures more beautiful and commo- 
 dious. 
 
 How welcome young Copley's letters were at home, 
 
 1 See Appendix for account of a pamphlet by him in 1804, which shows the 
 active interest he took in its proceedings, an interest which, it is apparent from 
 his speech referred to in the text, he continued to feel through life. 
 
 C 2
 
 2O YOUNG COPLEY TO HIS MOTHER. CHAP. i. 
 
 may be inferred from the following specimen of them, 
 written obviously on the eve of his leaving Dr. 
 Home's School at Chiswick. He was then in his 
 eighteenth year : 
 
 Chiswick, December 4, 1789. 
 
 My dear Mother, 
 
 " The Pylian sage at length the silence broke." Popts ' Iliad.' 
 
 I do not mean by this line to imply that I am in any 
 respect like the Grecian sage, except merely in that of inter- 
 rupting a long silence. Perhaps you will be surprised if I 
 say I have expected a letter ever since my last visit ; no doubt 
 you have done the same from me ; this I can readily con- 
 jecture without much stretch of thought. I have accordingly 
 set pen to paper, in order to satisfy you, expecting at the 
 same time shortly to be satisfied myself, if the old adage be 
 true, " set your bait and you'll catch fish." 
 
 I shall make no questions concerning my father's cold, 
 which, from your silence, must have vanished long ago. I 
 shall ask nothing concerning the great picture, as the 
 group is doubtless already finished. I shall ask nothing 
 concerning my sister's embonpoint, as it must require 
 (pray excuse the idea) a summer's heat to melt it down : 
 in fine, I shall make no inquiries, but tell my own news 
 in three lines, news which merits the pen of a Cicero. 
 Thursday next, at 12 o'clock, is our speaking day, and a few 
 days after, if you wish to hear Alexander's Feast, come ; if you 
 wish to hear Greek and Latin, prose and verse, come ; if you 
 wish to hear the thundering of Chiswick orators, come ; but 
 prepare to smile and clap, fatigued or pleased. Come, and 
 bring with you all who are of that mind, I mean within the 
 bounds of your own walls. No strangers can possibly be 
 admitted : reflect upon eighty fathers, mothers, and sisters ; 
 reflect upon the size of our room, and you cannot err. Duty 
 to my father and grandfather, love to my sisters. Your 
 dutiful son. 
 
 Another letter of young Copley's to his mother, 
 written about the same time, has also been preserved.
 
 1790. GOES TO CAMBRIDGE. 21 
 
 I received your letter of the 25th instant, together with the 
 book you sent, and am very well pleased with the opportunity 
 of taking upon myself (by Confirmation) those baptismal vows 
 which were entered into in my behalf by my godfathers and 
 godmother, to whom I shall always think myself highly 
 obligated. I am very far from thinking the practice of 
 religion can in any degree interrupt any of the enjoyments of 
 this world, and am of opinion that it not only increases every 
 pleasure, but likewise mitigates every grief. If we have any 
 gratitude for a favour conferred by a mortal, how much more 
 ought we to have towards our Maker, to whom we owe our 
 existence and everything we enjoy ! If we kneel before a 
 monarch, what should we do when we address Him who formed 
 the universe ! I am, with all respect, your dutiful son. 
 
 Young Copley's abilities, which made themselves 
 felt among his family and friends as of no common 
 order, seemed to point to the Bar as the true sphere 
 for their exercise. With a view to this his father 
 decided on his going to Cambridge. Accordingly 
 on the 8th of July, 1790, he was entered as a pen- 
 sioner at Trinity College. He was then eighteen. It 
 was intended that he should have gone to Trinity 
 Hall, which his father had been told was the right 
 college for a future student of law. But as the two 
 Copleys travelled down to Cambridge in the stage 
 coach, Dr. Gretton, afterwards Dean of Hereford, 
 travelled with them, and on learning the college for 
 which young Copley was destined, he mentioned, that 
 at that time neither law nor anything else was much 
 taught at Trinity Hall a stigma under which it has 
 certainly not laboured for the two last generations at 
 least whereas Trinity, of which he had himself been 
 a fellow, was the only place for a lad of ability. Dr. 
 Gretton then asked permission to examine young 
 Copley, and, after having done so, said, "If you do 
 not let your son, with his manifest powers, go to
 
 22 HIS LOVE OF CLASSICAL LITERATURE, CHAP. I. 
 
 Trinity, he will be utterly thrown away." Accordingly 
 to Trinity he went. 1 
 
 Of young Copley's doings at the University no 
 authentic record remains. They were, no doubt, very 
 much those of every young man of ability, who 
 delights in gathering knowledge at once for its own 
 sake and as the instrument by which he hopes to make 
 his way in the world. The bent of his mind was 
 towards mathematics, chemistry and physical science, 
 but this was tempered by a love for classical literature 
 which remained with him through life. In delivering 
 judgment in 1842, in the case of the Manchester Free 
 Grammar School (Attorney-General v. Lord Stamford. 
 Phill. p. 761), where an attempt was being made to 
 change the character of the school, and confine the 
 teaching to a purely mercantile education, he said, " I 
 think it is of the utmost importance that we should be, 
 .as far as possible, all of us brought up according to 
 one general system of education ; and no system is 
 better fitted for refining and humanizing the manners 
 of a nation than a system of literature founded on 
 classical learning." 
 
 The quickness of his perception, and the rare preci- 
 sion and tenacity of Copley's memory, made it compara- 
 
 1 lam indebted for this anecdote to Dr. Gretton's son, the Rev.'F. E. Gretton, 
 Rector of Oddington, who informs me that the acquaintance thus made ripened 
 into intimacy, in token of which Copley asked to be allowed to paint and did paint 
 the portraits of Dr. Gretton and his wife. The incident remained in Lord Lynd- 
 hurst's memory, and was gratefully cherished there. When he stood as Attorney- 
 General in 1826 as candidate for Cambridge University, a son of Dr. Gretton's 
 was brought up to be introduced to him by the Chairman of his Committee. 
 "Nay, "said Copley (then Sir John), "no introduction is needed. Had it not been 
 for this gentleman's father I should not have come to Trinity, and unless I had come 
 there I should never have been in a position to aspire to represent the University." 
 "This offhand sentence," Mr. Gretton writes, "was at once kindly to the 
 individual and a graceful compliment to the University. But Lord Lyndhurst 
 did not confine his kindliness to words. When already rising in his profession 
 he manifested much active courtesy to one of my brothers, then a young law- 
 student in London, and, when Lord Chancellor, he gave a living to another."
 
 1791- MATHEMATICS AND PHYSICAL SCIENCE. 23 
 
 lively easy for him to cover a large area of literary study 
 in these early days. And what he learned then remained 
 with him, and was ready to be turned to account in 
 after years, when the claims of his profession, of 
 political life, and of society, left him little leisure for 
 such studies. It was the same with his mastery of 
 mathematics and of physical and mechanical science. 
 So thoroughly grounded was he in these studies, that 
 he was able to apply his knowledge of them with a 
 readiness and skill which gave him pre-eminence both 
 at the Bar and on the Bench in patent and other cases 
 relating to mechanical inventions or to scientific pro- 
 cesses. His memory, too, was of a character so 
 tenacious and exact, that very late in life he was able 
 to fix the date of an event that was mentioned in 
 conversation by remembering that it occurred at 
 a time when he had just entered on the study of 
 Newton's " Principia" at the University. 
 
 A few of his letters from Cambridge have been 
 preserved. They are chiefly interesting as affording 
 proofs of the strong affection which subsisted between 
 the young student and those whom he had left at home, 
 and of the pleasant temper, and bright spirit, and 
 thoroughly kind heart which obviously made him 
 greatly missed there. Here is one to his eldest sister, 
 written with something of the quaint formality of a 
 letter in a last century novel : 
 
 Cambridge, February 3, 1791. 
 
 "His turns too closely on each other press; 
 
 He more had pleased us had he pleased us less." 
 
 These two lines were intended by their author to charac- 
 terise the works of Cowley ; they proceed, as you very- 
 well know, from the polished pen of Addison. 
 
 This elegant critic and agreeable moralist seems to agree 
 in the vulgar opinion that there may be too much even of a 
 good thing. Following the steps of so distinguished a guide, 
 I have reflected that whatever might have been the charms
 
 24 COPLEY TO HIS SISTER. CHAP. L 
 
 of my company, however I might have contributed to enliven 
 the conversation of the tea-table, or to keep in due exercise 
 the argumentative faculties of your papa, still a constant 
 repetition of these sweets sweets great indeed must at 
 length have deducted somewhat from their original power, 
 and made absence, at least for a short time, necessary to 
 forming a just estimate of their value. To heighten the effect 
 of this absence, I have kept my pen for two days silent, 
 pleased with painting to myself the delight that the receipt of 
 a letter, after such an interval, must inspire. 
 
 I behold you reading over each line ten times, spelling 
 every word, counting the stops, afraid to arrive at the end : 
 your appetite is already flown. Adieu, draughts ! adieu, 
 cards ! Three nights you lie sleepless ! What snatching to 
 look at it ! What silence during the perusal ! 
 
 But how can I be so light, when I have just heard related 
 the particulars attending the death of poor Monck ! He had 
 been at supper in the hall. He came out in company with 
 several young friends. One of these happened to be a little 
 overheated with wine, and not being in a condition to study 
 wished to go home with Monck ; who, on his part, desiring to 
 be alone, and considering how he might best avoid his 
 companion, concluded that no means would be so effectual as 
 flight. The night was dark. He ran, and in endeavouring to 
 escape, heedless of his road, fell violently against the edge 
 of a copper dial. He struck his temple, and sunk to the 
 ground ; he presently after rose, and again fell. He was 
 carried to his room. When he got there he said to the 
 friends who were about him that " he was sure he should die," 
 and immediately began to pray ; he was soon after taken 
 delirious, and died the next evening. His funeral was 
 attended by several of his young acquaintances. Monck was 
 a quiet, well-disposed youth, universally esteemed. What a 
 lesson does so sudden a fate lay before us ! The conclusions 
 are too obvious to require mention. I am too sad to add 
 anything more. My duty and love I beg you to distribute. 
 Your affectionate brother. 
 
 The next of young Copley's letters which has been 
 preserved, and which is addressed to his mother, is 
 in the affectionate strain which distinguishes all his
 
 r/9i. COPLEY TO HIS MOTHER. 25 
 
 communications to his family. The little touches of 
 youthful pedantry in his description of his pursuits, 
 and in his moralizing upon their aims, are not un- 
 welcome, so wholly in contrast as they are with any- 
 thing that was to be found in the full-grown lawyer and 
 statesman of later years. But when he says of himself, 
 " I am naturally a friend to gaiety ; I love to see what 
 is to be seen," he hits off a characteristic which 
 coloured all his life. 
 
 Cambridge, February 26, 1791. 
 
 It is from your goodness alone that I can expect pardon 
 for my late silence ; apology I can offer none. 
 
 I shall merely hint that the progression of time is so rapid 
 that I am often remiss in attention to my friends, without 
 observing my error. If, indeed, I could suppose that my 
 letters afforded you any proportion of that delight which I 
 derived from the perusal of yours yesterday, I should look 
 upon my silence as wholly unpardonable. And yet you tell 
 me that you daily expect the arrival of the postman with 
 impatience. They are then productive of at least some 
 gratification. It must be so. Away then all study ; away 
 every other pleasure except that of contributing to the 
 happiness of a kind and indulgent parent ! 
 
 First, then, to speak of myself. I have descended from 
 the attic to the middle story. My room contains eight chairs 
 and two tables commodiously. Not so extremely small, you 
 perceive. Here, according as my inclination prompts, I either 
 turn over the pages of science, or wander through the flowery 
 and less rugged paths of poetry and polite literature. Do not 
 imagine, however, that I am so enveloped in these pursuits as 
 to neglect amusements of a lighter nature ; they are in their 
 turn, perhaps, equally important. I am naturally a friend to 
 gaiety ; I love to see what is to be seen. Sometimes I stroll 
 into the coffee-house to sip my tea, and read the papers by 
 the way, or, to write more elegantly, apropos. I find Mr. 
 Paine has published his answer to Burke. 1 I expect to see it 
 to-morrow. 
 
 1 'The Rights of Man,' by Thomas Paine, of which the first part was 
 published in 1791. It was written in answer to Burke's 'Reflections on the
 
 26 THE STORY CHAP. i. 
 
 Sometimes I visit my friends, converse with them, or 
 perhaps debate. Yet still, though I love these things, I love 
 them in their season ; they are more grateful after a morning 
 spent in study. Study, unless prosecuted with considerable 
 industry, benefits little ; some say, not at all. 
 
 " A little learning is a dangerous thing ; 
 Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring ; 
 These shallow draughts intoxicate the brain, 
 And drinking largely sobers us again." Pope. 
 
 The same poet goes on : 
 
 "Oft at first sight with what the muse imparts 
 In fearless youth we tempt the heights of arts, 
 While from the bounded level of our mind 
 Short views we take, nor see the lengths behind ; 
 But more advanced, behold, with strange surprise, 
 New distant scenes of endless science rise." 
 
 Though it be impossible to arrive at the summit of the 
 hill, let us endeavour to approach as near to it as we are able. 
 Labour and perseverance overcome many great obstacles, 
 and it must be remembered that the honour which attends the 
 attainment of any object is proportional to the difficulties and 
 impediments with which it is entrenched. I proposed to 
 speak first of myself, but I find I have engrossed so much of 
 the paper that there is no room for company. Duty, love, 
 compliments. Your dutiful and affectionate son. 
 
 P.S. I left in town a pair of small knee-buckles, Aris- 
 totle's Poetics, translated by Pye, a small book in marble 
 paper. I wish for my foils. These could be easily trans- 
 ported hither by the coach which sets off from the Queen's 
 Head, Gray's Inn Lane. 
 
 The following letter, also to his mother, is without 
 date, a bad habit which distinguished the writer to the 
 last ; but it must have been written in 1 791, as it refers 
 to his father's picture of " Hagar and Ishmael in the 
 Wilderness," which was begun in that year. The 
 searching method of the future lawyer is conspicuous 
 in the way young Copley set to work to prove, to the 
 
 French Revolution.' The second part, published in February 1 792, contained a 
 vehement attack on monarchy and upon George III. personally.
 
 I79i. OF HAGAR AND ISHMAEL. 2/ 
 
 confusion of his father, that Ishmael was not the 
 little boy that, as he playfully calls his father, " the 
 Knight of the Brush," following the practice of the 
 older painters, had represented in his picture. 
 
 So Saturday is to be the great day ! Well, I shall prepare 
 for the reception of the celebrated artist. But you have given 
 me no idea with respect to the probable duration of the visit. 
 Only four sheets, I assure you ! 
 
 " Mr. Copley, shall I have the pleasure to take a glass of 
 wine with you ? I saw your father the other day, I dined 
 with him at Lord Carlisle's " (says some one). 
 
 Yesterday being Sunday, I read my Bible. I am very 
 sorry to inform the Knight of the Brush that Gilgal was about 
 forty miles from the nearest town or city that Saul destroyed 
 in his expedition against Agag ; and I wonder that a person 
 of my father's profound biblical information should have 
 committed so unpardonable an error as to reduce that distance 
 to five or six hundred paces. 
 
 I have a few words to write relative to Ishmael's age at 
 the time when he was expelled from his father's house. 
 
 (i.) The text says expressly that Abraham was eighty-six 
 years old when Ishmael was born (Gen. xvi. 16). 
 
 (2.) When the new covenant was made with Abraham, he 
 had attained his one hundredth year (Gen. xvii. l), about 
 twelve months after which Sarah was delivered of Isaac 
 (Gen. xvii. 21). 
 
 (3.) Ishmael was therefore fourteen years older than Isaac. 
 
 (4.) We may collect from Gen. xxi. 9-14 that Ishmael was 
 not driven from under his father's roof till Isaac was weaned, 
 and it is most probable that the expulsion immediately 
 followed that event. 
 
 (5.) At what age was it customary to wean children 
 among the Jews ? There are two cases mentioned in the 
 Scriptures that may serve to elucidate this point : in one of 
 which the child was suckled for three years (2 Mac. vii. 27), 
 and in the other it is probable he was weaned at a more 
 tender age (i Sam. i., ii). At present, I believe, children are 
 usually fed by hand at the expiration of one year, and it 
 could not well be sooner.
 
 28 COPLEY TO HIS MOTHER. CHAP. i. 
 
 (6.) It is therefore clear that when Ishmael was turned 
 from Abraham's door he was at least fifteen years of age ; it 
 is probable he was seventeen ; it is possible he was still older. 
 
 If I recollect my father's picture, Ishmael is represented as 
 about twelve or thirteen years of age, and certainly too young. 
 A merciless critic ! I pull the girls' caps ! Adieu. Very 
 affectionately. 
 
 The only other letter of this period which has been 
 preserved, is one written immediately on his returning 
 from home to Cambridge for the winter term. 
 
 Cambridge, Monday Noon, November lo, 1791. 
 
 It has cost me some little time to move from my old 
 lodgings, and to get settled in those which I at present 
 occupy. The first leisure moment I consecrate to you, and 
 sit down to inform a kind mother of my welfare, complying 
 thus with her desire, and at the same time most gratefully 
 indulging my own inclinations. Nothing particular occurred 
 on the route, nor indeed has anything worth notice presented 
 itself since ; if, therefore, I lengthen out my letter it must be 
 with expressions of that affection and filial regard which glow 
 in my heart, and which no distance can ever diminish, no time 
 can ever impair. Let me entreat that you will often write to 
 inform me of your health and happiness, and of the situation 
 of those various and complex concerns which at present 
 engage and agitate the minds and bosoms of our circle in 
 George Street. 
 
 My duty and respects attend all who compose that circle, 
 upon the charms of whose society I cannot look back without 
 regret. Your affectionate and dutiful son. 
 
 The loving relatives who " composed that circle " 
 obviously anticipated the highest honours for one 
 whom they knew to be gifted with superior powers 
 of mind, and whom they had no reason to believe to 
 be otherwise than industrious. And most industrious 
 he must have been to come out, as he did, in May 
 1794, from his examination as Second Wrangler, 
 although he had only nine months previously taken
 
 1794- TAKES B.A. DEGREE. 29 
 
 up seriously the study of Mathematics. Like many 
 other young men, over-confident in the quickness of 
 their perception and the tenacity of their memory, he 
 had put off too long his preparation for the struggle 
 for honours, and given to his boat and fishing- 
 rod the hours which should have been devoted to 
 study. But, as the time drew nigh, he found he 
 had to make up for the lost hours by working late 
 into the night, under the stimulus of strong tea and 
 with wet bandages on his head. How hard he worked 
 will be seen from the letters to be presently quoted. 
 In his close and protracted application he had over- 
 tasked his strength, and, apparently to the great chagrin 
 of his parents, had been remiss in his correspondence 
 home. It is thus he announces to his father the result 
 of his examination : 
 
 Cambridge [17 Jan.], 1794. 
 
 I write to you in haste to let you know that the examina- 
 tion for bachelor's degree is terminated, and the issue is that 
 I am second wrangler, which, for fear you should not under- 
 stand the term, means second man. Perhaps you will be dis- 
 contented that I am not first, but my health was my only 
 enemy. It is now half-past eight, and therefore I terminate. 
 Will write more to-morrow. I am the more pleased at my 
 place as this study has been only adopted by me within these 
 nine months, whereas several of my opponents have been 
 labouring for years. As I predicted, I am first in my own 
 college. I am very tired and very unwell. 
 
 The last words of this letter alarmed young Copley's 
 mother, as he soon found by a letter from her, and 
 he hastened to relieve her anxiety by an assurance that 
 he had only been suffering from temporary fatigue. 
 But, when questioned closely afterwards why he had 
 allowed himself to be outstripped in the race for 
 honours, he said it was because the strain upon his 
 health was too great, and he had not been able to
 
 30 COPLEY'S ACCOUNT CHAP. I. 
 
 do himself justice. In fact, it brought on a severe 
 attack of jaundice. 
 
 Cambridge, Jan. 1794. 
 
 I am sorry you should entertain a moment's uneasiness on 
 my account, and hope this letter will remove every particle 
 of that anxiety which was expressed in your letter of yester- 
 day. If anything did by accident slip from my pen that 
 could give colour to the least suspicion of my being otherwise 
 than perfectly well, it is with the utmost readiness I recall it. 
 When I wrote, the contest was just concluded, and I was 
 most excessively fatigued ; but one night's rest restored 
 everything. With respect to my not writing in reply to my 
 father's letter, how was it possible that you could receive on 
 Saturday an answer to a letter which did not reach me till 
 Saturday ? I expect, my dear mother, to be in town in the 
 course of the week, till which time I wish you all imaginable 
 quiet and happiness. In mean time, believe me to be your 
 affectionate and dutiful son. 
 
 To his father he wrote to explain the reasons of 
 long silence, in answer to what seems to have been a 
 severe rebuke for having occasioned anxiety in the 
 home where his letters were obviously one of the chief 
 elements of the day's enjoyment. 
 
 Cambridge, Jan. 25, 1794. 
 
 After having exhausted almost every species of apology 
 that was ever yet used by a negligent son to his indulgent 
 and kind^ friends, what new reason am I now to allege for my 
 late long and obstinate silence ? Any but the true cause would 
 be insufficient, and I fear that will scarcely ensure a pardon. 
 For what will you say when I assert that I have been so 
 closely occupied the whole of this term that I have scarcely 
 had a moment for my own amusement, and for the gratifica- 
 tion of my friends ? To advance such a position, unless I 
 could prove it by convincing evidence, would endanger my 
 credit and raise suspicions of my veracity. The first part of 
 this term I was busily employed in preparing for examina- 
 tion which was to qualify me for the dignity of a scholar of
 
 1794- OF HIS WORK AT CAMBRIDGE. 31 
 
 the college. The candidates were numerous, and as seniority 
 was generally very much regarded in the election (I being the 
 last entered of my year), I was obliged to supply by some 
 degree of superior merit this deficiency. The result was 
 successful. No sooner was this contest concluded than the 
 preparation for a new one succeeded, the annual examination 
 of our knowledge in mathematics, Locke, and moral philo- 
 sophy. This terminated yesterday, and I was unwilling to 
 answer Betsy's letter till I could inform you of my gaining a 
 prize. About half an hour since, it was determined, and I 
 was adjudged to be in the first class. This, though it will not 
 atone for my negligence, will, at least, go some way towards 
 gaining a pardon. I shall, I hope, in a very short time have 
 the pleasure of meeting my friends in George Street. It is a 
 period to which I look forward with delight. ... I am 
 afraid to let you know that, anticipating your permission, 
 I have had the boldness to draw upon you for ten guineas, 
 not wishing to leave college in debt. The post will really go 
 in ten minutes ; you will, therefore, be kind enough to present 
 my duty and love, etc., etc. Your dutiful son. 
 
 Two days later young Copley was able to send 
 to his father the pleasant news that he had come out 
 first Smith's prizeman. This he did in the following 
 letter : 
 
 Cambridge, January 27, 1794. 
 
 I again address you, the subject myself. The whole 
 business is finally settled. You must know that when the 
 celebrated Dr. Smith, formerly master of Trinity, died, he left 
 two prizes of ^25 each, to be given to those two persons who 
 should approve themselves the best proficients in mathe- 
 matical and philosophical studies. This was at a time when 
 the degrees in the senate house were conferred merely by 
 favour or interest. He left it, therefore, as some reward to 
 those who should exert themselves in acquiring that species of 
 knowledge which he thought most deserving of encourage- 
 ment. The judges were to be the Master of Trinity, the 
 Master of Caius College, the Plumian Professor, the Lucasian 
 Professor, and the Vice-Chancellor.
 
 32 ENTERED AT LINCOLN'S INN. CHAP. I. 
 
 Now this examination is about four or five days after the 
 degree of bachelor is conferred. It is this which has confined 
 me in Cambridge, and, I have the satisfaction to say, not with- 
 out compensation, I having been fortunate enough to get one 
 of these prizes. But it unfortunately happens that this 
 money is not payable till Lady Day, the 25th of March 
 (Annunciation Day) ; otherwise I should have been already 
 in London. I would make over the sum to you if you would 
 suffer me to draw upon you for the amount, deducting the 
 discount, and would arrive in town the day after. A thousand 
 little ticks (bills) that one had no idea of show their heads 
 when they think it may be the last time of meeting. Expect- 
 ing your answer, I remain your dutiful son. 
 
 Pray excuse so shocking a scribble, but I am tired, and 
 my pen and mind are both worn out. 
 
 A letter from young Copley's tutor a Mr. Jones of 
 Trinity, who is said to have been a man of consider- 
 able mark 1 congratulating the elder Copley on his 
 son's success, mentions that his pupil had "of late been 
 very studious." Nor is there any reason to believe that 
 he relaxed his exertions in order to qualify himself for 
 the profession which now he finally decided to adopt. 
 On the i Qth of May of the same year (1794) he was 
 admitted a member of the Hon. Society of Lincoln's 
 Inn, and he kept the Easter term of that year. He 
 did not, however, settle down at this time to the study 
 of the law, but returned to the University, where he 
 obtained a Fellowship in 1795. This event was 
 announced to his father by his tutor, Mr. Jones, in a 
 letter dated the ist of October, in which he states, 
 that his pupil's " success is the more honourable as it 
 was obtained the first time of his appearing as a 
 candidate. As," he adds, "he is not to look forward 
 to any further examination in this place, he will be at 
 
 1 He is very highly spoken of by Professor Pryme in his 'Autobiographic 
 Recollections,' Cambridge, 1870, p. 38. 

 
 1794- TAKES KING WILLIAM PRIZE. 33 
 
 liberty to devote the whole of his attention to the 
 study of the law, in which profession his well-known 
 talents will unquestionably secure him success." To 
 his father young Copley wrote the same day 
 
 I have the pleasure of informing you that I am just 
 elected Fellow of Trinity College, which I hope will give you 
 and my other valued friends in George Street as much satis- 
 faction as I have experienced myself. But as there are 
 various oaths of allegiance, supremacy, abjuration, and no- 
 body knows what, to be taken to-morrow, it will be impossible 
 for me to be in town before dinner-time on Saturday. In the 
 mean while, I wish you all joy, happiness, etc. etc. 
 
 Young Copley had previously, in the Michaelmas 
 term of 1794, competed successfully for the King 
 William Prize. His essay on "The Character and 
 Memory of William III.," to which its author at- 
 tached no value, regarding it merely as a college 
 exercise, was preserved by his younger sister. 1 It 
 is, in truth, no more than might have been written 
 by any average student the only characteristic fea- 
 ture being the absence of rhetorical exuberance 
 and a measured gravity of judgment. The writer, 
 if he had been at all infected by the prevailing 
 Radicalism of that day, has certainly contrived most 
 effectually to conceal the taint, even under the 
 temptation which the subject would naturally offer to 
 a young man of high spirits and not without enthu- 
 siasm in matters concerning popular rights and the 
 freedom of political opinion. 
 
 1 It will be remembered that Macaulay took this prize. Some specimens of 
 his essay are given in his Life by Mr. Trevelyan, voL i. p. 83, et seq. They are 
 more showy than anything to be found in young Copley's, but, as a study of 
 William the III.'s character, both essays are equally unimportant.
 
 ( 34 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 Copley appointed Travelling Bachelor Goes to America Unsuccessful 
 Efforts to recover Family Estate in Boston Makes Tour through 
 United States and into Canada Correspondence Letters as Travel- 
 ing Bachelor. 
 
 BEFORE young Copley went in for his Fellowship, it 
 had been decided that he should pay a visit to 
 America. 1 Having obtained from his College (loth 
 August, 1795) the appointment of travelling bachelor 
 with a grant of ^100 a year for three years, he was able 
 to carry out this intention without pressing too heavily 
 upon his father's purse. This was obviously a matter 
 of some importance, for although the elder Copley was 
 well employed as a portrait painter, and was, more- 
 over, most industrious in the production of fancy and 
 historical pictures, his income was apparently no more 
 than sufficient to meet the ordinary expenses of his 
 home. 
 
 Since the conclusion of peace in 1784, things 
 had settled down in America to their normal condi- 
 tion, and the painter seems to have thought that he 
 might find his art yield him as good and perhaps more 
 steady returns there, where he would be without a 
 
 1 This appears from a letter, dated September 23, 1795, to the elder Copley 
 from his brother, Henry Pelham, who was now settled in Ireland, in which he 
 writes: "I long greatly to hear what success my nephew, John, has had at 
 Cambridge. I flatter myself it is such as he could wish. In his tour to America, 
 I wish him most sincerely a safe and prosperous voyage, and shall hope ere long 
 to hear of his return to George Street."
 
 1795- FAMILY ESTATE IN BOSTON, U.S. 35 
 
 rival, than in England, where he had to compete with 
 other painters of skill not inferior to his own. He 
 had left behind him, as already mentioned, a good 
 property of twelve acres in Boston, called the Beacon 
 Hill. It had been taken possession of by the British 
 troops at the outset of the war, and upon it they had 
 encamped and erected fortifications, which, on their 
 retiring from Boston, continued to be held by the 
 American troops. On the close of the war, Copley 
 seems to have entrusted his interests in regard to this 
 estate to an agent on the spot, who had sold it without 
 due authority, and, it would seem, without accounting for 
 the price. To recover this estate was the principal object 
 which he had in view in sending his son to America, 
 in which if he had succeeded, the project of leaving 
 England and resuming his profession in Boston might 
 have taken a definite shape. Mrs. Copley, however, 
 by no means shared her husband's yearning towards 
 their old home, preferring England, where the extremes 
 of heat and cold were less severe, and where she had 
 many comforts and conveniences which were not at 
 this time to be found on the other side of the 
 Atlantic. 
 
 If, however, the family entertained any hope of 
 recovering the Beacon Hill estate, it was soon 
 dispelled by young Copley's inquiries upon the spot. 
 All that he could do was to obtain as large a sum 
 as possible by way of compromise, and in con- 
 sideration of the execution by his father and mother 
 of such deeds as would give an unchallengeable title 
 to those persons who in good faith had purchased and 
 were in possession of the property. This was a result 
 which caused the elder Copley many a pang ; and in 
 his letters to his son his mortification was apparent. 
 " My father," young Copley writes in a letter to his 
 
 D 2
 
 36 COPLEY GOES TO AMERICA. CHAP. n. 
 
 mother (July 3, 1796), "I fear, is disappointed. All I 
 can now say is, that, if the property had been my own, 
 my conduct would have been precisely the same, and 
 that, after three or four months' reflection, I am con- 
 vinced that I acted with propriety. If my father 
 thinks otherwise I shall regret it, and all the amends 
 I can make is to offer my whole life and exertion to 
 his service." These were no idle words. The father 
 did not live to claim the pledge ; but, after his death, 
 his son fully redeemed it by adopting and discharging 
 his debts, and by proving to the mother and sisters 
 who were then thrown upon his care all that the father 
 could have wished. 
 
 On reaching America young Copley lost not an 
 hour in ascertaining the true state of the case in 
 regard to the paternal estate. He seems at first to 
 have anticipated 4 that it might be recovered, if his 
 father could succeed in making himself out to be a 
 subject of the United States. But how could this 
 be hoped for, seeing that Copley had left America 
 before the separation from England, and before the 
 Declaration of Independence, and had ever since lived 
 in London, as much a British subject as he had been 
 when he left America in 1774 ? It is obvious that 
 whatever hopes in this direction might have been 
 entertained were early destroyed ; and it is laying 
 no undue stress on young Copley's sagacity to adopt 
 his own view that in the compromise which he made 
 he " acted with propriety." 
 
 Several of his letters home, while away on the 
 American expedition, have been preserved. They 
 show in unabated force the respectful devotion to his 
 parents and the affection for his sisters which marked 
 his letters from Cambridge. How strangely to our 
 modern notions the formal address to his mother as
 
 1795- LETTER FROM THE DOWNS. 37 
 
 " dear Madam " sounds in connection with the tender 
 thoughtfulness, the anxiety to relieve her motherly 
 fears, which inspire all his letters to her ! He left 
 home about the end of October. Bad weather pursued 
 him from the first, so that the voyage occupied 
 eight weeks, even in those days and at this season 
 an unusually long period. 
 
 1795- 
 
 Dear Madam, The Downs being not far distant, and the 
 sea somewhat more smooth than it has been for this some 
 hours before, I write to inform you of our welfare. It is from 
 deck that I write and at about 3 o'clock P.M. We have had 
 what I call stiffish weather. I have not yet had the least 
 symptoms of sickness, and I hope to weather that land entirely. 
 Well ! Pray for a northerly or easterly wind, and then adieu, 
 old England ! The Jay is just at hand, and I believe many 
 other American vessels remain yet in the Downs, so we have 
 lost no time. Once more, God bless you ! 
 
 Ramsgate, Friday, One o'clock, 1795. 
 
 My dear Madam, You will be more pleased than sur- 
 prised at the date of this letter, if the wind in London blew 
 last night with any proportion of the violence to which we 
 were unfortunately witness in the Downs. Downs did I say ? 
 They bear more analogy to the thorny back of a porcupine, 
 than to the softness of a down bed of state. When I last had 
 the pleasure of writing, I informed you that we had been 
 driven by the violence of the winds from our moorings. We 
 soon, however, recovered a new situation where we lay during 
 the whole of yesterday, not, however, a little harassed by the 
 raging of the winds. About midnight we judged it prudent, 
 from the increasing vehemence of the storm, to heave a second 
 anchor. We had not long lain in this situation when the Jay 
 which was something ahead, breaking from her moorings, 
 drifted close alongside us, but fortunately without brushing 
 us. She however, secured herself about half a mile astern. 
 Just as we had recovered from our apprehensions, one of our 
 cables snapped short off, and the vessel, left to the other 
 anchor, drifted from her moorings. We were in much alarm
 
 38 LETTER FROM RAMSGATE. CHAP. n. 
 
 as it wanted several hours of morning. In drifting, our anchor 
 caught the anchor of a large Danish ship, and we stopped. 
 Owing, however, to this circumstance, we came so near along- 
 side this vessel, that for above an hour we were very anxious 
 lest we should strike each other. They were within five yards 
 for above the space of half an hour, and the sea exceedingly 
 heavy. 
 
 We, however, providentially, kept clear till we hauled 
 ahead, where we lay till morning without sleep. As soon as 
 light we contrived to get clear of the Danish anchor, and 
 getting a pilot on board we reached this harbour. 
 
 Write to me at the King's Head, Ramsgate. 
 
 I am a great sailor already. I have learnt to despise the 
 appearance of heavy seas, and only dread shoals and sands. 
 Not a moment's sickness, nor the least apprehension of sick- 
 ness, since I got on board. When we once get clear of this 
 bad coast, we shall go cheerily. 
 
 I'll plague you with letters. We are buying cables and 
 anchors, etc., and do not stir from here till fair wind. Lane, 
 the captain, says the Downs are as bad as the North Sea. 
 Many vessels have lost their anchors in this, I may call it, 
 equinoctial gale. 
 
 Ramsgate, 1795. 
 
 My dear Madam, You will think that we have left this 
 place, not having received any letter from me this morning, 
 which my former promise must otherwise have led you to 
 expect. I do not know how it was, but somehow or other I 
 omitted it till too late, when I began to reflect upon my vio- 
 lation of faith. You must excuse it. Well, we sail to-day, at 
 high water, which will take place about 3 o'clock ; and if the 
 weather continues as favourable as at present, we shall soon 
 quit the Channel. 
 
 After Mr. Pitt's declaration, are you not persuaded that 
 peace cannot be far distant ? I would term his whole 
 speech singular, had we not been so long accustomed to 
 extraordinary declarations from him and his associates, that 
 nothing that now proceeds from him or them can excite 
 wonder. But mark this prominent sentence. I cannot de- 
 liver it in his own words, but I think I can give the pith and 
 marrow of it. Attend ! The new Constitution of France 

 
 1795- COPLEY IN AMERICA. 39 
 
 may seem accepted with such a general acquiescence on the 
 part of the people, as to lead us to hope that every obstacle 
 to negotiation as a preliminary to peace may be at length 
 removed. Is not that absolutely giving up the point ? l 
 
 Well, my dear mother, adieu, and remember me very 
 kindly to my father, and my dear sisters. I remain your 
 dutiful son and humble servant. 
 
 Young Copley arrived at Boston on the 2nd of 
 January, 1796. He seems to have lost not an hour 
 in engaging on his father's business, for on the day of 
 his arrival he writes to inform him of the result of 
 inquiries as to the state of the proceedings which 
 were pending for the recovery of the Beacon Hill 
 property. They could not, he writes, be brought to 
 issue before May, adding, "If you can make yourself 
 a subject of the United States you are clear. If 
 otherwise, I am not yet sufficiently informed to say 
 what may be the result, if you are decreed an alien." 
 That his subsequent inquiries satisfied him that his 
 father was by the American law an alien, may be 
 inferred from the fact that within a few weeks he 
 consented to a compromise of his claims. But busi- 
 ness obviously did not prevent the young man from 
 making his way in the best Boston society, to which 
 the pride of the Bostonians in the elder Copley's 
 renown as an artist was a ready passport. How he 
 found things in the city of his birth is very pleasantly 
 told in the following letter to his sisters : 
 
 1 Pitt's Government had for some time been meeting the impatience of the 
 opponents to the war by maintaining that the French nation, exhausted by its 
 drain upon their resources, and dispirited by some recent defeats, would probably 
 be inclined to a treaty of peace. In December 1795 a message to Parliament from 
 the King held out hopes of a successful negotiation with France for peace. In 
 the debate which ensued upon the Address in answer to this message, the Oppo- 
 sition argued that no change had taken place in the aspect of affairs abroad, or 
 in the position of the French Government, to warrant such an anticpaition. They 
 proved to be right. Young Copley seems to have been of their opinion.
 
 40 LETTERS CHAP. ir. 
 
 Boston, January 21, 1796. 
 
 1 I was under the necessity of suddenly closing my letters, 
 owing to the immediate departure of the vessel for London. 
 I scarcely recollect the subject I was treating, but every 
 subject that I can start relative to this country may afford 
 interesting matter to you. Even were I to talk about myself 
 I trust you would not deem it entirely stupid. 
 
 Well, then, I will talk about myself. I am now sitting 
 opposite to a looking-glass, and the thought that immediately 
 strikes me is that, if I preserve my present looks, you will 
 find it difficult to recognise me, upon my return to George 
 Street. Instead of a pale, thin, helpless-looking dog, suffer 
 your mind's eye to contemplate a lusty, rosy, stupid-looking 
 fellow, the son of some Yorkshire farmer, who had never 
 stirred out of sight of his village during the whole course of 
 his monotonous life. Such a being am I, and, in respect to 
 good spirits, I am actually crazy; I never enjoyed three 
 more pleasant, I never enjoyed three so pleasant, weeks since 
 I was born. What, then, would it be, if my dear friends were 
 present to partake it ? 
 
 I always thought the influence of climate was powerful ; 
 my ideas are realised beyond my most sanguine expectations. 
 The weather is so cold that you would expect your fingers to 
 drop off, but, at the same time, so clear that you are astonished 
 at its being cold. Never, never, my good girls, was there 
 better sleighing than at this moment ; never was there con- 
 trived a pleasanter mode of conveyance ; never was a situa- 
 tion contrived better calculated to promote sociability. My 
 uncle Clarke is expected shortly, I understand, at New York ; 
 I have written with the design of learning the truth of the 
 report ; if unfounded, I shall instantly set off for Montreal. 
 The communication is the most easy imaginable. The season 
 of the year is the best adapted for a rapid journey, and in six 
 days after my departure from Boston I hope to be welcomed 
 by my uncle in Montreal. There are in Boston market, 
 daily, sleighs loaded with venison, which come from Lake 
 George and the borders of Canada. 
 
 I think, in my last, I talked about the ladies ; I said much 
 I hope, in praise of them. You are not to expect among
 
 1796. FROM AMERICA. 41 
 
 twenty thousand inhabitants the same show of beauty as 
 among fifteen hundred thousand. There certainly is no 
 woman in Boston pre-eminently beautiful, but there are a great 
 many very pretty, very lively, and in every respect very 
 agreeable. I don't know what falling in love, as it is called, 
 means, but I think one might be easily induced to be so far 
 attached as to be at length taken in to marry. One must 
 look sharp and have one's wits about one. 
 
 But I have said nothing about our passage. The first few 
 days were rough and tempestuous, after which we had four 
 weeks of summer weather. The rest was beyond measure 
 unpleasant : gales of wind succeeding each other, each more 
 dreadful than the preceding ; our dead-lights shut in ; the sea 
 continually breaking over the vessel from stem to stern, 
 rendering it perilous to appear upon deck ; the water pouring 
 through the skylight by hogsheadsful at a time. At one 
 period we were obliged to lay the vessel to, as it is called, 
 unable to carry sail, and drifting three days and three nights 
 successively. We had got so far to the southward as to have 
 determined to put into Charleston, had not the wind suddenly 
 veered about. On one night, for about six hours, we passed 
 our time very anxiously. It blew a hurricane ; it is impossi- 
 ble to give an idea of it by words only. No man could keep 
 the deck ; the mainsail under which we were lying was 
 shivered into ten thousand pieces, and we continued under 
 bare poles till the storm abated, the sea, every few moments, 
 breaking over the vessel, sweeping us fore and aft in a most 
 awful manner. However, here we are, and have some reason 
 to be thankful, three vessels having been lost upon the coast 
 since our arrival. 
 
 But no more of this subject. I've said nothing about our 
 young friend, Vixen [his dog]. I know you are interested for 
 her : she was half-starved, half-starved ! three quarters, at 
 least, on board ship, but, like her master, she is now grown 
 as fat as a porpoise. Shall I call her out of sleep before the 
 fire, and tell her I am writing to you ? I will. She has given 
 me a kiss for you ; I wish I could pay it to you. 
 
 But I trust we are again to meet, and then ! Oh, what a 
 happy day the first, the second, the third will be ! I've dined 
 alone ; the wine is on the table, and from the bottom of my
 
 42 LETTER FROM AMERICA. CHAP. n. 
 
 heart I drink your healths and welfare. I did not forget you 
 on Christmas Day : it was stormy weather ; we were in 
 latitude sixty, and so I allowed four hours, drinking your 
 health at half-past 2 o'clock, which would correspond to 
 your half-past 6. Perhaps I hit the right moment. 
 
 But all this is about myself. I have engrossed enough, 
 perhaps too much, of your time already upon such a barren 
 study. If I write at this rate, what a load of postage you 
 will have to pay ! I must not be so loquacious. And yet I 
 must and will, even if I deprive myself of dinner to defray 
 the charge. I have been treated with great politeness at 
 this place ; I hope I mentioned it in my last, for I hate 
 ingratitude. 
 
 Mr. R and his lady now inhabit their new house : a 
 
 spacious brick dwelling, two rooms only on a floor in the main 
 house ; the kitchen forms a wing ; on the other side they 
 are building a new State House. The rooms are extremely 
 lofty and spacious, and upon the whole it has a striking 
 effect. You would be pleased with his lady ; she is pretty 
 and sensible and tolerably lively, but not remarkably so, 
 though perhaps your grave English people would think her 
 lively enough. 
 
 Mrs. C is a fine woman, and has a fine family, but 
 
 the children are, in general, too like their father to be hand- 
 some. 
 
 Mrs. P is agreeable ; her health is precarious, but her 
 
 pretensions to beauty would be treated with ridicule. Her 
 eyes are not in unison : one looks to the right, while the 
 
 other is turned to the left. Mr. R looks older than 
 
 he did. The lieutenant-governor has entertained me at 
 two handsome, aldermanlike dinners ; I never saw such a 
 collection of food, except in Leadenhall Market, during my 
 whole life. 
 
 Mr. R I have been introduced to. His wife is only 
 
 about thirty years younger than himself, and has the honour of 
 
 being my second cousin ; her name was Watson. Mr. R 
 
 is an excellent man, and she a fine woman. Send my com- 
 pliments to Lady Taylor and family, and inquire concerning 
 their health, and write me word of the result : that, by the 
 way !
 
 1796. COPLEY NO JACOBIN. 43 
 
 The A s have all been polite ; they are as infinite in 
 
 number as the sands in Boston Bay, and as homely as old 
 Spence. 
 
 The S s, that is, the two youngest, are pretty, very 
 
 pretty ; but what do you think ? Though her house is 
 splendidly furnished, and her table handsomely set out, she 
 has the character of starving her servants ! It cannot be, I 
 think, from parsimomy ; it must be from an aristocratic 
 contempt for a lower race of beings. 
 
 Samuel Adams is superannuated, unpopular, and fast 
 decaying in every respect ; in addition to this, and perhaps 
 on this account, he has taken no notice of me. 
 
 Shall I whisper a word in your ear ? The better people 
 are all aristocrats. My father is too rank a Jacobin to live 
 among them. Well, what a deal of scandal I have been 
 writing ! I did not dare to begin till I had drunk six glasses 
 of wine, and that inspired me with courage to proclaim the 
 truth. Truth and wine go together, according to the old 
 proverb. No more at present ; two sheets are enough at 
 once. 
 
 Remember me most affectionately to my mother, whom I 
 sigh to embrace. 
 
 It is very plain from some words in this letter, that 
 if the elder Copley was a " rank Jacobin," his son by 
 no means shared his opinions, otherwise he would have 
 said so. He had no difficulty in getting pleasantly 
 on with the "aristocrats" of Boston. The bias of 
 his mind was obviously towards their views, which 
 might be liberal enough, yet very far from Jacobinical. 
 Indeed the events of the last few years in France were 
 calculated to confirm him in the antagonism to the 
 extreme opinions of the sympathisers with the French 
 Revolution, which he had been in the habit of main- 
 taining in the discussions on political questions which 
 in one of his letters he says he was in the habit of 
 holding with his father. 
 
 On the 27th of February young Copley writes to
 
 44 COPLEY MEDITATES CHAP. n. 
 
 his father to tell him that, on full consideration, 
 and with the concurrence of counsel, he has con- 
 cluded a compromise of the Beacon Hill case. All 
 he could secure out of the settlement was a sum of 
 about ^4000. He adds that he will remit this money, 
 retaining about ^500 in the meantime, as there were 
 profitable investments to be had for it in America. 
 He was going to travel about the country, and as 
 something very profitable might turn up, he thought it 
 would not be amiss to have it in his power to com- 
 mand a small sum of money. In the meantime this 
 money would produce six per cent. The idea was 
 obviously strongly present to his mind at this time, 
 that the family would return to Boston and he himself 
 settle down as a farmer in the United States. 
 
 " I have thought," he writes, " ever since I set foot in this 
 country that it was possible you might think of returning 
 hither. That you would find your profession more profitable 
 than in England I have no doubt ; the state of society and 
 of government would be more congenial to your inclinations, 
 and nothing but the difficulty of moving seems to stand in 
 the opposite scale. If I had a tract of good land, perhaps 
 5000 acres, which may be purchased for no very considerable 
 sum, I would in four or five years, if it should please God to 
 bless me with health and strength, not only render it a 
 very valuable and productive estate, but also a delightful 
 retreat to you and my dear mother whenever you should 
 choose to enjoy it. Land of this kind is to be had in a good 
 climate, and within two hundred or two hundred and fifty 
 miles from Boston and New York, a distance which will 
 continually diminish as the facility of communication, owing 
 to the rapid improvement of the country, increases." 
 
 Whether the elder Copley, having lost his property 
 in Boston, lost with it the desire to return thither, and 
 gave no encouragement to his son's views as expressed 
 in this letter, is not known. Young Copley went on,
 
 1796. SETTLING IN AMERICA. 45 
 
 as will be seen from subsequent letters, making care- 
 ful enquiries to see whether, as he says, the country 
 would be " agreeable for a European to settle in." 
 There is no express record of his ultimate conclusion ; 
 but that it was adverse must be presumed from what 
 took place on his return to England. From that 
 time the elder Copley settled down as an English 
 citizen, casting for years, it is said, longing and wistful 
 looks towards the lost acres which might have founded 
 a princely fortune for his family ; while the son was 
 content to return to the life of struggle and toil, which 
 he knew would await him at the bar, being as he was 
 without professional influence, or the fortune to enable 
 him to wait without anxiety for a success which might 
 not come for years. 
 
 It was not till far on in April 1796 that he set out 
 upon his tour in the United States. He reached 
 Philadelphia on the i6th of that month, and the 
 following letter to his mother is remarkable and im- 
 portant, as containing not only a disavowal of Jacobin 
 principles, which he has been .accused of entertaining 
 at this period, 1 but a declaration that he had ranged 
 himself with the aristocratic party upon conviction, 
 confirmed by the experience of what he saw around 
 him. 
 
 Philadelphia, April 20, 1796. 
 
 My dear Madam, I have been four days in this city : 
 cannot yet give you a very good account of it ; but as I 
 
 1 "The tremendous struggle produced by the French Revolution between 
 the defenders of old institutions, however defective, and those who contended 
 that all existing governments ought to be overturned, was now at its height ; 
 and young Copley's mind being from infancy imbued with republican principles, 
 fie took what in American phrase he called the ' go ahead side* so warmly and 
 openly, as to run some risk of serious animadversions" ' Life of Lord Lyndhurst,' by 
 John, Lord Campbell, 1869, p. 10. The words in italics are pure fiction. All 
 the Copley family the head of the house only excepted were royalists, and 
 there is no evidence that even his father was favourable to a republic anywhere but 
 in America. What young Copley was, his own language places beyond a doubt.
 
 46 LETTER FROM AMERICA. CHAP. n. 
 
 promised to write by every opportunity, I take pen to say 
 that, with respect to me, all's well. I have become a fierce 
 aristocrat. This is the country to cure your Jacobins. Send 
 them over and they will return quite converted. The oppo- 
 sition here are a set of villains. Their object is to overset 
 the government, and all good men are apprehensive lest they 
 should on the present occasion be successful. They are now 
 debating upon the treaty. The President and Senate, in 
 whom are vested by the Constitution the power of making 
 treaties, have ratified the treaty with Great Britain. But the 
 Lower House seem inclined to refuse the appropriation 
 necessary for carrying it into effect. They are now debating 
 the question : and I fear a very considerable majority will be 
 against the executive. The Middle and New England States 
 are strongly in favour of the treaty. The Southern States, in 
 particular Virginia who will be called upon for the payment 
 of their debts in case the treaty takes effect are in violent 
 opposition to the treaty. A great schism seems to be form- 
 ing, and they already begin to talk of a separation of the 
 States north of the Potomac from those on the southern side 
 of the river. 
 
 The under-writers refuse to insure : produce has already 
 fallen, and every person is alarmed. 
 
 A war with England, perhaps a civil war, will be the 
 consequence of success in the present opposition. These are 
 the sentiments of people here. They are not, however, my 
 sentiments. Depend upon it, all will end well. I even 
 entertain some doubt whether the executive will not have a 
 majority in the House of Representatives. But if not, I do 
 not apprehend such serious consequences as people in general 
 look for. Your son. 
 
 Young Copley seems to have lingered on in Phila- 
 delphia, for the next of his letters which has been 
 preserved is addressed to his sisters from that city 
 more than six weeks after his arrival. The idea of 
 settling in America had obviously by this time been 
 abandoned, and he had begun to long for the home 
 in George Street, although he had not abandoned the
 
 1796. LETTER FROM AMERICA. 47 
 
 plan of first making himself acquainted with the 
 general features and capabilities of the North Ameri- 
 can Continent. It is interesting to observe, as a trait 
 of character, how, in recommending a friend to the 
 consideration of his family, he gives him the praise of 
 possessing "a good understanding, and, what is better, 
 a good heart," a conclusion arrived at, as a rule, only 
 by those who, having a good heart themselves, have 
 found it illustrated by a wide experience of life. 
 
 Philadelphia, June r, 1796. 
 
 To say that I am impatient to revisit George Street, and 
 to enjoy a society which I prize beyond all earthly things, is 
 but feebly to express what at this moment I feel. My desire 
 of again conversing with my friends, of beholding their 
 smiles, of doing whatever is within my power to add to their 
 happiness and to assist them in softening the ruggedness of 
 this vexatious life, is much, very much increased by the long 
 silence they have preserved at this very interesting period. It 
 is, I believe, nearly three months since I have received any 
 advices from England, and to what to attribute this chasm in 
 our correspondence I am in entire uncertainty. 
 
 My dear girls, tell my mother, my dear mother, to reflect 
 upon the pleasure which at this distance a single line affords, 
 and then consider how trifling a trouble the penning this one 
 single line would be, and I am sure I never afterwards should 
 have the same reason to complain. But to another point : 
 Mr. Henry, by profession a physician, a particular friend of 
 mine, a gentleman of information, possessing a good under- 
 standing, and, what is better, a good heart, takes England in 
 his way to the East Indies. 
 
 You must entertain him for my sake and for his own ; I 
 expect this from you ; now pray be civil to him, and you, 
 Polly, don't be silent, but ask about me; in short, you must 
 keep up the reputation you have acquired in this country : 
 who does not know the Misses Copley ! 
 
 The next week I see the federal city and Virginia ; it is 
 too late to go very far to the southward. I am impatient to 
 be at home, and will not delay farther than necessary.
 
 48 A LOVE AFFAIR. CHAP. n. 
 
 Pray remember me to every inquiring friend, and believe 
 me your very affectionate brother. 
 
 I write by the Asia, which will leave this the next week ; 
 in the mean time I expect to learn that my father and mother 
 are well, and that you all are well. . . . 
 
 June 7. 
 
 Been confined for a week by rain ; in love with a daughter 
 of Bishop White ! etc. ; you know my kind of love ! Well, 
 adieu. 
 
 " You know my kind of love ! " The sisters had 
 no doubt seen him in and out of love, scores of times, 
 love of the kind which Praed describes so well : 
 
 " Our loves were like most other loves, 
 
 A little glow, a little shiver, 
 A rosebud, and a pair of gloves, 
 And ' Fly not Yet ' upon the river." 
 
 But the case of Miss White took the serious form 
 of a proposal of marriage, to which her father, the 
 Pennsylvanian Bishop, very properly refused his assent, 
 not wishing his daughter to go to England, or to 
 engage herself to a man who had still his position to 
 make. Happily the hearts of the lovers were not 
 seriously damaged ; and seven years afterwards the 
 lady, who was four years Copley's junior, was married 
 to General William MacPherson of Philadelphia, and 
 survived till 1831. This incident accounts for Copley 
 lingering so long in Philadelphia. It gave him some- 
 thing to dream over in the journey through the wilder 
 parts of America, on which he now set out. From 
 the following letters, written from the various places 
 which he visited, it appears that he embodied his 
 travelling impressions in full notes. Unfortunately 
 these have not been preserved. We are thus left to 
 gather the results of his observations from the Latin 
 letters, which he addressed, in fulfilment of his obli-
 
 1796. LETTER FROM AMERICA. 49 
 
 gation as travelling bachelor, to the Vice Chancellor 
 of the University, in which the same freshness and 
 variety are not to be expected as in familiar letters to 
 his family. 
 
 The following is addressed to his sisters : 
 
 Leesburg, Virginia, near the Potomac, July 3, 1796. 
 
 I have written several letters to you since I quitted Phila- 
 delphia ; my intention was to give you some account of the 
 country. All the letters, however, are in my portfolio ; I 
 shall take an opportunity to send them. In the mean time, 
 I send you a letter which you will forward to Mr. Jones ; l it 
 begins where the letters to you terminated. I mean to continue 
 my correspondence with him, but as I shall send them first to 
 you, my letters will answer a double purpose. 
 
 I had rather, my dear girls, write to you, and from time to 
 time I will, but I cannot avoid complying with Mr. Jones's 
 request. It is a long, long time since I have heard from you. 
 I am viewing the country to see whether it will be agreeable 
 for a European to settle in. I choose the best part, which will 
 be conclusive upon the subject. 
 
 You will be able yourself, I hope, to form some judgment 
 from what I write to Mr. Jones. 
 
 I forget I am addressing more than one. I should have 
 said yourselves ; but I write in a most terrible hurry, my horse 
 is waiting, and I have resolved to finish this little scrawl before 
 I mount. It is a bad country to travel in a carriage ; good 
 enough for a horse. You have rode, yourself, I believe, from 
 Niewport to Dunkirk, but still you can form no idea of some 
 of the American roads. Well, Betsy and Mary, I cannot leave 
 off when I once begin to write to you. I have whole volumes 
 in my brain, but my pen would wear out before I could write 
 you all the circumstances which crowd themselves into one 
 little day. 
 
 Expect me in Europe very soon. This, I believe, must be 
 my last excursion. I want to embrace my friends, my dear 
 father and mother, concerning whom I know but little at 
 present. I would turn upon the Copley estate, only it would 
 
 1 This was, no doubt, his Cambridge tutor. 
 
 E
 
 50 COPLEY'S CHAP. II. 
 
 carry me to too great length ; the thing is done ; my father, I 
 fear, is disappointed. All I can say now is, that if it had been 
 my own, my conduct would have been precisely the same ; 
 and that, after three or four months' reflection, I am convinced 
 that I acted with propriety. If my father thinks otherwise, I 
 shall regret it, and all the amends I can make is to offer my 
 whole life and exertion to his service. I cross the Potomac 
 to-night for Fredericktown, Maryland. I understand it is a 
 charming country. Adieu. 
 
 My dear Mother, I need not tell you that the moment of 
 my meeting you will be the happiest of my life ; may it come 
 soon, and, in the mean time, may every happiness, every com- 
 fort, be yours ! 
 
 In the letter to his mother now to be quoted, 
 Copley appears to have enclosed one of his letters to 
 Mr. Jones, in which she would no doubt find his 
 movements, as to which she would be naturally 
 anxious, recorded in fuller detail. 
 
 Fort Cumberland, July 20, 1796. 
 
 Will you do me the favour to consider the enclosed as 
 addressed to you ; it will give you the same information with 
 respect to myself as if it began with " My kind mother ! " 
 
 To have come to America and returned to Europe without 
 full information respecting the country, would have been a 
 disgrace to any man who affected the least degree of philo- 
 sophy ; besides, I wish to compare the two countries in regard 
 to several points which nothing but actual observation will 
 enable me to do with any tolerable accuracy. I am observing 
 the farmers' life in the most fruitful parts of the country, and 
 considering what inducements it holds out to a European. I 
 write to you from Fort Cumberland, at the head of the 
 Potomac ; the letter to Mr. Jones is part of a series I mean to 
 write from my notes ; but I find my letters to him will by no 
 means keep pace with my travelling. My dear mother! no 
 distance can diminish my duty and my affection for the best 
 of parents, and for each member, my kind father and sweet 
 sisters, of our small family !
 
 1796. LETTERS FROM AMERICA. 51 
 
 I write now between the mountains, having passed the 
 Blue Ridge and the North Ridge, and being in full view of 
 the Alleghany, which towers to the heavens. I have a world 
 of information to communicate, but all in due time. How 
 little I thought a year ago of visiting the backwoods of Mary- 
 land and Virginia ! 
 
 My dear mother, good-bye, and don't criticise too severely 
 this little scrawl ; believe me, it comes from the heart, when I 
 say I pant to revisit you ! 
 
 There is a gap in the family correspondence during 
 the next four months. These were spent by young 
 Copley in exploring the country along the route 
 described in the following letter to his mother. 
 
 Albany, New York State, November 22, 1796. 
 
 I have just arrived at Albany, and a sloop is about to 
 hoist sail for New York. The post may arrive first. I dis- 
 patch, therefore, this letter to inform you that I am still in 
 the land of the living. I fear I shall hardly have time to add 
 more. 
 
 It is five months since I have been blessed with a perusal 
 of letters from my friends in England, friends whom absence 
 has rendered dearer to me than ever. It is four since I have 
 been able to apprise them of my welfare. If you will procure 
 a map of the United States, you may trace my route by the 
 following concise description. The motives of it you will read 
 in my next : 
 
 Mount Vernon to the upper falls of the Potomac ; thence 
 to Fredericktown, in Maryland ; thence to the mouth of the 
 Shenandoah ; thence to Winchester, in the vale of the 
 Shenandoah ; thence to Bath, upon the Potomac ; thence to 
 the mouth of the South Branch of the Potomac ; thence along 
 the South Branch, fifty miles, to Fort Cumberland ; thence 
 across the Alleghany Mountains to Morgantown, in Virginia ; 
 thence along the Monongahela to Pittsburg ; down the Ohio 
 to the Falls ; through the whole of Kentucky ; across the 
 Ohio to Cincinnati ; up the Miami, down the Auglaize and 
 Tawa rivers, through Indian settlements, to Detroit ; across 
 
 E 2
 
 52 COPLEY'S LETTERS CHAP. n. 
 
 Lake Erie to Niagara (saw the Falls and spent four days 
 with Judge Powell) ; thence through a wilderness to the 
 Genesee River ; afterwards, partly among Indians and partly 
 among whites, to the Mohawk River, and thence to this city. 
 
 I have abundance of information to communicate, infor- 
 mation interesting both to Americans and Europeans, for this 
 country is but little known yet to the bulk of the Americans. 
 My notes, though concise, fill several quires. I have time to 
 add that the public mind is much agitated here from an 
 apprehension of a war with France. My judgment, such as it 
 is, would persuade me to believe that such an event is not 
 probable. I cannot add particulars. 
 
 The election for President interests very strongly both 
 parties. They are nearly equal, the Aristocrats and the 
 Democrats, in number. The result is, therefore, uncertain. 
 The returns that are made persuade me that the republican, 
 Jefferson, will succeed. The bets are in his favour. Otis is 
 elected member to Congress. Your affectionate son. 
 
 A few days afterwards Copley again writes to 
 his mother. From the tenor of this letter it seems 
 clear that the idea of settling in America was now 
 definitively abandoned. 
 
 Philadelphia, December 2, 1 796. 
 
 A few days ago I wrote you news concerning your son 
 from Albany. Whether that letter or this will come first to 
 hand is entirely uncertain ; but to avoid repetition, I must 
 consider you as receiving them according to the order in which 
 they are written. In a letter from Leesburg, I intimated an 
 intention of returning immediately to England. I was after- 
 wards persuaded to alter my plan. The motives shall be 
 unfolded if you have patience to listen to them. 
 
 You will recollect the different conversations we had in 
 George Street in regard to the expediency of returning to 
 America. As far as it regarded the interests of my parents 
 and sisters, it did not appear very necessary to extend my 
 inquiries or observations to any considerable distance from 
 the principal cities of the United States ; but when I was 
 desirous of ascertaining the advantages which America might
 
 1796. FROM AMERICA. 53 
 
 hold out to myself, a more enlarged view became expedient. 
 Neither in the pursuits of commerce, nor in those of a profes- 
 sional nature, did the cities of New York, Philadelphia, or 
 Boston, appear to offer sufficient inducements to persuade 
 me, considered independently of my friends, to a change of 
 situation. I was told that a settlement in the western parts 
 of the United States could not fail of leading a young man 
 of prudence and of education to wealth and honour. As the 
 result of affairs in Europe was uncertain, I thought that to 
 omit investigating the material points relative to such an 
 establishment, when so near the country, would be highly 
 indiscreet ; and that the sacrifice of time would be more than 
 compensated by an accession of very interesting information. 
 Curiosity also to become acquainted with a country which is, 
 at present, so much a subject of conversation, and which is 
 extolled as the garden of the world, were additional and 
 powerful inducements. Why I did not inform you of the 
 alteration in my plan you are now to learn. I thought that 
 you would form wrong ideas of the fatigues and the dangers 
 attending the tour I was about to undertake, and when I 
 afterwards wrote from Fort Cumberland, I was persuaded 
 that you would see the impossibility of my complying very 
 literally with the intentions which I had manifested in my 
 letter from Leesburg. You will excuse me when I say that I 
 supposed Europeans in general had such inadequate notions 
 in respect to the facility of communication between the 
 different parts of the United States, that I expected to have 
 completed our intended tour almost as soon as you could 
 suppose me returned from Fort Cumberland to Philadelphia. 
 Our desire of obtaining very precise information detained us 
 much beyond our original calculation, and we were out of the 
 line of posts before I thought it necessary to write to Mrs. 
 Startin. 
 
 Do not regard what I have been writing as an apology 
 invented at the fireside for the purpose of making my peace 
 with you. It is, believe me, a simple detail of facts, and I 
 wish you could witness my feelings and my distress when 
 I learnt that Mrs. Startin had written you word that she 
 supposed me embarked for England. Heaven grant that this 
 letter may anticipate hers, and may neither you nor the rest
 
 54 LETTERS AS TRAVELLING BACHELOR. CHAP. II. 
 
 of my friends suffer uneasiness on my account ! I will write 
 a line by another vessel which sails with this, informing you 
 of my welfare, and hope that one or the other may reach 
 London as soon as that from New York. When at Albany, 
 I expected to have met letters from you or my father at New 
 York. You will conceive the disappointment I experienced, 
 upon my arrival in that city, at finding not a single line from 
 any of my friends. I immediately pushed forward in the 
 mail to Philadelphia, expecting that Mr. Rogers might have 
 sent some advices to my address in this city. I was a second 
 time disappointed. I have now written to Mr. Rogers to 
 request that he will favour me with every information he 
 possesses in regard to you, and to forward any letters he may 
 have received for me. 
 
 This is the last of young Copley's letters to his 
 family from America. But in accordance with the 
 rule of the University, that travelling bachelors 
 should write an account of their travels to the Vice- 
 Chancellor, he addressed three letters from the States 
 to Dr. Richard Bellward. They are without date, 
 but as Dr. Bellward was only Vice-Chancellor from 
 November 1796 to 1797, they must have been written 
 in the end of 1 796, when the writer was on the point 
 of returning to England. The letters are preserved, 
 according to custom, in the University Library, and 
 copies of them were published in 1867 by Mr. William 
 Heath Bennett, in a volume of "Select Biographical 
 Sketches from the Notebooks of a Law Reporter," 
 together with a translation which is the basis of that 
 given below, but which it has been frequently neces- 
 sary to correct. Copley's Latin is scholarly and good, 
 and contains abundant evidence of his familiarity with 
 the great classical writers. 1 
 
 1 The class mark for those letters in the University library is "MS. Oo. 6. 95 
 12." Lord Campbell, in his 'Life of Lord Lyndhurst,' p. 13, says that, on his 
 application, search was made by the University authorities, "but they could
 
 1796. TRAVELS WITH VOLNEY. 55 
 
 In his travels through the States Copley had for 
 some time as companion Constantine Frangois Volney, 
 author of the once celebrated work, " Les Ruines, ou 
 Meditations sur les Ruines des Empires." Volney had 
 gone to the United States in 1 795, and there he con- 
 trived to get into a quarrel with the Government, by 
 whom he was suspected without reason of having 
 crossed the Atlantic to arrange for the handing over 
 of Louisiana to the Directory. He proved to be any- 
 thing but a satisfactory travelling companion. The 
 roads and the inns were bad, the journeys had mostly 
 to be made on horseback, and they involved fatigue 
 and sometimes even peril. Volney was nearly forty 
 years old, and far from strong. He could not get on 
 without his chocolate and the other comforts essential 
 to the enjoyment of a town-bred epicure, and, as Baillie 
 Jarvie in Rob Roy's country was perpetually hankering 
 after " the comforts of the Saut Market," so the moans 
 of the revolutionary philosopher were incessant over the 
 fatigues of the road and the absence of the luxuries 
 of Parisian life. This was manifestly not the sort of 
 person to share an expedition with a man of vigorous 
 frame and a bright adventurous spirit. Neither were 
 the intellectual qualities of the man sufficient as a set-off 
 against his fretfulness and irritability. His political 
 views were tainted with the ignorance of practical life 
 which infects the school of which he was for some 
 time an authority. Young Copley had moreover seen 
 and thought too much for himself to be greatly 
 amused or influenced by them. Indeed, while in his 
 later years he never spoke of them as of the least 
 
 no where be found." Mr. Bennett obtained them without difficulty, and they 
 were published by him, not, certainly, before Lord Campbell's death, which took 
 place on the I2th of June, 1861, but two years before Lord Campbell's 'Life 
 of Lord Lyndhurst ' was given to the world.
 
 CHAP. II. 
 
 56 COPLEY'S LETTERS 
 
 importance, he frequently entertained his friends with 
 stories of the philosopher's ludicrous impatience of 
 hardship and discomfort an impatience little cal- 
 culated to inspire him with respect for Volney's 
 opinions as to the great forces by which society is 
 moved and moulded. It has been repeatedly said that 
 young Copley also travelled for some time with Louis 
 Philippe. But this was not so. He never met Louis 
 Philippe till 1846, when he was invited to dine with 
 him at the Tuileries. 
 
 The letters to Dr. Bellward bear internal marks 
 of having all been written within a few weeks of 
 each other. Their contents doubtless excited no 
 small attention from the information they gave about 
 a country of which so little was then known at home, 
 and with which England had at that time so many 
 ties in common. Even now they can be read with 
 interest, independently of the fact that they were a 
 remarkable scholastic exercise, and give indications of 
 the close observation and condensed expression for 
 which the writer became afterwards pre-eminent. 
 
 To the Rev. Richard Bellward, D.D. 
 
 Most Worthy Vice-Chancellor of the University of Cam- 
 bridge, Whilst travelling in this country, it has often oc- 
 curred to me how much good the journey would do me were I 
 able to write to you anything worthy of your perusal. To the 
 best of my ability I will endeavour to communicate in my 
 letters a few salient particulars from which you may be 
 enabled to form some idea of the position of affairs in this 
 Republic ; and from what place can I more appropriately 
 begin than from that city which the Americans have destined 
 to be the chief seat of their government ? 
 
 The federal city, Washington, is situated on an angle formed 
 by the branches of the river Potomac, one on the eastern side,
 
 1796. AS TRAVELLING BACHELOR. 57 
 
 the other on the western, which here form a junction. On the 
 eastern side the course of the river is short ; the western 
 branch, which rises in the Alleghany Mountains, after running 
 about 360 miles, empties itself into the Chesapeake. 
 
 When it reaches the federal city, the river takes a sudden 
 bend to the southward, so that as you look at it from the 
 opposite side you can almost fancy that it flows out of the 
 city itself. At this point the river is about a mile in breadth ; 
 and in the distance the town of Alexandria may be seen. 
 Under the walls of Washington is situated Georgetown. On 
 the banks of the Potomac, on either side, are open fields, all 
 fertile. It is the case, however, that there are considerable 
 obstructions in most of the rivers in America. From these the 
 Potomac is by no means free, but a company constituted for 
 the purpose is doing its best to remove them. 
 
 At about three miles from the federal city occur the first 
 falls upon the river, which in these three miles falls about 
 thirty-six feet. Here a canal with three branches, which was 
 completed about a year ago, assists the navigation. A few 
 miles higher up the stream shoals occur and rapids, by which, 
 within the space of one mile, the river makes a drop of seventy- 
 six feet ; but, " Labor omnia vincit," and in the course of one 
 year the whole of the river has been rendered navigable for 
 the transit of flat-bottomed boats, which carry from one to 
 two hundred measures each, being equivalent to if cwt. 
 Starting from about fifty miles beyond Fort Cumberland, 
 they are drifted down to Washington by the descending 
 current, a distance of 230 miles. The charge for the carriage 
 of a measure is a little over one dollar. The site selected 
 for the city of Washington is undulating ground of a pleasing 
 character. Almost in the centre stands the Capitol, from 
 whence you have an extensive view over the river, and away 
 across the plains of Virginia. This building will be about 
 390 feet in length, with columns of the Corinthian order. As 
 yet the foundations only are laid, and portions of the building 
 itself are alone visible. About a mile off is the residence 
 reserved for the use of the President. This building is com- 
 posed of square blocks of stone (dug out of the quarries of 
 Aquia, as are the stones of the Capitol) so placed as to pro- 
 duce an appearance of considerable magnificence. Adjacent
 
 58 COPLEY'S LETTERS ;CHAP. n. 
 
 to this are very pleasant gardens of about 100 acres in extent, 
 which are intended for the enjoyment of the citizens. A 
 regard to elegance as well as utility is everywhere observable 
 throughout the city. The streets are ninety and often a 
 hundred feet wide. There is also a regulation that the houses 
 of the citizens shall be thirty-five or forty-five feet high. 
 
 "Hi sunt certi denique fines, 
 Quos ultra citraque nequit consistere tcctieni." 
 
 Rows of trees are planted along the streets, which will 
 some day protect the inhabitants from the heat of the sun. 
 
 " Haec turn nomina erunt, nunc sunt sine nomine terne." 
 
 The fact of American institutions being still in their 
 infancy warns the people to be frugal. Enough money was 
 obtained from the sale of land upon which Washington is to 
 be built for the erection of the Capitol and other public 
 buildings ; but those who had the control of this sum having 
 become infected of the " Sacra fames " of speculation, the 
 fund is now so much diminished, that the completion of the 
 public works is impeded for want of money. It may not be 
 immaterial here to mention that some building land, about 
 550,000 feet square, produced only a little over $1000. 
 
 Having obtained a Fahrenheit thermometer, and placed it 
 in the shade for several days, observing it daily, I found that 
 the average greatest heat for three days at Georgetown was 
 82. I intend to test the character of the soil at various points 
 by the species and size of the trees. If by any other means I 
 see my way to gaining this information, I shall have recourse 
 to them. 
 
 Georgetown has grown with the growth of the Republic ; 
 the greater part of the houses appears to have been built 
 within these few years ; they are almost all built of bricks, and 
 are scattered about the hill-sides. 
 
 The Republic has taken into its grave consideration the 
 education of its youth, a college having been instituted with 
 that object for several years at Georgetown, and now it has 
 been found necessary to erect additional buildings, the dor- 
 mitory in which is 1 5 5 feet long by forty feet in breadth. You 
 may judge from this the number of pupils expected.
 
 1796. AS TRAVELLING BACHELOR. 59 
 
 Alexandria lies upon a flat on the banks of the Potomac. 
 There is a wonderful scarcity of trees about the city on all sides, 
 and far and wide the plain is covered with short grass. The 
 streets, which are of a very convenient width, intersect each 
 other at right angles. The houses are for the most part built 
 of bricks ; the city itself is clean and flourishing ; it numbers 
 from four to five thousand inhabitants. I was most courte- 
 ously entertained by them. The Alexandrians export tobacco 
 and flour (brought into the town on waggons) in return for 
 manufactured goods. They send many articles to Baltimore 
 and Philadelphia, and some to the Gulf of Mexico. The 
 Americans celebrated their " Declaration of Independence " on 
 the 4th of July, which is everywhere celebrated by sports and 
 rejoicings. The civic soldiery are now out for the turn of annual 
 duty. On this occasion the Alexandrians invited Washington 
 himself, who resides ten miles off, to dinner. I was present 
 at the banquet, and saw the President of the Republic ; he 
 entered heartily into the happiness of the citizens, and added 
 to it by his kindly and cheerful looks and smiles. And now, 
 reverend sir, I conclude, awaiting the time when I shall have 
 something more to communicate. I could wish this letter 
 were better worth your consideration, and that of the Univer- 
 sity. Your indulgence and pardon, however, will, I doubt not, 
 be extended to its defects. I am, with all respect, yours. 
 
 To the Rev. Richard Bellward, D.D. 
 
 Most Worthy Vice-Chancellor of the University of 
 Cambridge, Although I have little hope that my observa- 
 tions may be approved of by you and the University, yet the 
 shame of appearing idle prompts me once more to offer to 
 your consideration a few notes that I have made. If they have 
 no other merit, they at least have that of being true ; and since 
 truth is at all times useful, my letters may possibly, on this 
 account, afford you some satisfaction. 
 
 I have already written about Alexandria, which, however, 
 has nothing in particular to distinguish it from other 
 American maritime towns. Trade and political topics which 
 have any bearing on commerce are of the first concern 
 here. Neither literature nor philosophy are the themes of
 
 60 COPLEY'S LETTERS CHAP. 11. 
 
 conversation, and nowhere here would you find a learned man 
 in the European sense of the word. Those who apply them- 
 selves to mercantile pursuits are generally the richest and 
 most esteemed throughout America. 
 
 The luxury of these persons, however, and their houses and 
 domestic conveniences, in short (if you except slavery), 
 whatever is adapted to make life enjoyable, approach very 
 nearly the English standard. 
 
 We went to Mount Vernon for the purpose of paying our 
 respects to the President of the Republic. Between that 
 place and Alexandria are open fields, by no means remarkable 
 for beauty. The soil is barren, the roads rough and steep. 
 Even the President's own gardens bear no marks either of 
 culture or beauty. 
 
 The house, built of stone, much worn by time, situated 
 on high ground, is large, and commands a fine view of the 
 mighty Potomac, stretched out at no great distance, and of the 
 ships sailing to and fro between Alexandria and the ocean. 
 
 We found the President courteous, hospitable, and of a 
 pleasant humour (facetuni}. He talked freely upon many 
 subjects : his house, his gardens, and the country round about. 
 There is no trace of luxury about the house. It is by his 
 homely worth that Washington is conspicuous. In the 
 President's house were some chiefs of the native tribe of 
 Catawbas. These men were under-sized, their limbs small, 
 and there was a kind of timorousness in their looks ; natural, 
 perhaps, as where there is a feeling of danger fear will 
 show itself. It has been observed that the Catawba tribe is 
 dying out. Turning their attention to agriculture, they have 
 lost the courage and the arts of savages without acquiring 
 those of civilised life. It is not, therefore, to be wondered 
 at that filth and laziness prevail amongst them. 
 
 In former times, the Catawbas were noted for their ferocity. 
 Between the Catawbas and the natives of Delaware there was 
 an ancient feud. They often went immense distances to attack 
 each other, considering it an honourable and praiseworthy act, 
 if they could kill a few of their enemies. The speeches of 
 these barbarians have in them a certain grandeur. Some 
 one inquiring of a Catawba why they undertook so many 
 and such long journeys, " The earth is too small for me
 
 1796. AS TRAVELLING BACHELOR. 6 1 
 
 to walk freely in ! " replied the barbarian, rising on his feet, 
 and stretching his arms abroad into the air. Journeys which 
 the civilised man would consider endless, the native, who is 
 accustomed to travel, and whom no track, however stony or 
 rocky, can turn aside, looks upon as trifling. 
 
 In my former letter, I referred to the Lesser Falls of the 
 Potomac, which are distant about three miles from George- 
 town. The lofty banks, fringed with woods and rocks, effec- 
 tually hem in the current of the often swollen and raging 
 waters. Where the falls are the river is about 130 feet 
 broad, and the overhanging rocks will easily sustain the 
 arching of a bridge of a single span, which is about to be 
 carried over it by the Potomac Canal Company. This canal, 
 which commences in Maryland, will be about two miles 
 long, four feet deep, and twelve feet wide. The boats employed 
 in navigating the Potomac are about fifty feet long and six 
 broad. These boats glide quickly down the stream, but 
 against it they are moved only with the help of poles, at the 
 rate of two miles per hour. Each boat requires seven men to 
 manage it. They run from Fort Cumberland to the Greater 
 Fall, which is about twenty miles above Georgetown, in three 
 days. The return voyage takes at least twelve. Each boat 
 carries IOO, and sometimes 200, casks. 
 
 To Washington is to be attributed the improved navigation 
 of the Potomac. Having secured peace, he betook himself to 
 Mount Vernon, and there planned and superintended the 
 establishment of the Potomac Canal Company. Their works 
 (like those of all new companies) made slow progress. But the 
 project is sure to prove so beneficial that, as years pass on, the 
 Americans will be easily stimulated to undertake similar works. 
 
 I must now conclude. If I have sometimes made mention 
 of matters of minor importance, my excuse must be, that it 
 is trifles which often indicate most sharply the character of a 
 place. As I before expressed a hope, so do I now, that your 
 indulgence will be a shield and excuse for my deficiencies. In 
 this hope I shall seek a solace to cheer me in my exile from 
 England, an exile from the spot where formerly I delighted 
 
 "Inter sylvas Academi quserere verum." 
 
 I am yours, with all respect.
 
 62 COPLEY'S LETTERS CHAP. n. 
 
 To the Reverend and very learned Richard 
 Bellward, D.D. 
 
 Reverend Sir, To those particulars which I have formerly 
 written concerning America I now add a few others. This 
 seems to be a duty prescribed to me by gratitude as well as 
 by the office which I hold ; for I am not so presumptuous as 
 to hope that I can add anything with which you may not be 
 already acquainted, or that I shall be able, with all my care 
 (however much I may wish it), to offer anything worthy to 
 engage your leisure in its perusal. Nevertheless, what I have 
 seen and taken part in I hasten to communicate, in the 
 simplest terms. 
 
 Having quitted Virginia, already sufficiently explored by 
 travellers, and having crossed the Ohio, we came amongst the 
 native tribes of that part of the country. By the peace lately 
 made with these Indians (for so these people are called), all 
 danger is removed, and we wandered leisurely through the 
 scattered villages between Kentucky and Upper Canada. 
 All this region, both in its climate and country, is delightful. 
 It has no high mountains, but is ornamented with a variety of 
 forest trees of great age. It is, however, damp, and in some 
 parts, where the land is still uncultivated, there are stagnant 
 marshes. The rivers flow gently along, now through wood- 
 land, now across vast plains. Formerly, it appears, wild 
 animals abounded, the woods were filled with birds, and great 
 herds of oxen and deer wandered through these prairies. 
 This is not so at present. The wild animals have disappeared 
 before the husbandman, who is already advancing upon this 
 region on three sides. Serious evils to the natives have been 
 introduced by this approximation. Drunkenness, hunger, 
 and various kinds of diseases are rife amongst them. Their 
 means of sustenance are daily decreasing, and unless they 
 migrate across the Mississippi they cannot escape destruction. 
 But what sensible man can regret this ? Where now a very 
 few and squalid savages wander, innumerable colonists will 
 shortly live and flourish, and in the next generation cities, 
 letters, and the useful arts will be introduced. I incline to 
 the opinion of those who think that the native Americans
 
 1796. AS TRAVELLING BACHELOR. 63 
 
 came originally from Asia. Towards the north the two 
 continents approximate, and either join or are only separated 
 by a short space, and the restless disposition of man is busily 
 impelled to seek new abodes. The natives are also of the 
 same colour as those of Sarmatia, dark eyes and dark hair 
 being peculiar to each. These Indians also have many and 
 totally different dialects. Hence, many infer that this is not 
 the result of accident, nor that the tribes arrived by one and 
 the same immigration, but that they entered America by 
 some way well known and very frequently used. 
 
 The villages are generally situated on the banks of the 
 rivers, or even upon the islands formed by them, on account 
 of the fishing or the fruitfulness of the soil, and boats 
 furnish a convenient means of travel to those who go to a 
 distance upon hunting excursions in the autumn. The in- 
 habitants use rough logs of wood or bark for building their 
 huts, covering them on the outside with skins. They have 
 their fireplaces in the centre of the building, the smoke 
 passing out through a hole in the roof. They sleep upon the 
 skins of oxen or bears, and, except when threatened by 
 enemies, suspend their fruits from the beams, or hide them 
 near the roof. Should they anticipate an irruption of their 
 foes, they open subterraneous passages, lined with bark, and 
 covered with clay, as a receptacle for their fruits. Formerly 
 they clothed themselves with skins ; now they are habited in 
 woollen garments, which they purchase by way of barter from 
 our people. They all wear a tunic and a kind of boot ; they 
 have also a cloak, which they bind about the loins with a 
 thong ; this covers the shoulders, and in very cold weather 
 the head. The dress of the women is similar to that of the 
 men, except that they have under-garments, reaching down to 
 the middle of the leg. Both sexes wear bracelets on their 
 arms, and ornaments in their ears and noses. They fit collars 
 to their necks, and daub their faces with colour. Moreover, 
 the men having cut the hair from each side of the head, draw 
 back that which is left in the middle, and tie it in a knot on 
 the top. 1 They extract the hairs one by one from the body 
 and chin, and delight greatly in small mirrors, which they 
 carry with them even while hunting. 
 
 1 " Ac ssepe in ipso solo vertice religant" Taciti Germania, cap. 38.
 
 64 COPLEY'S LETTERS CHAP. n. 
 
 They always pass the winter in the chase ; the rest of the 
 year, when not engaged in war, they while away in sleeping and 
 eating. The men lounge about doing nothing, leaving the care 
 of the houses and fields to the women. Those who live near our 
 people buy horses and cows ; they rear poultry, and, imitating 
 our example, lay out orchards. In other respects they do not 
 differ from the other tribes. They smoke-dry their meat. The 
 earth, broken by the women with hoes, produces for them corn 
 and pulse. They weave mats, and show amazing skill in the 
 making and ornamenting of their shoes and vestments. They 
 take their food greedily, sitting in the porch of their dwelling, 
 and freely give to their neighbours and the passers-by. So long 
 as they have anything to drink, like all barbarians, they exercise 
 no moderation. Hence, quarrels and wounds are common at 
 their drinking bouts. But at these feasts there is always 
 some one, either a male or female, who sedulously refrains 
 from drinking, in order to look after the others and prevent 
 mischief. They consider it discreditable to avenge on a sober 
 man an injury committed by him when in liquor. The youth 
 play with spears, and in such earnest that wounds are some- 
 times inflicted, which, however, occasion neither anger nor 
 hatred. They are eager and reckless gamblers. It is won- 
 derful with what howlings and gestures of the body the 
 bystanders invoke their gods, according as they favour one 
 player or the other, for the players themselves accept good or 
 ill fortune with perfect equanimity. 
 
 Every tribe is divided into villages and districts, and the 
 sovereign power remains in one family by succession. The 
 authority, however, which depends rather upon persuasion 
 than command, has regard mainly to external matters. 
 
 Their chiefs are chosen for their valour, and it frequently 
 happens, as indeed is natural, that the king is elected as chief. 
 A council also of old men and warriors is held whenever 
 matters that concern the whole tribe are discussed. At these 
 assemblies the greatest order prevails, and profound silence. 
 There is much sound sense and shrewdness in their speeches ; 
 their language is sometimes common enough, at others 
 sublime. If the opinion expressed be approved of, they 
 applaud it as good and just; and as an indication of their 
 assent they utter a sound something like Oah. They preserve
 
 1796. AS TRAVELLING BACHELOR. 65 
 
 the decrees of the council and records of other events by 
 inscribing them on split shells fastened together with flax. 
 These are called " wampum," and are kept carefully by the 
 women, as public records. 
 
 Coercion by force or by law is unknown. If war be 
 decreed, each man is at liberty to arm or refuse. Murders, 
 unless compensated by money, are avenged by the nearest 
 relatives of the deceased. Sorcery is held in the greatest 
 abhorrence, and those suspected of this crime are immediately 
 hurried away, and put to a most cruel death. The relatives 
 of a thief punish him, as having brought disgrace upon the 
 family. But these crimes are rare, and, as Tacitus says of 
 the Germans, good principles have greater force here than 
 good laws elsewhere. 
 
 The matrimonial institutions of these tribes are very various. 
 A man may take to himself one or more wives, according to 
 the custom of his tribe. Presents are made both to the 
 parents and the bride ; amongst these a kettle, an axe, and a 
 belt fit for carrying weights, to remind her of her future 
 labours. Although divorce is allowable by mutual consent, 
 yet it is very rare amongst them. . . . 
 
 They believe there is one God, of infinite power and good- 
 ness ; but they also believe in another, who is the cause of all 
 evil. To him they offer up prayers, to avert his anger ; of the 
 former they have no /ear, for they believe it to be his nature, 
 of his own free will, to bestow good upon mortals. Moreover, 
 each has his own particular deity. To these they ascribe 
 various forms, and make rude and ridiculous images of them, 
 which they call Manitous, and always carry about with them 
 as a protection from evil. They sometimes abstain from food 
 and drink for many days, as a religious observance, and at 
 these periods they watch their dreams with the greatest solici- 
 tude. They believe in a life after death, but very similar to 
 the present. They picture it as placed in a new and secret 
 region, genial and fertile, replete with every kind of wild 
 animal. A dead man, therefore, has his weapons buried with 
 him, and other things which he used when living (for they 
 think that all things have both life and spirit), that he may 
 use them in his new country. There they believe (and this is 
 no slight inducement to valour) that honours and other rewards 
 
 F
 
 66 COP LETS LETTERS CHAP. II. 
 
 are bestowed, according to the skill in war and hunting which 
 the deceased has shown in this life. They also believe that 
 desires and joys are the same as here. The same individual 
 amongst these Indians is both priest and physician ; for 
 though they treat wounds and diseases with much success 
 they think that there is no power in medicine without the aid 
 of incantations and other rites. They also predict future 
 events, indifferent to occasional failure. There is no modera- 
 tion in their quarrels ; no length of time or distance lessens 
 their hatred and thirst for revenge. 
 
 The five most famous tribes, which are located near the Lake 
 Ontario, used to make war beyond the Mississippi, and to travel 
 annually this immense distance for the purpose. Often a 
 solitary individual, leaving his companions, will traverse vast 
 forests in order to take his enemy unawares ; he will climb 
 mountains, swim across rivers, and undergo every fatigue, so 
 long as there is a chance of slaking his thirst for blood. 
 Before the coming of our people they fought at a distance 
 with bows and arrows, and hand to hand with hatchets made 
 of stone, and these they never threw in vain after a retreating 
 enemy ; now, however, by means of barter, they buy fire- 
 arms, and, like us, make use of them both in war and in the 
 chase. Their custom is never to fight in the open country, 
 or against a disciplined army. They think there is no glory 
 in receiving a wound ; they consider it more an act of 
 madness than of courage to run the risk of being wounded. 
 A chiefs greatest glory, in their estimation, is to plan an 
 ambush craftily, to strike his enemy when sleeping, to 
 devastate fields and villages by fire, to carry off a swarm of 
 captives, and to lead his own men home safe and sound. 
 Their custom is to scalp the slain, and when the victors return 
 to their village, they raise as many shouts as there are scalps, 
 and manifest other indications of savage delight. 
 
 If they perceive no chance of victory, they think it prudent 
 to retreat and flee. In their retreat they display the greatest 
 art and cunning, for Indians, whether taught by nature or 
 experience, are wonderfully acute in following the trail of 
 fugitives. If a son has lost a parent, or a parent a son, or a 
 wife a husband, each forthwith chooses from amongst the 
 captives an individual to replace the deceased. On this, the
 
 1796. AS TRAVELLING BACHELOR. 67 
 
 person so chosen changes his country and household gods, as 
 if partaking of a new nature, and, forgetting his recent hatred, 
 embraces his new friends with the greatest affection. The rest 
 of the captives perish by a cruel death. These wretches are 
 tortured in every way which the ingenuity of barbarians can 
 contrive : they are flayed alive, their eyes are gouged out, 
 their limbs and their extremities consumed by a slow fire. 
 The captive himself bears these things with the greatest 
 fortitude. Showing no sign of pain, he chants his own brave 
 deeds, and heaps contumely on the bystanders as cowards 
 and unwarlike ; dying at last the death he longs for by the 
 hand of some one whom he has stung to fury by his 
 reproaches. 
 
 These particulars, reverend sir, concerning the manners and 
 customs of the Indians, I have selected from many as most 
 worthy of remark, and I now transmit them to you. I am 
 with all respect, yours. 
 
 F 2
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 Copley returns from America Takes M.A. Degree Studies under Mr. Tidd 
 Becomes a Special Pleader Marriage of Miss Copley to Mr. Greene 
 of Boston, U.S. Copley's Correspondence with Mr. and Mrs. Greene 
 
 YOUNG Copley made many warm friends in America, 
 and he always looked back to the country of his birth 
 with affectionate interest. He had seen enough of the 
 United States during his brief stay to feel confident 
 that a great future lay before them, and he sympathised 
 strongly with the efforts of the men who were at the 
 head of affairs there to lay the foundations of an in- 
 dependent state not unworthy of its ancestral origin. 
 A few months after his return to England (July 20, 
 1797) we find him writing to his aunt, Mrs. Startin, of 
 New York : " The moderate but spirited and energetic 
 conduct of the American Government has exalted the 
 character of the nation in the opinion of the haughty 
 inhabitants of Europe, who were accustomed to regard 
 with too supercilious an eye a people just risen from 
 the subordinate rank of colonists." In the same letter 
 we get a pleasant glimpse of the home at George 
 Street, to which his presence had brought back the 
 charm, which its inmates had sorely missed, of his 
 bright active intelligence, fine animal spirits and warmly 
 affectionate disposition. " There is nothing new," he 
 writes, " in our domestic circle ; the even, noiseless 
 tenor of our way is marked by few striking incidents. 
 We are as happy as health, spirits, and philosophy
 
 1797- BECOMES A SPECIAL PLEADER. 69 
 
 three important ingredients in the composition of 
 human happiness can make us." 
 
 On coming back from America young Copley 
 returned for a short period to Cambridge, where he 
 took the M.A. degree on the 5th of July, 1797. His 
 allowance of ^100 a year as travelling bachelor ceased 
 as a matter of course upon his return to England ; but 
 a somewhat larger yearly allowance was attached to 
 his fellowship. This he enjoyed down to the year 
 1804, and it was by no means unimportant in enabling 
 him to tide over the intervening period. For his first 
 experiences of the legal profession, to the preparation 
 for which he settled down in earnest after taking his 
 M.A. degree, were by no means encouraging. After 
 going through the usual preliminary studies, he attended 
 the chambers of Mr. Tidd, the celebrated special 
 pleader, and, to use the words of his own memorandum 
 already cited, was " initiated by him in that logical 
 science. After about a year," he continues, " I became 
 a candidate for practice in that branch of the law. 1 
 My clients," he adds, " were not very numerous." But 
 during these years of weary waiting, of which most 
 eminent lawyers have had experience, Copley was a 
 most industrious student, and equipped himself for 
 taking advantage of the hour, whenever it might come, 
 when he could show the stuff of which he was made. 
 "There is nothing," said Lord Eldon, "that does a v 
 young lawyer so much good as to be half starved. It 
 has a fine effect." Though not exposed to the full 
 force of this improving discipline, young Copley felt 
 some of it. The parental purse was not overstocked, 
 
 1 " Special pleaders," says Lord Campbell, writing to his brother, 17 May, 
 1804, " in general are not at the Bar. One or two who remain pleaders per- 
 manently are considered as something between attorneys and barristers, but the 
 common way is for a young man to plead a few years under the Bar, as they 
 call it, before being called. It is easier to get this kind of business than briefs 
 in the Court, and you thus gradually form and extend your connections." ' Life,' 
 vol. i. p. 148.
 
 70 MARRIAGE OF MISS COPLEY. CHAP. in. 
 
 and the scanty income from his Fellowship was good 
 for only a very few years. " My son," Mrs. Copley 
 writes (June 29, 1802) to her daughter Mrs. Greene, 
 " is as busy as his father, and is qualifying himself for 
 a more conspicuous scene of action. He is very 
 persevering in his studies, and I hope he will reap the 
 reward by-and-by." Again (August 31, 1802) she 
 writes to Mrs. Greene, " Your father is almost always 
 in his painting room, and Mr. J. S. C., Junior, in Essex 
 Court, if not engrossed with briefs or disturbed with 
 love, it may be with rilling his head with law, which may 
 enable him to combat the former and which may give 
 him hope of success in the latter." 
 
 In the year 1800 Copley's elder and favourite sister 
 Elizabeth married Mr. Gardiner Greene, a merchant 
 of Boston, U.S. The marriage was in every way a 
 happy one ; but the family correspondence shows that 
 her disappearance from the home circle was very 
 deeply felt. Her brother accompanied Mrs. Greene 
 as far as the Downs in the ship that was to take them 
 to America. Scarcely had he got back to London- 
 when he wrote to her the following letter : 
 
 London, August 23, 1800. 
 
 Here we are, sitting at our ease in the drawing-room, while 
 you are tossing about, sad and sick, upon the watery element 1 
 All our fine weather has deserted us, and it appears as if some 
 powerful spirit had suddenly transplanted us from the torrid 
 to the frigid zone. Oh, the delights of a clear sky and a 
 burning sun ! such are our feelings and such our language 
 amid the fogs and storms of November ; for November we 
 appear already to have attained. Strange that the weather 
 should engross so great a proportion of the conversation of 
 Englishmen ; still more strange that so dull a subject should 
 be suffered to occupy almost an entire page of a letter written 
 to a dear and distant friend. Will it mend the matter to write 
 a word or two about myself?
 
 i8oo. LETTER TO HER. 71 
 
 The pilot and your humble servant, who, very soon after 
 quitting the ship, became close friends, were set on shore upon 
 Deal Beach, from whence we walked about four miles to 
 Sandwich. After drinking a mug of ale in the most sociable 
 manner, we set out for Margate, in hopes, as wind and tide 
 favoured, we might meet with a packet I had nearly written 
 a hoy bound for London. Upon our arrival, after a sultry 
 walk of three hours, we found, to our great mortification, that 
 the boats had all sailed, and we were fain, therefore, to take 
 the coach to Canterbury, from whence we proceeded in the 
 mail, the same night, for London. As I expected, when I 
 reached George Street, ten thousand questions were put to me 
 in a breath ; and you know how mortally I hate being teased 
 with questions! However, I made a desperate effort, and 
 summoned all my patience. Where did you leave them ? 
 Were they in good spirits ? Was Betsy sick ? How were 
 they accommodated ? What kind of a party ? Oh, as to the 
 party, I am afraid, from what the pilot informed me, that there 
 
 is too great an intimacy between Mrs., or rather Miss, S 
 
 and the captain. Do you know, I b egan to suspect it? Well 
 I commend the taste of both parties. " Young Celadon and 
 his Amelia were a matchless pair," etc. 
 
 Not a word of news, no certain information relative to 
 the state of the negotiation. Political information has, since 
 you left us, been perfectly at a stand. I have cut out of the 
 Post of to-day some lines, in the manner of Cowper, descriptive 
 of a London summer morning. They will remind you of 
 scenes which you have so frequently witnessed in your walks 
 to the cold bath. I think they are not amiss. Pray remember 
 me very kindly to Mr. Greene, to whom I shall endeavour to 
 give early information of any affair of moment that may occur 
 on this side of the water. 
 
 Young Copley had by this time set himself up in 
 chambers in Essex Court in the Temple. But then, 
 as in later years, the days were not allowed to pass 
 without a visit to the home in George Street. 
 " Your brother," his mother writes (August 23, 1800) 
 to Mrs. Greene, " gives us his pleasing company at
 
 72 KNATCHBULL FAMILY PICTURE. CHAP. m. 
 
 dinner, where we unite in best wishes to absent friends. 
 He takes his walk to Hampstead, which he finds 
 pleasant." And again, some years afterwards, she 
 writes, "When possible your brother always dines with 
 us, however engaged." ' But in these early days he 
 gave his mother and sister every now and then the 
 pleasant excitement of a breakfast at his chambers. 
 "John is very well," his sister Mary writes (Oct. 22, 
 1800) to Mrs. Greene, "and has promised us another 
 breakfast on New Year's day," when he is to show 
 them the alterations and improvements in his chambers 
 upon which he was then busy. Meanwhile he keeps 
 up a constant communication with the other sister, 
 whom he can no longer delight with his animated talk. 
 His father had been commissioned by Sir Edward 
 Knatchbull to paint a family picture on a canvas that 
 " covered one end of the great room in the baronet's 
 house." It was originally intended to contain ten 
 figures ; but before it was finished Sir Edward married 
 again, and insisted on his second wife whom he had 
 married after the picture was begun, and a child she 
 had given him, being added to the group. It is to 
 this picture that young Copley alludes in the following 
 letter to Mrs. Greene. His father had been down to 
 
 1 According to Lord Campbell, Copley "generally dined at a coffee-house, 
 and when the labours of the day were over, he solaced himself in the company 
 of his friends in Crown Office Row " (' Life of Lord Lyndhurst, 1 p. 24). Until 
 he took up his residence in George Street after his father's death, Lord Lynd- 
 hurst always, when not engaged, dined with his parents, and he kept a horse for 
 the purpose of taking him there from the Temple. How much his absence for 
 even a few weeks was missed, is apparent from a letter of his mother's to Mrs. 
 Greene (March I, 1803) : "The Templar," she writes, "has left us to accom- 
 pany Judge Graham as marshal on the circuit : he will be absent five weeks. 
 We feel rather solitary without his company at dinner ; but it is a pleasant 
 excursion, and not without some profit : the two circuits are worth something 
 more than .100 a year." It would be easy to prove by a host of similar passages, 
 from the family letters, that even on so slight a matter as this Lord Campbell 
 "invented his facts."
 
 1 8oo. COPLEY TO HIS SISTER. 73 
 
 Sir Edward's country seat to make arrangements for 
 painting the picture on the spot. 
 
 Hampstead, September 3, 1800. 
 
 We have all written by the Galen except my father, who 
 you know, never writes. The captain of the Galen has made 
 a bet that he will arrive before you, as your vessel is reported 
 to sail very badly. Indeed, I saw sufficient before I left you 
 to confirm the general opinion ; but, as the winds have 
 continued favourable here ever since your departure, we are 
 not without hopes that you may make a short passage. 
 
 The Diana is upon the point of sailing ; I must therefore 
 write much in a short time, and, if possible, in a short compass 
 Where to begin ? My father hopes to leave town in two 
 or three days. He has already taken a view of his quarters. 
 Sir Edward carried him to a hop frolic at Mr. Hilton's, a 
 gentleman of large property in the county. Two hundred 
 persons of the first fashion, a splendid supper, a brilliant 
 dance (a hop frolic, you see, in every sense), flowers and foliage 
 and lamps, five o'clock in the morning, bed and breakfast at 
 Lord Sondes', dinner at Sir Edward's, a spacious and splendid 
 mansion, built by Adams, rain and thunder, eating and 
 drinking, talking and laughing, such is a rapid sketch of my 
 father's first visit. 
 
 Mary [his younger sister] still retains her good looks : my 
 mother is well, and as cheerful as we could expect, after the 
 loss of such a jewel as yourself. A long letter from Miss 
 Tomlins, and poems. She is quite angry with Mr. Greene ! 
 To come from so far, traversing I know not how many degrees 
 of latitude and longitude, to carry away her friend ! She 
 talks of coming to administer and receive consolation ! 
 Captain Yonge has met with another mischance. His horses, 
 a few days ago, ran away with him and Miss Poignon, in a 
 curricle, near Piccadily. He was thrown out, his better leg 
 broken, and the curricle shivered to a wreck. Miss Poignon, 
 as being of the race of Falstaff, was less unfortunate ; a few 
 bruises, a show of legs, constituted the sum of her sufferings. 
 As to politics, I have but little information to give you. All 
 that has passed and all that is meditated upon the subject of
 
 74 COPLEY'S LETTERS CHAP. in. 
 
 peace is covered by ... an almost impenetrable veil. The 
 opinion, however, that the preliminaries are already signed 
 between Austria and France is strengthened by every arrival, 
 though upon the return of Duroc the French funds gradually 
 declined from thirty-eight to thirty-one. 
 
 It is said that some communications of a pacific tendency 
 have lately passed between the republic and our own govern- 
 ment, and the stocks have felt the influence of the report, 
 Omnium having risen within a few days from three and a half 
 to six. Kleber has been assassinated ; an Arab, in the act of 
 presenting a petition, plunged a dagger in his bosom. Menou, 
 who has succeeded to the command, refuses to retire from 
 Egypt. He has married a woman of the country, adopted 
 with the turban a Turkish name and title, and declared 
 himself a convert to the religion of Mahomet. Our regards to 
 Mr. Greene. I salute you. 
 
 Three weeks later this letter is followed by another : 
 
 To Mrs. Greene. 
 
 London, September 26, 1800. 
 
 We have been taken by surprise. My mother has been 
 informed, I know not from what quarter, that the Minerva was 
 not likely to sail for some time. I therefore went yesterday 
 evening into the city, to request of Mr. Bromfield that he 
 would undertake the shipment of a small case for you, con- 
 taining an opera tippet, a muff, and some little et ceteras, but 
 was much mortified at finding that we had missed our oppor- 
 tunity, as the vessel had already cleared out. Another ship, 
 however, the Merchant, will sail in about a week or ten days ; 
 so that I hope this unlucky mistake will not put you to any 
 inconvenience. 
 
 These winter habiliments have recalled to my recollection 
 a subject upon which I must say a few words. Let me, my 
 dear sister, entreat you, in our joint names, by the affection 
 you bear us, to be particularly attentive to your clothing 
 during the severe weather which you are likely to experience 
 in the approaching winter ; and to be more especially careful on
 
 iSoo. TO HIS SISTER. 75 
 
 the return of spring, during which season the violent transi- 
 tions from heat to cold are said to be very trying to the 
 female constitution. You should cautiously watch the changes 
 of the weather, and adapt your dress rather to the day than 
 the season. Excuse me, my dear sister, for presuming to give 
 advice, and ascribe the liberty I have taken solely to the deep 
 interest I feel in everything that relates to your welfare. I 
 have made a packet of about a dozen of the last newspapers ; 
 I hope both Mr. Greene and yourself will receive pleasure 
 from the perusal of them ; I did not put a greater number 
 into the bag, but you may depend upon receiving, by the 
 next opportunity, the entire series from the day when you 
 left London. It appears, I think, from the general complexion 
 of affairs, highly probable that a peace will be concluded 
 between this country and France before the return of spring. 
 It is a blessing ardently looked for, and will be welcomed by 
 the great mass of the community with joy and enthusiasm. 
 
 More secret expeditions, and in the event as disgraceful, 
 though not quite so disastrous, as some of the former. Sir 
 James Pulteney landed fifteen thousand men in the neighbour- 
 hood of Ferrol, and re-embarked without venturing to attack 
 the place. It is said to have been weakly garrisoned, and, if 
 taken, would have proved a very valuable conquest. Dis- 
 turbances have prevailed throughout every part of the king- 
 dom on account of the high price of provisions. They have 
 been generally quelled without bloodshed. The volunteer 
 corps have proved of great service. You will read of dreadful 
 riots in London. Be not alarmed. They may appear formid- 
 able at a distance, but, I assure you, they did not exite a 
 moment's apprehension in the minds even of the most timid 
 .... Pitt has returned with his Russian bride. As to her 
 person, she is very well ; but, after all I had heard, I confess 
 I was disappointed. My father is still at Sir Edward Knatch- 
 bull's, and is highly pleased with the hospitable and polite 
 reception he has met with. He will not return to town for 
 some time. My mother is very well. Mary looks charmingly. 
 As to myself, I have still some flesh upon my bones. The 
 two solitary ladies paid me a visit yesterday in the Temple, 
 and were regaled with oysters, etc. I have entered into 
 winter quarters, and shall remain stationary till the swallows
 
 76 COPLETS CORRESPONDENCE CHAP. in. 
 
 return from their annual excursion. The weather, however, 
 still continues fine. I have written in great haste, but if 
 my letter is legible the object will be answered. 
 
 In these days, when young Copley was doing his 
 best as a special pleader to gain the good opinions of 
 his "not very numerous" clients, his life must have 
 been as devoid of incident as that of any of the 
 numerous aspirants for fame and fortune, who spend 
 laborious days and anxious nights in the not too 
 lively chambers of the Inns of Court. He had leisure 
 and to spare for keeping up his correspondence with 
 Mrs. Greene and her husband. This has fortunately 
 been preserved, and the following selections from it 
 speak for themselves not only as to the strength of his 
 domestic affections, but the extreme moderation of 
 his political opinions. 
 
 To Mr. Greene. 
 
 London, October 22, 1800. 
 
 It is now above two months since you quitted our shores, 
 and we are therefore beginning to look out for the much- 
 wished-for intelligence of your happy arrival in America. 
 Like impatient school-boys, we began our computation by 
 months, and now reckon the weeks which will probably 
 elapse before we are informed of your safety. We have 
 already scribbled a ream of paper, and are still adding to the 
 quantity. 
 
 Mr. Winslow goes to Boston, via New York, and I must 
 not let slip so favourable an opportunity cf sending the latest 
 intelligence from Europe. He will deliver you newspapers up 
 to the 22nd instant, from the conclusion of the last set which 
 were forwarded by the Merchant. . . . 
 
 When I began my letter, I intended to have attempted to 
 give you some idea of the state of politics, both foreign and 
 domestic. But the papers which I have sent being the
 
 i8oo. WITH MR. AND MRS. GREENE. 77 
 
 principal source from whence I derive my intelligence, I could 
 do little more than repeat and abridge the information they 
 contain. The high price of provisions appears to excite very 
 general uneasiness ; but whether the scarcity is real or artifi- 
 cial is a point upon which opinions are very much divided. I 
 think it is very doubtful whether Parliament, which meets on 
 the nth of next month, will be able to remedy, or even to 
 mitigate, the evil. 
 
 All commotions, however, have subsided, and, notwith- 
 standing the sufferings of the poorer orders of society, the 
 most perfect tranquillity at present prevails. Cobbett, who 
 was an instrument of so much mischief, is an American ; he 
 has issued a prospectus of a new daily paper, which he intends 
 to publish here under the title of the " Porcupine." It is filled 
 with the most virulent and intemperate invectives against the 
 United States. I send you a copy. 
 
 I think there is much reason to apprehend that there will 
 not be a long continuance of harmony between this country 
 and America, and I am afraid this fellow will fan the sparks 
 of disunion, which appear already to be quickened, till they 
 burst into a flame. 
 
 Circumstanced as we are, we must deprecate a rupture 
 with America as the greatest of calamities ; since, by in- 
 creasing the difficulties of communication, it will in fact 
 separate us still more widely from each other, and conse- 
 quently render us still more sensible of our loss. Among the 
 news you will find a thread paper. Polly sends it to Mrs. 
 Greene. I remonstrated with her on the subject. "What, 
 send a thread paper across the Atlantic ! " " And why not," 
 she says, " as well as a newspaper ? " I must not forget to 
 mention that my mother some time since shipped on board 
 the Merchant, of Boston, for Mrs. Greene, a box containing 
 several articles of dress, which she is anxious should arrive 
 before the winter. . . . 
 
 Accept my regards, and believe me very sincerely yours. 
 
 My mother is uncommonly well ; Mary quite fat. My 
 father is still in Kent. Adieu. Mrs. Greene, I salute you.
 
 78 COPLEY'S LETTERS CHAP. in. 
 
 To Mr. Greene. 
 
 London, January 22, 1801. 
 
 I have too long delayed to thank you for your kind letter. 
 The arrival of the Minerva has increased the debt, and the 
 acceptable present which it contains is rendered doubly 
 valuable by the accounts we have received of your welfare. 
 Betsy is very good to us, and, I am persuaded, will continue 
 so. It is unnecessary, and I am sure it would be difficult, to 
 describe the pleasure we receive from her letters. Placed in a 
 similar situation with ourselves, and blessed with the tenderest 
 affection, she is fully able to appreciate it. To say that they 
 are necessary to our comfort is almost too cold a language ; 
 they are essential to our existence ; we cannot live without 
 them. 
 
 Indeed, unless we exert ourselves with vigilance to 
 counteract the Lethean effects of time and absence, we shall 
 become in a degree strangers to each other. The very idea 
 is dreadful : away with it ! 
 
 We were surprised that a letter of the I4th of December 
 should contain no account of the event of your important 
 election. It is understood here that the votes were to be 
 published on the 3rd, and eight or nine days would, I should 
 think, be amply sufficient, even at this season of the year, to 
 convey the intelligence from the federal city to Boston. We 
 anxiously hope, and indeed the probability seems to favour 
 our wishes, that Mr. Adams may be confirmed in his station ; 
 as we think that the happy harmony which has subsisted 
 between the two countries is more likely to continue, and even 
 to gain strength, under his auspices than under the adminis- 
 tration of either Jefferson or Pinckney. I wish it were in 
 my power to communicate any favourable intelligence from 
 Europe. 
 
 Mr. Pitt, about two months since, ventured to declare in 
 the House of Commons " that even as a common spectator he 
 should advise the emperor to continue the war ! " He has 
 continued it, and the French, after a series of the most un- 
 exampled successes both in Bavaria and Italy, have established 
 their headquarters within sixty miles of the capital of the
 
 i8oi. TO MR. AND MRS. GREENE. 79 
 
 Austrian dominions, without a fortification, or scarcely the 
 semblance of an army, to oppose their farther progress. The 
 consequence has been that an armistice of thirty days has 
 been concluded, and the emperor, before the expiration of 
 that period, will be compelled to accept such terms as the 
 victor may think it prudent to impose. It is generally sup- 
 posed that by the preliminary treaty Belgium and Savoy will 
 be finally ceded to the republic, that Holland and Helvetia 
 will be established as independent governments, and that the 
 emperor will renounce all his claims in Italy to the west of 
 the Adige. Whether a separate peace with the emperor will 
 lead to a peace with this country, it is impossible to foresee. 
 The treaty of armed neutrality which is actually signed 
 between the courts of Russia, Sweden, and Denmark will 
 encourage a perseverance in hostility on the part of the 
 French ; and as we cannot give way to the unsanctioned 
 pretensions of the Northern powers, no prudent person can 
 venture to fix a term to the contest. 
 
 Sir R. Abercrombie has sailed for Egypt with about twenty 
 thousand men ; but the public are prepared for the intelli- 
 gence of disaster in that quarter, as there seems to be good 
 reason to suppose that Menou is well provided for defence. 
 
 I have only left room to sign my name at the end of my 
 letter, and have still two or three things to add. Bread has 
 fallen to twenty pence the quartern loaf, which weighs about 
 four pounds five ounces ; but it is expected shortly to rise 
 again, as wheat and flour have advanced considerably in the 
 course of the week. In a few days, however, the law for the 
 prohibition of white bread will begin to take effect. The 
 people murmur, but remain quiet. Everybody looks anxiously 
 forward to peace as the only event that can put an end to the 
 public distress. 
 
 To Mrs. Greene. 
 
 London, March 2, 1801. 
 
 We write by the Minerva, which sails in a few days ; but, 
 as you will be disappointed in not receiving a letter by the 
 Galen, if it should happen to arrive first, I am therefore com- 
 missioned to transmit a line for the purpose of informing you
 
 8o COPLEY'S CORRESPONDENCE CHAP. in. 
 
 that we are all well, and that your commission has been in 
 every respect punctually executed. Upon Captain Barber's 
 return you will receive a case containing the cotton furniture 
 and fringe, the carpeting, a proof print of Chatham, 1 the 
 lamps, and a barometer, which Mr. Webb has restored to its 
 former splendour. 
 
 What shall I say in the remainder of this page? The 
 king has had a return of his old complaint, but is now in a 
 state of convalescence. A treaty of peace has been concluded 
 between the emperor and the French republic. Pitt, Grenville, 
 Dundas, etc., have resigned upon the Catholic Emancipation. 
 Addington is the new prime minister ; Hawksbury succeeds 
 Grenville. The appointments are not yet made out; these 
 are suspended in consequence of the king's illness. . . . 
 
 Regards to Mr. Greene. Adieu, adieu, a thousand times 
 adieu. You shall have a long letter by the Merchant to 
 make amends for this scrawl. 
 
 To Mr. Greene. 
 
 London, April 20, 1801. 
 
 We are anxiously expecting news from Boston, as some 
 weeks have now elapsed since we have received any in- 
 telligence from our friends in that place. You must not, 
 however, suppose that we are unmindful of former favours, 
 or that the impression made by your letters is fugitive and 
 transitory ; you will, I am persuaded, be ready to assign a 
 more just and much better reason for our impatience. 
 Feeling as we daily do the loss we have sustained, every 
 alleviation is welcomed with eagerness ; but while we are 
 devouring the contents of a letter we cannot forbear reflecting 
 upon the days which have elapsed since it was written, and, 
 throwing our view across the Atlantic, we indulge in thoughts 
 upon the present, and sigh for more recent and therefore more 
 satisfactory intelligence. 
 
 That our feelings and sentiments are reciprocal it is a 
 comfort and happiness to consider ; and you will therefore, I 
 am persuaded, sincerely rejoice with us at the favourable 
 
 1 The engraving of Copley's picture of "The Death of Chatham."
 
 i8oi. WITH MR. GREENE. 8 1 
 
 change which, within a few days, has taken place in the aspect 
 of our public affairs. By the enterprise and courage of our 
 seamen, who have achieved a brilliant victory over the Danes 
 even in their own harbour and in view of their capital, and by 
 the sudden death of the great autocrat, Paul, the vital spring 
 and soul of the Northern Confederacy, we have a fair prospect 
 of extricating ourselves with reputation and honour from the 
 perplexed situation in which this formidable league had 
 involved us. 
 
 We have commenced a negotiation with the French, which 
 it is not improbable may terminate in a peace ; our sovereign, 
 for whom we have experienced so much anxiety, is rapidly 
 recovering from the effects of his late indisposition. 
 
 The new ministers have constantly manifested a spirit of 
 mildness and conciliation, and there is every prospect that an 
 ample harvest will rescue the poor from the privations and 
 sufferings to which the scarcity of the two last seasons had 
 condemned them. With respect to Egypt, indeed, it is 
 uncertain at present what may be the result of our exertions 
 in that quarter. 
 
 Paris papers were yesterday received which state that 
 General Abercrombie had landed with twelve thousand 
 British troops in the vicinity of Alexandria ; that he had been 
 immediately attacked by four thousand of the enemy, who, 
 after a vigorous conflict, fell back towards the city ; that a 
 second engagement had taken place, which had been followed 
 by no farther advantages ; and that Menou had arrived from 
 Cairo, and was assembling his army from all quarters to 
 oppose the invaders. We shall therefore look with anxiety 
 for farther intelligence ; particularly as the operations upon 
 this theatre must necessarily have so important an influence 
 upon the negotiations for peace. . . . 
 
 To Mr. Greene. 
 
 London, June 27, 1801. 
 
 We were very much mortified in learning the disaster which 
 occurred to the glasses, both of the Chatham print and of the 
 barometer. With respect to the latter, Webb assured 'me'that 
 
 G
 
 82 COPLEY'S LETTERS CHAP. in. 
 
 he would take care so to secure it that it would arrive without 
 accident ; finding fault at the same time with the manner in 
 which it had been packed upon the first voyage. I have many 
 thanks to return for the newspapers with which you have so 
 repeatedly furnished us, and very much regret that it has not 
 been hitherto in my power to transmit a regular series from 
 hence. I have several times endeavoured to arrange a plan 
 with my friends by which I might secure to myself a rever- 
 sion of the papers, but have not yet been able to succeed. 
 
 Nothing will give me greater pleasure than to be able to 
 contribute to your gratification in this particular, as I am 
 persuaded that, notwithstanding your transatlantic exile, you 
 must still feel an interest in the intrigues, the contests, and the 
 revolutions of Europe. 
 
 In consequence of the timely death of Paul and the splendid 
 victory of Copenhagen, our contest with the Northern powers, 
 which appeared to threaten such alarming events, will in all 
 probability be speedily adjusted in an amicable and favourable 
 manner. 
 
 Lord St. Helens has arrived at St. Petersburg, and the 
 embargo has been removed from the British vessels in the 
 several ports of Russia. 
 
 We have manifested a similar spirit of conciliation, and have 
 relieved all the Russian, Swedish, and Danish vessels which 
 have been detained in England. Mr. Addington and his 
 associates in administration hold a very moderate and pacific 
 language ; the same temper is also possessed by the chief 
 consul, and the negotiations between the two countries have 
 for some time been carried on with great activity. It is im- 
 possible, with any safety, to speculate upon the result ; but 
 there are those who assert that the affairs will terminate in a 
 peace, at once honourable and advantageous to Great Britain. 
 It is said that the French are to evacuate Egypt, and that we 
 are to be allowed to retain the port of Alexandria, as a check 
 upon any future enterprise directed against that country ; and 
 that we are to be suffered also to keep the Cape of Good Hope 
 and all our conquests in the East Indies, but then, in the 
 West we are to make large sacrifices ; and, lastly, that the 
 King of Sardinia is to be reinstated in the possession of 
 Piedmont. It is asserted that the chief consul is sincerely
 
 i8oi. TO MR. GREENE. 83 
 
 desirous of concluding a peace with this country, as well on 
 account of the general eagerness manifested in the republic for 
 this event, as because of the difficulties and embarrassments 
 in the way of the indemnities agreed upon at the settlement 
 of the treaty of Luneville. 
 
 As to Egypt, we have no authentic accounts from that 
 country of a later date than the 22nd of April ; but there are 
 various reports in circulation, chiefly founded upon the para- 
 graphs and letters contained in the French papers, that the 
 issue of the contest in that part of the world has not been so 
 favourable as, from previous circumstances, we were naturally 
 led to hope. 
 
 These reports, however, rest upon very slight foundation, 
 and do not appear to be entitled to any credit. 
 
 To Mr. Greene. 
 
 London, July 25, 1801. 
 
 Dear Sir, Your excursion to New York and Montreal 
 has, I hope, in every particular, been attended with all the 
 pleasure and gratification which you expected to receive 
 from it. 
 
 To my sister, who had before seen but little of America, the 
 tour must have been interesting in the extreme ; I expect her 
 letters will be filled with captivating descriptions, as well of 
 the sublime scenery of the Hudson as of the romantic and 
 picturesque beauties of Montreal. I assure you, I have a 
 thousand times longed to be of the party, which, according to 
 Mr. Atkinson's account, was to be strengthened by a con- 
 siderable accession of friends at New York, and was to be all 
 life and gaiety and cheerfulness. 
 
 While you, on your side of the water, are enjoying these 
 agreeable and peaceful scenes, which tend to humanize the 
 heart and improve the social affections, our attention is 
 engrossed by objects of a far different character, by the 
 immense preparations which the French are making along the 
 whole extent of their coast for the invasion of this country. 
 These formidable appearances, however, have not yet created 
 the slightest symptom of uneasiness, although ministers are 
 
 G 2
 
 84 COP LETS CORRESPONDENCE CHAP. us. 
 
 exerting themselves with laudable activity and vigour for the 
 purpose of preventing or defeating the enterprise. Indeed, I 
 think that here we are invulnerable, and that it is only Ireland 
 / that can afford any just ground for apprehension. For it is 
 , there alone that the enemy, if by any accident he should 
 . succeed in eluding the vigilance of our squadrons, can reason- 
 ably hope to meet with countenance and co-operation. 
 
 The actual state of affairs in Egypt is involved in con- 
 siderable doubt and uncertainty. For although the last advices 
 from that country were of the most favourable nature, yet 
 there is reason to believe that Admiral Gautheaume has 
 contrived to land a powerful reinforcement, to the extent of 
 four or five thousand men, in the vicinity of Alexandria. The 
 squadron under his command has also fallen in with and 
 captured the Swiffsure, a seventy-four-gun ship, commanded 
 by Captain Hallowell, which was returning to England on 
 account of her leaky condition. She attempted to fight her 
 way through the middle of the French fleet, but was, at length, 
 brought to close action, and compelled, after a gallant defence, 
 to surrender to the superior force of the enemy. Captain 
 Hallowell is, I believe, a native of Boston. He has distin- 
 guished himself very honourably on several occasions, in the 
 course of the present war. 
 
 We have also met with another naval misfortune. Sir 
 James Saumarez chased into Algeciras Bay a French squadron, 
 consisting of three line of battle ships and a frigate, commanded 
 by Admiral . Linois. The enemy anchored close under the 
 Spanish batteries, and, having a considerable number of troops 
 on board, sent them ashore to man the works. The British 
 commander, nevertheless, ventured upon the attack, but, after 
 a most obstinate and bloody engagement, was compelled to- 
 retire, leaving the Hannibal, of eighty guns, in the hands of 
 the enemy. The only account, however, which we have yet 
 received of this affair is through the medium of the French 
 papers, which are not, certainly, upon all occasions, to be 
 implicitly relied upon. 
 
 A convention has been signed at Petersburg by Lord St. 
 Helens and the Russian minister, to which the courts of 
 Sweden and Denmark have since acceded. The terms of this 
 treaty have not been officially announced to the public, but it
 
 i.8oi. WITH MR. GREENE. 85 
 
 is generally understood that the right of search, even in the 
 case of vessels under convoy, is expressly recognized, but that 
 certain regulations are prescribed relative to the mode of 
 exercising the right, which, it is hoped, will prevent future occa- 
 sions of differences and misunderstanding. It is also stipulated 
 that neutral vessels, under convoy, shall not be visited, or in any 
 respect molested, by the privateer of the belligerent powers. 
 
 August 5. 
 
 At length we have received advices from Sir James 
 Saumarez, which confirm the statement that I have already 
 given you, relative to the disaster sustained in Algeciras Bay. 
 It appears that the Hannibal, in moving to her station, 
 unfortunately took the ground. In this situation she was 
 exposed to heavy fire from the Spanish batteries, and, there 
 being no possibility of extricating her, she was reluctantly 
 compelled to strike her colours. But the sequel of the affair 
 must forever put to silence the vain and ridiculous boasts of 
 the enemy on account of this accidental advantage. For it 
 has been followed by a victory as glorious to the British arms 
 as anything that has been achieved during the course of the 
 present war, in which the enterprising and heroic spirit of our 
 navy has shone with such distinguished lustre. For shortly 
 after the engagement six sail of the line, confiding, no doubt, 
 for security in the crippled state of our vessels, ventured 
 to put to sea from the harbour of Cadiz. This squadron 
 consisted, among others, of two Spanish first-rates of one 
 hundred and twelve guns each, a French eighty-gun ship, and 
 the San Antonio, a Spanish seventy-four, but under French 
 colours, commanded by a French officer, and with a crew 
 composed of an equal proportion of each nation. The enemy 
 proceeded to Algeciras Bay, and, being there joined by the 
 three French ships and the Hannibal, under the command 
 of Linois, immediately steered its course back again towards 
 the Straits. Sir James Saumarez had exerted himself with 
 indefatigable diligence in refitting his vessels ; and, with only 
 five sail of the line, proceeded in pursuit of this fleet, which 
 was of considerably more than double his own force. He came 
 up, towards the close of the day, with the sternmost of the 
 enemy's ships, and immediately brought them to action.
 
 86 COPLEY'S CORRESPONDENCE. CHAP. in. 
 
 This bold and daring enterprise was crowned with signal 
 and deserved success. For, in the course of the engagement, 
 the two Spanish first-rates took fire and blew up, and the San 
 Antonio, after a short resistance, was captured. The rest of 
 the fleet, favoured by the darkness, made its escape, and took 
 refuge in the harbour of Cadiz. 
 
 August 15. 
 
 I have left my letter open for the purpose of communica- 
 ting the latest information, as well political as domestic. With 
 respect to the latter, I have the pleasure to acquaint you that 
 we are all well, an intelligence that to distant friends can 
 never be uninteresting or superfluous. We were yesterday 
 made supremely happy by the receipt of a letter from Betsy, 
 dated New York, 2Oth. I am afraid that the commissions 
 which it contains cannot be executed in time for the sailing of 
 the Minerva, but as there is another vessel to follow in about 
 a fortnight, the delay will not, perhaps, be of much importance. 
 My mother has omitted in her letter to send you our thanks 
 for the meal. I am therefore commissioned by the whole 
 circle to tender our acknowledgments in due form for your 
 kind and acceptable present You will, I am persuaded, be 
 happy to hear that our harvest is likely to prove most 
 abundant. The season has been extremely propitious, and 
 throughout the southern part of the island the wheat is in 
 general cut, and in many districts already secured. 
 
 Lord Nelson has visited Boulogne, but, as it appears, 
 rather for the purpose of experiment than with the intention 
 or the hope of performing any great and splendid exploit. 
 About twenty-five of the enemy's gun-boats were outside the 
 harbour ; he destroyed ten of these, but very properly and 
 humanely abstained from doing any injury to the town, which, 
 as it is said, lay completely exposed to bombardment. He 
 has since returned to the Downs, and is preparing for a second 
 expedition, but the object of attack is prudently concealed. 
 
 By letters received from Lord Minto, English minister at 
 Vienna, and Mr. Tooke, the East India Company's agent at 
 Constantinople, we are informed that the castle and city of 
 Cairo have surrendered to the combined British and Ottoman 
 army. The terms of the capitulation are reported to be 
 honourable. The troops of the enemy, to the number of five
 
 i8oi. WITH MR. GREENE. 87 
 
 thousand, are to be embarked at Rosetta, and to proceed to 
 France under the protection of a British force. It is still, 
 however, uncertain whether Gantheaume has landed any force 
 upon the coast of Africa ; but even if he succeeded in the 
 enterprise, I think the fall of Cairo may be regarded as 
 decisive of the fate of Egypt. There is therefore every reason 
 to hope that long before this the conquest has been completed, 
 and that we have at length happily succeeded in removing the 
 great obstacle to the termination of the war. For it has 
 
 o 
 
 always appeared to me impossible that the two governments 
 should, according to the usual maxims of policy, agree upon 
 the terms of peace before our operations in Egypt were 
 brought to a close. 
 
 August 17. 
 
 Lord Nelson has made a second attack upon Boulogne 
 but it has not proved successful. He got possession of several 
 of the gun-boats, but could not bring them off, as they were 
 all connected together and moored with heavy chains. Only 
 one lugger-rigged vessel was secured. Her complement of 
 men was seventy, of which all were killed but fourteen, and 
 most of these were dreadfully wounded. This circumstance 
 will enable you to form some idea of the desperate fury of the 
 engagement. Our loss is estimated at about two hundred, 
 killed and wounded. 
 
 Pray present my regards to Betsy, and believe me very 
 truly yours. 
 
 To Mr. Greene. 
 
 London, October 14, 1801. 
 
 You have, no doubt, before this returned to Boston, and 
 absence, as usual, has served to render home still more 
 agreeable. Montreal, independently of the beauty of its 
 situation, is greatly recommended to strangers by the 
 cheerful and hospitable character of its inhabitants. I am 
 persuaded that Mr. Clarke spared no exertions that might 
 contribute to the entertainment of his visitors. I am con- 
 vinced that you have been pleased with the place. 
 
 Travelling in America does not afford such a variety of 
 amusement and instruction as in Europe. Without manu-
 
 88 LETTER TO MR. GREENE. CHAP. in. 
 
 factures and without the arts, you have little to engage your 
 attention except the picturesque and sublime scenery of the 
 country. In passing, however, from the States to Canada, 
 there is a new source of observation opened to the mind. It 
 affords an opportunity of observing the effect of different 
 institutions and different forms of government upon the 
 improvement of a country, and upon the character and 
 manners of its inhabitants. Among the people of the States, 
 it is said, there is more activity and enterprise ; among those 
 of Canada, a greater share of courteousness and civility, 
 arising, perhaps, from the mixture of French, and a greater 
 appearance of neatness and comfort. Compared, too, with 
 the States, the latter country advances but slowly in the 
 settlement of its lands and the increase of its population. I 
 have thought that it is the policy of our government to retard 
 the growth of a colony which, it is probable, will shake off 
 the jurisdiction of the parent state when it begins to feel its 
 own strength and resources. With respect to Canada, 
 however, I speak only from report ; it is for you to correct 
 and instruct me. 
 
 The sudden restoration of peace between this country and 
 France will, no doubt, very much surprise you. To us, I 
 assure you, it was no less unexpected than welcome. Some 
 objections are made to the terms ; but when we recollect that, 
 with a very trifling difference, they are the same which were 
 proposed through the medium of Lord Malmesbury in the 
 year 1797, I think we have no great reason to complain. I 
 perfectly agree in opinion with Mr. Fox, that, independently 
 of considerations arising from humanity, even the island of 
 Martinique, valuable as it undoubtedly is, would be dearly 
 purchased at the price which it would cost to continue the 
 war for a single month. We are to restore all our conquests, 
 with the exception of Trinidad and Ceylon, and the Cape of 
 Good Hope is to be a free port Tobago, it is said, though 
 I will not vouch for the truth of the report, is to be ceded to 
 this country by the definitive treaty as an equivalent for the 
 million which is due on account of the French prisoners, and 
 which Buonaparte does not find it altogether convenient to 
 pay. I very much wish that we could have retained our 
 conquests in South America, as you, no doubt, would have
 
 i8oi. LETTER TO MRS. GREENE. 89 
 
 preferred the protection of the British government to that of 
 the Dutch. But though we have not obtained all that we 
 might have desired, we ought heartily to rejoice that a period 
 is at length put to the slaughter of the human species, and 
 to those multiplied miseries which this dreadful war has 
 occasioned. 
 
 Alexandria has capitulated to General Hutchinson. Bread 
 has fallen to twopence per pound. The three per cents, have 
 risen to sixty-seven. General Laureston, who brought over 
 the ratification, was drawn in triumph by the populace. The 
 illuminations have been splendid, and the rejoicings general 
 and almost unbounded. All the world is moving to Paris. 
 What a pity you are so far off ! Give my love to Betsy, and 
 believe me to be truly yours. 
 
 To Mrs. Greene. 
 
 London, October 31, 1801, 
 
 A_ letter from England is sure of a welcome reception. 
 Though destitute of any intrinsic value, it may derive import- 
 ance from accident and circumstance, as we treasure up a leaf 
 taken from the laurel that flourishes upon the tomb of Virgil, 
 or a fragment of stucco collected from the remains of Hercu- 
 laneum or Pompeii. 
 
 I am persuaded you have rejoiced with us at the happy 
 tidings of peace. Everything already begins to assume a 
 different aspect. Our manufactures, which, for some months 
 past, had been nearly suspended, are again in motion, and 
 employment is afforded to those hands who have suffered 
 under the utmost extremity of wretchedness and want. The 
 treaty is, however, very far from meeting with universal 
 approbation. 
 
 The warm Anti-Jacobins, with Windham at their head, are 
 of opinion that no peace should have been made with France, 
 while she retained her republican form of government. They 
 do not scruple to say that the ministers have signed the death 
 warrant of the country. Another party, at the head of whom 
 are the Marquis of Buckingham and Lord Grenville, censure 
 the peace on the ground of terms, and think that ministers
 
 90 COPLEY'S LETTERS CHAP. in. 
 
 have made concessions not authorized by a comparison of the 
 relative situation and resources of the two countries. On the 
 other hand, the treaty is supported by Mr. Pitt, and the leaders 
 of the opposition : by the former, on I know not what grounds ; 
 by the latter as the best conclusion that could at this time have 
 been expected to a disastrous and ruinous war. The debate 
 upon this important subject is to take place on Tuesday next, 
 and cannot fail to be highly animating and interesting. It is 
 whispered that Mr. Pitt, having disengaged himself from his 
 colleagues, who controlled and thwarted his views, is soon to 
 resume his former situation. It is, however, mere rumour, and 
 I cannot venture to give an opinion upon the subject. But 
 what have you to do with our parties and factions ? You have, 
 no doubt, by this time, lost all interest in our political squabbles, 
 and whether Pitt or Fox, Whig or Tory, prevails, must to you 
 be a matter of perfect indifference. Had I thought of this 
 sooner, I might have spared you the trouble of perusing so 
 many lines upon so dull a topic, and substituted something 
 more important in its place. But better late than never ! . . . 
 
 Pray forgive such a wretched scrawl ; but I have written as 
 fast as my fingers could move, that I might not lose my dinner. 
 Pray present our regards to Mr. Greene, and accept the 
 kind love of the whole circle. In haste, as you will easily 
 perceive. 
 
 To Mrs. Greene. 
 
 London, June 29, 1802. 
 
 The inclosed is the joint production of Mrs. Copley and her 
 son. My congratulations to you, my dear sister, upon the 
 happy event of which we have so lately received the joyful 
 intelligence. Mary looks as black as November at being 
 saluted by the title of aunt ; but, as to my mother, she has 
 with great readiness ordered her grandmamma's cap, and 
 looks as dignified and stately as you please. Pray present 
 my regards and congratulations to Mr. Greene, and believe 
 me ever yours.
 
 i8o2. TO MRS. GREENE. 91 
 
 To Mrs. Greene. 
 
 London, August 9, 1802. 
 
 And so, my dear sister, you are apprehensive that Mary 
 and myself may forget you ! 
 
 It is surely not kind to entertain such an opinion of us ; it 
 is cruel to express it. After having passed so many years 
 together in the most perfect love and harmony ; after having 
 shared in the plays of childhood and the amusements and 
 conversation of maturer years ; after so many reciprocations 
 of friendship, is it possible that your image should ever be 
 effaced from our recollection ? No ; whatever may be my 
 situation or fortune in life, in whatever part of the world my 
 lot may be cast, you will ever be present to my thoughts ; 
 your virtues, the loveliness of your disposition, and the 
 repeated instances I have, upon all occasions, received of your 
 kindness and attachment will ever inspire me with the 
 tenderest recollections. Dismiss, then, my dear sister, these 
 apprehensions from your mind, and entertain juster sentiments 
 of those whose regard, far from being impaired by distance 
 and the lapse of time, will every day acquire new strength 
 and vigour. 
 
 And now, Betsy, I have a great secret to communicate 
 to you, of which, however, you must not suffer even a hint 
 to escape from your lips. If I were here to pause, what a 
 field should I leave open for the activity of your imagination ! 
 What is this important secret which he is preparing to unfold ? 
 Is Mary upon the point of being led to the hymeneal altar ? 
 Or are you, yourself, fond as you have always professed to be 
 of freedom, are you become so far degenerate as to submit, 
 without a struggle, to the slavish and galling yoke of 
 matrimony ? No, my dear sister : the secret, the wonderful 
 secret, to which I allude is of infinitely more interest than 
 any little private arrangement of this nature. It is of interest 
 not to our little group alone, but to the whole circle of the 
 Arts ; not only to the present time, but to all future genera- 
 tions. But what is it? Well, then, attend: my father has 
 discovered the Venetian " the true Venetian," more precious 
 than the philosopher's stone ! Is that all ? And are you
 
 92 COPLEY'S LETTER CHAP. in. 
 
 already so barbarized by your transatlantic residence as to 
 put such a question ? Is that all ? To have made a dis- 
 covery which the artists of three generations have in vain 
 been endeavouring to explore ! What is it that has raised 
 the Venetian artists to so high a pitch of celebrity ? It is 
 not their drawing ; it is not their superior skill in composition, 
 in the distribution of drapery, or in the management of light 
 and shade : it is principally to be ascribed to the medium, or 
 vehicle, of which they made use, which was peculiar to them- 
 selves, which they carefully concealed from others, and which 
 was lost with the decline of their school. Henceforth, then, 
 you may fairly expect that my father's pictures will transcend 
 the productions even of Titian himself. After such a com- 
 munication what can I say more ? l 
 
 Give a kiss to the baby, and my regards to Mr. Greene. 
 I have written to Mr. Greene this morning, but as there are 
 two ships upon the point of sailing, the Galen and the Minerva, 
 I intend sending one by each vessel. 
 
 To Mr. Greene. 
 
 London, August 9, 1802. 
 
 Accept our sincere congratulations upon the birth of the 
 little cherub, of whom Betsy writes in terms of such rapture 
 and fondness ! I assure you there is not one among us but 
 would give the world to see and dandle the pretty creature, 
 though it were only for a few minutes. But his mother, if I 
 conjecture rightly, could not be prevailed upon to spare him 
 even for that short space. I am sure Betsy makes an ex- 
 cellent nurse and an excellent mother, and there is only one 
 danger to apprehend, lest the little man in embryo should be 
 spoiled by too much caressing. The most effectual means of 
 preventing this is by providing a succession of similar play- 
 things, that the attractions of one may be set off against 
 those of another. 
 
 1 Sir Joshua Reynolds thought that he too had discovered the Venetian secret 
 in the perilous vehicles which he used for the colours of his pictures. He lived 
 to see in their decay how greatly he was mistaken. Copley's discovery, whatever 
 it was, had no such disastrous consequences. His colours have stood well, but 
 they certainly have not the luminous richness of the Venetian school.
 
 i8o2. TO MR. GREENE. 93 
 
 With respect to domestic intelligence, I have little to 
 communicate. I am sure it will afford you and my sister 
 great pleasure to learn that we all enjoy good health ; and 
 though my mother occasionally sighs when she reflects upon 
 the immense distance at which her daughter is removed from 
 her, yet when she, at the same time, calls to mind the happi- 
 ness of her lot, it alleviates her anxiety, and whispers con- 
 solation and peace. 
 
 In the field of politics, as far as this country appears to 
 be concerned, everything is calm. The calamities of war 
 begin to be forgotten. The burdens which it has occasioned 
 we bear without repining. Opposition and faction have 
 nearly died away, for the measures of the new administration 
 are almost universally approved by the nation. If any dis- 
 satisfaction exists it is chiefly among the most violent 
 advocates of the war. 
 
 Perhaps great talents and an ambitious spirit are not to 
 be wished for in a prime minister of this country. The rest- 
 lessness of spirit with which they are accompanied is fatal to 
 national repose and national prosperity : for repose and pros- 
 perity, in a commercial kingdom, are intimately connected 
 with each other. Mr. Pitt is almost forgotten, and though a 
 subscription has been entered into for raising a statue to his 
 honour, and five thousand pounds have been collected for 
 this purpose, yet it would be strange, indeed, if, after being 
 twenty years in power, and after having filled the pockets of 
 so many, such a scheme should have failed of success. A 
 similar project has been set on foot in favour of Mr. Dundas 
 at Glasgow. 
 
 Betty will regret to hear that Sir Edward Knatchbull 
 has been thrown out for the county of Middlesex upon the 
 late election. The contest for Middlesex has been carried 
 on with much warmth between the partisans of Sir Francis 
 Burdett and Mr. Mainwaring. The former has been returned, 
 but it is doubtful whether he will hold his seat, as many of 
 his votes are of a doubtful nature. He owes his election to 
 his opposition to the House of Correction, in Cold Bath Fields, 
 commonly styled the Bastile by the populace, and in which, 
 I believe, some abuses of power have been committed. It is 
 impossible to describe the enthusiasm of the multitude in
 
 94 
 
 COPLEY'S LETTERS TO CHAP. in. 
 
 favour of their champion. The people were, to a man, on his 
 side, and the numbers which accompanied him from Brent- 
 ford to London, on the day of his election, surpassed any- 
 thing that the imagination can conceive. I send two 
 numbers of " Bell's Weekly Messenger," and will supply you 
 with a regular series of them by every opportunity that pre- 
 sents itself. It is a well-conducted paper, and will furnish 
 you with all the material intelligence, as well with respect 
 to this country as to Europe at large. Present my kindest 
 regards to Betsy and all your friends, and believe me to be 
 very truly yours. 
 
 To Mr. Greene. 
 
 London, September 9, 1802. 
 
 Dear Sir, The Sampson still lingers in port. This delay 
 has enabled me to send another weekly paper, and to repeat 
 to you and my sister the assurance of our love and kind 
 regard. It has not, however, furnished me with any consider- 
 able supply either of domestic or political information ; for we 
 who are constant residents in London may be truly said, at 
 this season of the year, to be in the stationary point of our 
 orbit. The city, indeed, is always alive, always in a state of 
 fermentation and tumult ; but the western extremity of the 
 metropolis is completely deserted, and almost every house 
 shut up. A stranger might suppose that we had been visited 
 by some dreadful epidemic, such is the solitude that reigns in 
 the streets, such the silence that everywhere prevails. Instead 
 of the rapid succession of brilliant equipages which dazzle our 
 sight in the lively month of May, we see nothing but here 
 and there the crazy chariot of some medical practitioner, 
 which, by the sad association which it produces, only adds to 
 the gloom and horror of the scene. Even the Temple, that 
 theatre of noise, contention, petulance, and wit, the loved 
 abode of the demon of strife, even the Temple itself is 
 forsaken and deserted. All is still and silent. This stillness 
 and silence, however, are most congenial to study ; and if we 
 cannot communicate with the living, at least we have the 
 consolation it undoubtedly is, that we are permitted, without 
 interruption or disturbance, " to hold high converse with the
 
 1803. MR. AND MRS. GREENE. 95 
 
 mighty dead." Mr. and a Mrs. Parker and Miss Cruikshanks, 
 from Montreal, deigned, on Saturday, to enliven the scene in 
 George Street. You may imagine the number of questions 
 with which we teased them, and the pleasure we experienced 
 from their answers. Nothing was too minute for our inquiries, 
 because every circumstance, however trifling in appearance, is 
 interesting and dear to absent friends. 
 
 All the British world is in Paris ; the rage for visiting that 
 metropolis was never, at any former period, so general and 
 violent. There is, indeed, much to see, much to observe, in 
 that extraordinary place ; it offers a wide field to the specu- 
 lations of the moralist, the philosopher, and the politician. 
 Those who have returned do not, in general, appear very 
 well pleased with their visit. They tell us that in the inter- 
 course of society the most perfect equality prevails, but that 
 the government is vigilant, arbitrary, and despotic ; that the 
 prisons are filled with state criminals, and that it is dangerous 
 to converse upon political affairs ; that the men are dirty and 
 slovenly in their dress and appearance, but that the women in 
 these respects are extremely gay and elegant ; that the most 
 unbridled licentiousness of manners prevails, particularly in 
 the intercourse of the sexes ; that gaming is the employment 
 both of day and night, and that it is professedly sanctioned 
 by the laws ; that religion is ridiculed and despised, and 
 every serious subject banished from the mind ; that the First 
 Consul is not popular, but that the people are wholly careless 
 and indifferent upon the subject of politics, and appear not to 
 feel any interest in the transactions of the government. Such 
 is said to be a faithful sketch of the inhabitants of New Rome. 
 
 To Mrs. Greene. 
 
 Dorchester, July 28, 1803. 
 
 My dear Sister, We have long been anxiously hoping 
 to hear from you, and have therefore been rendered very 
 happy by the receipt of your letter of the Qth of June, which 
 contains the agreeable intelligence of your welfare. The 
 change of your residence 1 has again put you in a bustle, again 
 
 1 To the Vassall House, a large, old-fashioned house standing in spacious 
 grounds, which now form part of the present Pemberton Square, Boston, U.S.
 
 96 COPLEY'S LETTER CHAP. in. 
 
 afforded an opportunity for the display of your taste and judg- 
 ment, unless, indeed, these powers, for which you were for- 
 merly so eminent, have lost their activity from a long residence 
 in a barbaroits clime. I have no doubt that you must be 
 highly pleased with the charming situation of your house, 
 which is not excelled, and perhaps hardly equalled, by any 
 other spot upon the extensive continent of America. 
 
 You are no doubt anxious for our fate, menaced as we are 
 with subjugation by our restless and powerful enemy. For 
 ourselves, however, we have no fears and apprehensions what- 
 ever. We are nearly prepared for the reception of these 
 ferocious Gauls ; and in the course or three or four weeks our 
 means of defence will be so complete that, even if they should 
 succeed in evading the vigilance of our fleets, they must be 
 overwhelmed by the number of our military, before they can 
 penetrate far from the shore. We are in fact all soldiers ; 
 even your brother carries his musket, and as he rides through 
 the country the sight of every laurel-bush inspires him with a 
 generous and noble emulation. 1 
 
 But, numerous as this body is, perhaps you will not be 
 disposed to place much confidence in the steadiness of new 
 levies, and will inquire the amount of our regular force. We 
 have, at present, in this island, about forty thousand cavalry, 
 and about the same number of infantry, equal in all respects 
 to the best troops of France. The old militia consists of 
 ninety thousand men, which were trained during almost the 
 whole of the last war, and are scarcely inferior to the troops 
 of the line. The army of reserve, which, for England and 
 Scotland, amounts to forty thousand men, will be embodied 
 and trained in about three weeks from this time. The volun- 
 teer and yeomanry corps, infantiy and cavalry, may be taken 
 at about one hundred and fifty thousand, the greater part of 
 which are in a good state of discipline, having been trained 
 upwards of five years. Last of all comes the levy en masse, 
 the bill for which has just passed into a law. By this bill, the 
 whole population of the country is to be immediately trained, 
 
 1 Compare this paragraph with Lord Campbell's statement that for years 
 before and after this time Copley's hero was " Napoleon the Great, who had 
 established pure despotism in France, and wished to extinguish liberty in every 
 other country " (' Life of Lord Lyndhurst,' p. 14).
 
 1803. TO MRS. GREENE. 97 
 
 which, it is said, may be effected in about a month. Four 
 hundred thousand men of the first class, that is, of unmarried 
 men, between the ages, I think, of seventeen and thirty, will 
 be obtained by this seasonable, energetic, and constitutional 
 measure. 
 
 With such a force, and with the complete command of the 
 seas, which the enemy has no means of disputing with us, I 
 think we may venture to speak with confidence of our security. 
 You will perhaps wish to know something with respect to the 
 disposition of the people. The information on this point will 
 be very satisfactory. Never, upon any occasion, was there a 
 greater display of loyalty, zeal, and unanimity, and before the 
 lapse of a twelve month you may expect to hear of events 
 highly honourable to the British character. 1 If we become a 
 military nation, everything is to be expected from that energy, 
 firmness, and constancy of temper which have ever distin- 
 guished the people of this country. 
 
 My dear sister, I send to you and Mr. Greene a large 
 bundle of newspapers, which will, I hope, afford you much 
 entertainment and much information with respect to the 
 present state of this country and of Europe. How happy 
 you are, to be enjoying all the blessings of peace and tran- 
 quillity, while Europe is in a state of fever and agitation, the 
 result of which it is impossible to predict ! I am, at present, 
 upon the circuit with Judge Graham, 2 and shall return to town 
 after completing a tour through Devonshire, Cornwall, and 
 Somerset, in about three weeks. We have hitherto had 
 a delightful excursion. The weather has been extremely 
 favourable, and the country is delightful. 
 
 You will rejoice to hear that there is every prospect of a 
 most abundant harvest. Upon our tour we are of course 
 
 1 These are strange words from the man who, if Lord Campbell is to be 
 believed ('Life of Lord Lyndhurst,' p. 14), was " devotedly attached to repub- 
 lican doctrines," and (Ibid. p. 10) "thought a democratic revolution would be 
 salutary, and is said (!) to have contemplated without dismay the possible esta- 
 blishment of an Anglican Republic." They are more in accordance with what 
 he said of himself in his speech on the 7th of October, 1831, on the Second Read- 
 ing of the Reform Bill, "To the monarchical institutions of my country I have been 
 attached both by habit and education." In this letter the same spirit may be 
 recognised which animated Lord Lyndhurst's great speeches at the time of the 
 Crimean war. 
 
 2 As his marshal. 
 
 H
 
 98 VISIT TO WILTON. CHAP. in. 
 
 received and entertained with the utmost attention and hospi- 
 tality. Yesterday we passed at Milton Abbey, the seat of 
 Lord Dorchester, where I had the pleasure of meeting two 
 of your acquaintances, whom you will recollect by the 
 name of Mr. and Mrs. Lionel Darner. He is brother to 
 Lord Dorchester. Mrs. Darner is a very agreeable, good- 
 natured little woman. 
 
 From Salisbury we went to Wilton, the seat of Lord Pem- 
 broke, where I had an opportunity of seeing the celebrated 
 picture of "The Pembroke Family" [by Vandyck]. I was 
 extremely delighted with the production, which is certainly 
 one of the finest works of art, in that style, which the world 
 contains. My father, who has never seen it, will almost be 
 disposed to envy me the opportunity which the circuit has 
 afforded. His " Knatchbull Family " is a picture of the same 
 character, and, I think, yields in no respect, except in the 
 taste of the dresses, to the work which I have mentioned. 
 
 I must now take my leave, having scribbled an immode- 
 rately long letter, which, on account of the love and affection 
 you bear the writer, will, I am sure, not be considered as 
 tedious. 
 
 Pray remember me most kindly to Mr. Greene, and 
 present my love and regards to my little nephews and 
 nieces.
 
 ( 99 ) 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 Copley called to the Bar Goes on' the Midland Circuit His early 
 struggles His political opinions misrepresented Persevering industry 
 First great success in defending Luddite Rioter at Nottingham 
 Becomes Serjeant-at-La\v Death of his father. 
 
 COPLEY was now in his thirty-first year. His business 
 as a special pleader was not sufficient to maintain 
 him, and the allowance attached to his fellowship, 
 something under 1 50 a year, would expire in 1 804, 
 unless he took orders and entered the Church. So 
 gloomy were his prospects that for a time he enter- 
 tained serious thoughts of taking this step, and he was 
 only induced to abandon it by the urgent entreaties of 
 his father that he should stick to the Bar, and not 
 throw away the fruits of many years of persistent 
 study. 1 He was now fully prepared to enter the 
 higher branch of the profession, to which his practice 
 as a special pleader was only a preliminary step. But 
 to be called to the Bar, without funds at his back to 
 enable him to go on circuit, and to keep his place 
 until he might hope to become known, and to earn an 
 income, would have been merely to court failure. 
 
 1 What Copley, the future Chancellor, meditated, Connop Thirlwall, the future 
 bishop, did. When Copley was canvassing Cambridge in 1826, he was intro- 
 duced to Thirlwall, who was then in residence there. Thirlwall, he was told, 
 had lost heart about his prospects at the Bar, and was thinking of forsaking it 
 and going into the Church. Copley showed him how near he had himself been 
 to taking that step, and what good reason he had to c thankful that he had not 
 followed up his intention. Thirlwall decided the other way, how well and 
 wisely was soon shown. 
 
 H 2
 
 IOO COPLEY ENABLED BY MR. GREENE CHAP. iv. 
 
 Unhappily his father was not at this time in a position 
 to help him. War with France had again broken out. 
 It was a time of high prices and great monetary de- 
 pression. The fine arts were at a discount. Com- 
 missions for portraits were falling off, and there was no 
 market for historical pictures. What was to be done ? 
 
 Across the Atlantic there was in Mr. Greene a 
 friend, who had the power, and also, as was quickly 
 shown, the will to help. To him the elder Copley 
 wrote on the 26th of November, 1803, laying the 
 family difficulty before him, and asking for the loan of 
 a thousand pounds to enable the young lawyer to make 
 his start in life. " I shall thank you," he wrote, " for 
 as early an answer to this letter as possible, as my son 
 is under the necessity of determining his course before 
 his Fellowship expires," which it did in six months. 
 
 The answer came promptly and the money with it. 
 The tone of young Copley's letter to Mr. Greene in 
 acknowledgment of a boon of such inestimable import- 
 ance was simple and manly. Not less noticeable in 
 relation to the writer's future career is the way in 
 which he speaks of his profession as affording " a 
 passage to what is of more value than wealth, to 
 reputation and honours." 
 
 London, May 30, 1804. 
 
 Dear Sir, I am to thank you for a very serious obligation, 
 and I do thank you with my whole heart. It is now conside- 
 rably more than a year that I have been waiting for an oppor- 
 tunity to be called to the bar ; but my father, from various 
 unforeseen circumstances, has not been able to afford me the 
 pecuniary assistance which was absolutely necessary for this 
 purpose. Your friendship has supplied the deficiency, and I 
 cannot sufficiently express the sense which I entertain of your 
 kindness. It will not be improper, and it may be a duty, 
 under these circumstances, to state to you the nature of my 
 prospects. After five years of regular application and study,
 
 1 804. TO BE CALLED TO THE BAR. IOI 
 
 I hope I may venture to say, at least to so near a friend, that 
 I am moderately conversant with the system of our laws ; and 
 by continual and repeated practice at the societies of mock 
 debate, I think I have also acquired, what is not less essential 
 than a knowledge of the laws, some degree of ease and fluency 
 of expression. I have also, during my practice as a special 
 pleader under the bar, formed some professional connections 
 which, I hope, may materially tend to facilitate my progress 
 and to promote my future interests. Under these auspices, 
 and assisted by your friendship, I am now to launch my bark 
 into a wider sea ; I am not insensible of the dangers with 
 which it abounds. But, while to some it proves disastrous and 
 fatal, to others it affords a passage to wealth, or, what is of 
 more value than wealth, to reputation and honours. 
 
 We have been rendered extremely happy by the letters 
 which we have lately received from America. The information 
 which they communicate relative to the increase in your 
 family and the favourable state of my sister's health has 
 afforded to all of us the sincerest pleasure. 
 
 With respect to our political prospects, they are sufficiently 
 gloomy. It appears impossible to foresee any termination to 
 the severe and arduous contest in which we are engaged. For 
 my own part, I have never been in the least apprehensive of 
 the result of a direct attack from the enemy ; but what may 
 be the consequences arising from a continuation of our present 
 exertions and I fear they must long be continued it is im- 
 possible to predict. 
 
 According to the news of the day, the ceremony of the 
 Imperial coronation has already been performed. 1 
 
 You will, I am sure, with pleasure, present to Betsy my 
 tenderest regards and congratulations. Believe me to be, 
 dear sir, your faithful friend and brother. 
 
 Within a few days after this letter was written 
 Copley was called to the Bar (June 18, 1804). 
 " Having no local or particular connections in any 
 
 1 This report was premature. The Coronation of Napoleon I. did not take 
 place till the 2nd of December, 1804. The Empire was decreed by the Senate 
 on the 1 8th of May preceding, but the vote of the nation had subsequently to 
 be taken, and the result was only made public on the 1st of December.
 
 102 GOES ON THE MIDLAND CIRCUIT. CHAP. iv. 
 
 part of England," he says in the memorandum already- 
 quoted, " I selected the Midland Circuit and the 
 Lincolnshire and Nottingham Sessions." The family 
 correspondence at this time is full of expressions of 
 hopefulness as to his prospects. "His friends," his 
 sister writes to Mrs. Greene (June 12, 1804), "are all 
 very sanguine in the expectations they have formed of 
 his success. We shall lose his company in three 
 weeks, as he is going the circuit. We shall see very 
 little of him from this time, as he will be absent nearly 
 six months in the year, attending the sessions and the 
 circuits." His mother, a few weeks later (July 28), 
 writes to Mrs. Greene with the measured hopefulness 
 natural to one who had experienced not a few disap- 
 pointments in life. " I trust your brother will meet 
 with that success which will produce happiness for 
 himself and friends. We are encouraged to hope so 
 from all who speak upon the subject ; but in this, as 
 in all other worldly concerns, we must not allow our- 
 selves to be too sanguine. . . . The law, as well as 
 other pursuits, requires time and much application to 
 secure success. I am happy to say that your brother 
 has been and is very persevering." 
 
 It was at this time, Lord Campbell tells us (' Life of 
 Lord Lyndhurst,' p.i i), that he made Copley's acquain- 
 tance. This, he says, he did at a Debating Club which 
 was held at the chambers of Mr. Tidd, the special 
 pleader, and of which Copley was a leading ornament. 
 "When I entered here as a pupil," which, as we are 
 informed in Lord Campbell's 'Life' (p. 133), he did 
 not do before the 3rd of January, 1804, "and was 
 admitted a member of this club, I had the honour of 
 being presented to Mr. Copley, to whom I looked 
 up with the most profound reverence and admiration." 
 That it was not without cause he did so is obvious
 
 1804. SPEAKING AT DEBATING SOCIETY. 103 
 
 from a passage in his Autobiography, written in 1842, 
 and written sine ird aut studio, with less at least of 
 either than the Lyndhurst Biography of a later period. 
 "When Copley," he says, "took pains, he argued most 
 admirably, giving a foretaste of those powers which 
 should have placed him in the first rank of lawyers, 
 orators, and statesmen. His fault at this time," Lord 
 Campbell goes on to say, and he says the same thing 
 in different words in his * Life of Lord Lyndhurst/ 
 " which he afterwards fully corrected, was being too 
 loud and declamatory." This statement he proceeds 
 to illustrate by an absurd story of Copley's vehemence 
 having drawn together a crowd of the porters and 
 laundresses of the Temple outside Mr. Tidd's cham- 
 bers late at night, which led to a cry of fire being 
 raised, and the Temple fire engine being actually 
 brought out. Now as the discussions of the Tidd 
 Debating Club, by Lord Campbell's own account 
 ('Life,' vol. i. p. 138), took place late in the evening, 
 when the Temple gates were closed, and were confined 
 to pure questions of law, the meeting being modelled 
 upon the plan of the courts at Westminster, a chief 
 justice, counsel for the plaintiff and defendant, &c., 
 the story is upon the face of it incredible, and may 
 be discarded as one of the delusions of a memory 
 which in matters of this kind was singularly inexact. 
 
 On the same page we are told that "in those 
 days Lord Campbell never met Lord Lyndhurst in 
 private society ; " and indeed it is obvious from his 
 published letters and Autobiography, that then and 
 for years afterwards all he knew of Copley was 
 what he saw of him at the Tidd Debating Club. 
 He was not on the same circuit and did not mix with 
 the same set, yet he does not hesitate to speak of the 
 young struggling barrister, whom we have seen, in the
 
 104 FALSE REPRESENTATION CHAP. IV. 
 
 letters above quoted, the idol of his home, and the 
 strenuous student of an exacting profession, in terms 
 calculated to convey a derogatory impression both of 
 the principles and habits of his life. " Bent on present 
 enjoyment," are his words, " Copley was reckless as to 
 what might be said or thought of him," and then, as if 
 from a feeling that this was going too far, the sugges- 
 tion is qualified by the addition of these words, " But 
 by his agreeable manners, by his contempt of hypo- 
 crisy, and by the habit of representing himself some- 
 what more self indulgent than he really was, he 
 contrived to disarm the censorious, and to soothe all 
 whom he approached." (Lord Campbell's ' Life,' 
 vol. i. p. 140.) 
 
 In this part of his Autobiography Lord Campbell 
 is silent on the subject of Copley's political opinions. 
 Indeed he could have had no means of knowing 
 them. They were not personal friends, Copley did 
 not frequent any of the debating societies, at which 
 political and social topics were discussed, where 
 Campbell made his first efforts as a speaker. Never- 
 theless in his Life of Lyndhurst, he claims to speak as 
 from an intimate knowledge of Copley's political sen- 
 timents. "In those days " that is, the days when 
 Campbell made his acquaintance at Mr. Tidd's rooms, 
 between the 3rd of January, when Campbell became a 
 pupil, and the 8th of June, 1804, when Copley was 
 called to the Bar, for it is of these days he has been 
 speaking 
 
 " I never met him in private society, but I did meet him at 
 public dinners of a political complexion. In after life he 
 asserted that he had never been a Whig, which I can testify 
 to be true, He was a Whig, and something more or, in one 
 word, a Jacobin. He would refuse to be present at a dinner 
 given on the return of Mr. Fox for Westminster, but he
 
 1 804- OF COPLEY'S POLITICAL OPINIONS. 105 
 
 delighted to dine with the 'Corresponding Society,' or to 
 celebrate the anniversary of the acquittal of Hardy and Home 
 Tooke." 1 
 
 One naturally inquires on reading this passage, 
 what were " the dinners of a political complexion " at 
 which Campbell "not u n frequently " met Copley at 
 this time ? His Autobiography is silent about them. 
 Were they dinners "to celebrate the anniversary of 
 the acquittal of Hardy and Home Tooke ? " If such 
 they were, how came the wary Campbell to be there 
 the cautious young Scot, who had written a few 
 years before (May 25, 1801) to quiet his father's 
 apprehensions that he might have been infected with 
 the " advanced views " of the period ? " You will 
 caution me, no doubt, against espousing the cause of 
 opposition ; but I have already determined to be the firm 
 supporter of arbitrary power and passive obedience. 
 Patriots in the present day cut a mighty foolish figure." 
 (' Life,' vol. i., p. 72). If innocent curiosity took Camp- 
 bell there, and, as he was no Jacobin, active sympathy 
 could not have been his inducement, why might not 
 Copley have been present from the same motive ? 
 But, in truth, there is not a shadow of foundation for 
 these statements, any more than for the assertion on 
 the immediately preceding page, to which attention 
 has already been called, that, when Copley was at the 
 University, his " mind being from infancy imbued with 
 republican principles, he took what in American phrase 
 
 1 The wanton recklessness of this statement is proved by a reference to dates. 
 Fox's election for Westminster took place in 1784, when Copley was twelve years 
 old. Hardy and Tooke were tried and acquitted in 1794, when Copley was a 
 student at Cambridge. He was away from England part of 1795 an< i *U I 79^ ) 
 and the " Corresponding Society " was suppressed soon after his return in 1797. 
 How could Campbell, who only came to London in 1798, and never met Copley 
 till 1804, and even then was not admitted to his acquaintance, know anything 
 about his antecedent history or opinions ?
 
 106 GAOSS MISSTATEMENTS CHAP. iv. 
 
 he called the ' go-a-head side ' so warmly and openly 
 as to run some risk of serious animadversion." 
 
 How little Lord Campbell really did know of the 
 man against whom he ventures to make such grave 
 imputations is made apparent by the gross inaccuracy 
 of his account of Copley's doings in the period between 
 his taking his bachelor's degree and being called to 
 the Bar. " Copley," he says, "as soon as he finally 
 left Cambridge, took chambers in Crown Office Row." 
 The chambers he took were not in Crown Office Row, 
 but in Essex Court, and they were not taken till at least 
 two years after he left Cambridge. Copley, as we have 
 seen, went to America in 1795, but according to Lord 
 Campbell (' Life of Lord Lyndhurst/ p. 1 1), he did not 
 go there till after Campbell had become acquainted with 
 him in 1 804 ! Again, in the same paragraph in which 
 he records that Copley determined on being called to the 
 Bar partly because a constant attendance at chambers 
 was expected from him as a special pleader, and this 
 " was very distasteful to him " a wholly gratuitous 
 assumption he says that " before commencing his 
 forensic career, he embarked for America," and that 
 he was called to the Bar "as soon as possible after his 
 return " from that country. The " soon as possible " 
 being rather more than seven years afterwards ! 
 
 With such gross misstatements as these before us, 
 what credit can be attached to the charges put forward 
 by Lord Campbell, with the assurance of a man speaking 
 from intimate personal knowledge, that Copley was an 
 avowed Jacobin, that is, a man who made no secret of 
 his conviction that it would be for the good of mankind 
 if the British Constitution were overthrown and the 
 whole framework of society dislocated ? Copley, no 
 doubt, was too sagacious and too far-seeing not to 
 have discerned very early, that the days of " arbitrary
 
 1804. BY LORD CAMPBELL. 107 
 
 power and passive obedience " were fast coming to an 
 end in England as indeed what generous spirit did 
 not desire, what man of sense did not foresee, that 
 happy change ? But he had studied the history and 
 the thoughts of the great men of classic antiquity too 
 well not to recoil from the extravagant doctrines of 
 the wild theorists whom he is recklessly accused of 
 adopting as his leaders ; and with his educated taste 
 and severely logical intellect, disciplined as these had 
 been by travel, and by observation of the dangers of 
 democracy which had impressed him during his stay 
 in America, is it conceivable that he should have 
 wasted his time, every hour of which was wanted for 
 the studies of a profession failure in which was ruin 
 to himself and to those he loved, in listening to the 
 frothy fustian of speakers in the " Corresponding 
 Society," or worshippers of such popular demigods as 
 Hardy and Home Tooke ? Neither Lord Campbell, 
 nor any other of Lord Lyndhurst's detractors, though 
 again and again challenged to prove assertions of this 
 nature, were able to adduce evidence in support of the 
 charge during Lord Lyndhurst's life. After what has 
 been seen in the letters above cited of the tone and 
 character of young Copley's mind, of his loyalty to his 
 sovereign, and his antipathy to revolutionary change, 
 it would be a waste of words to dwell longer on impu- 
 tations which not even the malice that means to strike 
 with a dead hand would have ventured to have made, 
 could it have dreamed that these letters were in 
 existence to refute its calculated calumnies. 1 
 
 1 It was also said of Sir Samuel Romilly, that he had been a bigoted 
 Republican. Lord Denman, when this was told him, would not believe it, 
 " because the universal estimate of Romily's fine understanding would be 
 greatly depreciated by the fact being so. For to hazard all the secured benefits 
 of an established order, from a distaste for those forms which fools alone 
 contest ; to regret the freedom which may be enjoyed under a constitutional
 
 IO8 COPLEY'S INDUSTRIOUS HABITS. CHAP. iv. 
 
 After his call to the Bar Copley set earnestly to 
 work to make his way there by the only means open 
 to a gentleman that is, by assiduous attendance on 
 the circuit, at the sessions, and in the Courts of 
 Westminster, by keeping himself abreast of the new 
 decisions, and, when briefs came, by showing that the 
 interests intrusted to him would not suffer in his hands. 
 He was not in a position to trifle with his vocation. 
 The welfare of his family as well as of himself was 
 dependent on his success ; and this consideration, to 
 say nothing of honourable ambition, was, to a nature 
 such as we have seen his to be, an incentive to "spurn 
 delights and live laborious days " not likely to be 
 disregarded. Very soon the intervals between his letters 
 to his sister, Mrs. Greene, grew longer and longer. His 
 sister at home has to plead in writing to America, that 
 "there are many apologies to be made for him. He 
 is obliged to be in Westminster Hall from nine in the 
 morning till four o'clock ; after that is the only time he 
 has for business and study." A few months later his 
 mother writes " We have the comfort of his company 
 at dinner, and that is as much time as he can afford 
 us." And again (March 15, 1805) "Your brother 
 is now absent on Circuit. He is making all possible 
 exertion to get forward in his profession, and we do 
 not doubt his success ; but we find the law, as well as 
 many other pursuits, requires much perseverance and 
 patience to obtain the object ; it is well for us that we 
 do not always foresee the degree that is necessary." 
 
 But when he had a little leisure nothing seems to 
 
 monarchy for the purpose of an experiment whether it may not also find shelter in 
 a fabric which, if it can be reared, will belong to an order of architecture which, 
 in my eyes, may be more symmetrical this is a course which would no doubt 
 deserve many other names, but certainly that of folly in a pre-eminent degree." 
 (Letter to Mr. Merivale, 24 August, 1832. Arnould's ' Memoir of Lord Denman,' 
 vol. i. p. 389.) If this were true of Romilly, how much more likely to be true 
 of Copley ?
 
 1804. LETTER TO MRS. GREENE. 109 
 
 have given him greater delight than to sit down and 
 gossip for half an hour on paper with the sister of his 
 first affections. As for example 
 
 London, September 3, 1804. 
 
 My dear Sister, I am persuaded that you still take an 
 interest in the occurrences, the lesser as well as the more 
 important occurrences, of this part of the globe ; and that 
 occasionally to revive the recollections of past events, and to 
 pursue in imagination the fortunes of your former friends and 
 associates, must, to a mind constituted like yours, prove a 
 source of pure rational pleasure. Thus impressed, then, it is 
 my intention to transmit across the bosom of the Atlantic a 
 sheet rilled with intelligence, a collection of little facts, which, 
 though trifling in themselves, may, in the union and composition 
 of the whole, form a picture amusing to your taste and fancy. 
 
 In considering what particular figure shall occupy the fore- 
 ground, I have, after some deliberation, selected myself, both 
 on account of the gravity and stateliness of my character, 
 for I am now a counsellor learned in the law, and as being, 
 in other respects, an object of no inconsiderable importance, 
 at least in my own estimation. In appearance, then, I hope I 
 am unchanged since we parted in the Downs. For, after some 
 investigation at the glass, which with me, you recollect, was 
 always a favourite article of furniture, I cannot discover 
 either a single gray hair or a single additional wrinkle. But 
 although the appearance of the person is the same, you will 
 not from thence conclude that in other respects I have been 
 stationary. You will, in common courtesy, suppose me to be 
 as much wiser and as much better as the interval may justly 
 seem to require. Run back in your imagination through the 
 last four years, and observe me writing at the drawing-room 
 table, Mary upon the one side and my mother upon the other, 
 and you will have a perfect picture of the present moment. 
 So much for myself. 
 
 The next figure in the sketch is my mother. She is as 
 kind and as good and loves all of us as much as ever. We 
 cannot sufficiently thank Providence for having blessed us 
 with so dear a friend and instructress, to whom we owe so 
 much, more, indeed, than all our attention can ever repay.
 
 110 LETTER TO MR. GREENE. CHAP. iv. 
 
 It cannot, my dear sister, but afford you the sincerest pleasure 
 to learn that her health is still good ; and I am almost led to 
 flatter myself that if you were suddenly to return you would 
 perceive no sensible change in her general air and appearance. 
 She sometimes drops a tear at the mention of your name, 
 expressive of a mingled emotion of regret at your absence 
 and of joy and happiness at the recollection of the blessings 
 of your situation. 
 
 Our father, too, although he was a few weeks since slightly 
 indisposed, is again well and cheerful, and as industrious and 
 indefatigable as ever. He is at present employed in painting 
 an equestrian picture of the Prince of Wales, which is to rival 
 the Charles of Vandyck and the Ferdinand of Rubens. 
 
 Mary, in despite of all I can say and all I can do, will still 
 be silent, and I assure you, in the conversation of the table, we 
 have lost much in losing you. She has already written to 
 you, but she desires me to reiterate her expressions of affection 
 and regard. 
 
 Thus have I formed the principal group of my picture, far 
 outstripping my father in ease and rapidity of execution. I 
 shall now take a wider range, and introduce other persons and 
 other scenes to your notice. 
 
 [ Here follows some pleasant gossip about old friends.] 
 
 My paper is full, and, to conclude in the Oriental style. 
 " What can I say more ? " You will not forget to present my 
 best and kindest regards to Mr. Greene. 
 
 Neither did young Copley fail upon occasion to 
 keep his brother-in-law, Mr. Greene, informed by letter 
 as to the political situation in Europe. Thus, on the 
 1 7th of February, 1805, ne writes in terms not very 
 consistent with the admiration for Napoleon which, if 
 Lord Campbell is to be believed, he cherished down 
 to the period of the defeat at Waterloo 
 
 In politics there is, at present, little either new or important 
 to communicate. When or how the war in which we are 
 engaged is to terminate, it is impossible to conjecture. Mr. 
 Pitt requires a loan of twenty-three millions for the services
 
 1805. STRUGGLING INTO PRACTICE. Ill 
 
 of the year, a sum surpassing, I believe, the whole American 
 debt. The Moniteur contains a letter from the new emperor 
 to the king of England, proposing a negotiation for peace, 
 together with the concise and vague reply of this government. 
 
 But how can we make peace in the present situation of the 
 Continent ? How can we, consistently with our safety, permit 
 Holland to continue under the absolute control of France ? 
 And yet, on the other hand, what are we to hope from a 
 continuance of the contest ? Such is our situation that peace 
 and war present prospects alike unfavourable to the interest 
 and security of Great Britain. 
 
 I thank my sister for her kind letter. It appears an age 
 since we parted. I am sure she thinks of me with kindness, 
 for I know the warmth and tenderness of her heart. When 
 and where we are again to meet is hid in the impenetrable 
 abyss of futurity. 
 
 From this time Copley's letters to Mrs. Greene 
 and her husband became fewer and fewer. Those of 
 his mother and sister explain why. They never fail 
 to mention how closely he is occupied in his efforts 
 " to get forward in his profession," and the perseve- 
 rance and patience which he shows. " In his first 
 year," his mother writes (November 5, 1805) "he 
 has gone before some of his contemporaries in ad- 
 vancement," adding, " I know you, as well as myself, 
 feel the importance of his success," words full, to 
 both mother and daughter, of grave significance, for it 
 was becoming plainer and plainer every day, that the 
 elder Copley was not in the way to grow rich. Your 
 brother, she writes a year later, "has been quite as 
 successful as he could have expected for the time he 
 has been at the Bar. ... I tell him that when the 
 law enables him to live, I shall be easy. His profes- 
 sion has one great advantage over the arts, that we 
 cannot do without it,"- a remark to which the accumu- 
 lation of unsold pictures in the studio at George Street
 
 112 CLOSE ATTENTION TO BUSINESS. CHAP. I v. 
 
 gave a sad emphasis. The letters are full, as might 
 be expected, of alternate hope and apprehension. 
 One month, the time and patience are dwelt upon, 
 which are required by this " terrible uphill profession." 
 The next, things look brighter. Copley has been 
 successful, " not only in obtaining briefs, but, what is 
 of still greater importance, in gaining a high reputa- 
 tion," and the folks at home are " in better spirits than 
 of late." A year goes by, and we hear " he certainly 
 rises in his profession, but the profits increase very, 
 very slowly." Still one remark is always transmitted 
 to the anxious sister in Boston " He is indefatigable 
 in his attention to business." Again his mother 
 writes (February 20, 1807), "I have not seen your 
 brother for some days, his whole time is so occupied 
 pursuing, what I hope he will ere long obtain, estab- 
 lishment in his profession. 1 He is very well, and very 
 assiduous. We only see him just at dinner very 
 often not then and directly after he is off. ... His 
 prospects are satisfactory, and remove our anxious 
 concern upon that score. I hope that thankfulness 
 will take the place that solicitude has so long occupied ; 
 it has been an arduous struggle, the last year. He 
 has made a great advance, and says he must style 
 himself as others do ' a lucky dog.' " 
 
 A few months elapse, and things began to wear a 
 cheerful aspect. On the 8th of July, 1807, his mother 
 writes : 
 
 Your brother has now that prospect of business which 
 relieves your father and the rest of us from much solicitude 
 upon his account . . . He has been so occupied ever since 
 
 1 Copley was fond of society, and a favourite there ; and being a good dancer 
 as well as a brilliant talker, was in great request. But when he began to get into 
 practice at the Bar, 'he gave up balls and evening parties, because, as he used 
 to say in his later years, he found them incompatible with the hard work of his 
 profession.
 
 I8o8. BEGINS TO MAKE HIS WAY. 113 
 
 he has been in town that we have seen very little of him, 
 and I expect that little will be still less ; but I hope I shall 
 not repine at this, as the cause is so important. . . . You 
 know that his spirits are naturally excellent ; they have had a 
 trial ; the late change in his prospects is visible in their im- 
 provement. As to your inquiries of his residence I can say 
 that he has the pleasantest situation in the Temple. Within 
 the last few months he has removed to the chambers over 
 those he occupied when he left London, open to the gardens 
 and to the river ; they are most delightful, pleasant, and airy." l 
 
 At these pleasant chambers Copley delighted in 
 having his mother and sister to lunch or take tea with 
 him. "We visit the Counsellor," his mother writes 
 (July 2, 1808), " as he cannot come to us in term-time." 
 From this time onwards the reports are all satisfactory. 
 Copley is steadily advancing in business and reputa- 
 tion, and the only complaint of his mother and sister 
 is that they see so little of him. " He is so entirely 
 and so necessarily occupied," writes his mother 
 (December n, 1810), that she does not remonstrate 
 with him for writing so seldom as he does to Mrs. 
 Greene. "When we can get an hour with him, we 
 wish to enjoy it. I am sure you will join your thanks 
 with mine to Heaven for the blessing we receive from 
 his good character, conduct, and success in his 
 profession." 
 
 A sketch of him as he might be seen at West- 
 minster in those days is given by Mr. Bennet (' Bio- 
 graphical Sketches,' p. 197). 
 
 " Like Romilly, Copley was destined to remain a spectator 
 rather than an actor for many weary years before attracting 
 public notice, and I well remember him in the old Court of 
 Common Pleas always occupying the same seat, at the 
 extremity of the second circle of the Bar, without paper or 
 
 1 They were now in Crown Office Row, to which he had removed some time 
 previously from Essex Court. 
 
 I
 
 114 HELPS HIS FAMILY. CHAP. iv. 
 
 book before him," a notable characteristic of the man, who to 
 the last could place implicit reliance on the tenacity of his 
 memory " but looking intently I had almost said savagely 
 (for his look at this time bore somewhat the appearance of an 
 eagle's) at the Bench before him, watching even the least 
 movement of a witness or other party in the cause, or treasur- 
 ing up the development of the legal arguments brought 
 forward by the eminent men who then formed the Inner 
 Circle of the Bar of learned Serjeants." 
 
 Meanwhile prosperity does not visit the studio of 
 the elder Copley. " Your father," Mrs. Copley writes 
 to Mrs. Greene (September 23, 1811), "has struggled 
 hard to overcome the many difficulties, and he is 
 still painting works which ought to procure him 
 more ease, but these are times in which there is no 
 money for their purchase." " But," she adds, " in this 
 state of things the prospects we have of your brother's 
 situation in life is a greater solace than I can convey 
 by my pen. . . . His character and his success in his 
 profession are such as to afford great support and 
 comfort, and, if his health continues, will, I trust, open 
 a brighter scene to those that are near him." 
 
 Copley was by this time able to help the household 
 in George Street, and did help it out of his earnings. 
 But in the following year the elder Copley had again 
 to f appeal to his son-in-law, Mr. Greene, for a loan of 
 ;6oo, this time not for his son, but for himself. 
 
 "My son," he writes (March 4, 1812), "will be bound for 
 it, but, circumstanced as he now is, I find that I cannot 
 perplex him further with my concerns at present. He has 
 been very successful in his profession, and has that prospect 
 before him which is highly gratifying to us ; but with the most 
 diligent application and attention his returns are at present 
 but sufficient for his wants, and for -what I am obliged to draw 
 upon him ; and should I harass his mind with anxious solici- 
 tude about these concerns, I fear it might so interrupt his
 
 i8ii. DEFENDS LUDDITE RIOTERS. 115 
 
 necessary attention to his business, that it might be very 
 prejudicial to him. I wish his mind to be as much at ease as 
 possible, and would rather suffer much difficulty myself than 
 it should be otherwise." 
 
 The cause of the elder Copley's difficulties was the 
 exhausted condition of the country, so that, as he says 
 in the same letter, " at this moment all pursuits which 
 are not among those which are the essentials of life are at 
 an end." The misery which prevailed among the work- 
 ing classes was extreme, and some sections of them 
 made their condition worse by combinations to destroy 
 machinery, which their leaders told them would be used 
 to throw them out of work. In Nottinghamshire, Derby- 
 shire, and Leicestershire, which then, as now, depended 
 greatly upon lace and stocking weaving, a wide-spread 
 conspiracy was formed for the purpose of destroying 
 the improved looms of Heathcoat and others wherever 
 they could be found. It was given out and believed 
 that at the head of the conspiracy was one Ned 
 Ludd, or General Ludd, from whom his followers took 
 the name of Luddites. 1 Nottingham was the centre 
 of the movement, and there and in its neighbourhood 
 the attacks upon the improved looms or frames were 
 carried on with extreme violence during the winter of 
 1811, with the natural effect of adding greatly to the 
 prevailing distress by impoverishing the masters and 
 throwing their workmen out of employment. 
 
 To the judicial proceedings arising out of this 
 
 1 " The name," says Mr. Spencer Walpole (' History of England,' vol. i. 
 p. 423), " had a very curious origin. More than thirty years before, there lived 
 in a village in Leicestershire one Ned Ludd, a man of weak intellect, the village 
 butt. Irritated by his tormentors, the unhappy fellow one day pursued one of 
 them into an adjoining house. He could not find the lad who had been mocking 
 him, but in his fury he broke a couple of stocking frames which were on the 
 premises. When frames were afterwards broken, it was the common saying that 
 Ludd had broken them ; and thus Ned Ludd, the village idiot, gave a name to 
 one of the most formidable series of riots of the present century." 
 
 I 2
 
 Il6 SUCCESS AT NOTTINGHAM ASSIZES. CHAP. iv. 
 
 unhealthy state of things Copley owed his first great 
 start in his profession. 1 At Nottingham, on the igth of 
 March, 1812, Copley broke down the indictment of one 
 of the leading Luddites, for whom he was counsel, by 
 an objection which gained him a reputation on his 
 circuit that led the way to his becoming a leader 
 upon it. The objection was ingenious, but not so 
 remarkable as to cause great notice but for the excited 
 state of local feeling at the time. His client, John 
 Ingham, formerly a warehouseman in the service of 
 Messrs. Nunn & Co., lace manufacturers, in Notting- 
 ham, was charged with having written and despatched 
 two threatening letters to Mr. Nunn, subscribed "Ned 
 Ludd & Co.," announcing that " fifty of his frames 
 should be destroyed, his premises burnt, and himself and 
 one of his leading assistants should be made personal 
 examples of." The letters also stated " that atonement 
 should be had, atonement which will make human 
 nature shudder." The charge was a capital one, the 
 evidence clear, and a flaw in the indictment was the only 
 chance of escape. It had set out that Nunn & Co. were 
 " proprietors of a silk and cotton lace manufactory." 2 
 
 1 At the immediately preceding assizes, Copley told Mr. Lowdham, a leading 
 Nottingham solicitor, that this would be the last time he would come on circuit, 
 the briefs given him being so few that he could not afford the expense. Mr. 
 Lowdham, who was the Prince Regent's private solicitor, and head of the firm of 
 Lowdham, Park and Freeth, solicitors in London, was a man of means and 
 culture, a bachelor, and liked Copley. "Pooh, pooh!" he said, "You will 
 have business in time, and till it comes, let me help you. When you can, you 
 will repay me. If you cannot do so, I can bear the loss." Copley did not 
 claim his assistance, but he remained on the circuit, and at the next assizes he 
 got the opening he wanted. Copley, so soon as he had an opportunity, showed 
 he had not forgotten the kindness of Mr. Lowdham. When he was Chancellor,, 
 he made him secretary of the Lunacy Commission, an office which he held till 
 his death. Lord Lyndhurst's influence also secured for Mr. Lowdham's surviving 
 partner, Mr. George Freeth, the solicitorship of the Duchy of Cornwall, which 
 he held down to his death in 1882. 
 
 2 A square yard of Nottingham machine-made, plain, net lace, which cost 5 
 in i8ll| could now be bought for fourpence halfpenny.
 
 1813. BECOMES SERJEANT-AT-LAW. 117 
 
 The manager of the firm was examined, and stated that 
 they were proprietors of a silk lace manufactory and of 
 a cotton lace manufactory. On this Copley took the 
 objection, that the evidence showed that the manufac- 
 tory was not of the kind described in the indictment, 
 which ought to have charged that Messrs. Nunn were 
 41 proprietors of a silk and of a cotton lace manufactory," 
 whereas the words of the indictment imported a manu- 
 factory of a lace of mixed silk and cotton. The judge 
 sustained the objection, and directed the acquittal of 
 the prisoner. The sympathies of the mob were all 
 with the accused. Copley became the hero of the 
 hour, and they wished to carry him back to his hotel 
 on their shoulders, an equivocal honour not at all to 
 his taste. But from this time he never wanted briefs 
 when he came to Nottingham. The tide in his affairs 
 had come, which, " taken at the flood," as his fine and 
 disciplined powers enabled him to take it, "led on to 
 fortune." 
 
 In the following year, having now obtained a name 
 and good position at the Bar, Copley was raised to the 
 dignity of Serjeant-at-law, and on the 6th of July, 
 1813, was in due form rung out of the Society of 
 Lincoln's Inn to which he belonged. 1 His mother, 
 announcing this advance in his profession to Mrs. 
 Greene (August 16), writes "We have continued 
 comfort in his good prospects, and, if we are not 
 egregiously flattered, his character is high in his 
 profession, and I might say in all other respects ;, but 
 
 1 "It is customary," says Mr. Bennett (p. 197), "on a member of this inn 
 being made serjeant-at-law, to eject him in the most amicable manner from the 
 society, ringing the chapel bell, and at the same time presenting him with 
 an embroidered purse, with a substantial enclosure as a retaining fee for his future 
 services as serjeant, if the society should need them." When Lord Campbell 
 went through the ceremony, the 10 which was given him as his retainer was 
 carried off as a joke by Brougham, and cost Campbell a visit to the delinquent's 
 house to get it back.
 
 Il8 DEATH OF ELDER COPLEY. CHAP. iv. 
 
 this is not necessary. I have the comfort to say his 
 health is good, though not one of the most robust in 
 the land. His necessary application to business is very 
 close. He is now upon the circuit, and the effect of 
 the change of air upon his appearance is very visible 
 on his return." 
 
 Copley's steady progress during the next two years 
 helped to bring sunshine into the house in George 
 Street, where it was much needed. His father worked 
 on diligently as ever, despite the failing energies of 
 advanced years, but his pictures did not find purchasers. 
 The family had now to depend chiefly upon his son's 
 income. Happily that was improving, although not 
 at such a rate as to enable him to fulfil the yearning of 
 his mother's heart, that he should marry. " Your 
 brother," she writes to Mrs. Greene (June 27, 1815), 
 " is busy, either at the courts or chambers, the whole 
 of his time ; he is very well. I begin to fear whether 
 I shall see him married. I wish I might." 
 
 This event was rendered still more improbable by 
 his father's death a few months afterwards. In August 
 of this year the still toiling artist was struck down by 
 paralysis. He rallied so far, and the doctors held out 
 such strong hopes of his recovery, that his son went off 
 to Paris with some friends for a week's holiday, which 
 he sorely needed, in the beginning of September. A 
 fresh seizure supervened, and the old man died at the 
 ripe age of seventy-eight, on the gth of that month, 
 before his son could return. 
 
 1 Contrast this language of the mother, who knows her son's character outside 
 his profession to be so irreproachable that even to refer to it is unnecessary, with 
 Lord Campbell's sneering mention of Copley's having become a serjeant-at-law. 
 " Accordingly he was coifed, and gave gold rings, choosing for his motto, ' Studiis 
 vigilare severis,' which some supposed was meant as an intimation that he had 
 sown his wild oats, and that he was now to become a plodder." Copley was 
 known by this time by his brethren at the Bar to have mastered the science and 
 practice of his profession in a way that no "plodder" could ever hope to do.
 
 1815. THE GOOD SON. 1 19 
 
 On his death his affairs were found to be greatly 
 embarrassed. His house in George Street was heavily 
 mortgaged. He owed considerable sums of money 
 to various creditors. Copley, we gather from a letter 
 of his mother's to her son-in-law, Mr. Greene, had 
 made his family " very large advances " within the 
 last few years, and a sum of no less than 1200 was 
 claimed from his estate by Sharpe, the engraver, on 
 account of the plate from the picture of the Siege of 
 Gibraltar. The rest of the sad story is best told in 
 Mrs. Copley's words : 
 
 When the whole property is disposed of and applied 
 towards the discharge of the debts, a large deficiency must, it 
 is feared, remain. My son has of late years advanced all that 
 he could spare, beyond what was necessary for his own 
 immediate subsistence, and has not been able to lay up any- 
 thing, which caused me and my departed husband very 
 anxious solicitude. I cannot, therefore, now look to him for 
 anything more than the support of myself and my daughter 
 Mary ; but it is impossible to express the happiness and 
 comfort that we experience from so kind and affectionate a 
 friend. . . . 
 
 You will readily suppose that these various embarrassments 
 have occasioned great disquiet to myself, and to my dear 
 departed husband, whose exertions were unremitting to 
 avert the end ; and if his high reputation in his art, with 
 constant application, could have met the return which, setting 
 aside partiality, I think it was not unreasonable to expect, 
 these difficulties would not have arisen. But every effort did 
 but end in disappointment, and a variety of events have 
 shown that he was not to receive a pecuniary gratification from 
 the art in which he so much delighted. It gave me comfort 
 that he derived great pleasure from the pursuit, and that he 
 could keep up his spirits. He always indulged a strong hope 
 that from his exertions he should at least leave sufficient to 
 discharge his debts. 
 
 He blessed God, at the close of his life, that he left the
 
 120 THE GOOD SON AND BROTHER. CHAP. IV. 
 
 best of sons for my comfort, and for that of my dear Mary the 
 best of brothers. I pray that his cares may not overpower 
 him. I thank Heaven that he is blessed with health and 
 success in his profession. He means to write to you by this 
 opportunity if he possibly can ; the courts are sitting, and he 
 is constantly occupied. . . . 
 
 It was not without cause that the fond mother wrote 
 of her son in such glowing terms. He proved himself at 
 this trying time to be, in his sister's words, 1 " the kindest 
 and the best of brothers and sons that ever lived." 
 He took upon himself the whole of his father's debts, 
 which were all discharged to the last penny. He 
 moved into the house in George Street, and did his 
 best to make his mother and sister no less happy than 
 they had ever been. They on their part clung to him 
 with equal affection. Mr. and Mrs. Greene tried hard 
 to tempt them to make a home with them in Boston ; 
 but of this they would not hear. " Were you here," 
 Mrs. Copley writes to Mrs. Greene (March 3, 1816), 
 "you would say, ' Mother, it is impossible ! ' Putting 
 my own feelings out of the question, it would be 
 distressing indeed to break up my son's only domestic 
 scene for comfort and resort from his arduous attention 
 to business. His kind and feeling heart you know, 
 and it has had a large scope for action." 
 
 The good son and brother, as we shall see, was the 
 good son and brother to the last. 
 
 1 In a letter to her sister, Mrs. Greene, 3rd of February, 1816.
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 Remarkable case of Boville v. Moore Copley's care in getting up his 
 cases Trial of Watson and others Spa Fields Riots Copley's 
 successful defence of Watson Unfounded charge of indolence in 
 preparing for this Trial Is retained for Government in Trial of 
 Brandreth and others Enters Parliament. 
 
 LOOKING at the facts of Copley's life up to this point, 
 it is difficult to understand how even malice could 
 have ventured to set on foot the charge which has 
 been again and again brought against him of habitual 
 idleness and self-indulgence. 
 
 Idle men do not wrest university honours from 
 industrious and resolute competitors. Listless stu- 
 dents of law do not make their way at the Bar. 
 Dutiful sons, to whom the parents they love look for 
 maintaining the honour and upholding the fortunes of 
 the family, neither waste their hours in idleness, nor 
 their means in self-indulgent pleasures. Copley took 
 high honours at Cambridge and brought away from it 
 a brilliant reputation. Yet it has been often said, that 
 if he were able, which was doubtful, to write the 
 accustomed Latin letters of the travelling bachelor, he 
 was too indolent to have taken the trouble, and that 
 he got his friend Legh Richmond to write them for 
 him. When called to the Bar he had not a friend 
 among the attorneys to give him a brief. Yet he 
 made his way there, in the only way he could make it, 
 by proving himself a sound lawyer and a dexterous
 
 122 COPLEY NO PLODDER. CHAP. v. 
 
 advocate. Idle, ease-loving ? Can we recognise these 
 epithets as true of the man whose watchful parents 
 saw him to be unremitting in the exacting studies 
 required to qualify him for distinction in his pro- 
 fession, or in the self-denial which appropriated all 
 that could be spared out of his scanty earnings to 
 maintain them in comfort ? 
 
 Copley's manner of working, we can well believe, 
 was not that of the mechanical plodder, the " multo 
 agendo nihil agens " of Phsedrus, evermore bent over 
 his books, who rarely stirs abroad, and, when he does 
 so, wears the solemn and preoccupied face of a man 
 overburdened with thought and the perplexities of fine 
 points of law. His mind was of that bright and subtle 
 order, which penetrates through the tangle of unim- 
 portant details to ruling principles. He would learn 
 more in an hour than other men learn in days. His 
 memory served him so well, that he could dispense 
 with the notebooks and memoranda on which men 
 less happily gifted find it necessary to depend. Dul- 
 lards seeing the absence of these would be sure to 
 conclude that he had not got up his cases thoroughly. 
 His very air and bearing, handsome, self-possessed, 
 elastic, would lead such men to conclude that this man 
 took his work with easy indifference. He was not 
 one, moreover, whatever anxiety might be at his heart, 
 and we have seen that he had many anxieties, to 
 let the world know that he "showed more mirth than 
 he was master of ; " and the envious or commonplace 
 people, who knew him but on the outside, were 
 probably apt enough to judge of what he was by 
 themselves, and to think that the man on whom life 
 seemed to sit so easily was given to idleness, to 
 pleasure and to self-indulgence. 
 
 Copley from this time onward was full of work,
 
 i8i6. BOVILLE V. MOORE. 123 
 
 and he did it well and thoroughly, as a gentleman 
 might be expected to do who was alive to what was 
 due not only to his own reputation, but also to those 
 who entrusted their interests to his keeping. The 
 goal of great distinction was now clear before him, 
 and he was not likely to slacken in his resolve to reach 
 it. One instance will suffice to show how earnestly 
 and conscientiously he dealt with his cases. 
 
 In an action, Boville v. Moore and Others, tried in 
 March 1816 before Chief Justice Gibbs, for infringe- 
 ment of the patent for a spinning jenny for the manufac- 
 ture of lace, Copley was engaged for the defendants, 
 lace manufacturers in Nottingham. The case was one 
 of great importance, and Copley, finding that he could 
 not, from the descriptions of the machines contained in 
 his brief, fully understand the points on which it 
 turned, took the mail for Nottingham one Saturday 
 evening, and, presenting himself at his client Mr. 
 Moore's house next morning, requested to be shown 
 the machine at work. Delighted to find his counsel 
 animated by so great an interest in the case, Mr. 
 Moore took pains to explain the principle of his 
 machine, possibly with an amplitude of detail 
 somewhat superfluous to a practised student in me- 
 chanics like Copley. Copley listened patiently, but 
 with a seeming air of listlessness and without saying a 
 word. Mr. Moore went on with further explanations. 
 Still Copley listened, but made no sign. At length, 
 exasperated at what he thought to be either indiffe- 
 rence or stupidity in his hearer, Mr. Moore stopped 
 with the exclamation, " What is the use of talking to 
 you ? I have been trying this half hour to make you 
 understand, and you pay me no heed ! " " Now, 
 listen to me ! " replied Copley, who meanwhile had 
 been thinking out the points of resemblance and
 
 124 BOVILLE v. MOORE. CHAP. v. 
 
 difference between the machine before him and that 
 from which it was alleged to have been borrowed ; and 
 then going into the whole question, he showed such 
 a mastery of every technical detail that Mr. Moore 
 confessed himself fairly astonished. He was still more 
 astonished when he found that Copley, bent on making 
 himself master of the working of the machine by actual 
 experiment, took his seat at the frame, and before he 
 left it, turned out an unexceptionable example of 
 bobbin net lace. 
 
 Armed with the knowledge thus acquired Copley 
 returned by that evening's mail to London. The 
 result showed that his hurried visit to Nottingham had 
 not been made in vain. Moore's defence to the action 
 rested chiefly on the ground that Boville's, or rather 
 Brown's, machine (for he claimed as the assignee of a 
 patent granted to a Mr. Brown), was in all its most 
 important features merely the spinning jenny invented 
 several years before by Mr. Heathcoat, and that his 
 patent was invalid, because Brown had included in 
 his specification not only his additions to Heathcoat's 
 machine, which were admittedly improvements, but also 
 the machine itself. Copley's speech is given at length 
 in Davies's Reports of Patent Cases (London, 1816), 
 pp. 361 et seq. His description of the intricate and 
 delicate details of Heathcoat's machine, and of the 
 points of difference between it and Boville's, is a marvel 
 of lucid exposition. 1 Accompanied as his explanations 
 were by actual working of the model in court, given, 
 according to a well-authenticated tradition, with all 
 the dexterity of an artisan expert in the manufacture, 
 
 1 The difficulty of Copley's task may be appreciated, when we consider what 
 is said of Heathcoat's machine by Dr. Ure, in his ' Dictionary of Arts,' where he 
 speaks of it as " Surpassing every other by the complex ingenuity of its machinery. 
 A bobbin-net frame is as much beyond the most curious chronometer, as that is 
 beyond a roasting jack."
 
 i8i6. BOVILLE v. MOORE. 125 
 
 the effect with both judge and jury must have been 
 great indeed. At all events Copley carried both along 
 with him. His legal argument, as a piece of inge- 
 nious closely knit reasoning, was upon a par with the 
 exquisite skill of his practical exposition. The verdict 
 was given for his client ; T and it had an effect far 
 beyond what was originally contemplated ; for, being 
 accompanied by a statement from the jury that 
 Boville's invention was merely a carrying out by a 
 slight improvement of the principle of Heathcoat's 
 machine, it was the means of securing to Heathcoat 
 the solid fruits of his invention. " After the trial was 
 over," says Mr. Smiles (' Thrift,' p. 50), " Mr. Heathcoat 
 on inquiry found about six hundred machines at work 
 after his patent, and he proceeded to levy royalty 
 upon the owners of them, which amounted to a large 
 sum." 
 
 This case naturally attracted much attention, and 
 it helped materially to advance Copley's forensic 
 reputation. Fees poured in upon him so liberally, 
 that he was able gradually to pay off his father's debts 
 and to establish the home in George Street in greater 
 comfort than had been known there for many years. 
 He now took rank as the leader of his circuit, and was 
 recognised among his professional brethren as a man 
 marked for distinction. 
 
 These were days in which trials at the instance of 
 the Government for riotous outrages and combinations 
 to upset the settled order of things occurred with 
 painful frequency. The cessation, after the battle of 
 Waterloo, of the war which had for more than twenty 
 
 1 On the day the tidings of the verdict reached Nottingham, Mrs. Moore 
 presented her husband with a brace of boys. He signalised his success by 
 naming them, one Copley, and the other Balguy, after the counsel who had 
 acted for him. It' appears from the report, that the case at the trial was entirely in 
 Copley's hands.
 
 126 TROUBLED STATE OF THE COUNTRY. CHAP. v. 
 
 years drained the resources of the country, instead of 
 bringing, as had been hoped, better trade and higher 
 wages, had, on the contrary, been followed by a 
 collapse of numerous industries which had been 
 fomented by the exigencies of war. Large masses of 
 men were consequently thrown out of employment, and, 
 to add to the hardships of their condition, wet seasons 
 and bad harvests had sent up the prices of food to 
 an abnormal height. All classes were pinched, the 
 capitalist no less than the artizan, and the pressure 
 upon the poor rates became heavier than had previously 
 been known. As ever happens under conditions of 
 this kind, discontent grew clamorous, trading agitators 
 found ready listeners to their fiery declamations against 
 the inequalities of a social system in which the good 
 things of life are inevitably distributed in unequal pro- 
 portions, as well as against the restraining forces of 
 government, by which alone society is upheld. Mingled 
 with much extravagance and absurdity, however, there 
 were complaints against real abuses in the political 
 system, which called urgently for redress. The Govern- 
 ment erred grievously in doing little or nothing to 
 redress these abuses, or to show their sympathy with 
 the wide-spread suffering by which the minds of the 
 great bulk of the labouring classes were kept in a state 
 of chronic discontent. Neither, when we look back 
 upon the way the Government dealt with much of the 
 prevailing agitation, is it possible to justify all the 
 methods to which they resorted for maintaining order 
 and depriving revolutionary agitators of their power 
 of mischief. 
 
 A signal instance of mistaken policy was given in 
 the course adopted in bringing to trial Dr. Watson, 
 Thistlewood, and others, the instigators of what were 
 known as the Spa Fields Riots. The men were in
 
 i8i;. SPA FIELDS RIOTS. 127 
 
 themselves contemptible, as their own counsel Mr. 
 (afterwards Sir Charles) Wetherell called them, " two 
 broken down apothecaries, a broken-down gentleman, 
 and two cobblers." Not less so were their doctrines 
 and the means by which they proposed to overturn the 
 Government, as the first step towards getting their 
 schemes of spoliation brought into play. They were 
 practically without followers, and the facility with 
 which the riot they provoked was put down showed 
 conclusively how little hold they had upon the sym- 
 pathies of the people, whose wrongs they professed it 
 to be their object to redress. Had they been tried for 
 a misdemeanour, their conviction would have been 
 certain, and their punishment sufficiently severe to 
 have deterred others from treading in their footsteps. 
 The Government, however, chose to indict them for 
 high treason, with the result that they were acquitted ; 
 while an impression was left on the public mind, that 
 an attempt had been made by the authorities to strain 
 the Law of Treason for their conviction in a manner 
 for which no precedent existed. 
 
 In securing the verdict in their favour Serjeant 
 Copley was mainly instrumental. Mr. Wetherell had 
 been retained as counsel for two of the leaders, 
 Dr. Watson and Arthur Thistlewood, the future head 
 of the Cato Street Conspiracy. He stipulated as the 
 condition of his undertaking their defence, that 
 Serjeant Copley should be associated with him. Why 
 he did so, no one can read the report of the trial 
 without seeing ; for in the course of it he went out 
 of his way to express the confidence he felt in " the 
 great legal knowledge and persuasive force" of the 
 coadjutor whom he had selected. He might well do 
 so, for Copley proved the wisdom of Wetherell's choice 
 in the skill with which he handled the witnesses on
 
 128 TRIAL OF WATSON AND THISTLEWOOD. CHAP. v. 
 
 both sides, in the incidental arguments on points of law, 
 and especially in the compact and vigorous argument 
 which he addressed to the jury, and to which, it was 
 generally admitted at the time, the acquittal of his 
 clients was in a great measure due. 
 
 Determined to lose no opportunity of accusing 
 Copley of Jacobinism, Lord Campbell cannot mention 
 the fact that he acted as counsel for Watson and 
 Thistlewood without coupling it with the innuendo, that 
 he owed his employment to the fact that he was 
 " generally understood to entertain pretty much the 
 opinions professed by the prisoners, though with 
 prudence sufficient not to act upon them till there 
 should be a fair prospect of success." As if men on 
 trial for their lives would choose by preference for 
 counsel a man known to hold the opinions which had 
 brought themselves within the clutch of the law, and 
 not rather the ablest advocate they could get, and 
 one against whom neither Court nor jury were likely 
 to be prejudiced beforehand on account of his political 
 creed ! Or as if Mr. Wetherell, a Tory of the Tories, 
 would have gone out of his way, as he did, to seek the 
 assistance of a man whose opinions, if Lord Campbell's 
 insinuations were true, he must himself have detested !: 
 For what were these opinions, as proved at the trial ? 
 These, among others : that the time had come for 
 abolishing Monarchy ; that it was lawful for those 
 who had no means to help themselves at will 
 to the property of those who had ; that the posses- 
 sion of land by an individual was unjust ; that all 
 land should be held in common, and in some vague 
 way for the people generally, 1 and that the funds 
 
 1 This was one of the tenets of what was then called the Spencean system, which 
 took its name from one Spence, a Yorkshire schoolmaster, and of which Dr. Watson 
 was said to be an apostle. Observe how it is dealt with by the man who, if 
 Lord Campbell is to be believed, ' ' entertained pretty much the opinions pro-
 
 1817. TRIAL OF WATSON AND THISTLEWOOD. 129 
 
 of fundholders ought to be confiscated for the 
 general good. Yet these opinions, we are gravely 
 told, opinions which strike at the root of all property, 
 and are incompatible with the motives and springs of 
 action which raise men from savagery to civilization, 
 were entertained by a man of the knowledge, ex- 
 perience, and matured judgment of Copley ! 
 
 The trial took place at Westminster, before Lord 
 Ellenborough, assisted by Mr. Justice Bayley, Mr. 
 Justice Abbott and Mr. Justice Holroyd. It lasted 
 from the Qth to the lyth of June. There were four 
 prisoners Dr. James Watson the elder, Arthur 
 Thistlewood, Thomas Preston, and John Hooper. 
 They severed in their pleas, claiming to be tried 
 separately, on which the Attorney-General, Sir Samuel 
 Shepherd, decided to proceed in the first instance 
 with the trial of Dr. Watson. 
 
 The riot on which the proceedings were founded 
 had taken place so far back as the 2nd of December 
 previous. From the meeting at Spa Fields, where very 
 inflammatory speeches had been delivered by Watson 
 and others, the mob had followed their leaders through 
 
 fessed by the prisoners." ' ' The principle of the Spencean system, as I understand 
 it," we quote from his defence of Watson " is not to give a certain portion of the 
 land to each individual, but to vest the whole in the Government, in order that 
 they may parcel it out according to a certain plan for the purpose ; a scheme 
 more visionary and absurd, if possible, than the former" (Watson's Trial. London, 
 1817. Vol. ii. p. 350.) One of Lord Campbell's many innuendoes against 
 Copley is, that " although he would not mix with the Radicals of the day, who 
 were men of low education and vulgar manners, he thought they might be made 
 useful, and by rumour he was so far known to them that they looked forward to his 
 patronage should they be prosecuted by the Crown for sedition or treason" How were 
 Radicals to be made useful by Copley ? As tools to carry out his revolutionary 
 ideas ? Useful to him at the Bar they could not be, for they were as poor as they 
 were reckless. "Everyman among them is as destitute of money as common 
 sense," Denman writes (September 10, 1807, 'Life,' vol. i. p. 115). And if they 
 counted on Copley's sympathy in their views, his language throughout Watson's 
 Trial must have cured them of the delusion, if they ever entertained it, of which 
 there is no evidence.
 
 130 COPLEY'S SPEECH CHAP. v. 
 
 Clerkenwell and Smithfield to Snow Hill. There 
 Watson's son entered a gunsmith's shop, demanding 
 arms, and in the course of a wrangle which ensued, a 
 pistol which he held went off and seriously wounded a 
 gentleman who happened to be present. After this the 
 mob entered and cleared the place of all the firearms 
 they could find, and pushed on through Cheapside to the 
 Exchange. Here the Lord Mayor, with the assistance of 
 a few policemen, checked their impetuosity by arresting 
 three of their number. Already the mob, such as it 
 was, had decreased in force. What was left of them 
 turned off towards the Minories and the Tower. Here 
 they could not muster courage to face the handful of 
 men which had by this time been got together to resist 
 them, and began rapidly to disperse. Here and there acts 
 of violence were committed, but in the course of a few 
 hours the whole affair was at an end. 
 
 Of the mischievous intentions of the men who had 
 commenced the meeting at Spa Fields, there can be 
 no doubt. If they could have got up a revolution, 
 that they would have done so is tolerably clear upon 
 the most favourable view of their case. But to dignify 
 their proceedings with the name of treason, and to call 
 the whole power of the Government into play in order 
 to bring them under the terrible penalties of that crime, 
 was a mistake which Copley in his defence turned to 
 account with admirable skill. Early in his speech he 
 struck a note in which the Counsel for the Crown must 
 have heard the death knell of their case. 
 
 " Gentlemen," he said, " let me turn your attention for a 
 moment to this indictment It consists of four charges. In 
 point of length it is an indictment without example in the 
 history of the country ; I mean without example with respect 
 to indictments for high treason. I have taken some pains to 
 examine and inquire, and I have not found one which in any
 
 i8i7. FOR WATSON. 131 
 
 degree approaches it in point of extent and prolixity. Gentle- 
 men, Mr. Watson is charged, first, with an intention to put the 
 King to death ; secondly with intending to depose the King ; 
 then with levying war against the King ; and lastly, with com- 
 passing and intending conspiracy to levy war, in order to 
 compel the King to change his measures. It is necessary, in 
 indictments for treason, that the facts meant to be given in 
 evidence, and insisted upon as proof of the traitorous intent, 
 should be stated upon the record. These are called overt 
 acts. In this indictment they are fourteen in number, and 
 the same overt acts are laid in respect of each charge. What 
 does the Attorney-General then, in fact, say ? I shall call 
 upon the jury to infer from these acts what ? First that 
 the prisoner compassed and imagined the death of the King, 
 that is, to put the King to death ; but this he feels to be too 
 extravagant ; he cannot persuade himself that the jury will 
 come to such a conclusion ; he therefore says, if they will not 
 do that, I shall then call upon them to infer from the same 
 facts, that the prisoner conspired to depose the King ; and, if 
 they will not do that, I shall then call on them to find still 
 from the same facts, that he conspired to levy war to compel 
 the King to change his measures. Gentlemen, it does, I con- 
 fess, appear to me from this indictment, as if the Crown 
 lawyers were not very confident as to any one of the charges, 
 but that they hoped by throwing the net as widely as possible 
 to give themselves one chance of catching a verdict. 
 
 "But let us, gentlemen, consider these different charges. 
 The first charge to which I shall direct your attention is that 
 of actually levying war against the King. It appears to me 
 that that charge will involve the whole case, for, if you do not 
 believe that war was actually levied, I think you will, upon 
 the facts of this case, be of opinion that there was no conspi- 
 racy to levy war, for any of the purposes stated on this record. 
 Now, gentlemen, let me ask you this plain question. You all 
 live in this metropolis. You were well acquainted with the 
 circumstances of this riot immediately or at least within 
 twenty-four hours after it had taken place ; you know, for 
 they were stated in the public papers, every fact that had 
 occurred. Did it then strike any of you, or can you now bring 
 yourselves, as men of plain and sound understandings, to 
 
 K 2
 
 132 COPLEY'S SPEECH CHAP. v. 
 
 conceive that these facts amounted to a levying war against the 
 King, a flagrant civil war, as the Attorney-General has styled 
 it ? What amounts to a levying war may perhaps be difficult 
 to define. It depends upon a variety of circumstances. But 
 of this at least I am sure you feel convinced, that the circum- 
 stances which occurred in this instance do not amount to a 
 levying of war ; that in plain understanding and according to 
 the usual acceptation of terms, it was not a levying of war 
 against the King." 
 
 It was fortunate for Copley's client, that the 
 Government case against him for constructive treason 
 depended mainly on the evidence of John Castle, 
 one of the most prominent of the rioters, who turned 
 King's evidence against Watson and his other asso- 
 ciates. Castle was shown, in the course of a masterly 
 cross-examination by Mr. Wetherell, to have already 
 saved himself twice from the gallows by becoming 
 a witness against associates in crime, who were 
 sentenced to death upon his evidence. He was 
 also shown to have obtained his living by infamous 
 means, and in various other ways to have forfeited 
 every claim to credit. The presumption raised against 
 him was that he had deliberately tried to entrap 
 Watson and others into acts of a treasonable nature, 
 and in several important particulars his evidence on 
 some of the gravest overt acts was contradicted 
 by the testimony of unimpeachable witnesses. Not 
 even the strong charge adverse to the prisoner by 
 the presiding judge, 1 weighed with the jury against 
 the finely studied argument which Copley had ad- 
 dressed to them with that "luminous energy" the 
 
 1 " You cannot but feel," were the concluding words of Lord Ellenborough's 
 charge, " that you have had laid before you a body of cogent evidence in proof 
 of the design charged against the prisoner, to overset the laws and Govern- 
 ment of the country, and to introduce anarchy and disorder in their room ; and 
 attempted to be carried into effect by means of open rebellion and force, 
 directed and levelled against His Majesty's Government."
 
 1817. FOR WATSON. 133 
 
 phrase is Lord Campbell's which even then distin- 
 guished his speeches ; and after deliberating for an hour 
 and a half they returned an unanimous verdict of not 
 guilty. Upon this the Attorney-General abandoned 
 the prosecution of the other prisoners. 
 
 Lord Campbell, who heard Copley's speech, says 
 that he did so with delight, and that he considers 
 it " one of the ablest and most effective ever delivered 
 in a court of justice." He pays it the highest of all 
 compliments by adding, that on reperusing it he found 
 " much difficulty in selecting any passage which would 
 convey to the reader an idea of its merit." There is 
 not in it one superfluous sentence ; nor one passage that 
 could be displaced without injury to the effect which 
 the speaker had in view. A finer illustration could 
 scarcely be desired of the " temperatum dicendi 
 genus," which Cicero says is the best kind of eloquence, 
 and which is assuredly the best where the speaker has 
 to persuade a jury of educated men, on whose verdict 
 hangs the life of a fellow creature. Not a weak point 
 in the evidence against the prisoner was missed, not a 
 false point taken, not an argument overlooked which 
 could operate in his client's favour. Of showy rhetoric 
 there was that entire absence which might be expected 
 from a mind of which his friend Sir Samuel Shepherd 
 once said, that " it had no rubbish in it." But there was 
 a glow of impressive earnestness, which, even as we 
 read it now, takes hold of the heart and understanding, 
 and which could not fail to carry with it the sym- 
 pathies of an intelligent jury. 
 
 It is typical of the recklessness with which the 
 charge of indolence has been brought against Copley, 
 that a not wholly unfriendly writer in the ' Edinburgh 
 Review,' 1 in an article published in 1869 on Lord 
 
 1 ' Edinburgh Review,' April, 1869, p. 562.
 
 134 UNFOUNDED CHARGE CHAP. v. 
 
 Campbell's Lives of Lords Lyndhurst and Brougham, 
 tells, for the first time, an anecdote which he says he 
 heard " from one who still survives," of Copley's want 
 of preparation for this trial, of a kind which, if true, 
 would have been altogether without excuse. Had the 
 reviewer not previously committed himself to the 
 assertion that Copley's " disinclination to labour was 
 such as not unfrequently to endanger his success," it 
 is inconceivable that he could have given currency to 
 a story which a moment's consideration must have 
 told him had no foundation in fact. 
 
 " One singular instance of this weakness occurred," he says, 
 " according to his [Copley's] own account of the matter, at the 
 very turning-point of his career. ' This crisis of Copley's fate ' 
 at the Bar, in Lord Campbell's opinion, was the occasion offered 
 him by his successful defence of Dr. Watson in 1815. Lord 
 Campbell, however, does not mention the picturesque way in 
 which the hero of the tale himself recounted it (as we have 
 heard from one who still survives) at a little dinner in his own 
 chambers at the Temple in 1817, at which Jack Campbell 
 himself made the third. Copley confessed to his guests that his 
 prospects on that occasion were within an ace of utter ruin, and 
 that he was only rescued by a marvellous turn of events. He 
 had relied implicitly on his leader Wetherell's proved ability 
 and willingness to occupy the Court for two days at least by his 
 speech in defence ; and, with the habitual indolence of his 
 nature, put off preparing himself to follow until he should 
 become aware of the ground over which his leader had travelled. 
 To his horror, Wetherell, after about a couple of hours of 
 rambling introductory talk, suddenly sat down as if he had 
 no more to say. Perdition stared Copley in the face. He 
 was just about to rise in utter unpreparedness, and leap into 
 the gulf before him, when Wetherell, his eccentric fit of 
 sullenness or desperation over, jumped up and exclaimed, 
 ' By God, this will never do ! ' dashed at once into the heart 
 of the case, declaimed for the whole of that day and half the 
 next, and enabled Copley taught by his leader's example
 
 1817. AGAINST COPLEY. 135 
 
 wJuit to avoid as well as what to insist on to succeed him in 
 a speech which Lord Campbell characterises as ' one of the 
 ablest and most effective ever delivered in a court of justice.' " 
 
 It is simply marvellous that any man of reasonable 
 experience should have accepted such a story as this 
 without inquiry. If it were true, Copley would have 
 been not only the greatest of fools in his own interest, 
 but destitute of the conscience and instincts of a 
 gentleman, and a disgrace to the gown he wore. For 
 it implies that in a case in which men's lives were at 
 stake, in which he for the first time had an oppor- 
 tunity of making a distinguished figure for it was a 
 case on which the eyes of all England were turned 
 he went into Court to face the ablest men in his 
 profession, both on the Bench and at the Bar, without 
 fortifying himself for every casualty which could 
 possibly arise. Worse stigma than this it would be 
 impossible for his deadliest enemy to have inflicted 
 upon him ; and yet we are asked to believe that he 
 made such a confession of his own utter want of 
 principle at his own dinner table to at least one 
 brother barrister ! Had he done so, was Campbell 
 likely to have forgotten a circumstance which would 
 have so materially supported his own theory of 
 Copley's character ? His silence ought to have put 
 the reviewer upon his guard, even if common sense 
 had not dictated the prudence of seeing how far the 
 story was borne out by the report of the trial, a by 
 no means scarce work in two volumes published from 
 Mr. Gurney's shorthand notes in 1817. There he 
 would have found conclusive evidence that the story 
 could not be true, and that his informant, as the 
 hatchers of anecdotes too often are, was under a 
 delusion. A few words will make this plain. 
 
 The trial began on the 9th of June, when the
 
 VINDICATION OF COPLEY CHAP. v. 
 
 Attorney- General opened the case for the Crown, and 
 several witnesses were examined. The loth, nth 
 and 1 2th were spent in examining witnesses for the 
 prosecution, many of whom were cross-examined with 
 great dexterity by Copley. On the i3th no fewer 
 than twenty-two witnesses for the Crown were ex- 
 amined and cross-examined, so that the day must have 
 been well advanced when the case for the prosecution 
 was closed and Mr. Wetherell rose to speak. His 
 speech was long, vehement, and somewhat discursive. 
 But it is consecutive, and the argument is developed 
 without break of any kind, except some angry sparring 
 here and there between himself and the Bench. From 
 first to last there was nothing that can be strained into 
 an indication that he closed his speech, sat down, 
 rose again and then started afresh. But, says the 
 reviewer, when he rose for the second time he de- 
 claimed the "whole of that day and half the next." 
 What was the fact ? The speech was actually con- 
 cluded on the day it began, and so far before the 
 usual time for the Court to rise, that when Copley 
 proposed to call his first witness, the following dialogue 
 with the presiding judge took place : 
 
 Lord Ellenborough. "Brother Copley, will the witness 
 you propose to call occupy any considerable time ? " 
 
 Mr. Serjeant Copley. " I think his examination will not 
 occupy a considerable portion of time, but perhaps it will be 
 better to take all together in the morning. I do not think it 
 will materially break in upon the day." 
 
 Lord Ellenborough. " Then we will take it to-morrow, if 
 you please." 
 
 Next day accordingly the witnesses, ten in number, 
 for the defence were called, Mr. Wetherell taking the 
 burden of examining them. Then Copley spoke and 
 was followed by the Solicitor-General, Sir Robert
 
 1817. FROM UNFOUNDED CHARGE. 137 
 
 Gifford, who made the closing speech for the Crown 
 before the Court rose for the day. 1 
 
 Compare now these facts with the story of the 
 Edinburgh Reviewer's friend. Copley, chosen by 
 Wetherell as his associate, was necessarily in confer- 
 ence with him not only during the many days of the 
 trial but also for days before it. In the course of his 
 speech, Wetherell, speaking " of the very able person 
 with whom I am associated," says, " we have conferred 
 much in private," as indeed it was impossible they 
 should not have done. Having also heard the opening 
 speech for the prosecution and been actively engaged 
 for four days in cross-examination of the witnesses, 
 Copley had all the preparation that a man of ability 
 and experience could require to enable him, if 
 Wetherell had failed in health, or from any other 
 cause, at once to step into the breach, and open the 
 case for the defence, even if the outrageous supposi- 
 tion were to be admitted that he had gone into Court 
 otherwise than well prepared. But Wetherell was 
 there. Twenty-two witnesses for the prosecution 
 were examined on the day he was called upon 
 to speak. The day was filled up by his speech, 
 and there were ten witnesses to be called for the 
 defence before it became Copley's duty to address the 
 jury. There was not, therefore, the slightest chance 
 of his being called upon to speak on the same day as 
 Wetherell. What becomes, then, of the Edinburgh 
 Reviewer's beautifully constructed story of Copley's 
 want of preparation bringing him "within an ace of 
 
 1 The sittings upon this trial must have been of very exhausting length. The 
 time is not noted in the published report. They could scarcely however have 
 taxed the powers of all concerned like the sittings on the trials of Hardy, Home 
 Tooke, and others, in 1 794, where it appears that the Court met at nine and sat 
 on till after midnight. On the score of Home Tooke's health, nine P.M. was 
 during his trial fixed as the hour for adjournment.
 
 138 GREAT EFFECT OF SPEECH FOR WA TSON. CHAP. v. 
 
 utter ruin," of his being saved by "a marvellous turn 
 of events," of "perdition staring him in the face," of 
 being about " to leap into the gulf before him," when 
 his leader, by declaiming " the whole of that day and 
 half the next," taught him "what to avoid as well as 
 what to insist on ? " And yet the reputation of the man 
 who discharged his duty to his client, as we have seen 
 that Copley discharged it, with consummate skill, is 
 thus cruelly dealt with by the chronicler of what the 
 very slightest investigation must have shown him to be 
 a piece of absolute if not malicious fiction ! But the re- 
 viewer's theory had to be supported, " that Copley was 
 habitually indolent," that his " disinclination to labour 
 was such as not unfrequently to endanger his success ; " 
 so fiction was adopted as fact, and published for the 
 guidance of Englishmen in forming their estimate of 
 one of the greatest ornaments of the Bar and Bench. 1 
 So great was the interest excited by Watson's 
 trial that, as Lord Lyndhurst mentions in the memoran- 
 
 1 The Edinburgh Reviewer, in further illustration of his theory, says, in 
 regard to authorship (in loc. cit. p. 570), that Copley was "far too indolent, 
 even when at the Bar, to try this slow and thorny road to employment ; he never 
 reported a case or published a treatise." It is well known, on the contrary, that 
 Copley published a ' Report of the Proceedings of the Committee on the Horsham 
 Election. London : Butterworth, 1808.' He had acted as Counsel for Lord 
 Palmerston before this Committee, but failed in securing the seat. "This," 
 says Mr. Foss (' Lives of the Judges,' vol. ix. p. 179), " was the only book which 
 Mr. Copley ever published with his name." Denman speaks of him as engaged in 
 1808 in producing ' Reports of all the Election Cases decided in the last Parlia- 
 ment ' (see 'Life of Lord Denman.' Lond. 1873, vol. i. p. 70) ; but we have 
 not been able to trace his connection with such a series of reports. The truth is, 
 writing anything, even letters, was always a painful operation to Lord Lyndhurst. 
 He thought he had no gift for it, and his standard of literary excellence was too 
 high to allow him to run the hazard of producing indifferent work. His literary 
 work was done in his speeches, in which, the late Mr. Bagehot says, are to be 
 found " some of the best, if not the very best, specimens in English of the best 
 manner in which a man of great intellect can address and influence the intellects 
 of others. Their art, we might almost say their merit, is of the highest kind, for 
 it is concealed. The words seem the simplest, clearest and most natural that a 
 man could use. It is only the instructed man who knows that he could not him- 
 self have used them, and that few men could." (' Biographical Studies,' p. 329.) 
 Such excellence is not attained without severe study of the best models.
 
 1817. BRANDRETWS TRIAL. 139 
 
 dum already cited, " many of the leaders of the Opposi- 
 tion, Grey, Lambton and others, regularly attended 
 the proceedings." Lord Castlereagh, Lord Campbell 
 says, " remained in court in a state of great anxiety 
 until the conclusion of the trial." If he did so, Mr. 
 Copley was not aware of the fact ; but it is beyond a 
 doubt that the distinguished ability he had shown 
 opened the eyes of the Government to the importance 
 of enlisting him on their side. 
 
 There was much work before them of the same 
 kind ; and it would have been strange indeed, if they 
 had not without loss of time made it impossible for 
 future Watsons and Thistlewoods to secure his 
 services. Accordingly he received the Government 
 retainer, and on the next state trial that of Bran- 
 dreth, Turner and others, in October 1817, at a special 
 assize in Derby he appears as one of the most formid- 
 able array of counsel that was ever banded together 
 for a criminal prosecution. They were ten in number, 
 with the Attorney and Solicitor General at their head, 
 while the prisoners were represented by Mr. Cross 
 and Mr., afterwards Lord, Denman. 
 
 Not even Mr. Copley's skill and eloquence could 
 have availed to secure an acquittal for Brandreth and 
 his associates. Their avowed object was to overturn 
 the Government, and the way they set to work to do 
 so, intrinsically absurd as it was for such an object, 
 brought them so clearly within the charge of " levying 
 war against the King," that escape was impossible. 
 Brandreth, a poor maker of ribbed stockings known 
 as " Derbyshire Ribs," driven to despair by the ruin 
 of his trade, was a man endowed with such force 
 of character and courage as gave him a predominating 
 influence over his fellow men, so much so, that his 
 counsel, Mr. Denman, in the course of his defence of
 
 140 TRIAL OF BRANDRETH CHAP. v. 
 
 two of his co-conspirators, Turner and Ludlam, rested 
 his case chiefly upon the fact that they had been 
 constrained into following him by the commanding 
 energy and vigour of the man. In the case of Ludlam, 
 Mr. Denman, in enforcing this view, had recourse to 
 Byron's famous description of Conrad, the hero of 
 " The Corsair," 1 then familiar in everybody's mouth, as 
 giving a portrait of him " as minute, as accurate, as 
 powerful as if the first of painters had seen him in his 
 hour of exertion and had then hit off his likeness." 
 Brandreth was without education and so poor that he 
 had even been in receipt of parish relief ; but there must 
 have been something more than common about the man 
 of whose sway over the starving operatives who followed 
 him it could be said, 
 
 With these he mingles not, but to command ; 
 
 Few are his words, but keen his eye and hand : 
 
 His name appals the fiercest of his crew, 
 
 And tints each swarthy cheek with sallower hue ; 
 
 Still sways their souls with that commanding art, 
 
 That dazzles, leads, yet chills the vulgar heart ; 
 
 What is the skill that thus his lawless train 
 
 Confess and envy, yet oppose in vain ? 
 
 What should it be, that thus their faith can bind ? 
 
 The power of thought, the magic of the mind ! 
 ****** 
 
 No giant frame sets forth his common height ; 
 Yet, on the whole, who paused to look again 
 Saw more than marks the crowd of common men. 
 They gaze and marvel how, and still confess 
 That thus it is ; but why, they cannot guess. 
 There breathe but few, whose aspect could defy 
 The full encounter of his searching eye. 2 
 
 Misery had driven Brandreth and his associates to 
 despair, and they answered to his appeal, made to 
 
 1 The 'Corsair' was published in 1814. 
 
 2 Mr. Denman goes on to quote the rest of the description, which speaks of 
 " the laughing devil " in Conrad's sneer, and how, when " his frown of hatred 
 darkly fell, Hope withering fled, and Mercy sighed Farewell," a piece of very 
 questionable tactics, considering that Brandreth, although by this time found 
 guilty, was his client, and was still awaiting sentence.
 
 1817. AND OTHERS FOR HIGH TREASON. 141 
 
 them in sorry enough doggrel to " turn out and fight 
 for bread." Some five hundred of them, who were in 
 the secret of his plans, were got together in Derby- 
 shire on the 9th of June. With Brandreth at their 
 head they compelled numerous householders to give 
 up their firearms. Brandreth shot and killed a man 
 who refused to yield to their demands. Armed with 
 pikes and whatever other weapons they could muster, 
 they marched upon Nottingham. There they found 
 themselves waited for by a body of yeomanry, which 
 had been hastily mustered to oppose them. Seeing 
 further advance to be hopeless, they threw away their 
 weapons, and dispersed in all directions. 1 
 
 In the unsettled state of the country, with people 
 preaching revolution and anarchy in all quarters to 
 men suffering from want of work and all its consequent 
 distresses, it was necessary to strike strongly and 
 sternly at the ringleaders of a movement that might 
 have been attended with very serious consequences. 
 The proof of their guilt was irresistible, and, in charg- 
 ing them with high treason, the Government ran no 
 chance of encountering the same defeat as in the case 
 of Watson. But they certainly seem to have brought 
 an unnecessary weight of forensic ability to bear upon 
 the trial of these miserable men. The fact that Copley 
 now appeared for the prosecution, Copley, who had 
 more than once defended the Luddites with success, 
 whose recent triumphant defence of Watson had 
 gained him such repute, that the populace of London 
 had been wearing ribbons at their button-holes, 
 stamped with the words, " Copley and Liberty," was an 
 incident of which Mr. Denman did not fail to make use 
 in addressing the jury for Turner, one of Brandreth's 
 
 1 Shelley, in his ' Address to the People on the Death of the Princess Charlotte,' 
 makes some striking comments on the fate of Brandreth and his companions. 
 (Forman's ' Shelley,' vol. vi.)
 
 142 COPLEY ENTERS PARLIAMENT CHAP. v. 
 
 confederates. " On what principle of fairness," he 
 asked, "were these unfortunate prisoners deprived 
 of that bulwark which they had found in the talents, 
 the zeal, the eloquence and the useful experience of 
 my learned and excellent friend Mr. Serjeant Copley ? 
 Why was he to be brought for the first time into the 
 service of the Treasury, for the prosecution of persons 
 so insignificant ? Why, but because he had been the 
 victorious champion of the rights and liberties of the 
 subject upon a former occasion, and therefore was now 
 to be silenced, and prevented from rendering the same 
 services to those who stood so peculiarly in need of 
 his assistance ? " The point was a perfectly fair one 
 to make as against the Government. It was probably 
 taken up strongly at the time by the sympathisers 
 with the popular party, and made use of to justify the 
 imputation against Copley, that he had deserted his 
 principles and gone over to the enemy's camp from 
 sordid motives of self interest. Generosity is never a 
 characteristic of political party warfare, and never was 
 it less so than in those days, when the rancour of the 
 Opposition was embittered by the apparent hopeless- 
 ness of a triumph for their party. 2 
 
 No skill could have prevented the Government from 
 obtaining the verdict against Brandreth and his asso- 
 ciates which they sought. The four ringleaders of the 
 movement were found guilty by the jury, in each case 
 after only a few minutes' deliberation. On this the other 
 prisoners pleaded guilty. Brandreth, Turner and Lud- 
 lam were executed at Derby on the 7th of November. 
 Various degrees of punishment, varying from transpor- 
 
 1 See vol. ii. p. 491, of 'The Trials of Jeremiah Brandreth and Others for 
 High Treason. Taken in Shorthand by William Brodie Gurney. London, 1817.' 
 
 2 Which gave rise to the well-known lines, 
 
 Naught 's constant in the human race, 
 Except the Whigs not getting into place.
 
 I8i8. THROUGH GOVERNMENT INFLUENCE. 143 
 
 tation for life to imprisonment for one year, were 
 inflicted on the others. The effect of this conviction 
 was most salutary, and combined with an improvement 
 in trade and a fall in the price of bread in the following 
 year to restore comparative tranquillity to the country. 
 
 Some time after Brandreth's trial Copley received 
 a message from Lord Liverpool through a common 
 friend, asking whether he would like to come into 
 Parliament. The suggestion was made without con- 
 dition or stipulation of any kind, and this doubtless 
 because it was perfectly well understood that the 
 general tenor of Copley's political views was by no 
 means likely to throw him into the ranks of the 
 Opposition. No Government, especially in those times 
 of fierce political excitement, would have gone out of its 
 way to bring into the field of Parliamentary warfare a 
 man of Copley's intellectual powers, unless they felt sure 
 of his support to their general policy. At all events 
 " no pledge, promise or condition of any sort was re- 
 quired, offered, suggested or imposed," and the offer was 
 after brief consideration accepted. Copley was soon 
 afterwards returned for Yarmouth in the Isle of Wight, 
 through the influence of Sir Leonard Holmes, and took 
 his seat in the House of Commons in March 1818. 
 
 The words quoted above as to the way the offer of 
 a seat was made and accepted were Lord Lyndhurst's, 
 dictated so late as 1857. Lord Campbell, however, 
 out of his inner consciousness evolves the statement, 
 for he neither gives nor could give any authority 
 for it, that although the seat was offered without 
 any express condition, nevertheless it was offered " with 
 the clear reciprocal understanding that the Convertite 
 was thenceforth to be a thick and thin supporter of the 
 Government, and that everything in the law which the 
 Government had to bestow should be within his reach."
 
 144 N0 GROUNDS FOR CHARGE. CHAP. v. 
 
 Having got so far as to describe a compact as having 
 been made, of which Lord Campbell could have had 
 absolutely no knowledge, it was an easy step to go on, 
 as he does, with an imaginary description of the way 
 in which Copley balanced considerations of personal 
 interest against the odium which he would " have to 
 encounter for what would be considered a very flagrant 
 case of ratting" and of how conscience and self-respect 
 kicked the beam, and he determined to brave the 
 " animadversions, sarcasms and railleries which awaited 
 him," not however until, " out of decency, he had asked 
 a little time to deliberate." (' Lyndhurst's Life/ p. 20.) 
 " Although very free spoken upon almost all 
 subjects," Lord Campbell continues, " this is a passage 
 of his life which he always shuns, and it would be vain 
 to conjecture whether he had any and what internal 
 struggles before he yielded." We quote these words 
 only to give them the strongest denial upon the autho- 
 rity of those who were intimate with Lord Lyndhurst 
 to the end of his days. On this "passage of his life" 
 he was at all times ready to speak without a shade of 
 embarrassment, and he never spoke of it but in the one 
 way, as a transaction which left him perfectly unfettered, 
 which asked for no surrender of any of his political 
 opinions, and which, on the contrary, enabled him to 
 make for the first time a public profession of the 
 convictions which he had long entertained. When 
 charged by his Whig adversaries with a flagrant dis- 
 regard of principle in consenting to come in for a 
 Treasury borough, and in making common cause with 
 the Government, it has been truly said by a writer who- 
 knew him well, 1 that, so far from shunning the topic, 
 " he never shrank from the charge either in or out of 
 
 1 Mr. Abraham Hayward, Q.C. See Review by him of Campbell's Lives of 
 Lyndhurst and Brougham in ' Quarterly Review ' for January, 1869, p. 14.
 
 i8i8. OF POLITICAL APOSTASY. 145 
 
 Parliament, whatever shape it took. His invariable 
 reply was that he had never joined any political party, 
 never belonged to any political society, and never made 
 any profession of political faith, prior to his election 
 for Yarmouth." 
 
 In the letters even of his youth we find no traces 
 of a leaning towards extreme views on either side ; 
 his inclination indeed seems to be all towards opinions 
 the reverse of what are called popular. Even so early 
 as in 1 796 he declares himself in direct opposition to the 
 prevailing spirit of Jacobinism. " I have become," he 
 writes from Boston (p. 46, supra], " a fierce aristocrat. 
 This is the country to cure your Jacobins. The 
 opposition here are a set of villains. Their object is 
 to overset the government, and all good men are 
 apprehensive lest they should be successful." 1 The 
 whole tenor of his views in after years, of which any 
 authentic record exists, points to the same conclusion. 
 Liberal, but gradual reform had his support always, but 
 he dreaded revolutionary changes, and he had no love 
 for the theorists who urged them. It would certainly 
 have been strange if he had not often expressed opinions 
 hostile to the doctrines of " arbitrary power and passive 
 obedience," which Lord Campbell, as we have seen 
 (supra, p. 105), was not disinclined to support, but which 
 
 1 Copley was a member of a Debating Society, called ".The Academical," 
 which met at a room in Bell Yard, between Lincoln's Inn and the Temple. Recent 
 politics were excluded from the discussions, which were directed to Modern 
 History and Political Economy. Brougham, Grant (afterwards Lord Glenelg) and 
 his brother, Francis Homer, and Campbell, were members. The late Professor 
 Pryme joined the Society in 1805, and mentions in his " Autobiographic Recollec- 
 tions," p. 65, that the first night he was present Copley opened the debate by 
 moving " that the Reign of Charles the Second was favourable to civil liberty." 
 " This," he said, " may seem a paradox, but I care not for the character of the 
 Sovereign, and shall dwell only upon the measures and political acts of the time." 
 Here was a theme on which a Jacobin might easily have been eloquent ; but Mr. 
 Pryme obviously heard nothing that savoured of a revolutionary spirit, otherwise 
 he could scarcely have failed to mention it.
 
 146 OF POLITICAL APOSTASY. CHAP. v. 
 
 must always have been distasteful to a man like Copley, 
 himself a man of the people, and whose sympathies were 
 naturally with the great body of the industrious masses, 
 to whom such doctrines were abhorrent, as they were 
 in themselves intolerable. Of no man of his time could 
 it probably be said with greater truth that he possessed 
 what his favourite author Horace calls the animus 
 rerum prudens, taking long views of things, and follow- 
 ing symptoms to their issues. But it needed no such 
 fine faculty of penetration and foresight as his to 
 have convinced him that the time had come, when 
 resistance to the free expression of opinion, and to the 
 rights of those on whom the existence and prosperity 
 of the State depends to a due share in Parliamentary 
 representation and in the raising and disposal of the 
 taxes levied upon them, could not and ought not to 
 be maintained. Nor was he likely to have spoken 
 otherwise than strongly and frankly on these and 
 kindred topics to Mr. Denman and others whom he 
 was in the habit of meeting in the intercourse of 
 daily life. But as the years advanced " that bring the 
 philosophic mind," as he saw the extravagant excesses 
 into which many of the men whose views he shared 
 up to a certain point were prepared to push them, and 
 considered the measures to which they were prepared 
 to resort for the purpose of carrying their views into 
 effect measures that went the length of imperilling 
 the framework of a social state which, with all its 
 faults, was full of blessings, and in any case was the 
 natural outcome of the history and genius of the 
 nation what was more natural than that he should 
 have chosen the safer path of standing " upon the 
 ancient ways," and of striving to make the increase 
 of political influence in the masses proportionate to 
 their increase in intelligence and to their stake in
 
 i8:8. WHAT WAS HIS AIM IN LIFE. 147 
 
 the stability of the State ? Such being his views 
 as undoubtedly they were is he to be condemned 
 as playing fast and loose with his opinions he had 
 belonged to no party, and therefore to no party could 
 he be false because he decided on throwing in his lot 
 with those whose general policy seemed to him better 
 fitted for the existing condition and exigencies of the 
 body politic ? If no change in political opinions is 
 to be allowed to those who grow cautious with the 
 advance of years and the growth of experience, what 
 public man of eminence or of proved capacity for 
 statesmanship shall escape censure ? x 
 
 At any rate, as the writer just quoted goes on to 
 say, 
 
 No one who knew Copley after his entrance into public life 
 could discern a trace, a sign, a feature of the Democrat. The 
 Ethiopian must have changed his skin and the leopard his 
 spots. The mind of the alleged convert seemed to have been 
 formed in a Tory mould ; all his habits of thought were Tory ; 
 and, if ever a man became a Tory from conviction, it was 
 this man, who is accused of having pretended to become one 
 with a view to personal advancement. 
 
 That he should be false to himself and to his own 
 honour in order to better his worldly position was 
 little likely to be true of the man whose foremost con- 
 sideration, as we have seen, in entering on his career 
 at the Bar was not wealth, but, to use his own words, 
 " what is of more value than wealth, reputation and 
 honours." (Ante, p. 101.) 
 
 1 " I am no more ashamed," wrote Southey, " of having been a republican 
 than of having been eighteen." 
 
 L 2
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 First speech in Parliament Misrepresented by Lord Campbell On 
 Dissolution returned for Ashburton Made Chief Justice of Chester 
 Marriage Birth and death of daughter Becomes Solicitor-General 
 His speeches in Parliament Triumphant defence in action 
 Macirone v. Murray. 
 
 COPLEY was not long in Parliament before he made 
 his voice heard. On the 4th of May, 1818, he said 
 a few words in a discussion on a Bill for altering the 
 existing practice of giving rewards to witnesses on 
 whose evidence criminals were convicted, which had 
 been found to operate as a dangerous encouragement 
 to informers to instigate their dupes to the commission 
 of crimes. Copley approved of the measure, and only 
 spoke to enter his protest against a sweeping asser- 
 tion, which had been made in the course of the debate, 
 that the old system had " been productive of great 
 confusion throughout the country," an assertion which, 
 if uncontradicted, would have thrown discredit on the 
 verdicts for years of every Court in the kingdom. 
 " He had been engaged," he said, "for fourteen years 
 on the Midland Circuit, and had never known a single 
 instance to justify such a statement." He was fol- 
 lowed by Sir Samuel Romilly, who did not attempt 
 to impugn the accuracy of this statement. 
 
 A few days afterwards (iQth of May), Copley 
 entered the lists as a supporter of the Government in 
 the debate on the proposed renewal of the Alien Bill,
 
 i8i8. FIRST SPEECH IN PARLIAMENT. 149 
 
 for enabling the Government to remove from the king- 
 dom aliens suspected of intriguing against the State. 
 This power had been originally granted in 1 793, and 
 renewed from time to time. Its renewal now, when 
 the war with France was at an end, was strenuously 
 opposed by the Opposition, on the twofold ground of 
 the measure being no longer necessary, and of the 
 danger of putting it in the power of the party in office 
 to limit the right of asylum to political refugees and 
 this, it might be, at the dictate of some foreign poten- 
 tate. Romilly had spoken with great warmth against 
 the Bill ; and it is significant of the estimation in 
 which Copley's powers were held, that to him was 
 entrusted the task of replying to so powerful and 
 popular an antagonist. It is scarcely less noticeable, 
 that the speech which he made called up Sir James 
 Mackintosh to answer it. 
 
 If Copley had hitherto been, as Lord Campbell 
 calls him (p. 21), "the professed admirer and eulogist 
 of the French Revolution," he would scarcely have 
 ventured to introduce himself to the House of Com- 
 mons, at almost the outset of his appearance there, by 
 denouncing, as he did in the strongest terms, the 
 apostles of the creed of Marat and Robespierre. 
 
 " Let the House," he said, " examine for a moment, what 
 sort of persons they were about to admit, if they rejected the 
 Bill. They were about to harbour in this country a set of 
 persons from the Continent who were educated in and who 
 had supported all the horrors of the French Revolution ; 
 persons who were likely to extend in this country that 
 inflamed and turbulent spirit by which they themselves were 
 actuated ; persons who did not possess either morality or 
 principle, and who could not be expected to respect these 
 qualities in this country." [" Hear ! " from the Opposition.] 
 
 Among the Opposition were doubtless some who
 
 1 50 FIRST SPEECH IN PARLIAMENT CHAP. VI. 
 
 Copley knew, had been accusing him of political 
 apostasy. This may be gathered from the prompt 
 and dignified assertion, in answer to this interruption, 
 of what he had spoken being the voice of long che- 
 rished conviction. Lord Campbell was not present. 
 But he speaks of the incident in these terms. " There 
 seems to have been a tempest of ironical cheers from 
 the Opposition benches, prompted by some knowledge 
 of the antecedents of the orator. This was a very 
 critical moment for him but his audacity triumphed." 
 Hansard's verbatim report of what Copley went on 
 to say would not have borne out this statement. 
 What, then, must be thought of the biographer who, 
 while professing to quote Hansard, deliberately, and 
 with the view of giving a colour to his assertion, puts 
 words into Copley's mouth of which there is not a 
 trace in Hansard, while he omits others which are 
 recorded there, and which would have been equally 
 sure to provoke " a tempest of ironical cheers " ? 
 That he has done so will presently be shown. 
 
 Lord Campbell continues his citation of Copley's 
 speech thus : 
 
 " I have expressed," said he, in a calm lowered tone, " and 
 I will repeat the opinions which I have deliberately formed, 
 and which I conscientiously entertain on this qtiestion. I am 
 aware that these opinions are distasteful to some Honourable 
 Members on the other side of the House, who perhaps think 
 that our institutions might be improved by a little Jacobinical 
 admixture" \Lo^td cheers and counter cheer sl\ 
 
 The words in italics are Lord Campbell's own. 
 Hansard's report merely says " I am expressing 
 the opinions I feel on the question, and am 
 aware that those opinions are not acceptable to some 
 hon. members on the other side of the House. 
 [Loud cries of ' Hear ! hear ! ' from all sides.]"
 
 1 8 1 8. MISSTA TED BY L ORD CA MPBELL. 151 
 
 Unmoved by the clamour, Copley, as reported by 
 Hansard, goes calmly on. " I will repeat that I ex- 
 press myself as I feel, and in doing so, I shall not 
 be disturbed by any clamour which may be raised 
 on the other side of the House," here Lord 
 Campbell interpolates the words " meant to question 
 my sincerity" although still professing to quote from 
 Hansard, where they do not exist, " as there is not 
 one who knows me but is aware that the observations 
 which I have made are the result of my conviction 
 as to the line of conduct which ought to be pursued on 
 the present occasion." 
 
 We continue the quotation from Hansard, marking 
 Lord Campbell's interpolations and alterations in 
 italics by the way : 
 
 If no Alien Bill existed there might and probably would 
 be an influx (of persons whose principles and views are alarm- 
 ing to all who love tJie regulated freedom which we enjoy) into 
 this country of that class of persons to which I have alluded. 
 I know that the great mass of the English population are 
 well affected to the laws and constitution of the country (laws 
 of England) but (all in) the House was (must be) aware, 
 and, if not, their eyes must be (the eyes and ears of members are) 
 shut that there still exist in England a sufficient number of 
 disaffected persons (ready) to disturb its quiet a set of persons 
 who (forming a junction with) possessing the will to disturb 
 the public peace, might, by such a junction as that of a set of 
 disaffected foreigners, be stimulated to acts of outrage and 
 disturbance. [It was known that those disaffected persons most 
 likely to seek shelter here were men who had a natural 
 aversion to England ; persons who, from their earliest age, were 
 impressed with a wish to overpower this country ; and] : I am 
 not so hazardous a politician as to throw an additional 
 quantity of combustible matter into the country, in order to 
 see how much we can bear without exploding. I do not 
 
 1 The words in brackets have been entirely omitted by Lord Campbell.
 
 1 5 2 FIRST SPEECH IN PARLIAMENT. CHAP. vi. 
 
 wish to make the experiment as to the quantity of fresh poison 
 which may be inhaled without destroying the constitution. 
 In 1793 similar arguments to those of the honourable gentle- 
 men opposite had been used, but (Parliament by disregarding 1 
 them saved us from those) the country, by not acting on these 
 arguments, had avoided all the horrors (which a reckless 
 clamour for liberty had conjured up in another country] into 
 which they would otherwise have been plunged, as a neigh- 
 bouring country had been. 
 
 Comment on a citation so grossly inconsistent with 
 the text which it professes to quote would be super- 
 fluous. Every one knows with what severity it would 
 have been the duty of Lord Campbell as a judge to 
 have stigmatised the conduct of any member of the Bar 
 guilty of importing glosses into the text of a document 
 on which he founded, if, indeed, it were conceivable 
 that any member of that honourable body could have 
 been guilty of so flagrant a breach of propriety and 
 honour. But he had determined to show that the man 
 who he tells us had become a renegade, because " the 
 chance of a Jacobinical revolution had passed away " 
 (p. 20), the man who, never having been in France till 
 1815, yet, he declares (p. 23), " had danced round the 
 Tree of Liberty to the tune of (^a ira" was looked upon 
 from his first entrance on the political stage as a traitor 
 to his old convictions ; and, with this view he has in- 
 troduced words into the speaker's mouth which he never 
 uttered, and omitted others which are indispensable 
 to a fair report of what he actually said. After Copley 
 turned upon the " ironical cheerers " no one ventured 
 to interrupt him again, though he spoke even more 
 strongly to the same effect ; nor, when Sir James 
 Mackintosh addressed the House in reply, did that 
 very zealous Whig seek to cast at him the semblance 
 of a taunt for political apostacy. On the contrary, 
 after a sentence of warm compliment to " the honour-
 
 i8i8. RETURNED FOR ASHBURTON. 153 
 
 able and learned gentleman's promising display of 
 talents," he addressed himself to the task of answering 
 Copley's argument in a way that showed how anxious 
 he was to remove the impression it had produced 
 upon the House. 
 
 Copley did not speak again during the Session of 
 1818. He was, in fact, too actively employed in his 
 profession, and too dependent on its emoluments, to 
 have time to hang on nightly in Parliament, in order 
 to swell the majorities, already overwhelming, of Lord 
 Liverpool's Government. His mother and sister's 
 letters at this period constantly refer to his great 
 success at the Bar, and to his unremitting toil, which 
 seems, however, never to have deprived him of his 
 " high and cheerful spirits." He was now head of the 
 house in George Street, and with them whenever he 
 was able. " I beg you," his mother writes (Nov. 14, 
 1818) to her daughter Mrs. Greene, "to look into the 
 domestic scene when we are happy together, and where 
 your brother's constant occupations do not allow much 
 variety. He has his short dinner with us, which is 
 the only time we have his converse. But when Chief 
 Justices, etc. favour him, some degree of style and 
 fashion must be attended to." The state of his fee- 
 book was obviously not even yet such as to make the 
 prudent mother otherwise than careful about the 
 household expenses. 
 
 When Parliament was dissolved at the end of the 
 Session of 1818, Copley was asked to stand for the 
 borough of Ashburton, along with Sir Lawrence Palk. 
 He was returnet^wTtTioiiira contest, butTas his mother 
 writes in the letter just quoted, " some expense attends 
 these matters, such as dinners to the constituents, etc. 
 I was rather anxious," she adds, " for (about ?) this 
 new occupation, but must hope that it is all right,
 
 154 MADE CHIEF JUSTICE OF CHESTER. CHAP. vi. 
 
 especially as he is to be one of the great men of the 
 country." The first indication that he was marked 
 out for the highest honours of his profession came 
 presently in his being appointed King's Sergeant and 
 then Chief Justice of Chester. 1 On the nth of 
 February, 1819, his mother writes to Mrs. Greene : 
 
 You doubtless have heard of the death of the late Chief 
 Justice, who was worn out in the service, which is indeed a 
 very arduous one. Among the changes, your brother is 
 made Chief Justice of Chester, and King's Sergeant the last 
 honorary. The former carries him to the Circuit Court as 
 Chief Justice. The pecuniary returns are rather more favour- 
 able, with less fatigue than that attending the Circuit as a 
 barrister. 
 
 In consequence of his appointment as Chief Justice 
 of Chester, Copley had to go through the form of being 
 re-elected for Ashburton. This was in the second week 
 of February, and on the igth of March he spoke 
 in the debate on the Bill for the abolition of Trial 
 by Battle, which was not a party measure, and he did 
 not speak again that session except to make a few 
 remarks on the loth of June in explanation of the 
 state of the existing law during the debate on the 
 Foreign Enlistment Bill. While he spoke he knew, 
 what the House was not then aware of, that he had 
 been appointed Solicitor-General, as we find his sister 
 writing the same day to Mrs. Greene, " Before you 
 receive this letter, my brother will be Solicitor-General. 
 
 1 It is only necessary here to mention, as an instance of the reckless way 
 in which Lord Campbell introduces any story which might operate to Lord 
 Lyndhurst's prejudice, that he makes Jekyll say to Lord Castlereagh, the day after 
 Copley's speech in the Watson Trial, " Bait your rat trap with Cheshire cheese 
 and Copley will soon be caught." This was an old bar joke and a very stale one. 
 Campbell admits this, but he says Lord Castlereagh " took the advice in good 
 earnest," and he obviously means his readers to believe that this actually was the 
 bait by which Copley was caught. Watson's Trial was in June 1817. It was 
 February 1819 before Copley was made Chief Justice of Chester.
 
 HIS MARRIAGE. 155 
 
 . . . He is obliged to work very hard parliamentary 
 business is a great addition to his other labours." 
 
 But in the meantime another important incident in 
 his life had taken place. He had met, been captivated 
 by, wooed and won for his wife a lady of brilliant 
 qualities of mind, and great personal attractions. She 
 was a niece of his intimate friend, Sir Samuel Shepherd, 
 her name, Sophia Garay Brunsden, and the widow of 
 Lieut.-Col. Charles Thomas, of the Coldstream Guards, 
 who, six weeks after his marriage, had been killed at 
 Waterloo. It is thus that his mother announces to 
 her daughter in America this important innovation on 
 the old home arrangements : 
 
 - London, March, 25, 1819. 
 
 I feel you will be not a little surprised, if it has not already 
 reached you, at the intelligence which this will convey. You, 
 perhaps, with many other interested friends of your brother, 
 may have decided that he was to remain a bachelor. This, 
 however, will acquaint you that he has recently taken to him- 
 self a wife. Like many others, when this important event has 
 been delayed, he has made a quick transit, so that when I 
 last wrote, I did not know his intention, if he had then such a 
 change in contemplation. In short, he has taken all his 
 friends by surprise. He has been married about ten days. 1 
 We were not acquainted with this new friend previous to the 
 marriage ; she has been a resident in the country. I am 
 happy to say that, from the recent intercourse with her, she 
 has the appearance of possessing everything estimable and 
 interesting in character, and I am certain you join with me in 
 ardent hopes that all farther intercourse may produce and 
 cement happiness to this dear and valuable friend, which 
 cannot fail to give comfort to me. . . . 
 
 The lady is between twenty and thirty, very pleasing and 
 elegant in appearance. My son, with his new wife, set out 
 upon the circuit to go through the duties of his late appoint- 
 ment of Chief Justice of Chester, and will be absent for a 
 month. . . . 
 
 1 He was married on the I3th of March, 1819.
 
 156 BIRTH OF A DAUGHTER. CHAP. vr. 
 
 Lord Campbell allows (p. 23) that in the perfor- 
 mance of these duties "he displayed those extra- 
 ordinary powers and qualities which might have made 
 him the very greatest magistrate who has presided 
 in an English Court of Justice during the present 
 century," did make him such, was the verdict of 
 all his great compeers, his self-appointed biographer 
 excepted. But he continues : 
 
 "Admired and praised by all who saw and heard him, 
 clothed in scarlet and ermine, Copley cared for none of these 
 things " none of what things ? " scarlet and ermine," and 
 " extraordinary powers and qualities " have alone been spoken 
 of " and he was impatient to finish his business in Denbigh- 
 shire, Flintshire and Cheshire, that he might get back to 
 St. Stephen's, to prosecute his ambitious schemes, for which 
 the times seemed so propitious. His name is now to be found 
 in the list of the Ministerial majority in every division, and he 
 could be relied upon in every emergency of debate, doubtless 
 saying to himself, ' The sailor who looks for high salvage and 
 prize money must be ready to go out in all weathers.' " 
 
 This is said of the man who, so far from takinq; a 
 
 o 
 
 prominent or obtrusive part in the debates of the 
 session, spoke only a few sentences during two unim- 
 portant discussions ! 
 
 It was different, as will presently be seen, when he 
 appeared as Solicitor-General in the next session of 
 Parliament, and when he took the share of the legal 
 work of the Treasury Bench, which was expected 
 from a man of his predominating powers. 
 
 His marriage made some changes necessary in his 
 home. He provided a new house for his mother and 
 sister at Hanwell, eight miles from London, which also 
 served as a summer residence for his wife and himself, 
 his mother and sister going back in the meantime to 
 George Street. This arrangement lasted for many
 
 1819. . HIS LOVE OF HOME. 157 
 
 years ; and at his busiest times, it appears from his 
 mother's letters, when " he could catch a few hours, 
 he embraced the opportunity to be with her by 
 running down to Hanwell. 1 In January 1820 the 
 birth of a daughter came to gladden the family circle ; 
 but in a few weeks (March 12) his mother writes to 
 Mrs. Greene to tell her that " the dear delight " was 
 taken from them, "which we had fondly called 
 our own, and which we hoped to enjoy for future 
 comfort/' the child having died of convulsions, when 
 three weeks old. 
 
 " Your brother," the old lady adds, " being greatly occupied 
 with his business, and his wife having no near connections, 
 you will naturally suppose that Mary and myself have been 
 called to much attention. They do not feel happy to have 
 us leave them, and while I remain well for an old woman, it 
 is pleasant to be together. ... It is the ardent desire of my 
 heart to contribute what is in my power to the ease and 
 comfort of my son. You cannot form an idea of the occupa- 
 tions of his mind and time." 
 
 The mother's feeling was fully reciprocated by the 
 son. Copley's devotion to his wife in no measure 
 altered the old home affections which had hitherto 
 bound him so closely to his parents and his sisters. 
 No jealousy was ever shown by his wife, and to the 
 end the happiest feeling existed between the two 
 households. 
 
 Copley's position at the Bar had designated him 
 for the appointment of Solicitor-General whenever a 
 vacancy arose. He was in great practice, and was 
 daily proving himself not only armed at all points with 
 
 1 Six years later, on May 26, 1826, Miss Copley writes from Wimbledon, 
 where Copley took a house, after leaving Hanwell, " My brother bears his hard 
 work wonderfully, and is never so happy as when he can steal a few hours to run 
 down to us ; but he always brings his work with him."
 
 158 CHARACTER OF HIS SPEECHES. CHAP. vr. 
 
 knowledge of the law, but able to bring this knowledge 
 to bear with the disciplined force of an intellect of un- 
 usual subtlety, aided by a rare faculty of terse, luminous 
 expression. A good description of what he was at this 
 time is given by no friendly critic, the author of a work 
 published in 1819, called ' Criticisms on the Bar.' 
 
 " I hardly know a man at the Bar," he writes, " who avails 
 himself so often of the advantage afforded by a liberal 
 education, and by reading which has not been confined to law. 
 He is more than a lawyer, and apparently well read not only 
 in the historians, but in the poets of his country, so that at 
 Nisi Prius he shines with peculiar brightness. He seldom 
 offers anything that is frivolous or unnecessary, or that does 
 not mainly conduce to the point at which he is aiming. His 
 periods are formed not only with correctness, but with great 
 nicety and exactness. His sentences are frequently long, but 
 they are not involved in parentheses, and are always complete, 
 well constructed, with due relation and proportion of parts, 
 and not by any means deficient in variety." 
 
 This testimony is fully borne out by Copley's 
 reported forensic speeches. It is easy to imagine how 
 greatly their charm must have been enhanced by his 
 handsome presence and fine voice, and by that perfect 
 courtesy to both Bar and Bench, which, even by the 
 admission of Lord Campbell, " made him popular with 
 all branches of the profession of the law." The same 
 charm, heightened by dignity of bearing and frank 
 courage in debate, was felt in his appearances in the 
 House of Commons. " His gait there/' says Lord 
 Campbell (p. 24), "was always erect, his eye sparkling, 
 and his smile proclaiming his readiness for a jest." 
 
 The opening of the Parliamentary Session in 
 November 1819 found parties under the influence of 
 passionate excitement. The country had continued 
 to be kept in a state of political ferment by men of
 
 1819. MANCHESTER RADICAL MEETING. 159 
 
 extreme views, who, taking advantage of the prevailing 
 feeling that the time had come for radical changes in 
 the representation, did their utmost to disseminate 
 revolutionary doctrines, and to inculcate the necessity 
 of a resort to force for the overthrow of Government. 1 
 The people were drilled in large numbers, and the well- 
 affected throughout the country were suffering all the 
 uneasiness and apprehension which the fear of some 
 great outbreak was calculated to produce. Reform 
 meetings had recently been held at Birmingham, Leeds, 
 Stafford and elsewhere, at which very violent language 
 had been used. The leaders of the Radical party had 
 followed these up by organising a meeting to be held 
 on the 1 6th of August at a place called Peter's Fields, 
 then a suburb of Manchester, but now built over, and 
 forming part of that city. It was to be presided over 
 by Hunt, the ostensible leader of the Radicals, a 
 speaker who had again and again preached disobe- 
 dience to the law, and whose oratory was of the kind 
 well calculated to rouse the passions of a mob. In 
 anticipation of a dangerous outbreak, special constables 
 had been enrolled, and the Lancashire and Cheshire 
 Yeomanry had been called out to support a body of 
 Hussars then quartered at Manchester. The magis- 
 trates had determined to arrest Hunt and to dissolve 
 the meeting, which had drawn together from 50,000 
 to 60,000 people ; but their Chief Constable found 
 this to be impossible, in consequence of the resistance 
 of the crowd. The yeomanry and troops were then 
 summoned, and were ordered by the magistrates to 
 disperse the meeting. They did so. Hunt surrendered 
 
 1 Here is a specimen of the language which was quite commonly used at 
 public meetings. "The parliament had forfeited its claim to obedience the 
 prince had forfeited his claim to allegiance. Charles and James had been, one 
 beheaded, and the other exiled, and the present sovereign must meet with the 
 fate of one or the other." Hansard, voL xli. 168.
 
 160 DEBATE ONPETERLOO MASSACRE? CHAP. vi. 
 
 to the magistrates' warrant, and the meeting came to 
 an end. But the charge of the military upon the 
 crowd had been attended with loss of life and much 
 personal injury to men, women and children, and the 
 popular indignation stamped the proceedings by the 
 name of " The Massacre of Peterloo." 
 
 When Parliament met, the angry emotions which 
 this affair had excited had in no degree cooled down. 
 The Government had publicly announced their ap- 
 proval of the action of the Manchester magistrates. A 
 large and influential section of the Whig party were in 
 accord with them in thinking that no undue severity 
 had been used in putting a stop to the proceedings 
 of Hunt and his followers. " The Radicals," Lord 
 Brougham writes to Earl Grey (24th of October, 1819), 
 "have made themselves so odious, that a number 
 even of our own way of thinking would be well enough 
 pleased to see them and their vile press put down 
 at all hazards." 1 But the resort to military force, 
 in the absence of any riotous overt acts, was de- 
 nounced by another section of the Opposition as an 
 unwarrantable and dangerous interference with the 
 right of public meeting. An amendment to the 
 Address in answer to the Prince Regent's speech at 
 the opening of the Session, giving effect to their views, 
 was moved by Mr. Tierney, and gave rise to an 
 animated and protracted debate, now chiefly interest- 
 ing from its having led to one of Canning's finest 
 speeches, which ended in the Address being carried 
 by a majority of 231 in a House of 531 members. 
 
 1 'Lord Brougham's Memoirs,' vol. ii. p. 348. In the same letter occurs the 
 following significant comment on the mischief occasioned by the encouragement 
 given to the Radicals by certain leading men of the old Whig families "I 
 question if the present overt acts of violence would have been attempted, but for 
 1 1 the late crotchets of some of our friends, and I heartily hope Morpeth and the 
 Cavendishes may now be cured of them."
 
 1819. ATTACKED BY MR. SCARLETT. l6l 
 
 Copley, now Sir John Copley, spoke during the 
 debate. In the course of his speech he animadverted 
 in indignant terms on some words which had fallen 
 from Mr. Scarlett, who had previously spoken, in 
 which he had stated that an impression had gone 
 abroad that the Ministers were determined to put 
 down meetings for redress of grievances by force of 
 arms, and hinted " that the legal advisers of the Crown 
 might have been the cause of this determination." 
 This drew from Mr. Scarlett the explanation, that he 
 had not intended to make such a charge. " From all 
 he had known of his honourable and learned friend," 
 he said, " he believed him incapable of such conduct, 
 unless, indeed, his opinions had lately undergone a 
 very material alteration." Lord Campbell, in quoting 
 these words, emphasises them by italics, as if they 
 implied a reference to some change that had actually 
 taken place in Copley's political opinions. This con- 
 struction is surely in no way warranted by the words. 
 The love of constitutional privilege is not confined to 
 what is called the Liberal party ; but would any man of 
 ordinary experience, however deeply he might venerate 
 the right of public meeting, and however warmly he 
 might at any time have advocated that right, stand up 
 for its exercise for mischievous purposes, and under 
 conditions calculated to result in riot and confusion ? x 
 It was in this Session that the measures which came 
 
 1 It is to be noted that both Denman, and, according to Lord Campbell, 
 Scarlett, mention that Copley was called "Jacobin." In no other quarter have 
 we been able to trace the use of the epithet. In a conversation reported by 
 Campbell in a letter to his father of the loth of March, 1821 (' Life,' vol. i. p. 
 396), Campbell reports himself as having said to Copley, "Had you come into the 
 House on the popular side, what a firebrand you would have been ! " on which 
 Scarlett remarks, "He would have retained his name of Jacobin Copley." To which 
 Copley rejoins, " That is a calumny lately invented" Scarlett : " It is the name I 
 well remember you being called by before you went over." We see, however, 
 how Copley himself dealt with the imputation. 
 
 M
 
 1 62 CASTLEREAGtTS SIX ACTS. CHAP. vi. 
 
 to be known as " Castlereagh's Six Acts " were passed. 
 
 Like all measures of a stringent character, to which 
 
 a Government feels bound to resort, in fulfilment of 
 
 its primary duty of maintaining the public peace and 
 
 security to life and property, they incurred at the time 
 
 no small amount of public obloquy. But the large 
 
 majorities by which they were passed cannot be 
 
 regarded otherwise than as showing that they were 
 
 viewed by the bulk of the nation as necessary in the 
 
 circumstances of the time. One of them, the Training 
 
 Prevention Bill, has retained its place on the Statute 
 
 Book, and another, the Misdemeanours Bill, is 
 
 admitted by Mr. Walpole (' History of England, 
 
 vol. i. p. 518) to have been "in its ultimate shape a 
 
 beneficial reform." With the other four, which were 
 
 directed against blasphemous and seditious libels, 
 
 incendiary political journals, seditious meetings, and 
 
 the acquisition of arms for seditious purposes, modern 
 
 legislation has found itself able to dispense in Great 
 
 Britain, because of the wholesome changes in the state 
 
 of the press and of public feeling. But, however 
 
 undesirable in themselves, and unsuitable to a state 
 
 well ordered in its people, as well as in its laws, it is 
 
 simply absurd to say of them, as Lord Campbell does 
 
 (p. 28), that " while they were upon the Statute Book 
 
 the constitution was suspended, oral discussion was 
 
 interfered with not only at county meetings, but in 
 
 debating clubs and philosophical societies, and no man 
 
 could venture to write upon political or theological 
 
 subjects except at the peril of being transported 
 
 | beyond the seas as a felon. . . . For a time we 
 
 ' could not be said to live in a free country." 
 
 "These acts," Lord Campbell adds, "were carried 
 through the House of Commons by Copley." It would 
 have been no discredit to him had this been so. The
 
 1 8 1 g. GREA T SPEECH B Y SOLICITOR-GENERAL. 1 63 
 
 proceedings of the Radicals were then, says Lord 
 Brougham (' Memoirs,' vol. ii. p. 345), " bad enough to 
 make reflecting men consider that the time was come 
 for taking some steps in support of order." For every 
 one of the Government measures Copley was able to 
 advance reasons which were to his mind sufficient, and 
 which were moreover approved by the general verdict 
 of public opinion at the time. 1 But it is simply not the 
 fact that Copley carried these measures through the 
 Commons. On the contrary, he did not even speak 
 upon three of them. It is no doubt true, that in the 
 course of his speech on the Seditious Meetings 
 Prevention Bill (December 2, 1819), which was the 
 first introduced, he explained in general terms the 
 scope of the series to which it belonged. But this 
 is a very different thing from carrying the measures 
 through the House. The charge of them was un- 
 dertaken by Lord Castlereagh himself, and the burden 
 of carrying the Seditious Meetings Prevention Bill 
 through the committee, it appears from Hansard, 
 was entirely undertaken by the Attorney-General, 
 Sir Robert Gifford. 
 
 The unexpected indisposition of Gifford, whose 
 duty it was to explain to the House this measure and 
 the series of which it formed a part, threw this task 
 upon Copley, who only learned what had happened 
 on coming down to the House. He states this 
 explicitly in the beginning of his speech. 
 
 1 Observe what is said by Lord Grey in writing to Lord Brougham (August 25, 
 1819), a few days after the affair at Manchester. " Nothing could be more 
 unjustifiable than the conduct of the magistrates in employing the military as they 
 did. Whether this will be the feeling of the country remains to be seen ; if not, 
 the consequences may prove most fatal to the freedom of the country ; and this 
 indeed is one of the most mischievous effects of the proceedings of the Radicals, 
 that by abusing popular privileges they establish precedents for abridging them." 
 (' Lord Brougham's Memoirs," vol. ii. p. 342.) 
 
 M 2
 
 1 64 SOLICITOR-GENERAL'S SPEECH CHAP. vi. 
 
 "In undertaking," he said ('Hansard/ 41, 596), "the duty 
 which I am about to perform, I must request the indulgence of 
 the House. It is a duty which, in consequence of the absence 
 of my honourable and learned friend, has been suddenly cast 
 upon me since I came down to the Hoiise ; and I must entreat the 
 indulgence of the House with respect to the manner of my 
 performing it. Of course, I am familiar with all the details 
 of the measures in question ; but it is a very different thing 
 to be acquainted with these details, and to be prepared 
 suddenly to unfold them with the distinction and precision so 
 desirable on such an occasion. I will endeavour, however, 
 to discharge the task which has fallen upon me with as much 
 simplicity and clearness as I can command ; and to explain 
 the nature and character of \ the measures which it has been 
 deemed advisable to recommend to Parliament, for the pur- 
 pose of meeting the extraordinary dangers with which the 
 country is menaced ; dangers, which in my opinion, there is 
 a great disposition on the part of the many honourable gentle- 
 men opposite to underrate." 
 
 With admirable clearness and brevity, Copley then 
 developed the scope and object of the various mea- 
 sures, and concluded with words, the full force of 
 which can only be understood by those who have made 
 themselves familiar with the state into which the 
 country had been brought by the men who "meant 
 licence, when they cried liberty." 
 
 The gentlemen on the other side were always advising the 
 Ministry to try the effects of conciliation. There was every 
 disposition on the part of Ministers to conciliate the honest, 
 the well-disposed, and the loyal. There was no disposition to 
 exercise coercion on them ; and, instead of being a coercion on 
 loyalty, the system is calculated to protect all who deserve 
 protection from the designs of men who have sworn to 
 overturn the constitution, and who, if they succeed, will soon 
 be themselves involved in the general destruction. But how 
 are Ministers to conciliate these Reformers, who are drawing 
 the sword against them ? They are not men to be conciliated.
 
 1819. ON SEDITIOUS MEETINGS BILL. 165 
 
 To offer conciliation would be to succumb would be to give a 
 triumph to the disaffected, and an encouragement to them to 
 rally round the banners of sedition. 1 
 
 In a man of Copley's powers it was not extraordi- 
 nary that he should have accomplished with complete 
 success the task thus suddenly thrown upon him. He 
 might have been spared, one would have thought, the 
 accusation of having been guilty of the contemptible 
 baseness of saying what was not true, when he told 
 the House that he had come down unprepared for 
 such a contingency. Nevertheless Lord Campbell, who 
 could not possibly have any special information on 
 the subject, does not hesitate to make this charge. 
 " Gifford," he says, " having in his youth professed 
 Liberal principles, had not nerve for heading the en- 
 counter ; and therefore the expedient was resorted to 
 of the Solicitor apologising for coming forward as leader 
 to explain and support the Bill in a very elaborate 
 speech, by pretending that the task unexpectedly 
 devolved upon him from the sudden indisposition of 
 his colleague, which he had only heard of since he 
 came into the House." 
 
 It is a trite observation, that men's characters are 
 revealed in the way they judge of other men's actions. 
 In advancing a charge of this kind, the man who 
 makes it writes his own bitterest condemnation. The 
 attack upon Gifford was wholly unwarranted. In the 
 subsequent stages of the Bill he took the labouring 
 oar, and showed no want of nerve in fighting its 
 clauses point by point. 
 
 Before leaving the Six Acts, Lord Campbell takes 
 another opportunity of misrepresenting one of the very 
 few appearances of Sir John Copley in Parliament at this 
 
 1 Recent experiences in Ireland of the fruitlessness of conciliation under some- 
 what similar conditions are brought forcibly to mind, as we read these words.
 
 1 66 ATTACKED BY MARQUIS OF TAVISTOCK. CHAP. vi. 
 
 time. " In a debate," he says (p. 30), " on what was 
 called ' The Blasphemous Libels Bill ' the Marquis of 
 Tavistock alluded to the manner in which the Solicitor- 
 General in his former, perhaps he might call them his 
 less prudent days, had indulged in expressing his 
 feelings." The Marquis of Tavistock, according to 
 Hansard, did not use the words in italics which are here 
 put into his mouth. He merely said, in reference to 
 Copley's speech on the Sedition Meetings Prevention 
 Bill, that he had some recollection of a time when 
 Copley "was accustomed to treat similar topics in a 
 very different tone." Copley lost not a moment in 
 grappling with the assertion. 
 
 " I would ask the noble lord," he said, " on what grounds 
 does he bring charges against me for my former conduct ? . . . 
 I have never before the time of my entrance into this House 
 belonged to any political society, or been in any way con- 
 nected with politics ; and even if I had intended to connect 
 myself with any party, I confess that, during my short 
 Parliamentary experience, I have seen nothing in the views, 
 the policy or the conduct of the gentlemen opposite to induce 
 me, as a true friend of the constitution to join them." 1 
 ' Hansard,' 41, 1438. 
 
 Lord John Russell, in the preface to the sixth 
 volume of his Life of Moore, tells a good story of a 
 mot of Sir James Mackintosh upon this occasion. 
 " I remembery' he says, " sitting by Mackintosh, when 
 a great lawyer, disclaiming from the Treasury Bench 
 all participation in the opinions of the Liberal party, 
 said, ' I could see nothing to tempt me in the views of 
 the gentlemen opposite.' ' For views read prospects? 
 whispered Mackintosh to me." Out of this very mild 
 specimen of Mackintosh's faculty of " tart reply," in 
 
 1 Lord Campbell, again professing to quote from Hansard, omits the very 
 important words in italics, which are given in Hansard.
 
 1819. ACTION MACIRONE v. MURRAY. 167 
 
 illustration of which Lord Russell quotes it, Lord 
 Campbell constructs the following portentous para- 
 graph : 
 
 This harangue was delivered from the Treasury, Bench, 
 and was received with derision by the Whig leaders to whom 
 it was addressed. At the conclusion, Mackintosh whispered 
 to Lord John Russell, who sat next to him. "The last 
 sentence, with the change of one word for a synonym, would 
 have been perfectly true. But, instead of quarrelling with 
 our views, he should have said that he did not like our 
 prospects. 
 
 This quotation serves well to show, not only how 
 the biographer of the Chancellors could " mar a good 
 tale in the telling," but also how little reliance is 
 to be placed on his candour in the use of materials. 
 Mackintosh's remark was perfectly fair as a passing 
 joke, for the prospects of office, that Elysium of Whig 
 dreams, were at this time blank indeed. But does it 
 warrant the statement that Copley's words, which 
 included " policy and conduct " as well as " views," 
 were " received with derision ? " No one, at any rate, 
 ventured to take up the glove which Copley had thrown 
 down, and many years elapsed before the charge 
 against him of inconsistency was publicly renewed, when 
 it was again as quickly and boldly met and silenced. 
 
 At this time all London was talking of a brilliant 
 success which Copley had achieved a few days before 
 (Dec. 10, 1819) in a trial before Chief Justice Abbott 
 and a special jury in the Court of King's Bench. 
 An action, in which the damages were laid at ; 10,000, 
 had been brought against Mr. John Murray, the well- 
 known publisher, by Colonel Macirone, in consequence 
 of some severe animadversions on his conduct which 
 had appeared in the ' Quarterly Review ' (No. xxxvii.) 
 in the course of a review of Sir Robert Wilson's
 
 1 68 COLONEL MACIRONE. CHAP. vi. 
 
 ' Sketch of the Military and Political Power of Russia/ 
 Colonel Macirone, an Englishman, had been in the 
 service of Murat, while King of Naples, and had 
 acted as his aide-de-camp. He had remained in his 
 service after Murat became actively engaged in hostili- 
 ties with Austria, then acting in alliance with England. 
 After the fall of Napoleon at Waterloo, Macirone had 
 been employed on behalf of the Duke of Otranto to 
 conduct negotiations with the Allied Armies for the 
 surrender of Paris. At a later date he had corresponded, 
 on the part of Murat, then a fugitive in Corsica, with 
 Prince Metternich, who, on the part of Austria, con- 
 sented to grant Murat an asylum in the Austrian 
 dominions upon his agreeing to abandon his claim to 
 the throne of Naples. A passport to enable Murat, if 
 he accepted these conditions, to proceed to Trieste, was 
 entrusted to Macirone. With this he went to Ajaccio, 
 and saw the King, who indignantly declined the 
 proposal. Murat was then, in fact, on the point of 
 sailing for the mainland with an expedition, bent on 
 endeavouring to regain his throne. Macirone knew 
 this yet he delivered the passport to Murat. He had 
 moreover deliberately misled Captain Bastard, the 
 commander of a small English squadron which had 
 been stationed at Bastia, to intercept Murat in the 
 event of his embarking in such an expedition. 
 The consequence was that Murat got such a start 
 of Bastard that he was able to land in Italy without 
 interruption. He was soon afterwards defeated and 
 taken prisoner. He tried to use the passport he 
 had received from Macirone to effect his release, but 
 in vain, and he was subsequently tried and shot at 
 Pizzo (Sept. 1815). 
 
 The reviewer had spoken of Colonel Macirone in 
 no very measured terms. " For Murat," he had said,
 
 1819. COPLEY'S SKILFUL DEFENCE. 169 
 
 " we cannot feel respect, but we feel very considerable 
 pity. Of Mr. Macirone we are tempted to predict 
 that he has little reason to apprehend the honourable 
 mode of death which was inflicted on his master. 
 His vocation seems to be another kind of exit." It 
 is characteristic of the temper of the times that an 
 issue, which might have been thought to lie only 
 between Macirone and his reviewer, was taken up 
 as hotly by the opposing political parties as if their 
 own dearest interests were at stake. Macirone was 
 obviously a stout adherent of the Radical party ; and 
 to this cause it is no doubt due, that much of the 
 speech for the plaintiff is occupied with invectives 
 against the party of which the ' Quarterly Review ' 
 was the advocate, and which is spokerfof as " a faction 
 rioting in all the insolence of power." 
 
 On the Bench were seated the Duke of Wellington, 
 Lord Liverpool, and other leading statesmen, who 
 had been subpoenaed as witnesses for the defence. 
 To what effect cannot now be known, for the 
 astuteness of Copley made it unnecessary to call 
 witnesses, and at the same time shut out the plain- 
 tiffs counsel from the advantage of a reply. With 
 singular lack of foresight, Mr. Bell, the counsel for 
 Macirone, had quoted passages from a book published 
 by him 1 some time before, and by so doing had made 
 the entire book available as evidence for the defendant. 
 Copley seized the advantage, and called for certain 
 other passages to be read, which were all that he 
 required to enable him to substantiate the facts above 
 stated and several others equally discreditable to 
 Macirone, on which he rested his client's defence. 
 
 Before Copley had completed his statement of the 
 
 1 ' Memoirs of the Life and Adventures of Colonel Macirone.' 2 vols. London. 
 1818.
 
 170 CLOSE OF COPLEY'S SPEECH. CHAP. vi. 
 
 facts, as developed in Macirone's own book, it is 
 obvious that the Jury had arrived at the conclusion 
 to which he wished to lead them ; but he went on 
 to drive this conclusion home. 
 
 " Gentlemen," he said, " I perceive I am unnecessarily 
 occupying your time, and that you have long been prepared 
 to pronounce a verdict in this case for the defendant. I will 
 detain you only a few moments longer. The substance of the 
 charge as proved against the plaintiff is this. We find him a 
 British subject, at a period when the government of Naples 
 was at war with this country, serving as an officer in the 
 Neapolitan army. We find him, under these circumstances, 
 filling the confidential situation of aide-de-camp to Murat, and 
 most clearly guilty, according both to the letter and spirit of 
 the English law, of the crime of treason. We find him again 
 engaged as the agent of the Duke of Otranto in a negotiation 
 with the Duke of Wellington ; we find him giving a false 
 colour to that transaction, and labouring to show that the 
 Allied Powers had been guilty of a gross breach of faith in the 
 construction put upon the Convention of Paris. We find him 
 impeaching the character of the noble duke now on the bench ; 
 attacking the Austrian government ; abusing, in the most 
 unmeasured terms, individuals of the highest respectability 
 and character ; and then, with a confidence peculiarly his 
 own, coming into a Court of Justice to demand at the hands 
 of a British Jury compensation in damages against a respect- 
 able individual for a fair criticism of his conduct, and an 
 impartial review of the facts which he has himself published 
 to the world. Above all, in this last transaction in Corsica, 
 you find his conduct throughout marked with falsehood and 
 treachery of the most infamous description ; and I ask you, 
 therefore, with confidence, whether it is going too far to say 
 that a person who has conducted himself in the manner I 
 have described, merits an exit of a different nature and less 
 honourable than that of his former master. ... If you are 
 satisfied, as I know you must be, that he has been guilty of 
 a most flagrant breach of trust, and conducted himself in a 
 manner wholly inconsistent with his duty as an Englishman,
 
 1819. RESULT OF ACTION. 171 
 
 you will send him out of Court marked with the contempt 
 which his conduct has deserved." 
 
 The Jury intimated at once that they were all 
 agreed, and that the presiding Judge need not trouble 
 himself to comment on the evidence. But this he 
 insisted on doing as a matter of precaution. As soon 
 as he concluded, the Jury at once returned a verdict 
 for the defendant. An attempt was made to obtain 
 a new trial, but without success. 1 
 
 1 In reviewing Lord Campbell's ' Lives of the Chief Justices ' (' Edinburgh 
 Review,' Oct. 1857, p. 456*), the writer states that it was by his appearance at 
 this trial that Copley first attracted the attention of the Government. It has 
 been said that this passage of the ' Review ' was submitted before publication to 
 Lord Lyndhurst himself. If this were so, the fact that he allowed the state- 
 ment to go unchallenged serves to illustrate the supreme indifference which 
 he always showed about everything in relation to his own biography. In the 
 memorandum by himself, however, to which reference has more than once 
 been made in the text, and which was written several years after 1857, he gives 
 the date correctly at which he was offered a seat in Parliament by Lord Liverpool. 
 Strange that the reviewer should not have taken the trouble to refer to the 
 report of the Macirone trial, when he would have seen that so far from being a 
 stranger to the Government, Copley was then Solicitor-General I Here is one 
 warning more to writers of biography to test, where it can be tested, every date 
 and every fact before committing themselves to it.
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 Cato Street Conspiracy Trial of Thistlewood, Ings, and others 
 Copley's speeches Queen Caroline Discussions in Parliament on 
 her case Bill of Pains and Penalties Proceedings in House of 
 Lords Brougham's, Denman's, and Copley's speeches. 
 
 A FEW months after this time, Copley added greatly 
 to his reputation by the appearance he made in the 
 trial of Thistlewood and others for high treason. 
 The agitation of the previous years by men reckless 
 as to results, so that only the existing constitution 
 could be destroyed and the administration of the 
 country be thrown into the hands of the populace, 
 had culminated in a plot of extreme atrocity for the 
 destruction of all the members of the Cabinet, as the 
 first step towards the desired result. At the head of 
 this plot was Arthur Thistlewood, who, thanks in a 
 great measure to Copley's skill and eloquence, had 
 made a narrow escape when brought up for trial with 
 Dr. Watson in 1817. Since t then he had been im- 
 prisoned for a year for sending a challenge to Lord 
 Sidmouth, and, on being released, he had employed 
 himself in hatching the sweeping massacre of the 
 Ministry of which Lord Sidmouth was a member. 
 The Cabinet consisted of Lord Westmoreland, Lord 
 Liverpool, Mr. Vansittart, Lord Castlereagh, Lord 
 Bathurst, Lord Sidmouth, Lord Melville, the Duke of
 
 1820. CATO STREET CONSPIRACY. 173 
 
 Wellington, Mr. Canning, Mr. Robinson, Mr. Bragge 
 Bathurst, Mr. Wellesley Pole, the Earl of Mulgrave 
 and Lord Harrowby. It had been at first contem- 
 plated to assassinate them separately, upon the night 
 of the funeral of George III., who had died on the 
 29th of January, 1820, the conspirators thinking the 
 occasion would be favourable for their plans, as the 
 greater portion of the soldiers usually quartered in 
 London would be at Windsor for the funeral cere- 
 mony. But this line of action having been found to be 
 attended with difficulty, it was subsequently resolved 
 to seize the opportunity of one of the Cabinet dinners, 
 which were held weekly during the early part of the 
 session at the houses of the Ministers in succession, 
 when all the victims of the intended massacre would be 
 present, and might be struck down at once. 
 
 On the 22nd of February, the conspirators learned 
 from the papers, that the Ministers were to dine the 
 next day at the house of Lord Harrowby, the 
 President of the Council, in Grosvenor Square. They 
 at once determined to avail themselves of a chance 
 which might not soon occur again. Some of their 
 number, it was arranged, should watch the house ; 
 another of them was to call at the door, on the pretext 
 of delivering a dispatch-box ; hand-grenades were then 
 to be thrown in at the dining-room window, while 
 the body of the conspirators rushed into the house, 
 and, having secured the servants, were to assassinate 
 the Ministers, bringing away with them as trophies 
 the heads of Lord Sidmouth and Lord Castlereagh 
 in bags provided for the purpose. This done, the 
 conspirators were then to set fire to the cavalry 
 barracks. They hoped by this time to be joined 
 by the "people," and with their aid to storm the 
 Bank of England and the Tower, and to establish a
 
 174 CATO STREET CONSPIRACY. CHAP. vn. 
 
 provisional government, with the Mansion House as 
 its headquarters. 1 
 
 Happily one of the men present, at the meeting 
 where this plan was arranged, one Hiden, a milk- 
 dealer, lost heart, and found means to put Lord 
 Harrowby on his guard. His lordship allowed all 
 the preparations for his dinner-party to proceed, the 
 Ministers being separately made aware that they were 
 not to come. As it happened, there was a large 
 dinner-party next door at the Archbishop of York's, 
 so that the scouts of the conspirators, seeing guests 
 arriving, and not being quite sure of Lord Harrowby's 
 house, were led to believe that the Government had 
 no suspicion of their intentions ; nor did they discover 
 their mistake until it was too late to give the alarm 
 to their confederates. These meanwhile had assembled, 
 to the number of twenty-five, in a loft over a stable, in 
 a small obscure street, called Cato Street, leading out 
 of the Edgware Road, and they were engaged in arm- 
 ing themselves to carry out their purpose, when they 
 were surprised by a party of Bow Street officers, who 
 scrambled up the ladder that led into the loft. The 
 lights were extinguished, a few pistol shots exchanged, 
 a police officer was killed, and Thistlewood, with some 
 
 1 In reading the insane projects of the sedition-mongers of this period, of 
 which murder and rapine always form a prominent feature, under the colour 
 of redressing the wrongs of the poor and establishing that equality of position 
 and of means which in the very nature of things is impossible, the reader of 
 Shakespeare is constantly reminded with what admirable truth and humour he 
 has clrawh the whole class in the scenes of the Second Part of 'Henry VI.,' in 
 which Jack Cade, " inspired with the spirit of putting down kings and princes," 
 urges dh his infatuated followers by the assurance that " henceforward all things 
 shall be in common." They are to go first "and set London Bridge on fire, and, 
 if you can, burn down the Tower too," while all above the artizan class are to be 
 swept off the face of the earth. 
 
 " We will not leave one lord, one gentleman ; 
 Spare none but such as go on clouted shoon, 
 For they are thrifty honest men, and such 
 As would, but that they dare not, take our parts."
 
 1820. CATO STREET CONSPIRACY. 175 
 
 of his companions, escaped through a window at the 
 back of the premises. Nine were taken into custody, 
 and next morning Thistlewood was traced to the house 
 of a friend in Little Moorfields, and captured in bed. 
 
 Eleven of the conspirators were indicted for high 
 treason. They claimed to be tried separately, and the 
 proceedings commenced by the trial of Thistlewood 
 on the i yth of April. The case was opened by the 
 Attorney-General. Copley examined the principal 
 witness, Adams, one of Thistlewood's gang, who 
 had turned approver. The examination was long, 
 and he became so fatigued, after a time, that Mr. 
 Gurney had to finish the examination. The trial 
 lasted three days, Copley replying for the Crown 
 on the whole case. His speech is a masterpiece of 
 forensic eloquence. It does not press the prisoner too 
 hardly ; it is free from heat or vehemence ; the 
 evidence is marshalled and stated with consummate 
 skill, and, while its weight is tested on strict principles, 
 no point is lost that should rightly go to determine the 
 verdict. As was fitting in a trial for a crime of such 
 magnitude, and involving such serious penalties, all 
 was grave, measured, judicial ; but the facts were at the 
 same time arranged with such clearness and coherence, 
 that no glow of rhetoric was needed to enforce them. 
 When dealing, however, near the close of his speech, 
 with the argument set up by Thistlewood's counsel, 
 that the plot had no political object in view, Copley 
 showed to what uses he could turn at will a masculine 
 power of oratory founded on the best models. 
 
 "This plot," he said, "it is contended, had no political 
 object in view. Observe the language and conduct of the 
 prisoner. The numbers at Cato Street were not so great as 
 he had expected they amounted to only twenty-five. He 
 was alarmed he was apprehensive they might desert him.
 
 COPLEY'S SPEECH. CHAP. vn. 
 
 He endeavoured to inspire them with confidence. He warned 
 them of the danger of retreating. It would prove, he said, 
 another Despard's job. 1 Why that allusion, but because his 
 enterprise was of a similar character ? Can it be explained 
 upon any other principle ? Does it not show what was passing 
 in his mind at the time and evince the true nature of the 
 enterprise more satisfactorily than evidence of any other 
 description ? But to pursue this still further. Davidson " (a 
 man of colour, one of the leaders of the plot) "is apprehended, 
 and immediately exclaims, ' Let those be damned who will 
 not die in Liberty's cause,' and he sings a line of the admirable 
 ballad of the poet Burns, ' Scots wha hae wi' Wallace bled ! ' 
 Does not this speak for itself in terms too distinct to be mis- 
 understood ? Does it not unfold his heart and mind to our 
 observation, and show what was passing there at the time ; 
 what was the object of the criminal enterprise in which he had 
 embarked ; what it was for which he was then a prisoner ? 
 Assassination to be followed by plunder ? No, but assassination 
 to be followed by revolution, and the establishment of that 
 which he miscalled liberty ! And here it is impossible not to 
 deplore the self-delusion of these misguided men, who, engaged 
 in an atrocious design against the laws and constitution of 
 their country, and which was to commence by the sacrifice of 
 some of the best blood of the nation by the murder, among 
 others, of that distinguished individual who' had led our armies 
 to victory, and exalted among the nations of the earth the 
 name and character of Englishmen could suppose that they 
 were treading in the steps of the great Scottish chieftain who, 
 with the spirit and energies of a real patriot, laboured to free 
 his country from a foreign yoke, and with inadequate means 
 and resources, but animated by an unconquerable spirit, kept 
 at bay the power of England, performing deeds of the most 
 heroic valour, till he fell at last, a victim to the basest 
 and most degrading treachery." Howell's 'State Trials,' 
 vol. xxxiii. p. 917. 
 
 1 Colonel Edwaid Marcus Despard, a native of Queen's County, in Ireland, 
 and six of his associates, were executed for high treason on the 2ist of February, 
 1803. His plan was to kill the King on his way to open Parliament on the 
 l6th of January previous, to seize the Tower, the Mansion House, and other 
 public buildings, and to proclaim a provisional government.
 
 i820. ON THISTLEWOO&S TRIAL. 177 
 
 Thistlewood's crime was so clearly established, that 
 a quarter' of an hour sufficed for the deliberation of 
 the jury. James Ings, one of the most active and 
 savage of his associates, was put upon his trial two 
 days afterwards. The parts of the Crown Counsel 
 were reversed, Copley opening the case for the pro- 
 secution, and the Attorney-General making the closing 
 speech. Copley's statement of the case against the 
 prisoner was given with admirable brevity. What had 
 occurred in the previous trial having enabled him to 
 anticipate the line of defence that would be adopted, 
 he disposed of it in a way that must have made the 
 task of Ings's counsel, Mr. Adolphus, a very hopeless 
 one. " Fervid and eloquent " are the epithets applied 
 to Copley's opening by Mr. Adolphus when he came 
 to speak, but its fervour and its eloquence will be 
 found by those who read it to lie in the closeness of 
 the argument, and the persuasive force of a high-toned 
 and tempered earnestness. The following passage 
 has an interest for the general reader, and is a good 
 example of the speaker's style : 
 
 It may be said that this was a wild and visionary project, 
 and, because it was a wild and visionary project, you will 
 probably be told that no such project was formed. The 
 question is not whether you or any other prudent and sober 
 man, even if his heart would allow him, would have embarked 
 in a design of this nature. It is impossible to examine the 
 history of the plots and conspiracies by which any country in 
 the world has in its turn been agitated, and not to say that, 
 independently of other considerations, there is not one in a 
 hundred in which any prudent men would have embarked. 
 You will find them in general ill-arranged, wild, and extrava- 
 gant, leaving everything to hazard, formed with inadequate 
 means, like that which is now the subject of your con- 
 sideration. But men become enthusiasts in cases of this 
 nature ; they are blind to the immediate difficulties ; they
 
 CHAP. VII. 
 
 178 TRIAL OF INGS. 
 
 look to the attainment of the ultimate object, and, in so doing, 
 overlook the impediments in their way. But let me only state 
 one observation to you, and you will cease at once to consider 
 that any argument can be founded on the visionary nature of 
 this plan, when you come to apply it to the case of these 
 particular individuals. They had considered falsely, I know, 
 but they had considered that the great mass of the labouring 
 part of the country was ripe for insurrection ; they considered 
 them as radically disaffected to the government of the 
 country ; they thought, therefore, that if they could strike 
 this sort of stunning blow, they might at once commence an 
 insurrection and revolt that would enable them to take 
 possession of the government of the country. If they were 
 right in the suspicion they had formed, that disaffection had 
 spread so widely, and had assumed such a character, the 
 project ceased to be wild and visionary ; and it is upon that 
 opinion, and that opinion alone, that the whole of this plan 
 appears to have been built. But the question is not whether 
 the project was extravagant, but whether the project was 
 formed ; and you will look to the evidence that will be laid 
 before you for the purpose of ascertaining that fact ; and 
 however wild, however extravagant it may appear to your 
 sober judgments, if you find 'it proved by the testimony of 
 witnesses, and by the appeal to facts which cannot be perverted 
 or denied, that such a project was formed, then however wild 
 and visionary it may be in your estimation, it will be your 
 duty to pronounce accordingly. 
 
 / As in the case of Thistlewood, the jury, after a 
 very brief deliberation, found Ings guilty. Three more 
 of the conspirators, Brunt, Davidson and Tidd, were 
 tried separately, but Copley only took an active part 
 in the trial of Brunt, summing up the case against 
 the prisoner. They were all found guilty, when the 
 six other prisoners who remained for trial pleaded 
 guilty, and threw themselves upon the mercy of the 
 Crown. They were transported for life. Thistle- 
 wood, Ings, Brunt, Davidson and Tidd were hanged 
 and beheaded (May i, 1820). The revelations during
 
 1 820. QUEEN CAROLINE. 179 
 
 this trial, and the punishment which followed upon 
 them, had a salutary influence in checking further 
 attempts at insurrection and anarchy, and agitation 
 was thenceforth conducted by legitimate means and 
 directed towards legitimate objects of reform. 
 
 On the dissolution of Parliament consequent upon 
 the death of George III. Copley was re-elected for 
 Ashburton. His name appears only once in the 
 debates" of that session, and he stood aloof from the 
 angry discussions that signalised it in anticipation of the 
 trial of Queen Caroline, in which he was soon to take 
 a prominent and distinguished part. It would indeed 
 have been unbecoming in the law officers of the 
 Crown to have joined in these debates. The issues 
 raised in them were such as with propriety could only 
 be dealt with by the leading members of the Cabinet. 
 To them no task could have been more irksome 
 and invidious. Gladly, no doubt, would they, if they 
 could, have escaped the necessity of dragging before 
 the public eye the miserable and disgusting scandals 
 which were inevitable, if that unhappy lady, a Queen 
 and no Queen, were so ill-advised as to come back to 
 England to claim the status and privileges of royalty. 
 They knew, what published memoirs have since made 
 known to all the world, how unwise was the choice 
 which had given Caroline, Princess of Brunswick, as a 
 bride to the Prince of Wales the first fataFstep which 
 drew after it a train of disastrous consequences. Still, 
 whatever her faults of character and disposition might 
 have been and they were many they could not but 
 pity her for the wrongs and outrages to her feelings 
 as a woman and a princess, which she had been com- 
 pelled to undergo, and which would have unhinged 
 many a stronger mind than hers had ever been. Her 
 conduct since she had returned to the Continent, 
 
 N 2
 
 l8o CANNING AND QUEEN CAROLINE. CHAP. viz. 
 
 even when judged with the most friendly eyes, had 
 been indiscreet in the extreme, and such as to raise 
 the gravest suspicion so grave indeed that Lord 
 Brougham, her most strenuous champion, was satisfied 
 that she ought to have remained abroad, and accepted 
 the terms which were offered to her as the price of her 
 consent to do so. But her own passionate wilfulness, 
 stimulated by evil counsel, forced upon the ministers 
 the very line of action which they were solicitous to 
 avoid, and left them no alternative but to introduce 
 the famous Bill of Pains and Penalties, and so bring to 
 the test of proof the imputations which the unseemly 
 folly of her own conduct had drawn upon her. 
 
 The retort made by Mr. Canning. to Mr. Tierney 
 (June 22, 1820), in the debate which had been raised 
 by Mr. Wilberforce in the hope of effecting an amicable 
 settlement with the Queen, puts the position of the 
 Ministry very clearly " ' Who forced you ? ' was the 
 question of the right honourable gentleman," he said, 
 " I answer, those weak and dangerous advisers who, 
 in an ill-fated hour, induced Her Majesty to return 
 to this country. ... By coming over to England, the 
 Queen has at once brought to issue a question the dis- 
 cussion of which the Government would gladly have 
 avoided." Of Canning's sincerity there can be no 
 question. The course taken by the Government had, 
 in his view, been made inevitable by the Queen's own 
 action. He was therefore quite consistent in passion- 
 ately disclaiming, as he did, the title of her " accusers," 
 which was applied to them. The charges against her 
 existed through no fault of theirs, and Her Majesty 
 had insisted they should be brought to issue. To 
 issue, therefore, they must be brought. 
 
 Canning had himself been on terms of friendship 
 so intimate with the Queen, that when the com-
 
 1 820. BILL OF PAINS AND PENALTIES. 181 
 
 promise failed, which Mr. Wilberforce had tried to 
 bring about, he waited upon the King, and stated 
 that, as he could not join in the contemplated proceed- 
 ings, having regard to the confidential terms on which 
 he had formerly stood with the Queen, it might be 
 expedient that he should not remain in the "Ministry. 
 The King, however, after a day's reflection, set him 
 free to remain at the head of Foreign Affairs, and to 
 follow what course he pleased in regard to the Queen. 
 Canning, convinced that whatever might be the result 
 of the inquiry before the House of Lords, no divorce 
 could be obtained, and that, unless this could be ob- 
 tained, the proceedings could only result in a perilous 
 public scandal, used all his influence with Lord Liver- 
 pool to prevent them. In this he did not succeed ; but 
 so strongly did he feel the awkwardness of his posi- 
 tion that he went abroad, and remained away until all 
 the discussions were at an end. " The Bill will not 
 pass ! " was his prediction from the first. It proved 
 true, and Lord Liverpool had in the end to do, what 
 Canning had all along urged him to do, withdraw it, 
 because of the narrow majority by which the third 
 reading was carried. 
 
 If the position of the Ministry, in bringing forward 
 the Bill, was painful, scarcely less so must have been 
 that of the professional men to whom the conduct of 
 the case to be made in support of it was intrusted. 
 The story they had to tell of a lady, possessed of 
 many estimable qualities the mother of the beloved 
 Princess Charlotte for whom England was even yet in 
 grief the wife of their Sovereign was one that must 
 have been hateful to their instincts as gentlemen. 
 What alone was left them to do was, to perform their 
 duty with courtesy and fairness, pressing the evidence 
 not a point beyond what it could reasonably bear.
 
 1 82 TRIAL OF QUEEN CAROLINE. CHAP. vn. 
 
 To the credit of having done so, every dispassionate 
 reader of the proceedings will, in these days, we think, 
 regard them as fairly entitled. 
 
 The proceedings commenced on the iyth of 
 August, 1820. Not till the 6th of November, after 
 forty-nine days of inquiry and discussion, was the 
 second reading of the Bill reached. It was carried 
 by a majority of 28, 123 voting for and 95 against it. 
 This majority, however, dwindled down to nine upon 
 the third reading four days afterwards, upon which Lord 
 Liverpool at once intimated that he would proceed no 
 further with the measure. 
 
 During the inquiry the House of Lords was con- 
 verted from a purely judicial tribunal, which it ought 
 to have been, into the arena of a party struggle, 
 carried on with unusual bitterness and vehemence. 
 The atmosphere of prejudice and passion which pre- 
 vailed outside had penetrated into the chamber of 
 that august assembly, and men whose sole duty it 
 was to weigh evidence and to pronounce a con- 
 scientious verdict a verdict affecting not only the 
 status of a Queen but the dignity of the kingdom 
 betrayed signs, that were too palpable to be mistaken, 
 of preconceived opinions which neither evidence nor 
 argument could alter. On the one side, the stability of 
 the Ministry, and the ascendency of their party were 
 at stake, and had to be maintained ; on the other, a 
 predetermination existed to regard the proceedings 
 against the Queen as prompted by a base servility to 
 the wishes of the sovereign, and to strike at him 
 through an adverse vote upon the Bill. Owing to 
 these causes the demeanour of many of the peers on 
 both sides was divested of the dispassionate dignity 
 which alone was suitable to the circumstances of the 
 case and the magnitude of the issue.
 
 1820. BROUGHAMS DEFENCE. 183 
 
 In so far as the Bar was concerned, the contest 
 was a battle of giants. Sir Robert Gifford, Attorney- 
 General, and Copley, the Solicitor-rGeneral, with Dr. 
 Adams and Mr. Parke, appeared in support of the 
 Bill ; Mr. Brougham, the Queen's Attorney-General, 
 Mr. Denman, the Queen's Solicitor-General, Dr. 
 Lushington, Mr. Williams, Mr. Tindal, and Mr. 
 Wilde appeared for the Queen. With the exception 
 of Dr. Adams they all subsequently attained judicial 
 dignity, three of them, Copley, Brougham and Wilde, 
 becoming Chancellors. All that ingenuity, eloquence, 
 and zeal could do was done on both sides. The 
 amazing energy and declamatory power displayed 
 by Brougham were not more conspicuous than a 
 courage which verged upon audacity, and occasionally 
 degenerated into something very like insolence towards 
 the tribunal before whom he stood. He seemed to 
 have felt that he had the mass of the populace so 
 completely at his back, that he might indulge in a 
 breadth of invective, and in language almost of menace, 
 on which but for the excited sympathies of the public 
 towards his client he would never have ventured. 
 It is now known that he was by no means assured of 
 her innocence, and that he withheld witnesses the 
 Countess Oldi, Bergami's sister, and others who 
 would have been unhesitatingly put forward had all 
 been clear in Her Majesty's favour, from the appre- 
 hension that they would break down on cross-exami- 
 nation, and discredit her case, perhaps wholly upset it. 
 Holding these views, nothing was left for him but to 
 heap unmeasured obloquy upon the witnesses in 
 support of the Bill an easy task, when they were 
 chiefly servants who had for years taken the wages 
 of the Queen and to dwell upon the too well 
 known injuries and insults which she had sustained
 
 1 84 BROUGHAMS SPEECH. CHAP. vn. 
 
 at the hands of one whom he treated as Her Majesty's 
 real accuser, and of whom he spoke, in a happily 
 selected quotation from Milton, as that impalpable 
 ,| shape, " whose head the likeness of a kingly crown 
 had on." Here, and not in the spotlessness 'of the 
 unhappy Queen, lay the strength of his case. As 
 he himself says in his 'Memoirs' (vol. ii. p. 385-6), 
 " Our strength against the Bill lay in the general 
 demurrer which all men in and out of Parliament 
 made namely that, admit everything true which is 
 alleged against the Queen, after the treatment she 
 had received ever since she came to England, her 
 husband had no right to the relief prayed by him, 
 and the punishment he sought against her." 
 
 What Brougham's fervid genius could accomplish, 
 when kindled by the excitement of a great occasion for 
 display, was finely illustrated in his celebrated speech 
 in opening the case against the Bill. The famous 
 peroration, which he rewrote several times, seems 
 overstrained almost to the point of extravagance to 
 the critical reader of the present day, unswayed as he 
 is by the sympathetic glow which was kindled in those 
 who heard it by the exciting circumstances under 
 which it was spoken, and by the electric force of the 
 speaker's voice and manner. But it unquestionably 
 produced a strong impression at the time, and will 
 probably long be quoted as a specimen of splendid 
 rhetoric. 1 
 
 If Brougham had misgivings as to the blameless- 
 ness of his client, his coadjutor Denman had none. To 
 him she was the innocent victim of purchased slanders. 
 She was, to use his own singularly inapt words, " pure 
 as unsunned snow," and he fought her battle with the 
 
 1 Denman says of it, " The peroration was sublime. Erslune rushed out of 
 the house in tears."
 
 1 820. DENMAWS SPEECH. 185 
 
 zeal of a knight of old, holding the lists against all who 
 questioned the chastity of the lady of his love. Strong 
 personal feeling, ever a dangerous element in a profes- 
 sional advocate, carried him several times in the course 
 of his speech beyond the limits of discretion. There 
 were in it two remarkable passages, which never should 
 have been there, on which Denman always looked 
 back with regret, and for one of which, as will after- 
 wards be seen, he paid the severe penalty of a 
 lengthened exclusion from the status of King's 
 Counsel, a then much prized honour, to which he was 
 well entitled on purely professional grounds. 
 
 In one of these passages Denman suffered, as people 
 so often suffer, for listening to suggestions from without, 
 instead of trusting to his own judgment. All the lead- 
 ing Whigs, the lights of Holland House, and others, 
 seem to have busied themselves in supplying the Queen's 
 Counsel with poetical and historical illustrations ; and 
 of those ready to prompt Mr. Denman none were more 
 active than Dr. Parr. " He earnestly besought me," says 
 Denman ('Life,' vol. i. p. 171), "to look into Bayle, 
 and weave into my summing-up allusions to Judith, Julia 
 and Octavia. The two first seemed to me inapplicable, 
 the third flashed upon me like lightning. In a moment 
 I resolved to make the wife of Nero my heroine, and, 
 indeed, the parallel was perfect." It says little for 
 Denman's judgment that he should have entertained 
 this notion for a moment. The Queen, a woman of 
 mature experience, of coarse, if not immodest, tastes 
 and habits, bold and reckless to the verge of impro- 
 priety, was palpably very unfit to be named in the 
 same breath with the innocent, blameless, virgin bride 
 of Nero, whose tragic story has been told by Tacitus 
 (' Annals,' xiv. 60) with more than his wonted power 
 and pathos. Parallel there could be none, except in
 
 I 
 
 i 
 
 1 86 DENMAWS SPEECH. CHAP. vn. 
 
 the fact that slaves were suborned to slander Octavia, 
 and to give Nero a pretext for ordering her death. But 
 even here the comparison failed in its chief point, for 
 there was in the Queen's story no counterpart to that 
 of Tigellinus, no scoundrel who like him denounced 
 himself as her paramour at the bidding of her lord. 
 The imputation against the Sovereign implied in such a 
 parallel was in no degree justifiable. Denman's offence 
 against good taste did not however even 'stop here, for 
 he went t>n to cite from Dion Cassius, lii. 13, the well- 
 known, but to all decent ears unquotable, retort of 
 Octavia's chambermaid to Tigellinus, and he did this in 
 a way which left it doubtful whether he meant to apply 
 it not to Majocchi, Sacchi, and other witnesses against 
 his client, but to the King himself. The King took it 
 in the latter sense. Denman certainly did not so 
 intend it ; but the bad taste of the quotation, however 
 read, was unquestionable. It delighted the popular 
 party, who for a time talked of the King as Nero; 
 but it greatly damaged the effect of a speech which in 
 other respects had many fine qualities. 
 
 It is intelligible that Denman, in the heat of zeal 
 for his client, should have been misled into availing 
 himself of Dr. Parr's envenomed suggestion ; but the 
 
 manner in which he concluded his speech IS 'in- 
 
 explicable on any reasonable plea implying as it did 
 the very guilt on the part of his client which he had 
 spent hours in repudiating. 
 
 " If your Lordships," he said, " have been furnished with 
 powers, which I might almost say scarcely Omniscience itself 
 possesses, to arrive at the secrets of this (femafe, you will 
 think that it is your duty to imitate the justice, beneficence, 
 and wisdom of that benignant Being, who, not in a case like 
 this, where innocence is manifest, but where guilt was detected 
 and vice revealed, said, ' If no accuser can come forward to
 
 1 820. COPLEY'S REPLY. 1 87 
 
 condemn thee, neither do I condemn thee: go and sin no 
 more.'" 1 
 
 These grievous mistakes in judgment were not 
 allowed to pass unnoticed when Copley came to reply 
 upon the whole case, and it will presently be seen with 
 what crushing force he dealt with them. Throughout 
 the inquiry he had shown the admirable temper and 
 rare skill in cross-examination for which rie was 
 conspicuous. Denman, who is unmeasured in his con- 
 demnation of the general conduct of the case for the 
 Bill, admits that " Copley's cross-examinations were 
 forcible and skilful ; that * of Flynn restored a lost 
 cause." 2 He could not, however, be just to Copley's 
 speech, which, he says, was much inferior to the 
 Attorney-General's, an opinion influenced, it may fairly 
 be surmised, by the way Copley disposed of the 
 passages above mentioned, the " purpurei panni " of 
 Mr. Denman's own speech, anoT certainly one which 
 the most weighty criticism has never shared. In 
 nothing is Copley's superiority to all the other 
 Counsel engaged more apparent than in his perfect 
 courtesy and calmness of demeanour throughout all 
 the proceedings, and in the judicial temper which he 
 contrived to maintain in dealing with the evidence, 
 when it came to his turn to analyse it, and argue from 
 it to results. He spoke, as was ever his custom, 
 without notes, but although Denman more than once 
 
 * The town was soon ringing with the epigram 
 
 " Gracious lady, we implore, 
 You will go and sin no more ; 
 Or, if the effort be too great, 
 Go away, at any rate." 
 
 - " I knew that he was lying," Lord Lyndhurst used to say in his later years, 
 when speaking of Lieutenant Flynn's evidence, " and I looked hard at him. He 
 fainted away, and was taken out of court." Well might Brougham fear to let 
 the Countess Oldi and others of the Bergami set be handled by such a master o f 
 the art of cross-examination as Copley.
 
 1 88 COPLEY'S SPEECH CHAP. vu. 
 
 impugned the accuracy of his citations, in every case 
 the reference to the short-hand notes proved him to 
 be correct. 1 
 
 His task was no light one, to engage the attention 
 of the assembled peers, on the forty-fourth day of the 
 inquiry, when it seemed as if no more was left to be 
 saicT, after the numerous speeches, all good, and all 
 very long, which had gone before. But in reading his 
 speech one feels that it must have arrested their 
 attention from the first, and kept it to the close. 
 Nothing was superfluous, nothing irrelevant. Almost 
 severe in its prevailing argumentative simplicity, it was 
 here and there enlivened by scholarly allusions and apt 
 quotations that fell naturally into their place. The 
 tone of feeling is manly and sympathetic, without 
 being sentimental ; the evidence is reviewed and brought 
 together in a way which leaves on the mind an im- 
 pression that it was very far indeed from being " a lost 
 cause " which Copley was advocating ; and when he 
 rises into a more impassioned strain, the language is 
 nervous, close, and weighty with the emphasis of 
 logically reasoned thought. 
 
 Here is a specimen of Copley's lighter vein. He 
 is dealing with the explanation given by the opposite 
 Counsel of the circumstance that, in travelling, 
 Bergami's rooms at the hotels were always next the 
 Queen's : 
 
 Mr. Williams says : " Oh, all this was intended to guard 
 
 1 One of these interruptions shows the marked contrast between the impe- 
 tuosity, not to say bad manners, of Brougham and the quietude and fairness of 
 Copley. Denman had challenged the accuracy of one of Copley's statements, on 
 which Brougham exclaimed : " Do not interrupt him ; it would be endless if you 
 interrupted him whenever he misstates evidence." Copley: "I should certainly 
 take it as a favour of my learned friend to interrupt me whenever I misstate any 
 fact." Brougham: "We shall be here till midnight." Copley: "I have not, 
 I conceive, misstated a single fact, except that I may have drawn a wrong 
 conclusion from the conduct of my learned friend Mr. Brougham."
 
 1820. ON BILL OF PAINS AND PENALTIES. 189 
 
 against surprise, against some danger with which she was 
 threatened^" My Lords, have we any evidence to prove this ? 
 Are we to be led away by confident assertions of Counsel ? 
 I look in vain for anything of the kind. My friend is learned 
 and laborious he introduces quotations in every possible way, 
 for the purpose of ornamenting his address to your Lordships. 
 I look around to see whether I can possibly discover to what 
 he refers, or from what source he takes the idea of a " surprise." 
 I have not been able to discover it, except in a grave and 
 serious author, with whose writings I know my friend to be 
 very conversant I mean Foote in ' The Trip to Calais,' where 
 I see something like a~hint for this. Your Lordships may 
 recollect to what I allude a conversation between Minniken 
 the chambermaid, and O'Donovan the Irish chairman, re- 
 specting the protection afforded to their mistress by Sir Henry 
 Hornby. My Lords, I will cite the passage. O'Donovan is 
 stating the extraordinary friendship of Sir Henry. He says : 
 
 " My lord was obliged to go about his affairs in the North 
 for a moment, and left his disconsolate lady behind him in 
 London." 
 
 " Minniken. Poor gentlewoman ! 
 
 " O'Donovan. Upon which his friend, Sir Henry, used to 
 go and stay there all day to amuse and divert her. 
 
 " Minniken. How good-natured that was in Sir Henry ! 
 
 "O'Donovan. Nay, he carried his friendship much farther 
 than that ; for my lady, as there were many highwaymen and 
 footpads about, was afraid that some of them would break 
 into the house in the night, and so desired Sir Henry Hornby 
 to be there every night. 
 
 "Minniken. Good soul ! And I suppose he consented ? " 
 
 Now I really cannot from any other source give an 
 explanation of this "surprise." Hansard, vol. iii. 1363-4. 
 
 The aptitude of this illustration disposed of Mr. 
 Williams' rhetoric with more effect than the most 
 elaborate argument. 
 
 When Copley came to deal with Denman's highly 
 elaborated parallel between Octavia and the Queen, 
 he brought into play that masculine force which
 
 190 COPLEY'S SPEECH CHAP. vn. 
 
 distinguished his oratory whenever the occasion 
 demanded it. Denman states that it was to Dr. 
 Parr he owed the suggestion for the parallel, and 
 no doubt this was the fact ; but his classical allusion 
 was stripped of much of its weight in many quarters, 
 when Copley was able to point to it as having 
 been anticipated by the celebrated William Hone, 
 who had beeri tried not many months before for 
 publishing blasphemous parodies. 
 
 " In the earlier stages of this inquiry," said Copley, 
 " appeals were made to the reign of Henry VIIL, and to the 
 cruelties exercised by that monarch. Those appeals, in that 
 stage of the cause, were considered as sufficiently powerful, as 
 sufficiently high, to answer the purpose of the defence. But 
 we had become used to them the name of Anne Boleyne, 
 the name of Henry VIIL had ceased to make any im- 
 pression on our minds. Some higher stimulant had become 
 necessary ; and, in the last stage of this inquiry, to my surprise, 
 to my amazement and utter astonishment, my learned friend, 
 Mr. Denman, whom I have long known, whose candour in 
 private life, and courtesy, I have long loved and admired, 
 dared I say dared, for no other word is applicable to such a 
 subject to say that in the history of the ancient and modern 
 world there was no parallel to the usage which her royal 
 Highness had experienced, unless in the annals of Rome, 
 in its worst period, under its worst and most infamous 
 sovereign. 
 
 " My Lords, the Princess of Wales is said, in her sufferings, 
 to stand in the situation of Octavia. How are we to answer 
 this, but by seeing in what sftuaGon Octavia did stand, and by 
 seeing the enormous nature of that charge which has been 
 preferred against the Government of this country ? Octavia's 
 father was murdered by Nero ; Octavia's brother was murdered 
 by Nero, in the presence of Octavia. She, one of the most 
 pure and spotless beings the world ever produced, was 
 charged with having had a criminal intercourse with a slave. 
 My Lords, there was not a semblance of truth in the charge : 
 she had never advanced this slave she had never promoted
 
 1 820. ON SILL OF PAINS AND PENALTIES. 191 
 
 him to honours she had never slept in the same room with 
 this slave ; but, without evidence, she was sent into banish- 
 ment. She was speedily recalled. What then took place ? 
 The most infamous of men, a monster who had been employed 
 by Nero to murder his own mother Agrippina, was applied to 
 by Nero to get rid of his wife Octavia. ' You must confess 
 that you have had an adulterous intercourse with her, you 
 shall suffer a nominal banishment ; but you shall be 
 abundantly rewarded.' The deposition was made it was 
 taken for truth she was seized her veins were opened the 
 blood did not flow sufficiently quick she was put into hot 
 water, and her head was taken off, and sent to Nero, to glut 
 his savage mind. 
 
 " My Lords, what can we say when my learned friend feels 
 himself justified in coming into a Court of Justice to say that 
 the case of Octavia bears anything like resemblance to the 
 case before your Lordships ? Nay, not only bears anything 
 like resemblance, but is the only case that can be extracted 
 from the history of ancient and modern times, that can be 
 stated as parallel to it ? My Lords, I confess when I heard 
 this, my blood chilled with horror. I hardly understood 
 where I was, or from whom it was that this extraordinary 
 language proceeded. But, my Lords, what makes it still more 
 extraordinary, my learned friend has not even the merit of 
 invention and novelty in this. The parallel is not his own ; 
 for I find in a newspaper which I hold in my hand, published 
 some days before the speech delivered by my learned friend, 
 an advertisement in these terms : ' Nero Vindicated ! ' 
 Published by whom, my Lords ? By a name well known, an 
 individual of whom I know nothing except through the 
 Publications he has ushered into the world 'printed by 
 William Hone, Ludgate Hill.' And my learned friend 
 condescends to make himself the instrument of such a person 
 as that whom I have described to prefer such charges as 
 these in this high and august assembly against the monarch 
 of this country ? 
 
 " What would my learned friends say, if I, imitating the 
 same course in answering the arguments of my learned friend, 
 who would endeavour to persuade you, from the boldness of 
 Her Royal Highness to come here to meet inquiry, that there
 
 1 92 COPLEY'S SPEECH CHAP. VH. 
 
 can be no foundation for the charges against her what would 
 your Lordships, or what would my learned friends say, if I 
 were to quote the language of Silius, as addressed to the wife 
 of Claudius, when he was endeavouring to stimulate her to 
 an act of treason ? ' Insontibus innoxia consilia, flagitiis 
 manifestis subsidium ab audacia petendum.' 1 My Lords, I 
 should not have dared to make such a quotation, only that I 
 found it in the same page with the passages to which my 
 learned friend has referred. I should not have dared to make 
 any allusion to the history of that period ; because I believe 
 in my conscience, on both sides, as far as relates to the 
 Sovereign and Government of the country, and to the illustrious 
 individual who now stands before you accused, there is not 
 the slightest resemblance between them." Hansard, vol. iii. 
 1408-10. 
 
 Copley spoke for nearly two days with unabated 
 clearness and vigour ; and although his peroration 
 might not compare for momentary effect with the 
 picturesque and fervid appeal with which his great 
 rival Brougham had concluded his celebrated speech, 
 it was better suited to the tribunal to which it was 
 addressed. It brought back the question out of the 
 heated atmosphere of passion and party in which it 
 had been enveloped into the colder and calmer air of 
 temperate reason, and formed a not unworthy close to 
 the long series of remarkable speeches which had been 
 delivered in the course of the inquiry. 
 
 In retiring from your Lordships' Bar we should be guilty 
 of the greatest ingratitude if we did not make to your Lord- 
 ships our acknowledgments for the kindness which we have 
 experienced at your Lordships' hands. Never came a cause 
 into a Court of Justice in which there was so much anxiety 
 with respect to every step in its progress, and with respect to 
 
 1 " It is all very well for innocent people to stick to innocent courses; but 
 where guilt is notorious, daring is the true resource for safety." This remark 
 of Silius to his paramour Messalina is given by Tacitus (' Annals,' xr. 26). It was 
 used when urging her to the murder of her husband, Claudius Nero.
 
 1820. ON BILL OF PAINS AND PENALTIES. 193 
 
 its final result. Every passion has been successfully appealed 
 to in the conduct of the defence by my learned friends on the 
 other side. They have well and faithfully discharged their 
 duty to their illustrious client. We make no complaint of 
 their conduct. We rejoice to see such talents exercised in the 
 defence of a Queen of England. My Lords, my learned 
 friends have endeavoured to awaken successively all the 
 sympathies and all the passions of your nature. They have 
 even appealed to the basest of all passions the passion of 
 fear. In this high and august assembly, the Mite, if I may so 
 express myself, of a nation renowned for its firmness and 
 intrepidity, my learned friends have appealed to the passion 
 of fear. You are told by one of my learned friends that if 
 you pass this Bill into a law, you will commit an act of suicide. 
 Another of my learned friends tells you that " you are to pass 
 the Bill at your peril ! " These words hung upon the lips of 
 my learned friend for a time sufficiently long to be understood ; 
 and they were aftenvards affectedly withdrawn. My Lords, 
 I am astonished that such topics should have been addressed to 
 your Lordships. They can only have an injurious effect upon 
 the individuals from whom they proceed. I know, my Lords, 
 that you will not dare to do anything that is unjust At the 
 same time I know that what justice requires you will do 
 without regard to any personal consideration that may affect 
 yourselves. 
 
 But, my Lords, it is not in this place alone that these arts 
 have been resorted to. The same course has been pursued 
 out of doors ; the same threats have been held out, and every 
 attempt has been made to overawe and intimidate the decision 
 of your Lordships. Even the name of her Majesty herself 
 has been profaned for this purpose. In her name, but un- 
 doubtedly without her sanction, attacks of the most direct 
 nature have been made against all that is sacred and venerable 
 in this empire against the constitution against the Sovereign 
 against the hierarchy against all orders of the State. My 
 Lords, this could not proceed from her Majesty. Her name 
 must have been made use of by persons aiming, under the 
 sanction and shield of that name, at some dark and pernicious 
 designs. Believing otherwise, my Lords, we must imagine 
 that her Majesty was aiming at the overthrow of the Govern- 
 
 o
 
 194 COPLEY'S SPEECH. CHAP. VII. 
 
 ment of the country, to be replaced by revolutionary 
 anarchy. 
 
 " . . . . Dum Capitolio 
 Regina dementes ruinas, 
 
 Funus et imperio parabat," 
 
 might in that case become a new era with our posterity. My 
 Lords, I acquit her Majesty of having had any concern in the 
 transactions to which I allude ; and I hope that from this 
 moment these proceedings will for ever terminate. 
 
 My Lords, if in looking at the evidence, although you 
 should have the strongest conviction on your mind that the 
 Queen is guilty of the charges which are imputed to her in 
 this Bill, but you should think that in strictness there is not 
 legal proof on which you can judiciously act, I admit that you 
 must adopt the language suggested by my learned friend Mr. 
 Denman, and say " Go AND SIN NO MORE." But, my Lords, 
 if you are satisfied, bending your minds earnestly to the 
 contemplation of that evidence, looking at it with that calm- 
 ness and that dispassionate feeling with which, as judges, you 
 ought to contemplate it ; if, I say, you are satisfied that the 
 case is made out so strongly, so fully, and in a manner so 
 satisfactory as to leave no reasonable doubt upon your 
 Lordships' minds, then, my Lords, knowing what I do of 
 the tribunal I am now addressing, I am sure you will pro- 
 nounce your decision on this momentous question with that 
 firmness which is consonant with your exalted station. 
 (Hansard, N.S., vol. iii. 1427-9.) 
 
 Although the Bill of Pains and Penalties was with- 
 drawn, the inquiry upon it was in effect fatal to the 
 Queen's cause. It was impossible to sustain enthu- 
 siasm for one who had shown herself so regardless of 
 the dignity and decorum demanded by her station, and 
 who had thus drawn upon herself suspicions, which in 
 one less elevated would have been construed into 
 certainties. 1 Her story made a chapter in English 
 
 1 Lord Lyndhurst always expressed his firm conviction to be, that the Queen 
 was guilty. While entertaining this conviction, however, he tempered it through- 
 out the trial, as Mr. Foss trulyobserves ('Judges of England,' vol. ix.p. 181), " with
 
 1 820. DEATH OF QUEEN CAROLINE. 195 
 
 history, which all right-minded men and women 
 would gladly have seen buried in oblivion. Neither 
 did what was subsequently seen and heard of her tend 
 to remove this impression. Her sudden death not 
 long afterwards (7th August, 1821) created no wide- 
 spread feeling of regret ; for even the mob, who had 
 previously been most clamorous upon her side, had 
 grown indifferent to or perhaps ashamed of one whom 
 they had in sheer ignorance exalted into an idol. 1 It 
 relieved the Ministry from a serious embarrassment. 
 The failure of their Bill had not resulted in their fall, 
 as the Opposition had hoped it would, but while the 
 Queen lived there were abundance of people both 
 in and out of Parliament who omitted no opportunity 
 of using Her Majesty's name for the purpose of 
 annoyance and attack. 
 
 the decorum due to her exalted rank, satisfying his employers by his admirable 
 performance, without incurring the obloquy to which they were subjected." 
 
 1 Writing on the 26th April, 1820, to his daughter, the Hon. Mrs. E. Bankes, 
 when the intention of the Queen to come to England was first talked of, Lord 
 Eldon foretold that what did actually happen would be certain to happen. " The 
 mischief, if she does come, will be infinite. At first she will have extensive 
 popularity with the multitude ; in a few short months or weeks she will be ruined 
 in the opinion of all the world." (' Life,' 2nd Ed., vol. ii. p. 3.) 
 
 O 2
 
 ( 196 ) 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 Copley becomes Attorney-General His Forensic Style, and Mode of 
 conducting Cases Discourages Prosecutions of the Press Becomes 
 Member for Cambridge University Introduces Bill for Chancery 
 Reform Appointed Master of the Rolls Speech on Catholic Dis- 
 abilities Canning offers him the Chancellorship Becomes Lord 
 Lyndhurst. 
 
 DURING the next few years Copley continued to rise 
 steadily in reputation at the Bar. He took no active 
 part in Parliament, speaking there but seldom, and 
 only on points where his legal experience and autho- 
 rity were appealed to, and entitled him to be heard. 
 His labours in Westminster Hall absorbed all his 
 energies ; and, like all greatly successful barristers, he 
 had little time to spare for society, or even for the 
 home circle, in which he always found his greatest 
 delight. Copley had at this time a country house at 
 Hanwell, to which he ran down whenever he could 
 escape from his work in London, but, his mother says 
 in one of her letters (1821), he was " not allowed to 
 spend much time there." He was no less liked by 
 his brethren at the Bar than respected by them, for 
 he was always fair, considerate, genial and courteous, 
 while the extent of his legal knowledge and the 
 trenchant vigour of his close and logical method as 
 a pleader made themselves more and more felt. In a 
 letter to Sir Egerton Brydges (Oct. 18, 1823), Lord 
 Tenterden thus speaks of him : " The Solicitor- 
 General has less learning than the Attorney-General
 
 1824. BECOMES ATTORNEY-GENERAL. 197 
 
 [Gifford], but a much better person, countenance, and 
 manner ; a good head, and a kind heart, and not defi- 
 cient in learning. I suppose he will soon fill one of 
 our high offices in the land." 1 
 
 His promotion came in January 1824, when Sir 
 Robert Gifford, having been appointed Chief Justice 
 of the Common Pleas, Copley succeeded him as 
 Attorney-General. By this time he was the father of 
 two daughters, and, to judge by the glimpses furnished 
 to us by the family correspondence, the happy union 
 of interests among its members continued unbroken. 
 " Were you to look into the house in George Street," 
 his mother writes to Mrs. Greene (January 10, 1824), 
 " of course you would find many changes. Here is your 
 mother in the little parlour, to whom it is principally 
 appropriated, advanced in years, which are not yet 
 attended with those infirmities that so often render 
 life distressing to the possessor, and to one's friends. 
 Here is likewise your sister, my dear companion, in 
 health, bestowing affectionate comfort. Your brother 
 has just returned from his family, who have been at 
 Brighton, all well. I miss the amusing little ones, 
 who are very interesting. Business," she adds, " com- 
 pels your brother, after two weeks' absence, to be 
 again in London, and sometimes we have his company 
 at dinner. You will observe that he is now Attorney- 
 General, which situation, of course, brings additional 
 responsibility, and demands attention, with its rewards." 
 Writing to Mrs. Greene two months afterwards the 
 old lady says : " I am happy to say your brother gets 
 through his busy scene, with health and good spirits. 
 For all around him I feel how important it is he 
 should retain both." 
 
 Copley was not of the common type of clever 
 
 1 Cited in Lord Campbell's 'Lives of the Chief Justices,' vol. iii. p. 296.
 
 COPLEY'S LOVE OF HOME. CHAP. vin. 
 
 men, who are bright and cheerful and brilliant every- 
 where but at home. It was there, indeed, that the 
 playfulness and natural gaiety of his disposition were 
 seen to the most advantage. He did not require 
 the stimulus of strangers, or of social conflict, to call 
 forth his wit or stores of information, for not only 
 did he not cultivate, but he despised the ambition 
 of display. The dear old mother, the sister whose 
 pride was centred in the brother who had established 
 so many claims on her affection, the wife to whom he 
 was strongly attached, to them he brought the frank 
 outpourings of a genuinely loving nature, of a mind 
 alive with observation, and of a freshness and simplicity 
 of tastes, which not all the absorbing labours of his 
 profession, nor the fascinations of a crowded life could 
 spoil. He delighted in his children ; and what they 
 were to his mother, as the letter just cited paints 
 them, they were to him, " the very young one in- 
 creasing in interest, the elder as pleasing from the 
 opening of her mind." When autumn brought its 
 brief holiday, he would run over to Paris ; but he 
 went there with his wife ; x and Lord Campbell's 
 statement (' Life,' p. 40) that he " was flattered with 
 any raillery which supposed that he indulged in all 
 the gaieties of that dissipated capital," may be classed 
 with the other fictions of his biography. 
 
 Had Lord Campbell known Copley, as he asserts 
 he did, " familiarly in private life," he would not have 
 ventured on this statement. But in truth he never 
 crossed the threshold of the house in Great George 
 Street, except late in life, and as a guest at one of 
 Copley's official dinners. He knew nothing of his 
 
 1 " Your brother and his wife," writes Mrs. Copley to Mrs. Greene (Sept 17, 
 1824), " employed his short time of respite to visit Paris. They were absent 
 three weeks. They found their excursion useful to their health, and very pleasant, 
 and they both desire kind love and good wishes to your circle."
 
 1824. HIS FORENSIC STYLE. 199 
 
 home life at any period, and had, therefore, no means 
 of knowing the depth and warmth of his affections, 
 his gentleness and sweetness in his domestic relations, 
 the constancy of his friendships, and the active kind- 
 ness with which those who really knew Copley in 
 private were familiar. But, having never had the 
 privilege of seeing this side of Copley's character, the 
 charge is less excusable which he makes against him 
 (' Life/ p. 39) when, speaking of his forensic eloquence, 
 he says, that it was " wonderfully clear and forcible ; 
 but he could not make the tender chords of the heart 
 vibrate, having nothing in unison with them in his 
 own bosom." He knows little of human nature or of 
 the biography either of authors or of orators, who will 
 say that pathos and tenderness of expression are any 
 index to a generous or truly sympathetic nature in 
 either writer or speaker. The man who feels most 
 deeply, if his intellect be as strong as his heart, will 
 be slow indeed to allow the impulses of warm personal 
 emotion to enter into what he has to speak from the 
 Bar. Impassioned declamation, save under most 
 exceptional circumstances, is out of place in such an 
 arena. Nor could it be supposed that the disciplined 
 intellect and severe judgment of Copley would readily 
 stoop to emotional rhetoric, in order to snatch a 
 verdict by making the tender chords vibrate in jury- 
 men's hearts. But where strong feeling came natu- 
 rally to strengthen the emphasis of the speaker's 
 argument, it is the tradition of the Bar that it was 
 never wanting in Copley's speeches. All through life 
 countless acts of unselfish kindness proved to those 
 who really knew him, how quick were his sympathies 
 and how truly tender was his heart. 
 
 Copley had a thorough contempt for the artifices 
 of rhetoric, and too keen a sense of the ludicrous to
 
 200 A FAVOURITE IN SOCIETY. CHAP. vnr. 
 
 resort himself, or to be tolerant of the resort by others, 
 to the calculated tones of a simulated pathos, or to the 
 plaintive appeals of a demeanour like what he once 
 defined as the " wife and ten children face of Parke." It 
 was the same disregard of the small conventions and 
 hypocrisies of the barrister's creed, which made him 
 disregard the staid airs and sober garb of the Inns of 
 Court, show his handsome person in a dress turned 
 out by a fashionable tailor, and drive about the streets 
 of London in a smart cabriolet, with a tiger behind him. 
 Lord Eldon, we may believe, was not the only lawyer 
 who was shocked by what must, to people accustomed 
 to accept traditional usages as sacred, have seemed an. 
 outrage upon decorum. It is told of the Chancellor,, 
 that when he asked his son what people would have 
 said of him, if he had driven about in this way when 
 he was Solicitor-General, the son, who by no means 
 shared his father's horror, made the sensible reply " I 
 will tell you, father, what they would have said ' There 
 goes the greatest lawyer and the worst whip in all 
 England.'" Known as Copley was to be as conscientious 
 as he was able in doing his best for his clients, his in- 
 dulgence in the dress and ways of the class to which 
 socially he belonged never lost him a brief. 
 
 A man so distinguished for his social qualities, and 
 so conspicuous in his profession, was sure to be courted 
 in the best London society. That his wife was hand- 
 some, " lived well, loved company," and was admired 
 by many leading men in the political world, was 
 another reason for his finding his way into the inti- 
 macy of the highest circles. But the remark of Lord 
 Campbell (' Life,' p. 41) that Lady Copley " now weeded 
 her visiting book almost entirely of lawyers and their 
 wives and daughters," filling their places with mem- 
 bers of the corps diplomatique, and people of rank,,
 
 1824. HIS CONSTANCY TO FRIENDS. 2OI 
 
 serves only to show that in her visiting book his own 
 name was not included. Lord Campbell was not a 
 man of imagination, and, knowing nothing of what was 
 going on in Copley's household, he supposes Lady 
 Copley to have acted as he would no doubt himself 
 have acted under similar circumstances. The truth 
 was that Copley brought around him in his home 
 the men most eminent in literature, art and science, 
 as well as in political life ; and it was inevitable that 
 names of great distinction for social rank should become 
 from time to time mingled with theirs in the pages of 
 his wife's visiting book. But no warrant was given 
 for Lord Campbell's innuendo. It is truly said by a 
 writer, who has been already quoted, that Copley 
 
 " never threw off an old friend ; he was never ashamed 
 of a vulgar or unfashionable acquaintance ; and to say that 
 a man gradually becomes more select in his intimacies as he 
 becomes famous, is simply to say that he profits by the 
 hardly earned privilege of mingling with distinguished persons 
 of all classes, with the leaders in literature, science, and 
 politics, as well as with the most accomplished and agreeable 
 members of the gay world. * * * Unless the successful aspi- 
 rant is fitted for his new position, he seldom retains it long. , 
 Copley was eminently fitted for the position he took up ; so 
 fitted that he seemed born to it, and a discriminating observer 
 would have said of him what Talleyrand said of Thiers 
 ' // riest pas parvenu ; il est arrive / " (' Quarterly Review,' 
 January, 1869, p. 22.) 
 
 But, speaking of Copley at this period, Lord 
 Campbell brings a graver charge against him, and one 
 that strikes at the very root of his character as a 
 barrister for honesty and loyalty to his client. Copley, 
 he says (' Life,' p. 39), " was more solicitous about the 
 effect he might produce while speaking than about the 
 ultimate result of the trial." A strange assertion indeed
 
 202 HIS FORENSIC STYLE. CHAP. vm. 
 
 to make in regard to a man whose distinction lay not in 
 those flashes of showy rhetoric on which speakers for 
 effect rely, but in the masterly evolution of facts, and 
 closely knit logic, which brought whatever subject he 
 treated clearly before the mind of his audience the 
 quality, which led to the general remark that, in his 
 case, as in Lord Mansfield's, " his mere statement was 
 worth any other person's argument.'' Still more extra- 
 ordinary is the illustration by which Lord Campbell 
 supports his assertion. 
 
 " Therefore," he says, " he was unscrupulous in his state- 
 ment of facts when opening his case to the jury, more 
 particularly when he knew that he was to leave the court at 
 the conclusion of his address, on the plea of attending to 
 public business elsewhere. I was often his junior, and on 
 one of these occasions, when he was stating a triumphant 
 defence, which we had no evidence to prove, I several times 
 plucked him by the gown, and tried to check him. Having 
 told the jury that they were bound to find a verdict in his 
 favour, he was leaving the Court, but I said, 'No, Mr. 
 Attorney, you must stay and examine the witnesses, I cannot 
 afford to bear the discredit of losing the verdict from my 
 seeming incompetence ! if you go, I go.' He then dexter- 
 ously offered a reference to which the other side, taken in 
 by his bold opening, very readily assented." 
 
 No one who is conversant with legal practice can 
 possibly attach credit to this story, despite its apparent 
 circumstantiality of detail. A barrister capable of such 
 conduct would very soon be found out. He would be a 
 marked man among his brethren, on the Bench as well 
 as at the Bar, and would be dropped by every respec- 
 table attorney. No more damning accusation, indeed, 
 can be brought against a counsel than that of being 
 " unscrupulous in his statement of facts," and of indif- 
 ference about " the ultimate result of the trial." Were 
 this not so, his profession would indeed be an infamous
 
 1 826. HIS CONDUCT OF CASES. 203 
 
 one, as Lord Campbell most unwarrantably called it. 
 Like other men, Copley may at times have been misled 
 by his brief into putting his case higher than the wit- 
 nesses, when brought to the test of cross-examination, 
 could carry it. But throughout his career, watched 
 by jealous eyes as it was, no such imputation as this of 
 Lord Campbell's was ever even suggested against him. 
 On this point the writer in the ' Quarterly Review ' 
 already quoted speaks with authority. 
 
 " This," he says, " is the first time we ever heard imputed 
 to Copley, either a want of generosity to juniors, or indifference 
 to the ultimate result. If he had betrayed such indifference, 
 his practice would have suffered from it. Lord Campbell 
 does not seem to have been aware of a point of advocacy in 
 which Copley especially excelled the opening speech. It 
 was his opinion, which we have heard from his own lips, that 
 it was of paramount importance to impress the judge and 
 jury in the first instance with the views and doctrines it was 
 intended to establish and maintain ; to lay down a clear and 
 definite line at starting, and abide by it, instead of waiting for 
 the turn of events during the progress of the cause. Now, an 
 opening speech of this kind demands a careful study of the 
 case in all its bearings ; it is the most laborious mode of 
 proceeding, and would not be pursued by one who was 
 habitually indifferent to results." 
 
 The rule is even more applicable in opening a case 
 for the defence than for the plaintiff ; for any vacilla- 
 tion from the position then taken up is more dangerous 
 to the client. To such a mind as Copley's it was 
 simply an impossibility to move without first settling 
 clearly and firmly the line of argument on which he 
 intended the defence to rest. But without a severe 
 sifting of the facts laid before him this could not be 
 done, and the presumption therefore is, that in this as 
 in so many other instances Lord Campbell's memory 
 is not to be relied on. Had the charge been true,
 
 204 SPEAKS LITTLE IN PARLIAMENT. CHAP. vm. 
 
 however great Copley's gifts, they would never have 
 raised him to the position he now occupied by uni- 
 versal consent ; where, to use Lord Liverpool's words, 
 in a letter to Lord Eldon (September 5, 1826), he 
 stood with " no competitor at the Bar, at least on 
 our side, nor any on the Bench, who can compete 
 with him in the highest honours of the profession." 
 (' Eldon's Life/ vol. ii. p. 150.) 
 
 For more than two years after his appointment as 
 Attorney-General, Copley spoke little in Parliament, 
 never coming forward indeed except when topics 
 arose on which he was expected from his official 
 position to assist the deliberations of the house. He 
 seems carefully to have avoided taking part in the 
 great party debates of the period. Such a course was 
 obviously inconsistent with the views ascribed to him 
 by Lord Campbell, who says (' Life/ p. 40), that 
 " about this time he was so much petted by the high 
 Tories that he had some vague notion of cutting the 
 profession of the law altogether, and accepting a 
 political office in the hope that he might succeed Lord 
 Liverpool." As if Copley, without fortune of his 
 own, would have been mad enough to surrender his 
 prospects at the Bar, and the highest honours of the 
 Bench, which were now almost within his grasp, for 
 the precarious distinction and still more precarious 
 emoluments of even the first Minister of State ! So far, 
 indeed, was this from being the case that at no time, 
 even when his influence as a debater and a statesman 
 was universally recognised, did Copley entertain any 
 ambition outside of his profession. In that and that 
 alone he felt his footing secure, and in his success 
 there his highest aspirations were satisfied. It was 
 there, as he well knew, that his peculiar powers were 
 seen to the best advantage, while there and there
 
 1826. PROMOTES NO PRESS PROSECUTIONS. 205 
 
 only was he sure of independence in point of income, 
 to which he could not afford to be indifferent. 
 
 Although he had supported Lord Castlereagh's 
 severe measures for controlling the press, he showed, 
 during his tenure of office as Attorney-General, that 
 he had done so from no want of sympathy with the 
 free expression of opinion. In this he acted in marked 
 contrast to his predecessor, Sir Vicary Gibbs, who, as 
 Lord Campbell says, " placed widows and old maids 
 on the floor of the Court of King's Bench to receive 
 sentence for political libels published in newspapers 
 which they had never read, because they received 
 annuities secured on the properties of these news- 
 papers." 1 Of his merits in this respect Lord Brougham 
 spoke in the warmest terms at a dinner, presided over 
 by Lord Lyndhurst in July 1839, of the Newspaper 
 Press Benevolent Association. 
 
 It certainly was not owing to the Press itself, he said, 
 that no ground for prosecution was afforded. If his noble 
 friend had chosen to pursue a different line of conduct to that 
 which he had taken up, there was not a day during the time 
 that he was Attorney-General in which he might not have 
 filed an ex officio information. He had thought, however, that 
 the public discussion of political topics could not be carried 
 on without on almost daily opportunity being given to the 
 Attorney-General to exercise the powers entrusted to him ; 
 but he went on the maxim only to prosecute where there was 
 such grave cause as rendered such a proceeding necessary, 
 to shut his eyes where he could, and to administer with 
 
 1 Even while acknowledging how well Copley acted in these matters, Lord 
 Campbell cannot forbear from coupling the acknowledgment with a suggestion of 
 meanness, the illiberality of which, to use a phrase of Charles Lamb's, " necessarily 
 confines the passage to the margin." " If Copley," he says, " had been directed 
 to file as many criminal informations as Sir Vicary Gibbs, I fear me he would 
 have obeyed, and would have produced very plausible reasons to justify what he 
 did ! " How little he knew of Copley, to think he would take " orders " on such 
 a subject from any Minister, or of statesmen of character, to suppose it possible 
 they could give them !
 
 2O6 EULOGISED BY LORD BROUGHAM. CHAP. vm. 
 
 mercy the high, responsible, and delicate functions of Public 
 Prosecutor. 
 
 If there was a man in England able to judge 
 whether Copley had acted with wise forbearance in 
 matters of this kind it was Lord Brougham. But in 
 replying to his speech, the object of his eulogy, with 
 accustomed modesty, declined to appropriate to him- 
 self the merit of this forbearance, while at the same 
 time explaining the principle on which he had acted. 
 
 With regard, he said, to what his noble and learned friend 
 had said of his public conduct with respect to the press, he 
 had always adverted to that part of his public life with 
 unmingled satisfaction. It was his duty, when he had held 
 the high office of Attorney-General, vigilantly to observe the 
 Press ; and the course which he had determined to pursue 
 was this that in the discharge of the important duties of that 
 office, he would institute no ex officio prosecution, except in 
 cases of extreme necessity, and of a character so clear and 
 decisive that no difference of opinion could have been enter- 
 tained with respect to it by men of any character, any 
 disposition, or any party. Happily during his administration 
 of the office no such case occurred ; and certainly he had the 
 proud consciousness and satisfaction of recollecting that, in the 
 discharge of his duty as Public Prosecutor, he never had 
 occasion to resort to that extreme proceeding. 
 
 Towards the close of 1825, it became evident that 
 a dissolution of Parliament was imminent ; and men 
 began to make preparations for the struggle which 
 was anticipated at the elections. Several measures 
 were pressing for solution on which opinion ran high, 
 and the party in opposition were bent on putting forth 
 all their energy to secure an increase of their numbers. 
 On no question were men's minds more inflamed 
 than on that of Catholic Emancipation, which had 
 for many Sessions been agitated with yearly growing
 
 1 826. IS RETURNED FOR CAMBRIDGE. 207 
 
 vehemence. It was one upon which the Ministry were 
 themselves divided, several members, Canning, among 
 the number, having joined their ranks, upon the under- 
 standing that it was to be treated as an open question, 
 a state of things which produced, as it could not fail to 
 produce, awkward and embarrassing results. Copley, 
 at this time hostile to Emancipation, who was devotedly 
 attached to his old university, and was regarded there 
 with pride, determined to compete for one of the two 
 seats which were then held by Mr. William Bankes 
 and Lord Palmerston. 
 
 It is obvious that he had no thought of ousting 
 Lord Palmerston, then Secretary at War, who had 
 sat for the University since I8I2. 1 Mr. Bankes, 
 although upon the same side of politics, had only 
 held the seat for three years ; and it was not un- 
 reasonable that it should be disputed with him by a 
 man of Copley's eminence. The result showed that 
 Copley was entitled to rely on his superior popularity, 
 for he came in with a triumphant majority at the 
 head of the poll. Lord Palmerston stood next ; 
 and, while indicating neither surprise nor dissatisfac- 
 tion at Copley's having disturbed the old arrange- 
 ment of the seats, he complains bitterly, and with 
 justice, of the very disloyal way in which the extreme 
 Anti-Catholic section of Lord Liverpool's Cabinet 
 threw their whole influence into the scale against 
 himself, their own colleague, and in favour of Mr. 
 Goulburn as their candidate. The struggle was close, 
 
 1 "In November, 1825, it being generally understood that Parliament would 
 be dissolved the next summer, Sir J. Copley, then Attorney-General, wrote to 
 me to say that he was going to begin to canvass the University, with the view of 
 throwing out Bankes." (Lord Palmerston's ' Autobiography.' Cited by Lord 
 Bailing, vol. i. p. 153.) In a letter from Lord Palmerston to Copley (Jan. 29, 
 1826) he says, "however much I may regret the existence and nature of our 
 contest, I can assure you that I never have felt any doubt that, in the manner of 
 carrying it on, I should find you a fair and courteous opponent."
 
 208 AVOIDS POLITICAL DEBATES. CHAP. vm. 
 
 but, we learn from an active member of Copley's 
 Committee, that it was conducted in a friendly 
 spirit all round. The canvass extended over six 
 months, terminating only in June 1826, and the 
 strange conflict between members of the same political 
 party marked in a very emphatic way the division 
 which reigned in their councils, not only upon the 
 urgent question of Catholic Emancipation, but upon 
 other questions of policy both foreign and domestic 
 which were beginning to press for a solution. Lord 
 Palmerston had all along supported Catholic Emanci- 
 pation. This was the reason of the attack made upon 
 his seat, an attack discountenaced by the Duke of 
 Wellington, and Mr. (afterwards Sir Robert) Peel, but 
 fomented by Lord Eldon, the Duke of York, and others 
 of the party who held extreme views upon this question. 
 Throughout 1825 and 1826 the Attorney-General 
 adhered to his rule of taking no active part in the 
 political debates. But on the i8th of May, 1826, it 
 became his duty to introduce a Bill to Regulate the 
 Practice of the Court of Chancery, which was the 
 first of a series of tentative steps towards the abridg- 
 ment of the cumbrous proceedings and the cruel 
 delays of that Court, which had for many years 
 formed a crying scandal, and furnished a fertile theme 
 for the invective of law reformers. Two years pre- 
 viously a Committee had been issued to inquire into 
 the practice of the Court, and to give effect to the 
 principal recommendations of their report was the 
 object of the Bill. As Copley's practice was confined 
 to the Common Law Bar, it must have cost him a 
 considerable effort to make himself so thoroughly 
 master of the practice of the Court of Chancery 
 as to explain as he did the defects of the existing 
 system, and the measures for its improvement, with a
 
 1826. INTRODUCES BILL FOR CHANCERY REFORM. 209 
 
 concision and lucidity which riveted the attention of the 
 House, and even elicited the admiration of the members 
 who for years had made a hobby of the question. 
 
 The name of Lord Eldon had been so long mixed up 
 with the denunciations of his Court, and its costly and 
 cumbrous procedure had been made so much more 
 obnoxious by the delays which his excessive anxiety 
 to give just judgment had led, that it was impossible 
 for Copley to avoid a reference to the Chancellor in 
 bringing his speech to a close. But he did so in 
 language which proved his conviction that the system 
 more than the individual was in fault ; and paid the 
 tribute which a great lawyer might be expected to pay 
 to the splended judicial qualities and the conscientious 
 industry of Lord Eldon. He enforced his own opinion 
 which, as he was not an equity lawyer, he gave with 
 natural modesty, by those of Sir Samuel Romilly, and 
 of Mr. Abercromby, then Member for Calne, whose 
 panegyric, he said, "far surpassed in eloquence any- 
 thing he could say, when he bore testimony to the 
 artlessness and simplicity of Lord Eldon's manners, 
 his anxiety to do justice, the depth and extent of his 
 judgment, and his vast and capacious memory' 1 * 
 
 1 Not even in a matter of this kind will Lord Campbell give Copley credit for 
 common honesty. "In private," he says ('Life,' p. 38), "Mr. Attorney talked 
 with the most undisguised and unmitigated scorn of the Lord Chancellor. In the 
 House of Commons he applied to the ' venerable judge ' all the epithets which 
 courtesy required ; but he only came forward in his defence when forced so to do 
 by official etiquette, and then he lavished upon him praise strongly seasoned with 
 sarcasm" The reader of Hansard will search in vain for any trace of this sarcasm. 
 Copley's words are simple, straightforward, earnest, such as a man speaking from 
 strong conviction would use. To give colour to his aspersion, Lord Campbell 
 again garbles his so-called quotation from Hansard, omitting the words in italics 
 quoted in the text, and substituting for them "his singular disinterestedness, and 
 his readiness to sacrifice his love of retirement to his official duties," of which not 
 a word occurs in Copley's speech. We are informed by a gentleman still living, 
 Mr. Francis Barlow, who was in most intimate relations of friendship with Copley 
 at this time and down to the end of his life, that Copley and Lord Eldon were on 
 the most cordial terms, until the debates in 1829 on the Catholic Emancipation 
 Bill led to a temporary coolness between them. But even while this coolness 
 
 P
 
 2IO APPOINTED MASTER OF THE ROLLS. CHAP, vin, 
 
 It was too late in the Session for progress to be 
 made with the Bill ; Copley introduced it again in the 
 following Session in an amended form (Feb. 27, 1827). 
 But the changes in the Ministry and other causes 
 arrested the further progress of the measure, and the 
 great question of Chancery Reform was left to be 
 dealt with by Copley, some years afterwards, when 
 his experience as Lord Chancellor enabled him better 
 to grapple with it, and to carry out changes which 
 would have been difficult to effect so long as Lord 
 Eldon remained upon the woolsack. 
 
 Lord Eldon had for some time been anxious to 
 retire, and he had looked to Lord Gifford, then Master 
 of the Rolls, as his successor. But this anticipation 
 was destroyed by the death of that amiable man and 
 accomplished lawyer, after a short illness, in September 
 1826. The Ministry could not afford to lose Lord 
 Eldon, and insisted upon his retaining the Great 
 Seal yet a little longer. 1 But in the necessity for 
 
 existed, Lord Lyndhurst (i2th of May, 1829), when introducing a Bill for 
 expediting the business of the Courts of Equity, spoke of the ex-Chancellor in 
 terms which went far to soothe any angry feeling which their political duels had 
 excited. "It is impossible for me," said Lord Lyndhurst, " notwithstanding the 
 political differences which now divide us it is impossible for me, I say, having 
 once mentioned the name of that noble and learned Lord, not to add, that no 
 man, sitting on the same bench which he so long filled, and considering the 
 nature of his decisions, can refrain from admiring his profound sagacity, his great 
 erudition, and his extraordinary attainments. It had been often said in the pro- 
 fession, that no one ever doubted his decrees except the noble and learned Lord 
 himself. I am sure, from the short opportunity which I have had of judging of 
 them, that none of his predecessors had a more complete command of the whole 
 complicated system of Equity, than that noble and learned personage." (Hansard, 
 N. S., vol xxi. 1280.) 
 
 1 Lord Campbell, always suspicious of intrigue did he learn in the political 
 camp to which he belonged his prevailing belief, that mean personal motives govern 
 lawyers and statesmen? says that while Copley for motives of selfish interest upheld 
 the Ministry, "Lord Eldon was to be vilipended, so that at the first convenient op- 
 portunity he might be got rid of, and a fit successor might take his place." Why, 
 Lord Eldon had been for years, as is now well ascertained, anxious to retire ; and 
 his correspondence shows that, next to Gifford, he believed Copley to be the fittest 
 man to take his place ! Where, then, was the necessity for "vilipending," that
 
 1 826. LORD ELDON'S OPINION OF COPLEY. 211 
 
 strengthening the Bench, Lord Liverpool at once 
 turned to Copley to take Gifford's place as Master of 
 the Rolls, an arrangement which carried with it the 
 advantage that his services might still be available in 
 Parliament, that anomalous privilege, which no longer 
 exists, being then attached to the office. Before 
 offering it to Copley, Lord Liverpool consulted the 
 Lord Chancellor, who thought it most "natural that 
 his Lordship should look to Copley," but doubted 
 extremely whether he would " accept the office, even 
 with the prospect of possessing the Great Seal." 
 These are Lord Eldon's words in writing to Mr. Peel ; 
 and he adds : 
 
 "I have stated my apprehensions, that he (Copley) will 
 decline the Rolls. He ought not, perhaps yet a man of 
 his eminence in that part of the profession in which he has 
 been engaged may probably feel unwilling to go into a Court 
 of Equity as a judge, never having been in one as counsel, 
 and especially in that Equity Court in which much business 
 is rather business of form than requiring the exercise of a 
 powerful intellect. He has always refused briefs in Scotch 
 causes, which looks as if his views were directed to the King's 
 Bench, and not to the office of Chancellor, who must hear so 
 many Scotch causes." 
 
 Lord Campbell assumes that this letter was written 
 to persuade Mr. Peel that Copley was not fit for the 
 office of Master of the Rolls. How unwarranted is 
 this assumption is obvious from a subsequent letter 
 of the Chancellor's, in which, referring to the fact that 
 Copley had accepted the office without hesitation, 
 he adds, that " considering the Chancellorship and 
 
 resource of only base and shallow natures ? And yet Lord Campbell can write 
 such nonsense as this : "Of Copley the bigoted ultra- Tory had an utter horror ; 
 for in dreams he had seen his rival snatching the Great Seal from his hand, and 
 heard him delivering a harangue in favour of the Roman Catholics " ! (' Life,' 
 p. 41.) 
 
 P 2
 
 212 COPLEY'S SPEECH CHAP. vm. 
 
 the Chief Justiceship of the King's Bench may soon 
 be open, and on the other hand, the change of Adminis- 
 tration may not be a thing so impossible, in the 
 meantime, as to make the acceptance a foolish thing 
 of an office and income worth ^"8,000 a year for life, 
 which may be accepted without prejudice to his 
 moving to either of the above offices, I think he has 
 acted very prudently, especially taking into the account 
 that he goes to school in the lower form (the Rolls) 
 to qualify him to remove into the higher, if he takes 
 the Chancellorship." 
 
 Not much evidence here of Eldon's jealousy of 
 Copley as his successor, of which some symptoms 
 would have been apparent, had any grounds existed 
 for the suspicion thrown out by Lord Campbell that 
 the new Master of the Rolls was bent on using such 
 new weight as he might acquire in the House of 
 Commons in that capacity " at any favourable moment 
 to give the coup de grace to the condemned Chancellor." 
 
 Appointed Master of the Rolls on the i4th of 
 September, 1826, Copley held the office for only eight 
 months. 1 But during that period he verified the anti- 
 cipations of his legal .brethren, that he had every 
 quality to make him a distinguished judge. 
 
 Copley, although openly avowing hostility to the 
 Roman Catholic claims, was so popular that he had 
 been supported at Cambridge by men of all shades of 
 opinion. But when the question again came on for 
 discussion, although he was no longer a member of 
 the Government, he felt himself bound to take part in 
 the debate, and to urge the views, which he himself 
 
 1 He had of course to go through the form of being re-elected for Cambridge. 
 "I hope," he writes to Mr. Barlow (Sept. 18), " I shall not be opposed. I think 
 it is scarcely possible. Goulburn has written that[/^ has no intention, and Bankes 
 will not venture." He was not opposed. The note of his election expenses, 
 now before us, shows that they amounted to only ,14. 13.?. !
 
 ON CATHOLIC DISABILITIES. 213 
 
 shared, of the large numbers of his constituents who 
 felt strongly upon the question. The occasion was 
 given by a motion made (March 5, 1827) by Sir 
 Francis Burdett, 1 affirming the necessity for taking 
 into immediate consideration the laws imposing Civil 
 Disabilities on His Majesty's Roman Catholic subjects, 
 with a view to their relief. Although the Cabinet 
 was divided on the subject, those of them who were 
 in favour of the Catholic claims had for some time 
 been gaining a preponderating influence. Lord Liver- 
 pool, the Prime Minister, was prostrated by the 
 paralysis which had struck him down three weeks 
 before ; and speculation as to his successor was 
 already rife, the odds being in favour of Canning, 
 whose ascendency in the Cabinet and in popular 
 favour seemed to designate him for the office, despite 
 his opinions on the Catholic Question, which made 
 him distasteful to the King. On all other questions 
 Copley and Canning were at one ; and even here 
 they differed, not so much upon the abstract question 
 as upon the necessity of coupling the removal of 
 the Catholic disabilities with safeguards against the 
 abuse, to the prejudice of Protestant institutions, 
 of the privilege claimed. 2 If Canning were called 
 to the head of affairs, Copley might fairly count 
 on being promoted to the Woolsack, which in such 
 an eventuality Lord Eldon was certain to vacate. It 
 was obviously not his interest, therefore, to come 
 into collision with Canning upon the Catholic question, 
 and, had he been swayed by the merely selfish con- 
 siderations which Lord Campbell imputes to him, 
 he might easily have avoided entering the lists upon 
 the opposite side. But the subject was one upon 
 
 1 Not Sir W. Plunkett, as stated by Lord Campbell. 
 
 2 See Stapleton's ' Political Life of Canning,' vol. i. p. 309,
 
 214 DEBATE ON SIR F. BURDETT^S CHAP. vin. 
 
 which he entertained very decided views. The 
 Romish Church, he maintained, was dangerously 
 aggressive in its policy. It would use the concessions 
 now demanded as a lever for destroying the Protes- 
 tant Church, and ultimately for severing the connection 
 between Ireland and Great Britain. Of the sincerity 
 of his convictions there can be no question ; for he 
 maintained them to the end of his days ; although 
 before two years had gone by, he, along with the 
 Duke of Wellington and Sir Robert Peel, was driven 
 to surrender these convictions to the overwhelming 
 weight of public opinion, and to bring in a measure 
 for Catholic Emancipation in order to avoid the 
 terrible contingency of a civil war. 1 
 
 Copley spoke early on the second night of the 
 debate ; and his speech was sufficient to call forth 
 the energies of several of the ablest debaters, Canning 
 included, in reply. The first half of it was occupied 
 by an elaborate historical statement of the circum- 
 stances which had given rise to the penal laws ; the 
 second was devoted to showing the danger likely to 
 result to the State, unless the concession of political 
 privileges to the Catholics were guarded by securities 
 (which, however, he did not define, as, indeed, it would 
 have been hard to define them), against their being 
 used in the future to the prejudice of the general 
 weal. Copley's historical knowledge, no less than his 
 political studies, was quite sufficient to have furnished 
 him with ample materials for his speech. But a 
 pamphlet, in which the same line of argument had been 
 urged by Dr. Phillpotts, afterwards Bishop of Exeter, 
 
 1 Lord Campbell, of course, sneers at his sincerity, and says that when, at the 
 close of his speech, he claimed credit for it, "he sat down amidst some sneers and 
 a great deal of tittering" the tittering being a pure fiction adding that, "if he 
 had any opinions, they were known to be on the other side of the question."
 
 1827. MOTION ON CA THOLIC DISABILITIES. 2 1 5 
 
 had recently been published. The story goes that 
 the pamphlet was espied by some members among 
 Copley's papers, and that before he sat down, a 
 whisper ran through the House that Copley had 
 drawn his inspiration from it. The whisper was coupled 
 with the words of a then well-known song, 
 
 " Dear Tom, this brown jug that now foams with mild ale, 
 Out of which I now drink to Sweet Nan of the Vale, 
 Was once Toby Phillpott's." 
 
 No one was so likely as Canning himself to have 
 made the happy quotation. Dr. Phillpotts was an 
 old antagonist of his, and we are told by his private 
 secretary and biographer, Mr. Stapleton, that Copley's 
 use of Dr. Phillpotts' line of argument " gave to his 
 speech a character of personal hostility which there 
 is every reason to believe was very far from the 
 intention of the speaker " (Canning's ' Life,' vol. i. 
 p. 310). Hence Canning's momentary soreness. The 
 writer in the ' Quarterly Review ' already quoted, says, 
 
 " We were personal witnesses of the scene. During the 
 first part of the speech, Canning's look and attitude, with a 
 pen in his hand taking notes, manifested an intention to reply 
 on the instant, but at the end of the first ten minutes he 
 appeared to have altered his plan, and was observed whisper- 
 ing to Plunkett, who rose after Copley, and made an 
 admirable debating speech in which his right honourable and 
 learned friend was severely handled. Then came Goulburn, 
 Brougham, Peel, Canning, and Burdett (in reply). It was a 
 brilliant and memorable night, but neither Canning nor Copley 
 appeared to the greatest advantage. Canning showed too 
 much undue irritation, and Copley foolishly interrupted him to 
 complain of his reading an opinion signed by the law officers 
 of the Crown (Gifford and Copley), on the ground that it was 
 a confidential communication." (' Quarterly Review/ In loc. 
 citat. p. 23.) 
 
 Canning was then suffering from the illness that in
 
 2l6 OFFERED BY CANNING AND ACCEPTS CHAP. vin. 
 
 the end proved fatal to him, which had been brought 
 on by a chill caught at the Duke of York's funeral in 
 the preceding January. He was obviously not master 
 of himself, and threw into his speech an amount of 
 acerbity which was really not justified by what Copley 
 had said. Brilliant and impressive as were his own 
 and some of the other speeches on his side, the result of 
 the division a result wholly unexpected -was to nega- 
 tive the motion by a majority of four in a house of 584 
 members. This was not calculated to improve Canning's 
 health, which, indeed, was so shaken by his exertions 
 in this debate that he was laid up for some time 
 afterwards, and was in a very unfit state to encounter 
 the fatigue and anxiety of fulfilling the duty, entrusted 
 to him by the King on the loth of April following, of 
 forming an Administration. The difference between 
 himself and Copley, if it caused temporary pain to 
 either, was soon healed. Nothing had been further 
 from Copley's thoughts than to offend Canning, and it 
 was a surprise to him to find, from the tone of Can- 
 ning's speech, that offence had been taken. Canning, 
 on the other hand, saw upon reflection that he had 
 gone too far. A day or two afterwards they met in 
 the House of Commons and shook hands. Canning- 
 
 o 
 
 apologised to Copley for the severity of his remarks ; * 
 and complete harmony was restored between them. 
 In arranging his Ministry, Canning had hoped that 
 
 * See Charles Greville's ' Memoirs,' vol. i. p. 91. But while Canning was 
 ashamed of having given way to bad temper, and attacked Copley unreasonably, 
 Copley's enemies were delighted with the very thing for which Canning apologised. 
 Thus Denman, who for some reason is always bitter against Copley, in a personal 
 narrative quoted by his biographer (vol. i. p. 205), says, that Canning attacked 
 Copley " with ferocity and contempt, exposing both the baseness and impudence 
 of his conduct with virulence. Everybody pitied the Master of the Rolls, and 
 thought him lucky in having obtained that situation from which he could never 
 expect to emerge." This is a gross exaggeration of Canning's speech. Had it 
 been true, no apology on one side or forgiveness on the other would have been 
 possible.
 
 1827. OFFICE OF LORD HIGH CHANCELLOR. 217 
 
 Lord Eldon would have remained as Chancellor, 
 but no sooner did he receive Lord Eldon's letter 
 of refusal, which reached him on the i2th of April, 
 than he determined to place the vacancy at Copley's 
 disposal. On the 1 3th he wrote to him 
 
 My dear Sir, I learn at your house in town that you 
 are to be at Wimbledon [where Copley then had a house] 
 to-morrow. May I request the favour of seeing you as soon 
 after your arrival as you can make it convenient. Believe me, 
 my dear Sir (Philipotto non obstante), 
 
 Very sincerely yours, 
 The Master of the Rolls. (Signed) GEO. CANNING. 
 
 Copley replied to this invitation that he would 
 come, following Canning's example by putting into 
 his letter clear evidence of unbroken friendship by the 
 concluding words, " Believe me now, as always (minus 
 twenty-four hours), yours very sincerely." 
 
 To Canning's appeal, accompanied as it presently 
 was with the statement that the King wished Copley to 
 be Chancellor, 1 there could be only one answer. Canning 
 had the King's permission to make Catholic Emancipa- 
 tion an open question with his Cabinet, and on other 
 questions Copley was in sympathy with him. Deserted 
 by many of his old colleagues, who he expected 
 would have stood by him, Copley's ready accession, 
 which was of importance to Canning, and greatly 
 strengthened his hands at a critical juncture, must 
 have obliterated any lingering trace of recent sore- 
 ness. It was moreover a strong assurance of personal 
 regard, for tempting as the offer was, its acceptance 
 by Copley was not wholly unattended by risk. As 
 Master of the Rolls he had ^7000 a year ensured 
 
 1 " You will be gratified to hear that your brother is appointed to the high 
 station of Lord Chancellor, by the particular wish of the King." Mrs. Copley, in 
 a letter to Mrs. Greene, 2ist April, 1827.
 
 21 8 SELECTION OF TITLE. CHAP. vm. 
 
 to him for life, and, we learn from Greville's 
 ' Memoirs ' (vol. i. p. 135), that " he debated whether 
 it was worth while to give this up to be Chancellor for 
 perhaps only one year with a peerage and a pension." 
 But to be assured of the crowning honour of his pro- 
 fession was worth incurring the hazard of pecuniary 
 loss, and he does not appear to have kept Canning 
 long in uncertainty as to his decision. 
 
 Having no landed estate, or family connection with 
 one, Copley hesitated for a time about the title by which 
 he was to be called to the Peerage. At first he fixed 
 upon " Lord Ashbourne," and this was even currently 
 talked of, for Lord Palmerston, writing to his brother on 
 the i Qth of April, mentions that " Copley is Chancellor 
 as Lord Ashbourne." But remembering Canning's lines 
 in * The Loves of the Triangles ' about " romantic Ash- 
 bourne," and the "Derby Dilly," 1 he was afraid of 
 having a ludicrous association connected with the name, 
 and selected that of Lord Lyndhurst in its stead. In 
 the course of a most friendly correspondence which 
 took place between Lord Eldon and himself at this 
 time, the old Chancellor' urged him to choose a short 
 title and one' easily written, as the official calls for 
 the Chancellor's signature were then innumerable. 
 Copley kept the friendly hint in view, and had reason 
 to be grateful for it. 
 
 1 " So down thy hill, romantic Ashbourne, glides 
 The Derby Dilly, carrying three INSIDES, 
 One in each corner sits, and lolls at ease, 
 With folded arms, prop't back, and outstretched knees ; 
 While the press'd BODKIN, punch'd and squeezed to death, 
 Sweats in the midmost place, and scolds, and pants for breath." 
 
 POETRY OF THE ANTI-JACOBIN.
 
 ( 2I 9 ) 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 Lyndhurst's First Chancellorship His Cordial Relations with Canning 
 Continues as Chancellor under Lord Goderich's Administration 
 Campbell applies for, and receives Silk Gown Denman's applicatio 
 for Patent of Precedence Difficulties with the King Duke of 
 Wellington becomes Premier Lord Lyndhurst continued as Chan- 
 cellor Relations with Wellington and Peel Gives Appointments to 
 Macaulay and Sydney Smith. 
 
 ON the 3<Dth of April the Great Seal was delivered to 
 Lord Lyndhurst by the King, who accompanied the 
 act with strong expressions of his confidence in the 
 new Chancellor. If the moment was a proud one for 
 the son of the struggling artist, who owed his eleva- 
 tion solely to the general recognition of his " predomi- 
 nating powers," it was no less one from which a solemn 
 sense of responsibility could not be absent. We have 
 no record that, like his great predecessor, Copley wrote 
 down in successive note-books and diaries, so as to be 
 always before his eyes, the sentence from Leviticus 
 xix. 15, 35 : "Thou shalt do no unrighteousness in 
 judgment," for Copley kept neither diaries nor note- 
 books ; but that the axiom was not the less upper- 
 most in his mind is confirmed by the history of his 
 career as a judge. 
 
 He knew well that on the bench as at the bar 
 excellence is to be achieved, and a reputation to be 
 maintained, only by hard work. Lord Eldon is re- 
 ported to have given as the only possible advice to a 
 young man bent on making way at the bar, that 
 he should make up his mind "to live like a hermit
 
 220 LORD LYNDHURST CHAP. IX. 
 
 and work like a horse." If Copley did not follow the 
 first half of the maxim he had certainly practised the 
 second. And what his views were as to the rule in- 
 cumbent upon a Chancellor may be gathered from 
 his remark to Mr. Charles Greville in regard to his 
 immediate successor on the woolsack. " I know," he 
 said (May 22, 1831), " Brougham affects a short cut to 
 judicial eminence, but without labour and reading he 
 cannot administer justice in that Court, although no 
 doubt his great acuteness and rapid perception may 
 often enable him at once to see the merits of a case, 
 and hit upon the important points." (C. Greville's 
 'Memoirs,' vol. ii. 145.) 
 
 Coming after a man like Lord Eldon, whose judg- 
 ments, however tardily given, commanded universal 
 respect, and with many jealous antagonists ready to 
 detect any loose joints in his armour, Copley had 
 every motive to devote his best powers to the fulfil- 
 ment of the judicial functions of his high office, and he 
 did so devote them. Its duties were of the most 
 arduous kind. Besides the business in Chancery, and 
 in Bankruptcy, which to him was in a great measure 
 new and unfamiliar, there were no fewer than seventy 
 appeals from Scotland, and forty from England and 
 Ireland waiting for hearing. 1 It was obviously impos- 
 sible for him to grapple single handed with this amount 
 of work. He had never taken briefs in Scotch appeals, 
 and some time therefore was necessary for him to 
 master the principles of the Scotch law of real property, 
 by no means so difficult a matter, however, for a man 
 of Copley's intellectual calibre, as Lord Campbell repre- 
 sents it. 2 But these appeals were urgent ; and to meet 
 
 1 Speech of Lord Lyndhurst in House of Lords, May 7, 1827. 
 
 2 " Copley felt that for him to have attempted to speak ex cathedrS, on the 
 Scotch tenure ' a me veldeme* would only have exposed him to ridicule." (' Life,'
 
 1827. AS LORD CHANCELLOR. 221 
 
 the difficulty recourse was had to the assistance of the 
 Chief Baron (Alexander), who was intimately ac- 
 quainted with Scotch law, and who undertook to devote 
 two days in each week to disposing of Scotch appeals, 
 and of the Master of the Rolls (Leach), who was to 
 devote one. 
 
 To carry out this arrangement a Commission was 
 necessary, authorising these judges to act as deputy 
 speakers of the House of Lords in the Lord Chan- 
 cellor's absence. The same course had been adopted 
 on a former occasion, and had provoked serious oppo- 
 sition, as a breach of the rule that only peers could act 
 in that capacity. Copley had therefore to make the best 
 case he could for it, and his first speech in the House 
 of Lords (May 7, 1827) was devoted to this object. 
 "If their Lordships," he said, "would grant him the 
 indulgence which he asked, he pledged himself, before 
 the next Session, to perfect a plan with reference to 
 his Court, which would secure the performance of its 
 duties, regularly, faithfully, and efficiently." This 
 promise, however, he found it impossible to redeem, 
 so great was the pressure of the business which he 
 had to take upon his own shoulders, and the numerous 
 claims upon his time occasioned by the active part he 
 was called upon to fulfil in the arrangements conse- 
 quent on a succession of ministerial changes. 
 
 Copley's fine presence and bearing never showed 
 to more advantage than when he appeared in his 
 Chancellor's robes. Tall, erect, self-possessed, with a 
 voice deep and rich in cadence, a command of words 
 that came with ease and yet were exquisitely apt, a 
 manner firm, courteous, and dignified without effort, 
 
 p. 43.) The mystery of that tenure is one which a few hours' reading would have 
 enabled Copley, as it has enabled many meaner men, to fathom. In due time he 
 showed he knew all about it.
 
 222 LORD CHANCELLOR CHAP. ix. 
 
 no worthier representative could well be imagined 
 of the great office which combines in itself the 
 functions of Minister, legislator and judge. No man 
 perhaps cared less than he for the trappings and suits 
 of high office ; but no man ever wore them with 
 greater dignity, or with more impressive effect. Both 
 on the bench, and in the House of Lords, he was in 
 his true sphere. His mind, rigorous in its estimate of 
 facts, was eminently dispassionate and judicial : it was 
 also too large and open to be fettered in its considera- 
 tions of questions of great public policy by the 
 narrowing influence of petty party interests and 
 motives. Before he had sat two months in the House 
 of Lords, he showed (June 26) that he had no 
 sympathy with the bigotry of the extreme Tory party, 
 between whose attacks and those of the discontented 
 Whigs Canning's brief career as Premier was cruelly 
 embittered. A Bill introduced by the Government to 
 enable Protestant Dissenters to have their marriages 
 celebrated by their own ministers, and at their own 
 places of worship, was strenuously opposed by Lord 
 Eldon, on the motion for sending it to a committee. 
 The Chancellor replied in a short but conclusive speech, 
 in which, after pointing out that until the time of the 
 { Council of Trent no religious ceremony was connected 
 I with Christian marriages, he urged the injustice of 
 forcing the marriage service of the Church of England 
 upon those the Unitarians for example who held 
 doctrines which conflicted with some of the most 
 material portions of that service. " This solemn 
 mockery," he said, "ought to be got rid of, for the 
 sake both of the Dissenters and of the Church, to 
 which, as much as to the Dissenters, its abolition 
 would be a relief." The State, he contended, ought 
 not to interfere in regard to the ceremony of marriage
 
 1827. UNDER CANNINGS ADMINISTRATION. 223 
 
 further than to provide that it should be simple, 
 certain, and easily proved. The Bill was sent to a 
 committee by a small majority ; but it went no further, 
 and it was not till many years afterwards that this relic 
 of ecclesiastical despotism was removed. 
 
 These were the only occasions on which Lord 
 Lyndhurst spoke during Canning's brief administra- 
 tion. Had the necessity arisen for more active inter- 
 vention in debate, he would assuredly not have been 
 wanting when called upon by his chief, for he was on 
 terms of most intimate friendship and communication 
 with Canning to the last. The rancour with which 
 that statesman was assailed by the section of the 
 Whigs, who were furious at his having been joined by 
 several conspicuous members of their party, and appre- 
 hensive that this might result in its being broken up, 
 culminated in a speech of Lord Grey's, who had 
 (May 10, 1827) made his policy the subject of an attack 
 full of bitterness, based upon gross misrepresentation. 
 Canning is said to have for a time entertained thoughts 
 of being made a peer, that he might answer Lord 
 Grey in person. In any case he was well able to act 
 as his own champion, and he could also afford to choose 
 his own time for entering the lists. Certain it is, that 
 until Lord Campbell propounded the statement, that 
 "it was thought cowardly in the Chancellor not to 
 defend more strenuously his chief against the combined 
 efforts of the Duke of Wellington and Lord Grey," the 
 charge was never dreamt of. To Campbell also belongs 
 the discredit of the suggestion that Lord Lyndhurst 
 abstained from striking a blow in defence of his chief, 
 because he thought his Government " could not last 
 long, and he did not like to incur the enmity of those 
 who would probably have to construct a new Cabinet." 
 (' Life,' p. 54.) He little knew on what a footing of
 
 224 HIS FRIENDLY RELATIONS CHAP. ix. 
 
 perfect confidence Canning and Lyndhurst stood 
 towards each other. Canning was in intimate com- 
 munication with him as to the arrangements of the 
 Government down to a few days before his death. It 
 was while sitting out in the garden of Lord Lynd- 
 hurst's house at Wimbledon, on the loth of July, that 
 Canning got the chill which was the proximate cause 
 of his death. The following letter from him, written 
 from the Duke of Devonshire's villa at Chiswick, to 
 which he had gone to stay on the 2oth of July, shows 
 very clearly the friendly intimacy of their relations : 
 
 Chiswick, July 24, 1827. 
 
 My dear Lord Chancellor, I have no answer from B , l 
 
 and as I gave him his choice of the whole day, he may choose 
 an hour so late as to prevent my return here to a 6 o'clock 
 dinner. Will you, therefore, instead of taking this place on 
 your way to-morrow, meet me at dinner at Clanricarde's ? 
 Considering your dinner here, however, only as postponed to 
 a fitter opportunity. 
 
 Ever sincerely yours, 
 
 (Signed) GEO. CANNING. 
 
 The dinner thus postponed never came off. Lord 
 Lyndhurst dined at Lord Clanricarde's next day, when 
 Canning complained of feeling very weak, and left 
 early. His illness gained upon him with great rapidity, 
 and on the morning of the 8th of August he died. 
 
 The opposition journals of the day gave out that 
 
 1 This initial obviously refers to Brougham, to whom Canning had offered a 
 place in his Administration, which Brougham declined, because, as he says in his 
 ' Autobiography ' (vol. ii. p. 480), " of course political office was out of the question 
 as I could not afford to quit my profession ; " and again (p. 485), " because I 
 should lower myself in Parliament and the country by accepting any place out of 
 my profession." What is referred to as not having elicited an answer was, no doubt, 
 the offer of a judgeship, to which, in a letter to Earl Grey of September I, 1827, 
 Brougham thus refers : " Within six -weeks I have refused the most easy and secure 
 income for life of 7000 a year, and high rank, which I could not take without 
 leaving my friends in the House of Commons exposed to the leaders of different 
 parties." (' Autobiography,' vol. ii. p. 489.)
 
 1827. WITH MR. CANNING. 22$ 
 
 Lord Lyndhurst and his chief were not on friendly 
 terms. This was one of those misrepresentations, 
 hatched by party malice, which public men of character 
 soon learn to despise. Lyndhurst treated it, as it 
 deserved, with silent contempt. But how the facts 
 stood may be gathered from the language of a letter 
 from his mother to Mrs. Greene (December 3, 1827), 
 in which, referring to this report, she writes : 
 
 ... I improve this opportunity to correct the conjecture you 
 mention with regard to the Lord Chancellor and the late 
 Premier. It is among those that are unfounded, which I state 
 upon my son's authority ; they were upon the most intimate 
 and cordial terms of friendship, and, with others, he has to 
 lament the loss to society in the death of Mr. Canning. . . . 
 
 Of this friendship Lord Lyndhurst took an oppor- 
 tunity to speak in addressing the House of Lords a 
 few months afterwards (June 10, 1828) in the debate 
 on Roman Catholic Claims. 
 
 "As Mr. Pitt," he said, "never was an advocate of un- 
 qualified concession, so neither was the late Mr. Canning, of 
 whose talents and judgment I can never speak without 
 admiration. Almost from the first period of my being 
 acquainted with that distinguished statesman, I was honoured 
 with his intimacy ; and I had abundant opportunities of 
 observing how decidedly strength of character and candid, 
 manly conduct marked the mind of my deceased friend." 
 (Hansard, N. S., vol. xix. 1254.) 
 
 Among the first to congratulate Lord Lyndhurst on 
 his appointment as Chancellor was his future biographer, 
 who had long coveted a silk gown, but knew that he 
 had no chance of getting one from Lord Eldon. No 
 sooner does he hear of Copley becoming Chancellor 
 than he writes to his brother (April 25), " I look 
 upon a silk gown as a matter of course : i, from my 
 station in the profession; 2, from Copley 's regard for 
 
 Q
 
 226 CAMPBELL APPLIES FOR SILK GOWN. CHAP. ix. 
 
 me; 3, from his friendship for Scarlett; 4, from the 
 interest of the Attorney-General (Scarlett). In truth 
 the first reason is quite sufficient " (Campbell's ' Life,' 
 vol. i. p. 444.) Probably it was. Hitherto, however, 
 it had not prevailed ; and although he records on the 
 same page that he " wrote a few lines to Copley 
 (pro forma)" it will be seen that the letter itself 
 scarcely bears this matter-of-course character. 
 
 9 New Street, Spring Gardens, May 2, 1827. 
 
 My dear Lord, I beg leave to offer you my hearty con- 
 gratulations on your accession to your high office. I believe 
 your Lordship is aware of my desire to be appointed one of 
 His Majesty's Counsel, and this distinction will be particularly 
 gratifying to me if I owe it to your kindness. I remain with 
 great regard and respect, yours faithfully 
 
 (Signed) J. CAMPBELL. 
 
 The Lord High Chancellor. 
 
 The Chancellor's answer (see Campbell's ' Life,' 
 Ibid.) was given to Campbell personally a few days 
 afterwards in the House of Lords, when, beckoning to 
 him at the bar, the Chancellor told him he should 
 probably hear from him in two or three days. "He 
 was exceedingly gracious," Campbell writes, "and 
 meant this as an announcement that I was to have my 
 patent forthwith." What Copley's " regard," on which 
 Campbell plumes himself, was, will hereafter be seen. 
 How Campbell repaid Copley's "kindness," how 
 strenuously he did his utmost to strip Copley of every 
 claim to either "regard or respect," the world has 
 long known. 
 
 Copley was a kind-hearted man, and in politics 
 a generous adversary. It must therefore have been a 
 pleasure to him to gratify the legitimate ambition of 
 such men as Brougham, Campbell and others to 
 receive the honour of a silk gown, for which they
 
 1827. MR. DENMAN ALSO. 227 
 
 had been kept waiting for many years through the 
 obstinacy of Lord Eldon. Brougham early received 
 his patent of precedence, thanks to the united influence 
 of Canning and the Chancellor. But, with every wish 
 to secure the same honour for Mr. Denman, who had 
 fought Queen Caroline's battle side by side with 
 Brougham, they were unable to remove the King's 
 objection to his promotion. Mr. Denman's applica- 
 tion was made in May 1827, and the Chancellor had 
 then sounded the King on the subject, and found 
 him inflexible. He made his friend aware of this in 
 terms which drew from him the acknowledgment in a 
 letter the next day (May 23) of "gratitude for the 
 favourable disposition towards me of which you were 
 pleased to give me the assurance." " In justice to my 
 feelings," Mr. Denman added, "to my character, and 
 the interests of those who are dearer to me than life, 
 I cannot renounce my claim ; " and he concluded by 
 repeating the application for precedence at the Bar, 
 and begging that it might " forthwith be placed before 
 His Majesty." 
 
 What pain it cost Lord Lyndhurst to refuse his 
 friend's request is obvious from the many drafts, still 
 existing, which he prepared of his reply. " The 
 claims," he said, " you have upon me, arising from the 
 intercourse of private friendship, I acknowledge in 
 their fullest extent. It would have been inconsistent 
 with the manliness of your character to have rested 
 your application on such grounds. I may, however, 
 be permitted to allude to them for the purpose of 
 satisfying you how extremely painful to my feelings 
 must be the conclusion to which I have been com- 
 pelled to come on the subject of your letter." 
 
 In his reply Lord Lyndhurst touched lightly 
 upon the reason which prevented him from laying 
 
 Q 2
 
 228 MR. DEN MAN'S APPLICATION CHAP. IX. 
 
 the application before the King. It lay in the unlucky 
 quotation made by Denman from Dion Cassius at the 
 Queen's trial (see ante, p. 186), suggesting an imputa- 
 tion of the most offensive kind, which had so rankled 
 in the King's mind that he had absolutely forbidden 
 Lord Eldon, and after him Lord Lyndhurst, to 
 approach him with Denman's name. It was a deep 
 mortification to Mr. Denman to find himself passed 
 over and precedence given to men younger and less 
 distinguished than himself. From motives of delicacy 
 Lord Lyndhurst had in the first instance forborne to 
 inform Mr. Denman fully of the construction put by 
 the King upon his use of the offensive quotation. But 
 this silence could not be long maintained in the face of 
 Mr. Denman's reiterated request to have his claims 
 pressed upon the King. The Chancellor's position 
 was consequently a most painful one. On the one hand, 
 Mr. Denman obviously suspected him of indifference 
 to his interest, while on the other the King had 
 forbidden him to renew the subject. Lord Lyndhurst 
 had therefore no alternative but to explain fully in 
 what sense the King had all along interpreted the 
 allusion from Dion Cassius. 
 
 Mr. Denman, who apparently had not till then 
 been aware of the certainly very obvious construc- 
 tion to which his quotation was open, was aghast, 
 and wrote to the Chancellor begging that "no 
 time might be lost in enabling him to vindicate his 
 character, in comparison with which he declared that 
 the silk gown was of no account with him." This 
 vindication he embodied, on Lord Lyndhurst's sugges- 
 tion, in a memorial to the King, in which he stated 
 that he had " heard with extreme sorrow, but with 
 still greater astonishment, that a speech delivered by 
 him in the discharge of his duty as an advocate in the
 
 1.827. FOR SILK GOWN. 2 29 
 
 House of Lords in October 1820, had been perverted 
 to a sense wholly foreign to his intention, and most 
 abhorrent to his feelings a passage quoted from a 
 Greek historian for an entirely different purpose 
 having been construed into an insinuation of a most 
 revolting nature against your Majesty." The 
 memorial went on to say with no small lack of tact, 
 implying as it did a reproach upon the Chancellor as 
 if he had stood in the way of explanation that, since 
 Lord Lyndhurst had informed him of the imputation 
 under which he lay, he had repeatedly importuned his 
 Lordship to lay before the King his " solemn disavowal 
 of the offence imputed to him," and it concluded by 
 an earnest entreaty to His Majesty " to believe his 
 declaration, that no such insinuation was ever made 
 by him, that the idea of it never entered his mind, 
 and that he was utterly at a loss to conceive how it 
 ever came to be suspected or could ever be thought 
 possible." 
 
 No more delicate task could well be imagined than 
 that of bringing this memorial to the notice of the King 
 in such a way as to give it a chance of being favourably 
 received. For more than seven years the conviction 
 had been rooted in his mind that Denman had deliber- 
 ately intended to use a passage, which, as we have 
 already said, ought never to have been quoted at all, to 
 convey a most odious impression of the King's conduct 
 and habits. What wonder then if the Chancellor, 
 having his friend's interest at heart, did not at once 
 thrust the subject on His Majesty's notice, but thought 
 it prudent to wait until some favourable opportunity 
 arose ? Denman, however, was impatient ; and, impu- 
 ting this delay to lack of friendly zeal, applied on the 
 24th of July, 1828, to the Duke of Wellington, who by 
 this time was Prime Minister. It appears from a letter
 
 230 MR. DENMAWS APPLICATION CHAP. ix. 
 
 written by Mr. Denman to his wife the same day, that 
 the Duke entered warmly into his case. 
 
 "There are feelings," he said, "in the King's mind which 
 it may still take some time to remove ; that the Chancellor 
 has really had no opportunity, and has shown a friendly dis- 
 position ; that I must leave it to them to consider the best 
 mode of doing it, and whether the one or the other shall be 
 the proposer ; that many feelings as strong had been got over, 
 but pressing the matter unseasonably could only defeat the 
 object. He said, however, ' I'll do it ! ' and with a most 
 marked and animated manner, 'You may rely upon me. 
 The King must be made sensible how unreasonable such 
 feelings are. I should like to feel my way a little, but if I 
 find that the subject is not agreeable, I will press it notwith- 
 standing.' I told him that my present object was not to ask 
 for a silk gown, but merely to remove the imputation, which I 
 considered important as a preliminary towards getting the 
 silk gown, and absolutely necessary for my character. He 
 said ' he understood me perfectly ; that it was a thing to be 
 done. You may rely upon me. I'll do it.' " 
 
 If Mr. Denman had been aware of what the Duke's 
 language must have told him, that the Chancellor had 
 already been considering with the Duke how best to 
 overcome the King's scruples, he would scarcely have 
 written the following somewhat ungracious letter the 
 previous day : 
 
 Russell Square, July 23, 1828. 
 
 My dear Lord, Having heard from Lord Holland, with 
 the utmost surprise and concern, that you have not communi- 
 cated to His Majesty the statement which I made by your 
 desire, I beg to inform you that I have thought it necessary 
 to take measures for trusting the vindication of my character 
 to other hands. Your Lordship's obedient servant, 
 
 (Signed) THOS. DENMAN. 1 
 
 1 This, and the letter to Mrs. Denman just cited, are now, thanks to the 
 courtesy of the present Lord Denman, printed for the first time.
 
 1827. FOR PATENT OF PRECEDENCE. 23! 
 
 A less kindly-tempered man than Lord Lyndhurst 
 would have taken umbrage at the tone of this letter, 
 with the old familiar friendly conclusion altered into 
 " Your Lordship's obedient servant." But he could 
 make allowances for Mr. Denman's irritable state of 
 mind ; and making no alteration in his mode of 
 addressing his old friend, he wrote to him thus : 
 
 House of Lords, Tuesday. 
 
 Dear Denman, I did not understand that I was to be 
 merely the channel to transmit your explanation to the King, 
 or I would have sent it to His Majesty immediately upon the 
 receipt of it. I considered that it was to be left to me to 
 communicate it at such time and under such circumstances as 
 would in my judgment be best calculated to effect all the 
 objects to which it appears to be directed, and which I have 
 never ceased to have anxiously in view. I have seen the 
 Duke of Wellington and communicated to him your letter. 
 Yours very faithfully, 
 
 (Signed) LYNDHURST. 
 
 Mr. Denman was not, however, in a temper to 
 be mollified even by this letter, and in his reply he 
 renewed his complaint, that time had been lost in 
 bringing his case before the King. 
 
 It was manifestly hard for a Whig of those days to 
 think that a political adversary could go straight, or 
 could sacrifice to friendship a tittle of self-interest. A 
 letter from Lord Holland to Mr. Denman, now before 
 us, written a few days before the interview with the 
 Duke of Wellington, points out very strongly the 
 hazards of pressing the matter on the King's notice, 
 and that just at that particular time to " stir matters 
 disagreeable to Royal ears " would be far from wise. 
 " The Chancellor," he adds, " wishes well to you, I am 
 satisfied ; but he does not mean to sacrifice the least 
 tittle of favour to his wishes." As if in sacrificing his
 
 232 DENMAN RECEIVES HIS PATENT. CHAP. IX. 
 
 own favour he must not inevitably have sacrificed 
 Denman's interest ! 
 
 This was the kind of generous construction with 
 which Lord Lyndhurst was doomed to become familiar 
 But nevertheless he did not relax his efforts, along 
 with the Duke of Wellington, to remove from Mr. 
 Denman the ban under which he had so long laboured. 
 It took many months and all the Duke's influence to 
 overcome His Majesty's repugnance. When at last he 
 succeeded, he took care that Mr. Denman should 
 receive the first intimation of the fact, not from himself, 
 but from the Chancellor. This was conveyed in the 
 following letter : 
 
 Wimbledon, Sunday. [Nov. 30, 1828.] 
 
 Dear Denman, I am happy to inform you that the 
 difficulties in the way of your obtaining rank at the bar have 
 been removed. I have to request that you will meet me to- 
 morrow morning (Monday), at the Duke of Wellington's in 
 Downing Street, at half-past ten o'clock. Allow me to ex- 
 press the great satisfaction I feel at the termination of this 
 most unpleasant affair. Ever faithfully yours, 
 
 (Signed) LYNDHURST. 
 
 " I've got it for you, Denman, but by G it was 
 the toughest job I ever had ! " were the words with 
 which the Duke saluted Mr. Denman, when he appeared 
 in Downing Street. Even while yielding, the King 
 showed that he did so against his own conviction, by 
 endorsing on Mr. Denman's memorial a statement, 
 which, while vindicating his own previous refusal, 
 dexterously insinuated his disbelief of the explanation 
 tendered by the memorialist. " The King," he wrote, 
 "could not believe that the Greek quotation referred 
 to had occurred to the mind of the advocate in the 
 eagerness and heat of argument," in this it has 
 been seen the King was right, " nor that it was not
 
 1827. LORD GODERICH BECOMES PREMIER. 233 
 
 intended, nor that it had not been sought for and 
 suggested for the purpose of applying to the person 
 of the Sovereign a gross imputation. The King 
 therefore considered it his duty to command the late 
 Chancellor Lord Eldon, and the Lord Chancellor 
 Lyndhurst, never to approach the King with the name 
 of the memorialist." If with these words before him 
 Mr. Denman was not convinced that he had wronged 
 Lord Lyndhurst by suspicion of lukewarmness and 
 insincerity, he certainly ought to have been so. 1 
 
 The death of Canning, and the appointment of 
 Lord Goderich as Premier, made no alteration in Lord 
 Lyndhurst's position. There was no question about 
 his retaining his office as Chancellor. Indeed, by sheer 
 superiority of intellect, and by his intuitive tact and 
 judgment in situations of difficulty, he had acquired 
 such an influence in the councils of his party, that his 
 presence among them was indispensable. It soon 
 became apparent that Lord Goderich was wholly un- 
 equal to the task either of keeping together a Cabinet 
 formed of discordant elements, or of holding a firm 
 front in opposition to the powerful Whig combination 
 which was at work to sap its stability from within as 
 well as from without. In the internal disputes of the 
 Cabinet, Lord Lyndhurst seems, if we may judge 
 
 1 On Mr. Denman's mind some feelings far from friendly obviously lingered. 
 \Yhen he was appointed Lord Chief Justice by Earl Grey, he writes to his wife 
 that Lord Lyndhurst pretended that he had a promise of the office, "which is a 
 pure fiction," and his biographer emphasises this by stating in a note that Lord 
 Lyndhurst made great efforts to obtain the office. For neither statement is there 
 the shadow of a foundation. Again, in a memorandum quoted by Mr. Denman's 
 biographer (vol. i. p. 363), he speaks of Lord Lyndhurst as " Mephistopheles " 
 adopting in this a humorous suggestion in a political caricature of the day an 
 epithet on which Copley's enemies have seized with avidity as expressive of his 
 character. For Denman it is however to be said, that he used it while his party 
 were smarting under a severe political defeat inflicted by Lord Lyndhurst, and 
 that he would probably not have sanctioned its publication as a deliberate 
 expression of his opinion.
 
 234 LORD GOD ERICH RESIGNS. CHAP. ix. 
 
 from letters to him from Huskisson and others still 
 existing, to have been appealed to as the peacemaker. 
 But the causes of discord were too deeply seated to 
 be removed ; springing as they did from absolute 
 discordance of views on such vital subjects as repre- 
 sentative and fiscal reforms. Very early the nation 
 lost confidence in a Ministry which it was no secret 
 was not animated by unity of purpose. Lord 
 Goderich, distracted by the difficulties of his position, 
 saw the opening of the Session of 1828 approaching, 
 while he was still unable to make up his mind with 
 what measures to meet Parliament, or whether he 
 ought not at once to throw up the reins of govern- 
 ment. To Lord Lyndhurst this state of vacillation 
 was intolerable, and as we learn from the narrative of 
 his colleague, Mr. Herries, then Chancellor of the 
 Exchequer, 1 he told Lord Goderich, " it was essential 
 for the public interest that no time should be lost in 
 representing to the Throne the unfavourable state of 
 the public opinion with respect to the Government, 
 and the apparent want of sufficient support from one 
 branch at least of the Legislature (if not from both) to 
 enable it to meet Parliament with any fair prospect 
 of carrying on the public business with success. He 
 was told that if he, Lord Goderich, did not take that 
 course, his colleague, who was then advising him, would 
 deem it incumbent to adopt it himself." Upon this 
 Lord Goderich's resolution to resign was taken. 
 
 It was now nearly the middle of December 
 (1827), and Parliament was to meet at the end of 
 January. Lord Campbell states, without mentioning 
 his authority, but leaving it to be inferred that it 
 
 1 ' Statement of the events which led to the dissolution of the Administration 
 of Lord Goderich,' quoted in ' Mr. Herries' Life,' by his Son. London, 1880. 
 vol. ii. p. 75.
 
 1827. LYNDHURST AND WELLINGTON. 235 
 
 was Lord Lyndhurst himself, that Lord Goderich was 
 afraid " to break the matter to the King, who must be 
 much perplexed by being called upon to change his 
 Cabinet a few days before the meeting of Parliament," 
 and that the Chancellor relieved him from the difficulty 
 by saying that if the Premier did not like to face the 
 King in a private audience, he would accompany him 
 to Windsor. Next day, we are told, they went there 
 together, and a very circumstantial account is given of 
 what passed on the occasion. Lord Lyndhurst, always 
 reticent as to what passed either in the King's Closet 
 or in the Council Chamber, was little likely to have 
 furnished Lord Campbell with the particulars of this 
 interview. 1 Some of these, indeed, as given by Lord 
 Campbell, are upon the face of them incredible, such as 
 the King's remark after Lord Lyndhurst had suggested 
 that the Duke of Wellington should be sent for, " Re- 
 member, whoever is to be Minister, you, my Lord, must 
 remain my Chancellor." On a matter of this sort the 
 Duke would have brooked no interference, and Lord 
 Lyndhurst was not the man to report to others such 
 an act of unconstitutional interference by the Sovereign 
 with the privileges of his First Minister, had it been 
 attempted. But it suits Lord Campbell's purpose to 
 insinuate that Lord Lyndhurst was forced upon the 
 Duke, who, he says, " knew little of Lord Lyndhurst 
 which he much liked." The fact, however, was, that 
 Lord Lyndhurst was then and always on the best 
 terms with the Duke, and that he owed his continu- 
 ance in office to the Duke's conviction that he had 
 amply shown his fitness for its duties both upon the 
 
 1 Lord Campbell himself says (' Life of Lyndhurst,' p. 48), that from 1827 down 
 to the time of his becoming in 1841 a member of the House of Peers, personal 
 intercourse between himself and Lord Lyndhurst " almost entirely ceased." How 
 and when could he have learned what was known only to Lord Lyndhurst, Lord 
 Goderich, and the King ?
 
 236 RELATIONS BETWEEN LYND HURST CHAP. IX. 
 
 Woolsack and in the Cabinet. The Duke did not 
 hesitate for a moment ; and indeed, to whom could 
 he have turned as equally eligible for the office ? Or 
 was it likely that he should pass over the man who 
 had suggested himself as the only person to undertake 
 the management of affairs in the then state of parties ? 
 
 Lord Eldon, it was known, had renounced the 
 Woolsack for ever ; and yet Lord Campbell writes 
 that, when he read Lord Lyndhurst's name as Chan- 
 cellor at the head of the list of the new Ministry, " he 
 was furious." Angry he was, but not on this account. 
 His mortification was that not only had he not been 
 offered a place in the Cabinet, but that he had not 
 even been consulted about the ministerial arrange- 
 ments. In however high esteem the Duke held the 
 venerable ex-Chancellor, he could not for mere 
 personal friendship risk the introduction into his 
 Cabinet of a man whose opinions were in direct 
 antagonism to those of many of the ablest men on 
 whom the prosperity of the new Ministry depended. 
 His former experience of Lord Eldon had moreover 
 shown him, that neither in the Council Chamber nor in 
 the Senate could the ex-Chancellor be relied upon for 
 serviceable assistance. This is no mere conjecture. 
 The Duke made no secret of the fact among his confi- 
 dential friends ; and when at a later period he was 
 pressed by the King to make the ex-Chancellor Lord 
 President of the Council, he gave this as his reason for 
 declining. 1 
 
 The appointment of Lord Lyndhurst as Chancellor 
 
 1 In the letter of Lord Eldon to his daughter (February 28, 1828) on some 
 expressions in which Lord Campbell's statement is founded, he says, "A lady 
 probably has had something to do with it." The real reason is to be found in the 
 following letter from the Duke to the King (' Wellington Civil Despatches,' 
 vol. v. p. 134) : 
 
 " Sudborne, October 14, 1828. 
 
 " I have well considered your Majesty's motion of calling Lord Eldon to your
 
 .1828. AND WELLINGTON. 237 
 
 was no less agreeable to Mr. Peel than it was to the 
 Duke of Wellington. Nevertheless, Lord Campbell 
 does not hesitate to allege (' Life,' p. 37) that he "had 
 more scruples than the Duke in agreeing to " his 
 appointment, " for he had enjoyed better opportunities 
 of marking his career, and he reposed no confidence in 
 his sincerity. It is a curious fact," he adds, " that, 
 although Lyndhurst and Peel sat together in the 
 Cabinet so long, and, after the formation of the Duke 
 of Wellington's Government, never had an open 
 difference, even down to the repeal of the Corn Laws. 
 they always entertained a considerable personal dislike of 
 each other, which they took very little pains to conceal '." 
 
 These statements, both as to the renewal by the 
 Duke of Lord Lyndhurst's appointment, and as to the 
 opinions which these two eminent men mutually enter- 
 tained of each other, are absolutely without foundation. 
 The letters from Peel to Lord Lyndhurst which have 
 been preserved are all couched in the most cordial 
 terms, and indicate the utmost confidence and unre- 
 serve in their official relations. As to Lord Lynd- 
 hurst, we are enabled, by the authority of those who 
 knew him most intimately, to give Lord Campbell's 
 assertion an unqualified contradiction. Peel's cold, 
 unsympathetic manner, his stiffness in opinion, yet 
 want of daring at critical moments, so unlike his own, 
 
 Majesty's Councils as Lord President ; prevailing upon Lord Bathurst to accept 
 the office of Lord Privy Seal. 
 
 " Lord Eldon's character, knowledge, and qualities would be a great advantage 
 to any administration. But having been long in the Cabinet with Lord Eldon, I 
 must tell your Majesty that he is very little disposed to take upon himself the lead 
 of, and responsibility for, the measures of the Government, for which he is so 
 highly qualified ; and he is as little disposed to support in public the decision 
 to which the majority may have come. I have no personal objection to Lord 
 Eldon, but these habits render him an inconvenient colleague to the Minister who 
 has to conduct your Majesty's business in the House of Lords, and I must add that 
 he would be found much more inconvenient on the Treasury Bench than he was 
 heretofore on the Woolsack."
 
 238 RELATIONS BETWEEN LYNDHURST CHAP. ix. 
 
 jarred at times upon Lord Lyndhurst, but he always 
 entertained the highest opinion of his ability and 
 patriotic spirit, and unbroken confidence in the sincerity 
 of his friendship. Happily we have evidence under 
 Peel's own hand how thoroughly this feeling was 
 reciprocated. And, as Lord Campbell's aspersion 
 has been very widely adopted, it may be as well to 
 deal with this evidence at once, although somewhat 
 out of the order of date. 
 
 In October, 1840, the office of High Steward of 
 the University of Cambridge having become vacant, 
 Lord Lyttelton was immediately put in nomination for 
 the office. Lord Lyndhurst was then abroad, and his 
 friends, thinking that both by his connection with the 
 University, and by his political and judicial eminence, 
 he was well entitled to the honour, lost no time in 
 submitting his name for it, without waiting to com- 
 municate with him. The chairman of his committee 
 wa.s Sir John Beckett, to whom Sir Robert Peel wrote 
 (October 25, 1840) from Drayton Manor, immediately 
 on hearing that Lord Lyndhurst was in the field : 
 
 My dear Beckett, I think you have done quite right in 
 accepting the chair of Lyndhurst's committee. 
 
 I have written to those who have consulted me, to say 
 that I think we ought in his absence to presume his consent 
 to stand, and only make the more vigorous exertions for him 
 on account of his absence. 
 
 Some persons appear to attach weight to the consideration 
 that Lyndhurst may decline, and that active demonstrations in 
 his favour would thus needlessly offend Lord Lyttelton and 
 ensure his loss to the Conservative party. 
 
 I have not much faith in his adherence to it under any 
 circumstances, and, if I had, should consider it a paramount 
 obligation to do all in my power for a man of superior pre- 
 tensions for the office of Lord Steward, but, above all, for a 
 former colleague and personal friend, with whom in office and
 
 1828. AND SIR R. PEEL. 239 
 
 out of office I have always been on the most confidential 
 intercourse in public matters. 
 
 Sir Robert Peel, although not a Cambridge man, 
 subsequently sent a cheque for ^50 towards the cost 
 of the contest, which ended in a triumphant majority 
 of 485 for Lord Lyndhurst. 1 
 
 Eight years later, Lord Lyndhurst visited Sir Robert 
 Peel at Drayton Manor. How Sir Robert felt towards 
 him is very clearly shown by what he says in a letter 
 written to Mr. F. R. Bonham, M.P., who was not even 
 personally known to Lord Lyndhurst (October 12, 
 1 848), a few days afterwards ! 
 
 " I was delighted," he writes, " to see Lyndhurst in such 
 good health and spirits, delighted to see him 
 
 In that happier hour 
 Of social converse, ill exchanged for power. 
 
 " I have had some colleagues with whom I have lived, while 
 in office, on terms of greater personal intimacy, but none whose 
 society was more agreeable, or on whom I could more con- 
 fidently rely, when real difficulties were to be encountered." 
 
 The spontaneous assurance of warm and unbroken 
 personal regard contained in these letters was confirmed 
 to Lady Lyndhurst by Sir Robert Peel during this 
 visit. Walking with him in the gardens at Tamworth, 
 he told her that Lord Lyndhurst was the most agree- 
 able member of a Cabinet he had known. Loyal, con- 
 siderate, unselfish, his fine temper had been invaluable 
 in reconciling differences whenever they arose among 
 
 1 Here is a letter of the Duke of Wellington's on the same occasion : 
 
 " Walmer Castle, October 21, 1840. 
 
 "My dear Beckett, You tell me, as everybody does, 'your influence is 
 extensive.' But I have never discovered that I had either power or influence to 
 do any good in the best times. I will exert any that I find or think that I have 
 to promote the views of Lord Lyndhurst's friends, that he may be honoured as he 
 deserves. " Believe me, ever yours most sincerely, 
 
 " (Signed) WELLINGTON."
 
 240 GIVES APPOINTMENT TO MA CAUL AY. CHAP. ix. 
 
 the members of the Cabinet, and his powerful intellect, 
 courage, and firmness not less so in making things 
 smooth and clear when questions of difficulty arose. 
 
 Such were the men who " always entertained a 
 considerable personal dislike of each other, which they 
 took very little pains to conceal " ! ' 
 
 Two of Lord Lyndhurst's first acts in 1828 were 
 characteristic of that liberal spirit, which never grudged 
 a kindness to apolitical opponent. In January 1828 
 he gave a Commissionership of Bankruptcy to young 
 Macaulay, then striving, not very successfully, to make 
 his way at the Bar, and a Canonry at Bristol to Sydney 
 Smith. The former appointment, which was given at 
 the request of Lord Brougham, Mr. Trevelyan writes 
 ('Life of Macaulay,' vol. i. pp. 138-9), was " a rare piece 
 of luck at a time when, as Lord Cockburn tells us, ' a 
 youth of a Tory family, who was discovered to have 
 a leaning towards the doctrines of the Opposition, was 
 considered as a lost son.' " Welcome as the commis- 
 sion avowedly was, Macaulay in writing to his father 
 expresses his delight that it was given during the 
 interregnum between the Goderich and Wellington 
 ministries, " and when the acceptance of it implied no 
 political obligation," the very last idea that would 
 have suggested itself to Lord Lyndhurst. To him, 
 
 1 Ignorant of Lord Lyndhurst's private affairs, as he was of his relations to the 
 statesmen with whom he acted, Lord Campbell accuses him (p. 55) of living at this 
 time on a scale of extravagance much beyond his means, giving " dinners in the 
 most splendid style, heightening the effect of the artistic performances of his French 
 cook and Italian confectioner by his own wit and convivial powers." Lord 
 Lyndhurst never had an Italian confectioner. His dinners were such as were 
 expected of a Lord Chancellor. After giving a place to the lie of the "society 
 journals" of that time, that his servants were sheriff's officers in livery, " there 
 being frequent executions in the house," this "honest chronicler" mildly adds 
 his belief that "there was no sufficient foundation for these stories," and this in 
 almost the same sentence in which he says he had heard Lord Lyndhurst declare 
 "he had never incurred debts which he had not the means of satisfying." Sir 
 Benjamin Backbite could not have insinuated a damaging slander with nicer skill.
 
 1 828. GIVES APPOINTMENT TO SYDNEY SMITH. 241 
 
 Macaulay adds, " I of course feel personal gratitude; 
 and I sJtall always take care how I speak of him'' a 
 phrase which it is not easy to interpret, unless upon the 
 supposition that a good Whig was bound never to 
 speak well of a Tory leader, there being no reason 
 in the world why he should not have spoken his honest 
 mind about Lord Lyndhurst as freely after his appoint- 
 ment as before it. 1 
 
 When at the York assizes on a special retainer some 
 years before, Copley had dined at Sydney Smith's house 
 with a large party of lawyers. On this occasion, Lady 
 Holland writes ('Life of Sydney Smith,' p. 131), he 
 " contributed not a little by his powers of conversation 
 to one of the most agreeable dinners I ever remember. 
 Little did we then guess how much he was to contribute 
 hereafter to the happiness and comfort of my father's 
 life." The meeting had not been forgotten by Copley. 
 How he testified his remembrance of it cannot be 
 better told than in Lady Holland's words. (Ibid. p. 147.) 
 
 On the 24th of January, 1828, Lord Lyndhurst, then Chan- 
 cellor, although differing entirely from my father in politics, 
 had the real friendliness and courage to brave the opinions 
 and opposition of his own party, and from private friendship 
 and the respect he had for his character and talents, to bestow 
 on him a stall which was then vacant at Bristol. For this 
 promotion he always felt deeply grateful to Lord Lyndhurst, 
 as it was of the greatest importance to him ; less in a pecuniary 
 point of view (as rendering permanent what was before 
 temporary, it rather diminished than increased his previous 
 income), than from breaking that spell which had hitherto 
 kept him down in his profession, and to show the world how 
 well he could fill its duties, wherever placed. 
 
 1 In fact the office had become vacant, and the appointment was given, not 
 as Macaulay says, " while there was no Ministry," but when Lord Goderich was 
 still Premier. Otherwise Lord Lyndhurst could not have appointed to it Offices 
 which become vacant after the fall of a Ministry are by courtesy always appointed 
 to by their successors.
 
 242 LETTER FROM SYDNEY SMITH. CHAP.IX. 
 
 Nor did Lord Lyndhurst's kindness end here, for 
 in the following year he presented Smith with the 
 living of Combe Florey, near Tatmton. Smith's reply 
 (March 25, 1829) was couched in the warmest terms 
 of acknowledgment, ending with the words, " I remain 
 always, with the truest sense of the obligation I owe 
 you, ever yours." The friendship thus cemented con- 
 tinued unbroken to the last. In a letter to the second 
 Lady Lyndhurst (July 2, 1841), thanking her for a 
 gift of the engraving from Lawrence's portrait of the 
 first Lady Lyndhurst, Sydney Smith writes : " She 
 was one of the best and steadiest friends I ever had, 
 and I retain a deep sense of her kindness, as I do 
 also of that of your most able and agreeable husband, 
 to whom I wish as much of ermines and woolsacks as 
 will contribute to his health, wealth, and happiness." 1 
 
 1 Speaking on Chancery Reform in the House of Lords (March 31, 1851) and 
 vindicating his predecessors as well as himself from the imputation that they had 
 used their ecclesiastical patronage for party purposes, Lord Lyndhurst said: "It 
 had been felt as a trust of a most sacred nature, and the principle on which I and 
 my predecessors had acted was detur digniori. Nothing could be more un- 
 pleasant to me than to speak of myself .... but after I was entrusted with the 
 Great Seal, it so happened that the first important piece of preferment which 
 I had to dispose of was a prebendal stall at Bristol. Did I give that vacancy to 
 one of my own party ? So far from it, I conferred it upon a gentleman who, 
 from his earliest years, had been active in his support of the Whig cause ; but I 
 knew him to be a man of great learning I knew that he was beloved by his 
 parishioners I knew him to be an excellent parish incumbent. The gentleman 
 to whom I allude is the Rev. Sydney Smith ; but he had always been an active 
 Whig partisan, and therefore could not have received patronage from me on any 
 other ground than his real merits." (Hansard, vol. cxv. 776.)
 
 ( 2 43 ) 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 Wellington Administration Lord Lyndhurst's great Influence in it 
 Prosecutes for Calumnies Speeches on Corporation and Tests Acts 
 Repeal Bill On Roman Catholic Disabilities Bill Change of views on 
 latter Reasons for them Collision with Lord Eldon Their subse- 
 quent reconciliation. 
 
 IT has been often said that the Tory party, in the 
 changes that took place after the close of Lord 
 Liverpool's Administration, thought of Copley as 
 Prime Minister. He stood so high in favour with the 
 King that this honour was assumed to be quite within 
 his grasp. It has also been said that he cherished the 
 idea himself ; and certainly, had such been his ambition, 
 he might easily have put forward his claims when 
 appealed to by George IV. on Lord Goderich's 
 quitting the helm so unexpectedly as he did, and at 
 such an inconvenient moment. But these conjectures 
 for they were merely conjectures are only significant 
 as showing the prevailing belief in Copley's command- 
 ing ability, and in the closeness of his relations with 
 the leading men of his party. Copley, however, knew 
 himself too well, and at the same time held his leaders 
 in too high esteem, to dream for a moment of placing 
 himself before them. Wellington and Peel, he was well 
 aware, were far more likely than himself to command the 
 confidence of the country, and far better fitted by genius 
 and habits to direct the conduct of public affairs, in the 
 management of which they had, while he had not, been 
 trained. Under and with them he could serve with 
 
 R 2
 
 244 LORD LYNDHURST NEVER RICH. CHAP. x. 
 
 honour and satisfaction, for he knew he possessed their 
 entire confidence. To lead them, having himself up 
 to this time taken no prominent place in parliamentary 
 warfare, and little disposed as they would have been 
 to accept a subordinate position, was not to be 
 thought of. 
 
 Moreover what Lord Brougham said in speaking 
 of the charge against himself of having striven to turn 
 out Earl Grey in 1834, and to take his place as Prime 
 Minister, applied with no less force to Copley's case. 
 " I could not afford it," he wrote, " without getting 
 into debt, the end of a public man's independence. I 
 could not have lived in Downing Street a single year. 
 . . . As for honour, what greater could I have than the 
 Chancellor enjoys ? " (Brougham's ' Autobiography/ 
 vol. iii. p. 433.) 
 
 This was precisely Copley's position. His years 
 of great success at the bar had been too few to admit 
 of his making a capital, and his current expenses had 
 grown considerably of late, in maintaining an establish- 
 ment suitable to his position, first as Master of the 
 Rolls, and afterwards as Lord Chancellor. The income 
 of the Chancellor, large as it was, being somewhat over 
 ; 1 4,000, was not more than adequate to meet the 
 current expenses of his establishment. These were 
 on a liberal scale ; and Lord Lyndhurst, unlike his pre- 
 decessor on the woolsack, and the majority of eminent 
 lawyers, was careless about money. The old house in 
 George Street was too cramped for one mixing so 
 largely in the great world as he was now called upon 
 to do. He was, however, too deeply attached to it to 
 give it up ; so he bought the adjoining house, and by 
 throwing the two into one he made it ample for all the 
 requirements of his high position, and the reception of a 
 very large circle of friends and visitors. The alterations
 
 1829. EXPOSED TO LIBELLOUS ATTACKS. 245 
 
 and additions were designed by himself, and they were 
 made with a skill which showed that in the great lawyer 
 an accomplished architect had been lost. 1 
 
 In those days of keen political antagonism, embit- 
 tered by personalities to an extent happily long gone 
 out of fashion, there were journalists ready to resort to 
 any foul means of damaging the reputation of men of 
 eminence who were impregnable to assault in their 
 public lives. Lord Lyndhurst was too powerful, and too 
 much dreaded by his political opponents, not to become 
 a favourite mark for calumny and slander. That he 
 was not a man of fortune, and that he saw a good 
 deal of company, were sufficient data to work upon 
 for the creatures who prostituted the press to purposes 
 of denigration and annoyance. He was reported to 
 be ruinously extravagant, to be drowned in debt, to 
 have sheriffs officers in the dress of footmen waiting 
 at his table. Such reports he could affdrd 'to treat 
 with-cantemptuous indifference. Presuming on his 
 forbearance, his calumniators went a step farther. A 
 man so embarrassed as they represented him to be 
 they conceived the public might be persuaded was not 
 likely to be scrupulous as to the means of repairing 
 the ravages of his extravagance. The Chancellor's 
 patronage was large ; he must be accused of having 
 made it a source of income. Accordingly one paper, 
 the Atlas, charged him with having sold his church 
 appointments. This was carrying matters too far, as 
 the libeller found to his cost. A criminal information 
 was immediately filed against him (June 26, 1829). 
 Lord Lyndhurst, who had all along taken unusual pains 
 
 1 Except for a short period, when he rented a house, now No. 14, in Hyde Park 
 Terrace, Lord Lyndhurst lived in this house till his death. It was then sold for 
 ;i8,ooo. The purchaser pulled it down, and built the large and massive structure 
 which now occupies its place.
 
 246 PROSECUTES JOURNALS FOR LIBEL. CHAP. x. 
 
 to investigate the fitness of every person to whom he 
 gave a living, had preserved with scrupulous care not 
 only every application, but every document relating 
 to his appointments. He was thus able to scatter 
 the calumny to the winds ; and a conviction of the 
 slanderer followed as a matter of course. 
 
 A charge even more preposterous was about the 
 same time made in the Morning Journal, of cor- 
 ruption in the distribution of political offices, and in 
 particular of obtaining for Sir Edward Sugden the 
 appointment of Solicitor-General in return for a loan 
 of ^30,000. Proceedings were taken against the 
 author, printer, and publisher of this libel, and they 
 were convicted before Lord Tenterden and a special 
 jury on the 22nd of December, 1829.* 
 
 These are the types of the calumnious attacks to 
 which Lord Lyndhurst was exposed for several years 
 after he rose into prominence in the political world. 
 Only when they touched his honour as a public 
 man did he consider them worthy of notice ; but they 
 occasionally took a form which caused him great 
 personal annoyance, although their nature was such as 
 to make it impossible for him to stoop to give them 
 a public denial. Calumnies, once circulated, die very 
 hard, and some of these slanders still linger in the 
 
 1 The particulars of this case will be found in the Times of May 30, June 19, 
 and December 22, 1829, and in " Rex v. Gutch, Fisher and Alexander" (Moody 
 and Malk. Rep. p. 433). See also ' Greville Memoirs,' vol. ii. p. 258, and Mr. S. 
 C. Hall's ' Retrospect of a Long Life,' vol. i. p. 130. Lord Ellenborough writes, 
 on the nth of June, 1829 (' Diary,' vol. ii. p. 50), " The world has had imposed on 
 it a story of the Chancellor's selling his Church preferment. The Age is to 
 bring forward its charges on Sunday next. This is an arrow from the Cumberland 
 [the Duke of Cumberland's] quiver." Again on the 2Oth of June, " The 
 Chancellor has prosecuted the Morning Journal for a libel accusing him of 
 having taken money for Sugden's appointment as Solicitor-General. I heard him 
 tell Lord 'Bathurst, with reference to another calumny against him, that he had 
 fortunately preserved through his secretary the grounds on which he had given 
 everything he had disposed of."
 
 1828. COLLISION WITH LORD ELDON. 247 
 
 memories of the puny imitators of Horace Walpole, 
 who fancy, as Macaulay has said, that while they 
 record the gossiping scandals of their time, they are 
 writing history. But as Lord Lyndhurst himself 
 despised them, they may be left to drop with other 
 lumber into " the alms' bag of oblivion." 
 
 Although in all measures of importance the Duke of 
 Wellington and Sir Robert Peel leant so greatly upon 
 the counsels of Lord Lyndhurst, that his voice may be 
 said to have been next to theirs the most potential 
 in the Cabinet, he took very little part in the political 
 debates in the House of Lords during the years 1828 
 and 1829. On the 25th of April, 1828, he spoke in 
 support of the Corporation and Test Acts Repeal Bill. 
 Lord Eldon had proposed an amendment which would 
 have excluded all but Protestants from the benefits of 
 the measure. Speaking against this limitation, Lord 
 Lyndhurst provoked the anger of Lord Eldon, who 
 was little inclined to brook contradiction in an arena 
 where he had long held almost despotic sway, by 
 disputing his law, as well as discrediting liis states- 
 manship. He did this with all his wonted courtesy ; but 
 while acknowledging the ex-Chancellor's great legal 
 powers and zeal for the interests of the Church, he con- 
 cluded his speech by expressing the opinion " that the 
 exercise of those powers and that zeal, in the present 
 instance, was decidedly mischievous." This called up 
 Lord Eldon in a mood of strong excitement, to repu- 
 diate the charge of acting mischievously, and to crave 
 a patient hearing from the House, " while he replied 
 to such a charge coming from such a place, and such 
 an authority." 1 In what he said, he did not affect to 
 
 1 These very simple words, which we quote from Hansard, are altered by Lord 
 Campbell in such a way as to convey an offensive innuendo. " Strange that such a 
 charge should be brought against me, and from such a quarter ! " is the form into 
 which he casts them.
 
 248 SIX FRANCIS BURDETTS RESOLUTION CHAP. x. 
 
 conceal that his object was to defeat the Bill. This 
 was the very mischief on which Lord Lyndhurst had 
 rested his charge, and he was fully justified in making- 
 it, knowing what added bitterness such a result would 
 have caused in the minds of the Roman Catholics, and 
 of the large mass of people throughout the kingdom, 
 who were growing daily more impatient of the dis- 
 abilities under which their Catholic fellow-subjects were 
 labouring. It is easy, therefore, to imagine the amused 
 smile upon the Chancellor's face as he listened to Lord 
 Eldon's protestations, that "were he called that night 
 to render his account before Heaven, he would go 
 with the consoling reflection that he had never advo- 
 cated anything mischievous to his country," and that 
 he cast back the Chancellor's imputation "with all the 
 scorn of a man who felt himself injured." The defeat 
 of his amendment did not tend to smooth down Lord 
 Eldon's excitement. The soreness lingered in his mind 
 and broke out in very strong language during the 
 heated debates of the following session on the Catholic 
 Disabilities Removal Bill. 
 
 The time was rapidly approaching when the settle- 
 ment of the Catholic claims could be no longer delayed. 
 Year by year the Government majorities on this question 
 had diminished, and now (May 12, 1828) the House of 
 Commons had, by a majority of six, carried Sir Francis 
 Burdett's resolution, affirming the expediency of "con- 
 sidering the state of the laws affecting His Majesty's 
 Roman Catholic subjects in Great Britain and Ireland, 
 with a view to such a final and conciliatory adjustment 
 as may be conducive to the peace and strength of the 
 United Kingdom, to the stability of the Protestant 
 establishment, and to the general satisfaction and con- 
 cord of all classes of His Majesty's subjects." Finding 
 himself in a minority on this the most important of 
 domestic questions, Peel's first impulse was to resign,
 
 1 828. ON CA THOLIC DISABILITIES. 
 
 249 
 
 and he has stated, in the autobiographic ' Memoirs/ 
 published by his trustees (vol. i. p. 103), that he only 
 refrained from doing so in order that he might not 
 endanger the Duke of Wellington's Government, which 
 had been weakened by the secession, not many days 
 before, of Mr. Huskisson, Lord Dudley, Lord Palmer- 
 ston and others, and because he was convinced that 
 owing to the peculiar combination of parties at the 
 time, no other strong government could be constructed. 
 But it was impossible in the face of the Commons 
 division to delay dealing with the question ; and when 
 on the gth of June Lord Lansdowne moved that the 
 Lords should concur in the resolution of the Commons, 
 although both the Chancellor and the Duke of 
 Wellington spoke strongly against the motion, and it 
 was negatived by a majority of 44, still it was clear 
 from the speeches of both that they felt the time 
 had come when the question must be dealt with by the 
 Government. Both admitted the urgent and serious 
 difficulty in which the country was placed by the 
 violence of the agitation in Ireland, although they did 
 not at present see an outlet from that difficulty. This 
 admission Lord Lansdowne rightly argued indicated a 
 foregone intention on their part to " look at the question 
 with a view to its final arrangement." 
 
 The speech of the Chancellor was moderate and 
 conciliatory in its tone ; but he in no way drew back 
 from the position he had taken up on former occasions, 
 that the danger of concession lay in the aggressive 
 character of the Romish Church, and in the changes 
 in the relations between Ireland and Great Britain 
 which the possession of a control of the representation 
 would be used to effect. 
 
 The proposition, he said, now made was, to admit the 
 Catholics without restriction into the legislature, into all and
 
 250 LORD LYNDHURST'S SPEECH. CHAP. x. 
 
 every office, and into a full participation of civil and military 
 power. Did they believe, when they had considered all these 
 points, that they should be able to stop short there ? Little 
 must he know of the disposition of the Church of Rome to 
 aggrandise itself, and obtain a supremacy in all things, and in 
 all states, who could think so. ... 
 
 I contend that by agreeing to this motion we shall not 
 purchase tranquillity. We shall only give new means to 
 support further claims, which will be urged and backed by 
 the very power we have ourselves conferred. Are your Lord- 
 ships prepared to bid adieu to the Protestant Church of 
 Ireland ? Are you prepared to establish the Catholic religion 
 in its stead ? We know that the population of Ireland is 
 Catholic ; that three-fourths are of that persuasion ; and it 
 may be contended, that it is as just to establish the Catholic 
 religion in Ireland as the Protestant in England, or the 
 Presbyterian in Scotland. Any man who comes to that 
 conclusion I can understand. He acts a consistent part, and 
 may well call upon us to take this step, in order to facilitate 
 the object he has in view. But because I love the Protestant 
 Church of Ireland . . . because I think it the bulwark of 
 the Church of England, I am not willing to forego my support 
 to it, and I cannot grant a Catholic ascendancy in Ireland. . . 
 I have said, that I do not see my way out of the difficulty. 
 I wish to God I did ; but I am satisfied that to comply with 
 what is required, instead of diminishing that difficulty, would 
 increase it. 
 
 It was obvious throughout the whole of the Chan- 
 cellor's speech, that he was pressed by the difficulty 
 of depriving, upon religious grounds, the majority of 
 the Irish population of their share in the rights and 
 privileges of their fellow-citizens. 1 The perplexities 
 surrounding the whole question were stated with 
 moderation and frankness. Lord Plunkettf who 
 
 1 What was the state of mind in the Cabinet itself is shown by the entry in 
 Lord EUenborough's Diary (nth June) the day after the debate " Cabinet dinner 
 at the Duke's, and the Duke said he believed there was no one who desired the 
 settlement of the Catholic question more than he did ; but he confessed he did 
 not see daylight." (Lord EUenborough's ' Political Diary,' vol. i. p. 143.)
 
 1 828. REASONS FOR HIS CHANGE OF VIEWS. 251 
 
 followed him in the debate, while he spoke in warm 
 terms of the Chancellor's " able, temperate, and digni- 
 fied statement," made light of the apprehensions, which 
 have since been more than verified, of the dangers to the 
 Established Church in Ireland. Could he have shared 
 in these, he said, he, who had " supported these claims 
 almost from the first moment that he could think, would 
 abandon his ancient and confirmed opinions, and be- 
 come as determined an opponent to concession as he 
 had been its most anxious advocate." He treated the 
 Chancellor's fears of the effects of concession upon 
 the legislative union as equally groundless. In any 
 other country but Ireland they would probably have 
 been so. But in any case the consequences of which 
 England now has experience, and which seem to have 
 been very clearly foreseen by Lord Lyndhurst, were 
 too remote to have much weight against the argu- 
 ments based on the injustice of excluding a large 
 section of the subjects of the State from the civil rights 
 enjoyed by their fellow-citizens. It was significant that 
 the majority against Lord Lansdowne's motion was 
 only 45, three less than the majority when the subject 
 had last been discussed in the Upper House. 
 
 The state of Ireland, verging on rebellion, and the 
 return of Mr. O'Connell for the county of Clare, hitherto 
 regarded as one of the strongholds of Protestantism, one 
 of many indications that the influence of the Protest- 
 ant gentry throughout Ireland was coming to an end, 
 compelled the Government to take up the Catholic 
 question, with a view to legislation, early in the next 
 session. Mr. Peel had satisfied himself that concession 
 could no longer be delayed without danger. Most 
 gladly would he have retired from office, and so escaped 
 the embarrassment of promoting a measure which he 
 had long actively resisted, and exposing himself, as he
 
 252 CONSULTS WITH WELLINGTON AND PEEL CHAP. x. 
 
 knew he must, to the "rage of party the rejection by the 
 University of Oxford, the alienation of private friends 
 the interruption of family affections." l But he placed 
 himself (nth of August) in the hands of the Duke of 
 Wellington, ready to sacrifice " every consideration of 
 private feeling and individual interest " for the public 
 good. The Duke, no less alive to the necessity of the 
 case, who had arrived at substantially the same conclu- 
 sions as to the measures to be adopted, had, before 
 receiving Mr. Peel's communication, been in conference 
 upon the subject with Lord Lyndhurst. On the 9th of 
 August he wrote to Mr. Peel, saying 
 
 " I will send you a memorandum which I sent to the King 
 on the state of Ireland ; the letter which I wrote him at the 
 same time ; his answer : a memorandum upon the Roman 
 Catholic question which I have since drawn ; and a letter 
 which I wrote yesterday to the Lord Chancellor. I am to 
 see him again this afternoon," he adds, " and will write you a 
 line before the post goes out ; and I hope to hear from you 
 on Monday. I will either then, or this evening with the Lord 
 Chancellor, fix a time at which we shall meet to talk over this 
 subject, previous to my having any further communication 
 with the King." (' Memoirs,' by Sir R. Peel, vol. i. p. 180.) 
 
 In a postscript he mentions that he had seen the 
 Chancellor, and the modifications on the Duke's pro- 
 posals which he had suggested, adding, " The Chan- 
 cellor and I are going to Windsor on Tuesday. We 
 will afterwards fix a time to meet you." 
 
 Mr. Peel in replying to the Duke embodied his 
 views in an elaborate Memorandum, which he said was 
 meant " rather to suggest topics for very full inquiry 
 and consideration, than to express decided opinions 
 on the points raised in it." In reply to his letter 
 the Duke wrote (i3th August) 
 
 1 ' Memoirs,' by Sir Robert Peel, vol. i. pp. 187-88.
 
 1828. ON REMOVAL OF CATHOLIC DISABILITIES. 2 $3 
 
 I did not answer your letter upon the Roman Catholic 
 question yesterday, as I was obliged to go to Windsor at an 
 early hour, and I wished to communicate what you had 
 written to the Lord Chancellor, whom I was to meet at the 
 Royal Lodge. I will not now pretend to discuss the different 
 topics raised in your letter and paper, but will do so at a 
 future moment, when I shall be more at leisure. In the 
 meantime I tell you that I have communicated your papers 
 to the Chancellor alone. . . . Moreover, I told the King 
 that it should go no farther than to you and the Lord 
 Chancellor in this stage. 
 
 He then mentions that, as he is himself going to 
 Cheltenham for a short time, and as it will not be con- 
 venient for the Chancellor to enter upon the discussion 
 of the question until some days after finishing his sittings 
 on the 2Oth in Chancery, he could fix some day in the 
 first week of September for Mr. Peel, the Chancellor, 
 and himself to meet. 
 
 Meantimethe state of affairs in Ireland was proceed- 
 ing from bad to worse. The King, however, remained 
 resolute in his resistance to Catholic Emancipation, 
 while his ministers saw every day more clearly that 
 a great national convulsion was inevitable, unless it 
 were conceded. Down to a late period in the year 
 Peel continued to hope he might be allowed to retire, 
 and to give his support to the Government in his private 
 capacity. But finding that the Duke could not do 
 without him, and convinced that if the settlement 
 passed out of the Duke's hands into those of the oppo- 
 sition, the hostility of the King would cause a delay 
 dangerous to the state, he determined to remain. In 
 all the deliberations between the Duke and Mr. Peel, 
 the Lord Chancellor had taken an active part, and his 
 advice had helped to mould the measure, with which 
 they finally resolved to dispose of the question on the 
 meeting of Parliament. The letters above quoted are
 
 254 MISREPRESENTA TIONSBYLORD CAMPBELL. CHAP. x. 
 
 in themselves conclusive evidence that this was so, 1 
 and enable us to judge of the trustworthiness of Lord 
 Campbell's assertion ('Lord Lyndhurst's Life,' p. 70) : 
 " I do not think the Chancellor was at all consulted, 
 before the measure of Catholic Emancipation was finally 
 determined upon by the Duke of Wellington and Sir 
 Robert Peel." They, he goes on to assume, might be 
 influenced by convictions based upon the circumstances 
 of the times. Not so Lord Lyndhurst. They might 
 dread "the invectives, the taunts, and the sarcasms," 
 to which this change of policy must expose them. 
 Not so Lord Lyndhurst. He was insensible to such 
 assaults, and " prepared to turn them off with a laugh 
 and boldly to retaliate on all who should assail him." 
 So probable was it, that a man of whom such things 
 could be said with truth would have been admitted to 
 the intimate counsels and friendship of Wellington and 
 Peel. 2 Lord Lyndhurst knew very well, as they did, 
 that they would have to encounter a storm of obloquy 
 and sarcasm for a change of policy so marked ; but, like 
 them, he was nerved to face it by the profound convic- 
 tion that in no other way could a great public danger 
 be averted. 
 
 1 It would be easy to multiply the proofs of the fact. Thus Lord Ellenborough 
 in his 'Diary,' vol. i. p. 284, writes (December 27) " I had some serious conver- 
 sation with the Chancellor about the Catholic question. He says the Duke must 
 see the King soon, and tell him what he wishes to do. The Chancellor expects 
 the King will send for him and Peel. The Chancellor will tell His Majesty it is 
 much better to concede quietly and with good terms what cannot be prevented 
 that, if the Ministers meet the question and are beat, as they would be, they must 
 go out, and His Majesty would only be able to find Ministers resolved to carry 
 the measure in any manner." Then, showing that the question of Peel's retire- 
 ment was still unsettled, he adds, " The Chancellor thinks Peel will not be a 
 member of the Government which brings forward the question." 
 
 2 One of H. B.'s caricatures issued at this time indicates the prevailing opinion 
 that the Chancellor had a potential voice in the Cabinet Councils. It shows him 
 seated at a table writing the King's Speech with a preoccupied, but quite unem- 
 barrassed air, while Wellington and Peel, seated at opposite sides of the table, 
 are made to look as if they had given up the task in despair.
 
 1829. THE KING'S SPEECH. 255 
 
 On the 5th of February, 182,9, Parliament met, and 
 the King's speech, though as usual guarded in its 
 language, gave no uncertain note as to the intentions 
 of the Government. The state of Ireland, it said, had 
 been the object of His Majesty's continued solicitude. 
 It called attention to the action of the Catholic Associa- 
 tion, as "dangerous to the public peace and inconsis- 
 tent with the spirit of the Constitution," and calculated 
 " if permitted to continue, effectually to obstruct every 
 effort permanently to improve the condition of Ireland," 
 and asked for the necessary powers to put it down. 
 It went on to recommend that, when this should have 
 been accomplished, Parliament should " take into its 
 deliberate consideration the whole condition of Ireland, 
 and review the laws which imposed civil disabilities on 
 His Majesty's Roman Catholic subjects." 
 
 The King had with great difficulty been prevailed 
 upon to assent to the terms of this speech. When the 
 Duke of Wellington in an interview with him (2,7th of 
 February) explained the nature of the measures for giving 
 it effect, he was extremely agitated, and even spoke 
 of abdicating. The interview was altogether a very 
 painful one. For some days His Majesty's mind seems 
 to have remained in a state of vacillation most embar- 
 rassing to the Ministry, who were determined not to act 
 unless they had his express approval to their measures. 
 On the 3rd of March he sent for the Duke of Welling- 
 ton, the Chancellor, and Mr. Peel r to come to him 
 together. The details of the Relief Bill were explained 
 to him by Mr. Peel. To one of these, the alteration 
 of the Oath of Supremacy, he declared he could never 
 
 1 Mr. Peel, who had resigned his seat for Oxford to give his constituents the 
 opportunity of saying whether they would support him in his change of views on 
 the Catholic question, was opposed by Sir R. Inglis and defeated by a majority 
 of 126. He was then returned for Westbury, and took his seat in the House on 
 the 3rd of March.
 
 256 HESITATIONS OF THE KING. CHAP. x. 
 
 consent that he had given his sanction to the pro- 
 ceedings of his Ministry under a misapprehension on 
 this point, and had no alternative but to retract his 
 consent. " After this explanation of my feelings," he 
 continued, " what course do you propose to take as 
 my ministers ? " One by one, Mr. Peel first, then the 
 Duke of Wellington, and then the Chancellor, they 
 requested His Majesty to accept the resignation of 
 their offices. The interview extended over five hours, 
 and the ministers returned to London under the full 
 persuasion that the Government was dissolved, at least 
 that they individually were no longer in the service of 
 the Crown. " On our return to London," writes Sir 
 Robert Peel ('Memoirs/ vol. i. p. 449), " we found our 
 colleagues, who were assembled at a Cabinet dinner 
 (I think at Lord Bathurst's), and announced to their 
 infinite astonishment, that we had ceased to be members 
 of the Government." 
 
 By the next day the King had thought better of his 
 decision, and wrote to the Duke of Wellington, that 
 he could not dispense with the services of his present 
 Administration, and must request that the resignations 
 tendered the previous day might be withdrawn. After 
 this escapade, it was determined that no fresh loop- 
 hole for "misunderstanding " should be left open. The 
 Duke therefore wrote to the King for express authority 
 to assure Parliament that the contemplated measures 
 were proposed with His Majesty's entire consent and 
 sanction. This brought an answer from the King, 
 giving the Cabinet full authority to proceed with their 
 measures. 
 
 The next day (5th March) Mr. Peel, in a powerful 
 speech, more than four hours in length, listened to, 
 according to Hansard, " with the most profound 
 attention," while at times "the cheers were so loud as to
 
 1 829. CAMPBELL'S MISREPRESENTA TIONS. 257 
 
 be heard in Westminster Hall," moved that " the House 
 resolve itself into a Committee of the whole House, to 
 consider of the laws imposing " these Civil Disabilities. 
 After a two nights' debate this motion was carried by a 
 majority of 348 to 160. The Committee of the whole 
 House three days afterwards passed a resolution that 
 it was expedient to provide for the repeal of the dis- 
 abling laws, with certain provisions for the security of 
 the Establishments in Church and State. A Bill was 
 immediately introduced for the purpose, which reached 
 its third reading on the 3<Dth of March, when it was 
 carried by a majority of 320 to 142. 
 
 "While this Bill," Lord Campbell writes (p. 60), 
 " was making progress in the House of Commons there 
 were, from the commencement of the session, nightly 
 skirmishes in the House of Lords on the presentation 
 of petitions for and against the measure. The Chan- 
 cellor sometimes mixed in these, and received painful 
 scratches." The Chancellor, on the contrary, sedulously 
 abstained, as might have been expected, from taking 
 part in these angry interlocutory discussions, leaving 
 them to those who were not to be charged, as he was, 
 with ministerial responsibility for the advocacy of 
 the measure on its coming up from the other House. 
 He spoke, in fact, only once on the subject of these 
 petitions (February 27, 1829), and then simply to move 
 the appointment of a committee to examine a complaint 
 made by the Marquis of Downshire, that a petition 
 purporting to be signed by Alderman Watson, of 
 Limerick, was a forgery. Not having mingled in the 
 fray therefore, whoever may have received painful 
 scratches the Chancellor certainly received none. 
 
 But, having ventured on the statement, Lord Camp- 
 bell goes on to manufacture proofs of it. 
 
 " Lord Eldon," he says, "presenting an anti-Catholic petition 
 
 S
 
 258 LORDS ELDON AND KING. CHAP. x. 
 
 from the Company of Tailors at Glasgow, the Chancellor, still 
 sitting on the Woolsack, said in a stage whisper, loud enough 
 to be heard in the galleries : ' What ! do tailors trouble them- 
 selves with such measures ? ' 
 
 " Lord Eldon. ' My noble and learned friend might have 
 been aware that tailors cannot like turncoats' (A loud 
 laugh.)" 
 
 Not a word of this is to be found in Hansard, 
 where so good a repartee in "a stage whisper, loud 
 enough to be heard in the galleries " would have been 
 sure to be chronicled. The story is obviously borrowed 
 from Twiss's 'Life of Eldon' (vol. ii. p. 226, 3rd ed.), 
 where it is given as one Lord Eldon himself used to 
 relate, not of Lord Lyndhurst, but of Lord King ! 
 Here are Mr. Twiss's words: "When he (Lord 
 Eldon) laid it (the Glasgow Petition) on the table, Lord 
 King, who was very zealous for the Bill, cried out, 
 ' What ! do the tailors trouble themselves about such a 
 charge ? ' ' No wonder,' replied Lord Eldon ; ' you can't 
 suppose that tailors like turncoats ! ' Lord King, 
 a man not without wit himself, who was continually 
 teasing Lord Eldon at this time, and who, having 
 been one of those who had formerly resisted Catholic 
 Emancipation, was fairly open to the ex-Chancellor's 
 rejoinder, shared no doubt in the mirth which it pro- 
 voked ; so also, if it reached him, would Lord Lyndhurst 
 beyond all question have done, for no man had a heartier 
 enjoyment of a good repartee. For Lord Campbell 
 coolly to apply the sarcasm to the Chancellor for an 
 obviously malignant purpose, is bad enough. But in 
 the very next sentences of his book, he is again guilty 
 of the more serious delinquency of falsifying Hansard 
 with the same object. 
 
 " On a subsequent day," he says, " the Chancellor charged 
 Lord Eldon with insidiously insinuating, when presenting
 
 1829. CATHOLIC RELIEF BILL. 
 
 petitions against the Roman Catholics, that they were not 
 loyal subjects, and that they were unwilling to swear that 
 they would support the Protestant succession to the Crown. 
 
 "Lord Eldon. ' My Lords, I am not in the habit of insinua- 
 ting what I think, I avow. And, my Lords, I am an open 
 not an insidious enemy, when I feel it my duty to oppose any 
 meastire, or any man. My character, known to my country 
 for more than fifty years, is, I feel, more than sufficient to 
 repel so unfounded an insinuation. It is equally unnecessary 
 that I should criticise the career of my accuser? " 
 
 Lord Campbell gives this speech of Lord Eldon's 
 as a quotation from 20 Hansard, N.S., 1827, but dis- 
 creetly omits a reference to the page. He might well 
 do so. What was actually said is given on p. 1042 of 
 the volume referred to, 1 and there not a trace will be 
 found of the words which we have printed in italics. 
 
 No time was lost in pressing on the discussion of 
 the Catholic Relief Bill in the House of Lords. It was 
 brought in upon the 2ist of March, and on the 2nd of 
 April the debate on the second reading was opened 
 by the Duke of Wellington. In his speech, both on 
 this occasion and in concluding the debate, he grappled 
 boldly with the charges of inconsistency levelled against 
 himself and his coadjutors. There was something 
 higher, he said, than personal consistency to be thought 
 of by a Minister charged with the responsibility of 
 government. Things had come to such a state in Ireland 
 that government had become impossible without such 
 coercive measures as would have resulted in civil war. 
 His duty was to consider how such a state of things 
 could be cured, and to abandon without hesitation any 
 
 1 This is what actually appears in Hansard: "He would not answer what 
 had fallen from the noble and learned Lord on the Woolsack. If that noble and 
 learned Lord said that his (Lord Eldon's) honest opinions were uttered with an 
 insidious design, his character known to his country for more than fifty years 
 was, he felt, more than sufficient to repel so unfounded an insinuation." 
 20 Hansard, N.S., 1042, March 13. 
 
 S 2
 
 260 LORD LYNDHURSTS SPEECH CHAP. x. 
 
 formerly expressed views, if satisfied that they stood in 
 the way of an effective remedy. 
 
 " My Lords," he said, " I admit that many of my colleagues, 
 as well as myself, did on former occasions vote against a 
 measure of a similar description with this ; and, my Lords, 
 I must say that my colleagues and myself felt, when we 
 adopted this measure, that we should be sacrificing ourselves 
 and our popularity to what we felt to be our duty to our 
 Sovereign and our country. We knew very well that if we 
 had chosen to put ourselves at the head of the Protestant cry 
 of ' No Popery ! ' we should be much more popular even than 
 those who have excited against us that very cry. But we felt 
 that in so doing we should have left on the interests of the 
 country a burden, which must end in bearing them down, and 
 further that we should have deserved the hate and execration 
 of our countrymen." (Hansard, N.S., vol. xxi. 391.) 
 
 Not less frank and fearless was the attitude taken 
 up by Lord Lyndhurst. Before entering at large upon 
 the question raised by the Bill, he asked leave to detain 
 the House for a little, while he spoke of matters which 
 concerned himself personally. 
 
 The noble and learned Lord (Eldon) at the table I call 
 him the noble and learned Lord, because he has declared that 
 he will not allow me to call him my noble and learned friend 
 directed me on a former night to vindicate my own con- 
 sistency. My Lords, I readily accept the challenge. On 
 two occasions, and on two occasions only, have I addressed 
 either House of Parliament on this subject. . . On both 
 these occasions I stated that which had been the constant 
 principle of my conduct, and said that, if concessions to the 
 Roman Catholics could be made, consistently with the security 
 of the Protestant Established Church, and consistently with 
 the great interests of the empire, I considered we were bound 
 to make them. I stated this, my Lords, so unequivocally, so 
 explicitly, that I thought it was impossible I could be mis- 
 understood. My Lords, I was not misunderstood, because I 
 have reason to believe that the ground I took was not
 
 1829. ON CATHOLIC RELIEF SILL. 26 1 
 
 congenial to those who were opposed to concession ; that it 
 was thought I had not taken ground sufficiently high, and 
 that I had not been sufficiently transcendent in the view I 
 took ; and, being at that time the representative of the 
 University of Cambridge, some of my constituents complained 
 of the course I had taken. They were of opinion that no 
 sacrifice ought to be made that under no circumstances 
 ought concessions to be granted ; and I believe they were 
 dissatisfied with me for hinting even at the possibility of a 
 satisfactory adjustment of this question. That I held the 
 same language in the last Session of Parliament which I held 
 in the House of Commons, I may safely appeal to your 
 Lordships who heard me. 
 
 But, myLords, there has been another charge made against 
 me. ... I have been charged with having forgotten, with 
 having violated the sacred oath I took, when I was appointed 
 to the high situation which I have now the honour to fill. 
 My Lords, the terms of that oath are deeply impressed upon 
 my mind ; they are, " that I will truly counsel the King." I 
 have deeply considered the obligation this oath imposed upon 
 me, and, after much deliberation, the result has been that I 
 came to a firm conclusion in my own mind that if the stability 
 of the empire were to me, as it ought to be, an object of deep 
 and intense interest, Ireland must be tranquillised, and that 
 it was impossible for me not to give the counsel which I 
 have given to my Sovereign. Have I then violated the oath 
 I took ? No, my Lords ; it was because I felt myself bound 
 by the obligation of that oath because I felt it an imperious 
 duty because I was grateful to my King for the benefits 
 I have received at his hands it was for these reasons that I 
 gave that counsel in which an ill-constituted and ill-directed 
 mind has been able to discover a violation of my obligation 
 to counsel the King truly. The most bitter opprobrium has 
 been cast upon me. I have been assailed with revilings in 
 the most unmeasured and in the coarsest terms. But, my 
 Lords, when I bear in mind that the individual to whom I 
 allude stated in the same breath, that he would not take the 
 state of Ireland at all into his consideration, I look upon what 
 proceeded from him rather as the ravings of a disordered 
 Imagination, than as emanations from an enlightened and
 
 262 LORD LYNDHURSTS SPEECH CHAP. x. 
 
 sagacious understanding. And now, my Lords, I pass from 
 this subject, never again to revert to it. 
 
 The individual here referred to was Sir Charles 
 Wetherell, who had attacked Lord Lyndhurst in the 
 debate on the second reading of the Bill in the House 
 of Commons (i8th March), in terms which justified the 
 epithets applied to them by Lord Lyndhurst. This was 
 notorious, and yet Lord Campbell speaks of the charge, 
 to which the Chancellor referred, as a "supposed charge, 
 which he feigned for the purpose of answering it ! " 
 (' Life/ p. 62.) 
 
 The Chancellor then proceeded to state, that since 
 he had become one of the responsible advisers of the 
 Crown, his attention had been repeatedly directed to 
 the state of Ireland in a way it had never been before. 
 This he found to be such as could not possibly be 
 allowed to continue. How then was it to be amelior- 
 ated ? Civil disabilities and proscription had produced 
 nothing but discontent, turbulence and disorder. Was 
 it not, then, his duty to consider if conciliation should 
 not be tried where severity had failed, and if we could 
 not make the Irish people our friends by admitting 
 them to the full benefits and privileges of the 
 Constitution ? 
 
 Lord Lyndhurst had hitherto listened in silence, 
 through many weeks, to the assaults of Lord Eldon 
 upon himself and the other members of the Govern- 
 ment for their change of policy, of which more was 
 sure to be heard from the ex-Chancellor in the course 
 of the debate. But now he seized the opportunity of 
 making a point against him, which told well with the 
 House : 
 
 " When," he continued, " I was called upon to act as a re- 
 sponsible adviser of the Crown, I possessed the means of arriving
 
 1829. ON CATHOLIC RELIEF BILL. 263 
 
 at information which was not before within my reach, and of 
 which it was my duty to avail myself in giving that advice 
 to the Crown, which it will ever be my pride and consolation 
 to reflect on having given. Now the noble and learned Lord 
 (Eldon) at the table had for five and twenty years been the 
 responsible adviser of the Crown. During the whole of that 
 time he saw the distracted state of Ireland, and yet he applied 
 no remedy to the evil. On the contrary, it was under the 
 administration of which that noble and learned Lord was a 
 member that the situation of Ireland descended from bad to 
 worse. He did not suggest any line of policy which wise and 
 considerate statesmen ought to have adopted, to put an end 
 to the manifold disorders that afflicted that country. But 
 now he came forward to oppose, with his utmost force, that 
 which was recommended by His Majesty's Ministers. In 
 unison with my noble and honourable colleagues, I have 
 suggested a course which I hope will lead to the termination 
 of those mischiefs, and give to the people of Ireland tran- 
 quillity and prosperity. I am not one of those who would 
 support an ancient system, merely for the purpose of uphold- 
 ing the preponderance of a party. ... I do not mean to say 
 that cases of extreme necessity might not arise, where there 
 was a nice balance between evils, which would for a time 
 render decision difficult ; but that for a period of twenty years 
 such a system was allowed to go on, appears to me most 
 extraordinary and unprecedented. This unsatisfactory state 
 of things, however, led to the measure which was now before 
 their Lordships." 
 
 He then adverted to the Bill brought in for the 
 relief of the Roman Catholics in 1791, when Lord 
 Eldon was Attorney-General, and when Lord Redes- 
 dale, then Solicitor-General, said of it that its only 
 fault was that it did not go far enough, without a 
 word of objection from the Attorney-General, who was 
 sitting by his side. Again in 1792, when by an Act of 
 the Irish Parliament all the disabilities of the Roman 
 Catholics were removed, they were allowed to become 
 magistrates the army and navy were thrown open to
 
 264 LORD LYNDHURSTS SPEECH CHAP. x. 
 
 them, and the elective franchise was extended to them. 
 Here Lord Eldon broke in with the exclamation, " I 
 had nothing to do with that ! " when the Chancellor 
 continued, with telling effect 
 
 If in his capacity of Attorney-General the noble and learned 
 Lord came to the knowledge of anything that was likely to 
 prove injurious to the Crown, or dangerous to the Constitution 
 of the country, he was, according to his own showing, bound 
 to state it. But he took no notice of this Act, which conferred 
 such extensive powers on the Roman Catholics, although he 
 was Attorney-General. In the year 1793, another Act was 
 passed by the English Parliament, which extended to the 
 Roman Catholics of Scotland all the benefits and advantages 
 of the Act of 1791 ; and this Act, like the others, met with no 
 opposition from the noble and learned Lord. He entered no 
 protest, he made no complaint, he offered no remonstrance. 
 
 He then went on to strengthen his position by 
 reference to subsequent Acts passed, as he said, " under 
 the patronage of the noble and learned Lord," which 
 had given relief to the Roman Catholics of England 
 and Scotland, and thrown open to them the army, the 
 navy, the customs and excise. " If," he adroitly con- 
 cluded, "the noble and learned Lord had continued 
 for some time longer in office, he doubtless would have 
 found it necessary fully to accomplish the work he had 
 thus auspiciously begun, and would have admitted the 
 Roman Catholics into Parliament." 
 
 As he proceeded, Lord Lyndhurst frankly owned 
 that he had formerly overrated the dangers likely to 
 result from concession. It was on this side that he 
 was chiefly vulnerable, considering in what strong terms 
 his apprehensions of danger to the Irish Church, and 
 to the Legislature, had on former occasions been ex- 
 pressed. In the meantime it appeared he had been 
 extending his historical reading, and turned it to
 
 1829. ON CATHOLIC RELIEF BILL. 265 
 
 account in dealing with the argument of some of the 
 opponents of the measure, that we had been a Protes- 
 tant Government for not much more than a century. 
 
 " Now I contend," he said, " that a Protestant Government 
 has existed in this country from the period of Elizabeth down 
 to that of William III. ; and it is worthy of remark, that during 
 a century of that time Roman Catholics sat in Parliament and 
 held offices under the Crown. . . . During this period, for a 
 whole century, there was no law to prevent Catholic Peers 
 from sitting in this House ; and, with respect to the House of 
 Commons, if a Roman Catholic took the Oath of Supremacy, 
 there was nothing to prevent him from taking his seat there. 
 That Roman Catholics could and did sit in the House of 
 Commons at that time is quite clear. It is proved by the 
 speech of Colonel Birch, who, in the course of his argument 
 in the House of Commons, in the time of Charles II., said : 
 ' Will you, at one step, turn out of both Houses of Parliament 
 so many members ? ' evidently alluding to the Roman 
 Catholics. I state this as one out of many facts facts that 
 never were disputed to show that the Roman Catholics sat 
 in Parliament under our Protestant government 
 
 "Lord Eldon. 'Did the noble and learned Lord know \ 
 this last year ? ' 
 
 " The Lord Chancellor. ' IdicLnot ; but I have since been 
 prosecuting my studies. I have advanced in knowledge, and, 
 in my opinion, even the noble and learned Lord might improve 
 himself in the same way.'" 
 
 Lord Eldon did not again interrupt the speaker, 
 who had carried the House warmly along with him up 
 to this point. The promptitude of this rejoinder, bored 
 as their Lordships had been for weeks by the dreary 
 jeremiads of Lord Eldon on the perils impending over 
 the reign of Protestantism in Great Britain, gave the 
 Chancellor a further hold on their attention. His speech 
 covered every argument of importance bearing upon 
 the measure. As he himself said, the subject had 
 already been so thoroughly exhausted, that nothing
 
 266 OPINIONS ON LYNDHURSTS SPEECH. CHAP. x. 
 
 new was to be said upon it. But at no time, it was 
 felt, had the old arguments and reasonings been more 
 strikingly or convincingly put ; and the House, which 
 had listened with unflagging attention, cheered him 
 loudly as he sat down, having closed his address with 
 the words 
 
 I care not for the personal obloquy which may be cast 
 upon me for advocating this measure ; I have discharged my 
 duty fearlessly and conscientiously, and to the best of my 
 ability, and my most anxious desire, as it would be my 
 greatest consolation, is to be associated with your Lordships 
 in carrying this Bill into a law, and thereby to secure upon a 
 permanent basis the happiness and tranquillity of the United 
 Kingdom. 
 
 " The Chancellor made a very fine speech last 
 night," Mr. Charles Greville writes in his ' Diary ' (4th 
 April). 1 The previous day, Lord Ellenborough 
 chronicles, " The Chancellor spoke admirably, en- 
 deavouring to bring up Eldon, but the old man would 
 not move. He wanted more time to consider his 
 answer, by which he will not improve it." On the 4th 
 Lord Eldon spoke, making, says Lord Ellenborough, 
 " a very weak, inefficient, powerless speech. He 
 seemed beaten, and in some respects his memory had 
 failed him." Mr. Greville, recording the current opinion 
 of the day, says, " Old Eldon was completely beat, 
 and could make no fight at all ; his speech was 
 wretched, they say, for I did not hear it." 2 He made 
 the most, as might be expected, of the Chancellor's 
 
 1 Of this fine speech Lord Campbell has only to say, that the Chancellor 
 ' acquitted himself very dexterously by abstaining from any profession of sincerity, 
 
 by quietly trying to show that he had been a very consistent politician, by assuming 
 a tone of ribaldry" (an astounding assertion), "and by bringing a charge of 
 inconsistency against Lord Eldon." 
 
 2 Lord Ellenborough's 'Diary,' vol. ii. pp. 3, 5. 'The Greville Memoirs,' 
 vol. i. pp. 198-9.
 
 1829. HIS ATTACK ON LORD ELDON. 267 
 
 surrender of his former views, but the sting had been 
 taken by anticipation out of any such attack by the 
 candid avowal of this change, and by the reasons for 
 it, contained in the Chancellor's speech. The House 
 was not disposed to attach much value to what Sir 
 Robert Peel has called " a false consistency, which 
 inflexibly adheres to an opinion once pronounced, 
 though filtered circumstances may justify and demand 
 the modification or abandonment of it." (' Memoirs/ 
 vol. i. p. 365.) 
 
 The same night the second reading of the Bill was 
 carried by a majority of 105 in a very full house. In 
 the course of the discussion upon the clauses of the 
 Bill (April 7), Lord Lyndhurst was provoked by Lord 
 Eldon into speaking with an asperity, which was 
 remarkable in a man of his fine temper and habitual 
 courtesy. He may have been influenced in some 
 degree by the knowledge that Lord Eldon was using 
 at this time his influence with the King to cause em- 
 barrassment to the Ministry : but he was sufficiently 
 justified by the fact that the ex-Chancellor was not 
 fighting fairly within the House itself. He had stated 
 that " he had not been able to find that the Catholics 
 would admit the Established Church of this country to 
 be a part of the Christian Church." Little as Lord 
 Lyndhurst then or ever liked the tenets, religious or 
 political, of the Romish Church, this was more than 
 he could patiently endure from one who affected so 
 much judicial impartiality, and claimed to speak with 
 so much authority. It was easy to disprove the assertion 
 out of the mouths of Catholics themselves, and the 
 Chancellor did so in a few vigorous sentences. Lord 
 Eldon had also asserted that it was impossible for any 
 one who had taken the Oath of Supremacy to fulfil its 
 obligations if he admitted to parliamentary privileges a
 
 268 DEBATE ON SECOND READING CHAP. x. 
 
 body of persons in this country who acknowledge any 
 foreign spiritual power. " How," he had said, " can 
 I take this oath under such circumstances ? " 
 
 " I answer," said the Chancellor, "it is not for me to reconcile 
 this to him : it is not for me to mediate between the oath and 
 the noble and learned Lord's conscience. The law so stands, 
 and he has taken the oath notwithstanding. By the law, 
 persons are allowed to acknowledge foreign power in spiritual 
 matters ; and with the knowledge of this law the noble and 
 learned Lord has taken an oath, which he now finds it difficult 
 to reconcile with that fact. In 1791, a period to which the 
 noble and learned Lord will not direct his attention, an Act 
 was framed by a noble and learned Lord (Redesdale), and 
 that Act contains an oath on which the terms of the oath in 
 the Bill before us is founded. The noble and learned Lord 
 must know that not a single Catholic can enjoy any rights or 
 privileges, without being subject to the penal code, unless he 
 take that oath. He has, however, lost all recollection of this 
 Act ; although at this moment, and he knows it, it screens the 
 Catholics from the horrible severity of the penal laws. Now, 
 my Lords, are we to be overborne by the talent, the learning, 
 and the name of the noble and learned Lord, who comes down 
 here and deals with subjects of so much importance in this 
 way ? How stands the case ? Persons are now admitted to 
 certain offices, rights, and privileges upon taking this oath. 
 Does this infringe any principle of the Constitution ? Is 
 this a violation of any moral duty ? No. It has been the 
 law for many years. Everybody approves of it. Well, then, 
 what does the Bill before us do ? It does but extend these 
 privileges ; it merely allows a greater community of privileges. 
 When we get rid of the obscurity in which it is so industriously 
 sought to envelope the subject . . . the objection is too ex- 
 travagantly absurd to be entertained by any reasonable men." 
 {Hansard, N.S., vol. xxi. 509.) 
 
 In reply, Lord Eldon did not attempt to answer 
 the Chancellor's argument. It would have been 
 difficult to do so ; so he fell back upon the some- 
 what futile stratagem of personal retort.
 
 1829. OF CATHOLIC RELIEF BILL. 269 
 
 " I have now," he said, " been twenty-seven years in this 
 House, and I have on all public questions spoken the opinions 
 I entertained, perhaps in stronger language than was 
 warranted ; but I have now to tell the noble and learned 
 Lord on the woolsack that I have never borne down the 
 House, and I will not now be borne down by him nor twenty 
 such." 
 
 The House itself, however, to all appearance 
 was very much of Lord Lyndhurst's opinion. " Last 
 night," says Mr. Charles Greville, " old Eldon got a 
 dressing again from the Chancellor." Some people 
 of course took a less favourable view. Lord Ellen- 
 borough writes (i ith April), " Dr. Clarke and H. Fane 
 both spoke of the Chancellor's speech in attack upon 
 Eldon, as in bad taste and offensive. Not having 
 heard Eldon," he adds, " they cannot know how very 
 mischievous and disingenuous he was." 
 
 In the debate on the third reading of the Bill Lord 
 Lyndhurst took no part. It was carried by a majority 
 of 104, after one night's discussion, during which Lord 
 Eldon again spoke. Some management was neces- 
 sary to secure the King's consent to its passing. 
 Several other Bills had been purposely kept back, 
 that they might be included in the same Commission 
 with it. The Chancellor, in sending them, represented 
 the importance of avoiding further delay, calling the 
 King's attention at the same time to the Relief Bill ; and 
 the King, on sending them back, with the Commission 
 signed, thanked him for having called his attention to 
 the Bill, " and said he gave his assent reluctantly." 
 (Ellenborough's ' Diary,' vol. ii. p. 13.) Lord Eldon, 
 who had been filled with hope, by what had passed in 
 recent interviews between himself and the King, that 
 the Royal Assent would have been refused, wrote to his 
 daughter next day (i4th April), "The fatal Bills
 
 270 LYNDHURST AND ELDON RECONCILED. CHAP. x. 
 
 received the Royal Assent yesterday afternoon. After 
 all I had heard in my visits, not a day's delay ! God 
 bless us, and His Church ! " (' Life,' vol. ii. p. 235.) 
 
 It was characteristic of Lord Lyndhurst's urbanity 
 that he sought an early opportunity of soothing the 
 wounded feelings of the venerable ex-Chancellor. 
 It naturally presented itself in bringing in (i2th May) 
 a Bill for relieving the block in Chancery business by 
 the appointment of a new Equity Judge, 1 when he 
 vindicated the ex-Chancellor from the responsibility of 
 delays which were due to the defects of the system he 
 had had to administer, and pronounced the panegyric 
 upon his great judicial powers, which has been already 
 cited (ante, note, p. 210). " The wonder of the day," 
 writes Lord Ellenborough, " is that Lord Eldon should 
 have lived to hear a Chancellor so expose the errors of 
 the Court of Chancery as they were exposed by Lord 
 Lyndhurst to-day." Lord Eldon, however, was ob- 
 viously touched by kind words where probably he had 
 little expected them, and accepted the offer of recon- 
 ciliation thus generously tendered, saying that, what- 
 ever might have been their political differences, " he 
 was not the person unwilling to be reconciled, 
 particularly when in that much more justice had been 
 done to him than he deserved." The short-lived 
 alienation was forgotten, and the letters still in existence 
 from Lord Eldon to Lord Lyndhurst show that they 
 resumed their former habits of friendly intercourse. 
 
 1 The Bill passed the third reading in the Lords ; but, owing to the lateness 
 of the Session, and the threat of a formidable opposition in the House of Com- 
 mons, the question was postponed to the following year.
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 Fall of Wellington Administration Lyndhurst appointed Chief Baron of 
 Exchequer Correspondence on the Occasion with Wellington and 
 others Raises the Reputation of his Court His Qualities as a 
 Judge Case of Small v. Attwood Reform Bill Agitation Second 
 Reform Bill rejected by House of Lords Lyndhurst's Speech Third 
 Reform Bill Ministry resign, and resume Office on failure of Welling- 
 ton to form Administration Reform Bill passed. 
 
 FROM this time down to the fall of the Duke of 
 Wellington's Administration, Lord Lyndhurst took no 
 part in any of the political debates, confining himself 
 in the House of Lords to the introduction and support 
 of various measures of legal reform. He was, however, 
 no indifferent observer of the stirring events by which 
 Europe was agitated at this period, and thoroughly 
 appreciated the impulse given by the French Revolu- 
 tion of 1830 to the demand for Reform of Parliamentary 
 Representation. That a very considerable measure of 
 reform was necessary, he had no doubt ; and in his 
 speeches in opposition to Earl Grey's successive Bills 
 he made no secret of this conviction. In common with 
 all the ablest men of his party, he must therefore have 
 regarded with surprise and dismay the Duke of Welling- 
 ton's declaration in the debate on the Address in 
 answer to the King's speech (2nd of November, 1830), 
 that not only was the Government totally unprepared 
 with any plan of reform, but that he " never heard or 
 read of any measure up to the present moment which
 
 272 FALL OF WELLINGTON MINISTRY. CHAP. xi. 
 
 could in any degree satisfy his mind that the state of 
 the representation could be improved, or be rendered 
 more satisfactory to the country at large, than at the 
 present moment." (Hansard, 3rd series, vol. i. p. 52.) 
 When the Duke sat down, the murmur of surprise and 
 vehement comment among his own friends was so loud, 
 that according to Earl Russell (' Recollections/ p. 62,) 
 he asked a colleague what it meant. " You have 
 announced the fall of your Government, that is all ! " 
 was the reply. The colleague is believed to have been 
 Lord Lyndhurst. 1 
 
 The shock thus given to a Ministry, which, partly 
 owing to its internal weakness, partly to the alienation 
 of the extreme members of their party which they had 
 caused by their measure for the repeal of the Catholic 
 disabilities, had already begun to totter, was soon 
 followed by its actual downfall. A few nights after- 
 wards (i5th of November) it was placed in a minority 
 of 29 in an unimportant division in the House of 
 Commons upon the Civil List. This, with what 
 had gone before, showed the Duke of Wellington so 
 plainly that he had lost his hold upon his party, that 
 he tendered his resignation, and Earl Grey was 
 authorised the same day (i6th of November) to form 
 a Ministry; 
 
 Lord Lyndhurst, of course, followed the fortunes 
 of his leader. He would never have consented to do 
 otherwise, for he was too much attached to the Duke 
 of Wellington, and knew himself to be too little in 
 sympathy with the views of Earl Grey upon the 
 question of Reform, to have accepted the Chancellor- 
 ship under him even if it had been tendered. But in 
 
 1 Lord Brougham says that in an interview which he had with William IV. on 
 the a8th November, 1831, the King said, " that, except the Duke of Wellington, 
 every one of the last Government, when he saw them on resigning, had stated 
 their belief that some reform was necessary." (' Memoirs,' vol. iii. p. 146.)
 
 1830. IS OFFERED PLACE OF CHIEF BARON. 273 
 
 truth the idea of offering it was for the same reason 
 as far distant from Earl Grey's mind as it was from 
 Lord Lyndhurst's, intimate as the friendship was which 
 subsisted between them. The only person thought 
 of for the office was Sir John Leach, who was eager 
 for it, and would have resigned the Mastership of the 
 Rolls to make way for Brougham, an arrangement 
 with which Brougham would have been well content. 
 But it is now known that the King, acting upon the 
 advice of the Duke of Wellington not to allow 
 Brougham to remain in a position where, being still 
 in the House of Commons, he would have been too 
 powerful for any Government, suggested (i8th of 
 November) that the Great Seal should be offered to 
 Brougham, who accepted it with reluctance. 1 
 
 The contingency had now arisen which Lord 
 Lyndhurst had anticipated when he accepted the Chan- 
 cellorship. His income was reduced to his retiring 
 pension of ^4000 a year, and, what was worse to a 
 man who loved his profession as he did, he was 
 thrown idle upon the world. The loss to the State of 
 his fine judicial powers was also serious, and it was 
 therefore wise policy, no less than personal friendship, 
 which led Earl Grey to think of offering him the 
 appointment of Chief Baron, which appeared likely 
 to become speedily vacant by the resignation of Sir 
 William Alexander. The following note by himself 
 
 1 " I make no doubt," Lord Campbell writes in his ' Diary ' (Nov. i6th), " that 
 Copley will try to intrigue and keep the Great Seal." The very next day he is 
 forced to record, "The Chancellor is out as well as his colleagues" (Campbell's 
 'Life,' vol. i. pp. 485-488). Knowing absolutely nothing of Lord Lyndhurst's 
 action at the time, he invents the suggestion (' Life,' p. 68) that he "was not 
 without hopes that he might have continued " to hold his office under Earl Grey, 
 and that " he would have been very ready to coalesce with the new Whig Govern- 
 ment." Brougham, who knew Lord Lyndhurst well, says (' Autobiography,' 
 vol. ii. p. 85), in speaking of his opinions at this time, that he was " bitterly hostile 
 to the Government, and certain to oppose them." 
 
 T
 
 274 CORRESPONDENCE ON LYNDHURSTS CHAP. xi. 
 
 to Lady Lyndhurst (without date) shows that this offer 
 came unsolicited 
 
 My dearest Wife, I have been offered, as I anticipated, the 
 office of Chief Baron. The salary is ^"7000 a year ; but it is 
 going so many steps backwards, and I should be subjected to 
 so much obloquy and abuse, if I accepted it, that I think I 
 had better decline it. I have taken time to consider. I shall 
 probably give my answer to-morrow. 
 
 The appointment, being judicial, rested with the 
 Chancellor, and on the 6th of December Earl Grey 
 wrote to Lord Brougham, mentioning the probability 
 of a vacancy, and that he believed, on what appeared 
 good grounds, though he had had no communication 
 with him of any kind, that Lord Lyndhurst would 
 accept the appointment. " I lose no time, therefore,'* 
 he added, " in expressing my anxiety, if the opening 
 should occur, to make this arrangement. It would be 
 creditable to the Government in placing a most effective 
 judge on the bench ; it would contribute materially to 
 our ease and comfort in the House of Lords ; it would 
 be gratifying to my feelings of personal kindness to 
 Lyndhurst ; and it would save Lyndhurst's pension to 
 the public no immaterial consideration in these times." 
 
 Lord Brougham, while he felt assured that his 
 party might look forward with certainty to having 
 Lord Lyndhurst for their bitter opponent in the House 
 of Lords, whatever Earl Grey might think to the 
 contrary, at once fell in with Earl Grey's wishes, 
 because, as he says, " I was doing a great thing for 
 the profession and the country." In his reply to Earl 
 Grey (7th December), he gave as an additional reason, 
 " Lyndhurst is an old and valued friend of my own, so 
 that nothing could more gratify me than doing any- 
 thing he may like, 1 and though I place a rival near 
 
 1 At this time, according to Lord Campbell ('Life,' p. 72), there was "a 
 great enmity between " Brougham and Lyndhurst !
 
 1830. APPOINTMENT AS CHIEF BARON. 275 
 
 me, and enable him to make a great judicial reputation, 
 that is all the better for the country and the Govern- 
 ment." 
 
 Before accepting the offer so cordially made, Lord 
 Lyndhurst felt it to be his duty to consult his leading 
 colleagues in the last ministry. To the Duke of 
 Wellington he wrote 
 
 My dear Duke of Wellington, Lord Grey has offered me 
 the appointment of Chief Baron of the Exchequer, which is 
 about to become vacant. He offers it as a judicial office, 
 wholly unconnected with politics, and upon an express 
 engagement that it is not to be considered as binding me 
 in any way to support his Government. My dear Duke, 
 very truly yours, 
 
 (Signed) LYNDHURST. 
 
 The Duke's answer was prompt (8th December) 
 and to the point. "You know," he wrote, "how well 
 I wish you ; and how happy I shall be at any arrange- 
 ment which can tend to your convenience and advan- 
 tage." The replies of Sir Robert Peel and Lord 
 Aberdeen to the letters sent to them at the same time 
 by Lord Lyndhurst were in the same strain. Sir 
 Robert Peel wrote 
 
 Whitehall Gardens, December 9, 1830. 
 
 My dear Lord Lyndhurst, I have just got your note. 
 Whatever decision you may form with respect to the offer 
 which has been made to you, be assured that you will have 
 my warmest wishes that it may promote your happiness. 
 Believe me ever, with sincere regards, very faithfully yours, 
 
 (Signed) ROBERT PEEL. 
 
 From Lord Aberdeen came the following reply 
 
 Argyll House, December 9, 1830. 
 
 My dear Lord, I hope you are persuaded that your 
 appointment to any situation, which you felt you could with 
 propriety accept, would give me sincere pleasure, however 
 
 T 2
 
 276 APPOINTMENT AS CHIEF BARON CHAP. xi. 
 
 much I might regret the consequent diminution of your 
 political activity. In the present case, the explanations to 
 which you refer are calculated to remove many of the diffi- 
 culties which must naturally have suggested themselves to 
 your mind, before you could have felt disposed to entertain 
 the proposition which has been made to you. Believe me, 
 my dear Lord, ever most truly yours, 
 
 (Signed) ABERDEEN. 
 
 Owing to certain difficulties about his resignation, 
 raised by Sir William Alexander, it was not till the 
 1 2th of January, 1831, that Earl Grey was able to 
 inform Lord Lyndhurst that his name had been sub- 
 mitted to the King for his approval. " I beg you to 
 be assured," he wrote, " that nothing could have given 
 me greater pleasure than the conclusion of an arrange- 
 ment which I hope will prove as satisfactory to your- 
 self as I am confident it will be advantageous to the 
 public service." 
 
 In acknowledging this letter, Lord Lyndhurst 
 wrote " There are many circumstances which render 
 this appointment agreeable to me, but there is nothing 
 that will recommend it more than the recollection that I 
 am indebted for it to your friendship." 
 
 The King gave his cordial assent to the appoint- 
 ment, which was completed as rapidly as possible by 
 the Lord Chancellor. Why, is very apparent from the 
 following letter 
 
 Sunday Evening. 
 
 My dear Lord Lyndhurst, I was very anxious to have it 
 over and fixed, for fear our friend Alexander might change 
 his mind again. So I beg you to send your own concurrence. 
 I assure you I do not know the thing that ever gave me more 
 pain than his doing so before, and I will answer for Lord 
 Grey, that I, at least, never saw him so much grieved for the 
 six and twenty years I have known him. He was quite 
 unhappy.
 
 1 830. TO SA TISFA CTION OF LEGAL PROFESSION. 277 
 
 Your going to the Exchequer seems to me a real benefit 
 conferred by you on the profession and the country. It is 
 starting, or rather founding anew, the Exchequer with an eclat 
 and lustre which the Committee would hardly have expected 
 when they made their report. I really think it a most impor- 
 tant benefit in this respect, that it puts an end to the absurd 
 and, in these times, absolute nonsense of a Chancellor, when 
 he leaves office, not taking any other. Lord Redesdale 
 desired to be made Vice-Chancellor, and complained he did 
 not get it. Many of the Bar expressed the same sentiments. 
 Believe me, very truly yours, 
 
 (Signed) H. BROUGHAM. 
 
 That the Bar shared in the view thus expressed 
 may be gathered from a letter to Lord Lyndhurst 
 from Mr. Denman (i2th January) in which he pays 
 this high tribute to a man to whom he was not always 
 disposed to do justice. " May I be allowed," he 
 writes, " to say how much, in common with the whole 
 profession, I rejoice in the probability of your becoming 
 Chief Baron ? I am certain that nothing holds out 
 so gratifying a prospect of making all the Courts 
 efficient and amending the defects of them all." 
 
 The hopes thus entertained were not disappointed. 
 During the four years that Lord Lyndhurst held the 
 office of Chief Baron, he raised the reputation of his 
 Court to the highest point, confirming the impression 
 which he had previously made among the members of 
 his profession, that he possessed all the qualities of a 
 great judge in a pre-eminent degree. Such was the 
 despatch given by him to the consideration of cases, 
 and so great was the respect inspired by his decisions, 
 that he entirely changed the character of the Court. 
 It had for many years fallen into disrepute ; but it 
 now became a favourite with legal practitioners, and 
 the most busily occupied of all the Courts. " I often 
 went into Lyndhurst's Court," says Lord Campbell,
 
 278 HIS MERITS AS A JUDGE. CHAP. XL 
 
 "and as often I admired his wonderful quickness of 
 apprehension, his forcible and logical reasoning, his 
 skilful commixture of sound law and common sense, 
 and his clear, convincing and dignified judgments." 
 Lord Campbell adds, that he was a great favourite 
 with the Bar on account of his general courtesy, 
 (t although he has told me that he acted upon the 
 principle that ' it is the duty of a judge to make it 
 disagreeable to counsel to talk nonsense. ' Why 
 " although " it may well be asked ? Being what he 
 was, kind in heart, with a firm will, and perfect 
 manners, it cost Lord Lyndhurst no effort to com- 
 bine courtesy with this very obvious duty. The 
 barrister must have been bold indeed who required 
 more than a hint not to hazard untenable propositions 
 before a man so fitted by his demeanour, and by the 
 weight of his intellectual power, to make people feel 
 that he was not to be trifled with. Of the " eloquently 
 satis, sapientice parum" he was as intolerant in others 
 as he was void of it in himself. 1 
 
 "He regularly went circuits," says Lord Campbell, 
 " saying that he thought it pleasanter to try larcenies 
 and highway robberies than to listen to seven 
 Chancery lawyers on the same side upon exceptions 
 to the Master's report," surely a very pardonable pre- 
 possession. He declared, adds his biographer, " that 
 he was even pleased with what judges generally 
 find intolerable the duty of receiving the country 
 
 1 Writing of him in 1833, the late Mr. Samuel Warren says : " His conduct 
 on the bench is admirable. He listens to a long and complicated discussion, 
 tangled with detail, wire-spun in argument, with the most patient courtesy ; and at 
 its close he will briefly and easily marshal everything into its proper place, bring 
 together every material discrepancy, detect the subtlest fallacies, and dart to the 
 remotest consequences with the rapidity of lightning. Nothing seems capable of 
 confusing or mystifying him. When the expertest counsel are wading into deep 
 water before him, all but out of their own depth, they look up at his cold, keen 
 eye, and a faint smile, perhaps, on his fine features, satisfies them of the hopeless- 
 ness of misleading him."
 
 1832. ASSIZE DINNER AT BEAUMARIS. 279 
 
 gentlemen at dinner, when the labours of the day are 
 supposed to be over ; but he averred that he not only 
 could make himself entertaining to them, but that he 
 could make them entertaining to himself in return." 
 This is just what men of exceptional genius can do in 
 any society. 
 
 Here is a sketch of what he was upon an occasion 
 of this sort, for which we are indebted to a member of 
 the Irish Bar. 
 
 In the year 1832, I was staying at Beaumaris in North 
 Wales, the capital and assize town of the Island of Anglesea. 
 In August of that year the assizes were held under the 
 presidency of Lord Lyndhurst, although, to the credit of 
 Anglesea be it spoken, there was only one prisoner in the jail 
 at Beaumaris, a sailor, for some drunken assault. 
 
 When at the Middle Temple, I had often wandered into 
 Lord Lyndhurst's Court, and admired the great beauty of 
 his face, his eagle eye under his intelligent brows, accompanied 
 by a sweetness of expression and dignity of manner quite 
 captivating. He came to Beaumaris accompanied by Lady 
 Lyndhurst ; but I scarcely saw her, and remember little of 
 her but her brilliant eyes and fashionable bearing. I did not 
 attend the Assize Court, which only lasted half an hour. 
 When I met him and Lady Lyndhurst walking up the 
 street to their hotel, he looked more like a cavalry officer than 
 a solemn judge, for he was dressed, according to the fashion of 
 the day, in white Russia duck trousers, strapped under his 
 boots of polished leather, and in a becoming frock coat. His 
 gaiety of air, his handsome, well-cut features, his straight figure, 
 had all a soldierly cast. 1 He was not long at his hotel when he 
 was waited on by Sir William Bulkeley Williams, the foreman 
 of the Grand Jury, on his fellows' part and on his own, with 
 the' uncommon but chivalrous request that the Grand Jury 
 might be honoured at their dinner by the company of Lady 
 
 1 An excellent idea of Lord Lyndhurst's personal appearance at this time is 
 given in the picture of the first Reformed House of Commons, by Hayter, in the 
 National Portrait Gallery, where he is seen in the foreground, standing beside the 
 Duke of Wellington under the Speaker's Gallery.
 
 280 LYNDHURSTS CHEERFULNESS. CHAP. xi. 
 
 Lyndhurst as well as that of her husband. To this Lord 
 Lyndhurst gaily assented, and in this company of distinguished 
 gentlemen Lady Lyndhurst was the only lady guest. 
 
 " I thank God," says Sydney Smith, " who has 
 made me poor, that He has made me merry ; I think 
 it a better gift than much wheat and bean land, with 
 a doleful heart." Lord Lyndhurst was quite of the 
 unconventional Canon's mind. What he said of 
 himself when at college (ante, p. 25), " I am naturally 
 a friend to gaiety ; I love to see what is to be seen," 
 was true of him throughout life. In making these 
 Welsh squires happy, and drawing out what was best 
 in them by the charm of his own bright genial 
 manner, he was obeying the irrepressible impulse of that 
 youthfulness of disposition, that social benevolence, 
 which was as much a part of his genius in his hours of 
 ease, as were his sagacity in judgment, and the concen- 
 trated energy of his diction, on the bench or in the 
 Senate. His mind was of that enviable and rare order 
 which makes the most of the circumstances of the 
 hour is grave, and reserved, and absorbed in its 
 serious work while it has serious work in hand, but 
 will not suffer graver cares to intrude into the hours 
 
 o 
 
 of relaxation, in which it regains the spring and 
 elasticity that make it ready to encounter fresh effort 
 with alacrity. 
 
 It by no means followed from this, that, as Lord 
 Campbell asserts, " It was only while he was in court 
 that Lord Lyndhurst cared for or thought of the causes 
 he had to dispose of," or, in plain words, that he 
 habitually neglected the duties he had sworn as a 
 judge to fulfil. On the contrary, he took the greatest 
 pains in the study of the cases brought before him 
 and in preparing his judgments. Gifted though he 
 was with a power of rapid comprehension, and a
 
 1832. HIS PRACTICE IN SUMMING UP. 281 
 
 tenacity of memory quite unusual, he could in no other 
 way have raised the reputation of his court as he did. 
 This was only to be done by close attention to the 
 arguments addressed to him in court, and by that 
 thorough mastery of the details of the cases, and of 
 the law as applicable to them, which secured for his 
 decisions the best of all tributes, that they were rarely 
 subjected to appeal. 1 
 
 How anxious he was at all times that justice should 
 be done, and what pains he took with this view, is 
 shown by his practice in cases of trial by jury. When 
 at the Bar he had frequently observed that the pre- 
 vailing practice of the presiding judge reading over 
 his notes of the evidence to the jury, when making 
 his charge, instead of clearing and assisting their 
 minds, more commonly, especially in long cases, 
 tended to deaden and confuse them. He therefore 
 resolved, if he were ever raised to the bench, that 
 he should not follow the practice, but should en- 
 deavour to present the evidence in a condenseHTorm, 
 and so' classified and arranged that the jury might 
 the more readily appreciate its bearings upon the 
 
 1 We have been favoured with the following memorandum by the Rev. Whit- 
 \vell Elwin on this point : "In reference to Campbell's assertion that it ^was only 
 while he^was in court that Lord Lyndhurst cared for the causes he had to dispose 
 of,' I transcribe what he said one day when I called upon him with Lord Brougham, 
 long after he had ceased to take any part in judicial business, to show that his 
 interest in the old historic trials continued even then when he could only have 
 read them for the pleasure it gave him. I can vouch for the accuracy of my 
 report : Lyndhurst. ' I have just been reading the trial of Captain Donellan for 
 the murder of his brother-in-law, Sir Theodosius Boughton, by administering to 
 him laurel water. The celebrated John Hunter gave evidence, and Justice Buller, 
 who tried the case, pressed him twsaytvhether the laurel water, in his opinion, 
 was the cause of Boughton's death. Hunter held that the symptoms were equally 
 consistent with death by apoplexy or epilepsy, and refused, to the evident chagrin 
 of Buller, to state whether Boughton died from the effects of laurel water or not. 
 I think that Buller had no right to put the question at all. The point was not 
 within the province of any witness it was the very question which was to go to 
 the jury. What do you say, Brougham?' Brougham. 'Buller was wrong^ 
 There can be no doubt of it whatever.' "
 
 282 LYNDHURSTS PRACTICE CHAP. xi. 
 
 points at issue. A judge indifferent about his work 
 would never have imposed upon himself the additional 
 effort of mind required to perform this task with the 
 fulness and impartiality necessary for its success, in- 
 volving as it did a continuous exercise throughout the 
 proceedings of an active analysis, as well as a power 
 of combining the scattered facts as they emerged upon 
 the evidence round a clear guiding principle. Only 
 with a judge of the highest order of judicial intellect 
 would such a process be possible, for only such could 
 escape the hazard of losing in the advocate the 
 functions of the judge. This, however, was never 
 imputed to Lord Lyndhurst. He was always ready 
 to sum up the evidence without asking for delay, and 
 to present it lucidly to the jury without reference to 
 his notes. These indeed, it must be admitted, were 
 always of the briefest kind. His memory, however, 
 served him as accurately as any written record ; and 
 he trusted to his chief clerk for taking a full note, the 
 labour of note-taking being exceedingly irksome to 
 him. It was, however, never objected that he did not 
 state the evidence with entire fairness and accuracy, 
 clearing it of what was irrelevant, and indicating its legal 
 value and bearing as he went along. In this way he 
 not only simplified the labours of the jury, but satis- 
 fied even the unsuccessful litigant that he had been 
 fairly treated. Etiam quos contra statuit, csquos pla- 
 catosque dimisit was a sentence often applied to him. 
 
 We are fortunate in being able to state in Lord 
 Lyndhurst's own words the rule upon which he acted. 
 The Rev. Whitwell Elwin, who was present during 
 the trial of several causes before Lord Lyndhurst in 
 the Nisi Prius Court at Norwich, shortly after he 
 became Lord Chief Baron, in 1831, sends us the 
 following record
 
 1 832. IN SUMMING UP CASES TO JURIES. 
 
 " Through the whole of the time I was in court he dioTnot, 
 I think, make a single note ; he not only summed up the cases 
 to the jury with incomparable brevity and lucidity, but with 
 such perfect accuracy that not one of the counsel rose to 
 remind him that he had omitted to state anything essential, 
 or had stated anything incorrectly. In after years, when I 
 became acquainted with him, I one day mentioned to him the 
 wonder with which I had witnessed this power of summing 
 up evidence with such terseness, completeness, and exactness 
 from memory alone. His answer was in these words : 
 
 " When I was called to the Bar, the usage with most judges 
 in summing up was to say to the jury, after stating the point 
 to be tried, ' And now, gentlemen, that you may have a clear 
 view of the case, I will proceed to read to you the whole of 
 the evidence.' I determined that if ever I sat on the bench I 
 would endeavour to lay the evidence before the jury in a form 
 which was better adapted to their comprehension, and I made 
 it a rule, whenever I was in court, to digest the evidence in 
 my own mind as if it was my function at the close to state it 
 in the clearest and compactest shape I could to the jury. It 
 was not possible for me then to take down the evidence ; and 
 being forced to rely upon memory, practice soon made the 
 method easy to me." 
 
 From this it is obvious, that long before he was 
 raised to the bench, he had spent his vacant hours in 
 court in silently educating himself to carry out the 
 system which seemed to him most likely to further 
 the ends of justice. 
 
 From this illustration of Lord Lyndhurst's practice 
 in one part of his judicial duties, an idea may be 
 formed of the injustice of Lord Campbell's remark 
 {'Life,' p. 71), that "he would not heartily give his 
 mind to his judicial business." 
 
 Such was not the verdict of either the Bench or 
 the Bar. His treatment of one of the cases which came 
 before him not long after he was made Chief Baron 
 was regarded at the time as a marvel of intellectual
 
 284 HIS CELEBRATED JUDGMENT CHAP. xi. 
 
 power and of that faculty, which was pre-eminently 
 his, of reducing a chaos of details into luminous order. 
 It is still regarded among the traditional glories of 
 the judicial bench. This was the case of Small 
 v. Attwood, where the question in dispute was the 
 validity of a contract for the sale of coal and iron mines 
 in Staffordshire, which the purchaser disputed on the 
 ground of alleged fraudulent representations by the 
 seller. The depositions and other documents were 
 so voluminous, that the case was in mere bulk the 
 heaviest, in technical phraseology, ever tried in Eng- 
 land. The hearing began on the 2ist of November, 
 1831, and for twenty-one days Lord Lyndhurst sat 
 listening to the reading of the depositions, and to the 
 arguments of counsel. How these were stimulated to 
 their tasks may be inferred from the fact, that one 
 ; of the leading counsel received a brief fee of 5000 
 \ guineas. Lord Lyndhurst took nearly a year to 
 deliberate upon the case, not delivering his judgment 
 till the ist of November, 1832. But that judgment, 
 as Lo'rd Campbell truly states, was " by all accounts 
 the most wonderful ever heard in Westminster Hall. 
 It was," he adds, " entirely oral, and, without even 
 referring to any notes, he employed a long day in 
 stating complicated facts, in entering into complex 
 calculations, and in correcting the misrepresentations 
 of the counsel on both sides. Never once did he falter 
 or hesitate, and never once was he mistaken in a name, 
 a figure, or a date." And yet this was the man who, 
 according to the same authority, was " reckless as to the 
 fate of suitors," and, " only while he was in court cared 
 for or thought of the causes he had to dispose of ! " 
 
 It in no way detracts from the splendid judicial 
 qualities shown by Lord Lyndhurst on this occasion, 
 that his judgment was reversed some years afterwards
 
 1832. IN SMALL v. ATTWOOD. 285 
 
 on appeal to the House of Lords, upon the motion of 
 Lord Cottenham, the then Chancellor, supported by 
 Lord Brougham and the Earl of Devon. The case 
 was argued before the House of Lords for no fewer 
 than forty-six days. Lord Lyndhurst adhered to the 
 opinion he had formerly expressed, and justified it in 
 a speech not less remarkable than that in which he 
 had given his original judgment, for the skill with 
 which he reduced into method and compass the 
 enormous tangle of facts and figures, and applied to 
 them his views of the law on which his conclusions 
 were based. " The speech," says Lord Campbell, 
 " again astounded all who heard it." No lawyer can 
 read it now without admiration ; and neither lawyer 
 nor layman can read it and not be impressed by the 
 dignified serenity with which the speaker anticipates 
 and bows to the reversal of a decree arrived at after 
 infinite labour, and to which he felt bound to adhere 
 as the result of a profound conviction. Deeply as he 
 must have felt, no trace of mortification or of temper 
 escapes him. It is not the serenity of indifference, 
 but a characteristic sense of the futility of struggling 
 with the inevitable. He has done his best ; but 
 numbers are against him. His opinion remains un- 
 changed ; but to complaint or self-assertion his clear 
 calm intellect could not stoop. 
 
 Confident in the tenacity of his memory, Lord 
 Lyndhurst's practice both on the bench and when 
 sitting as Chancellor in the Supreme Court of Appeal, 
 was, as already mentioned, to take very brief notes 
 during the progress of the case. That he was justified 
 in a course, which could not generally be safely 
 followed, was shown by the uniform accuracy with 
 which, after a long argument, he would cite dates, or 
 figures, or facts. His habitual courtesy and self-
 
 286 MUTTERINGS ON THE BENCH. CHAP. xi. 
 
 control were shown by the patience with which he 
 always listened to the speeches of counsel. Tedious 
 as these often were, he bore the infliction in silence. 
 At times he might be seen, by the movements of his 
 lips, to be muttering comments to himself, but although 
 the tenor of these mutterings might perhaps be divined 
 by others, they were never allowed to reach the ears of 
 him who provoked them. Occasionally, however, they 
 were overheard by the Registrar of the Court, who 
 sat immediately under him, and he must have had 
 some difficulty in retaining his gravity to find them so 
 little in accordance with the judge's suave and urbane 
 demeanour, by which the counsel speaking was put 
 upon the best terms with himself. Some examples of 
 these subdued utterances have been preserved. 
 
 Co^tnsel. "The fact is proved, my Lord, by these 
 highly honourable men," [Lord Lyndhurst. " Dis- 
 graceful scamps, I call them ! "] " whose evidence puts 
 the fact past all dispute." [Lord Lyndhurst. " A 
 parcel of transparent lies ! "] 
 
 Or again 
 
 Counsel. " I appear, my Lord, for the defendant, 
 and I pledge what character I have when I declare 
 solemnly as a man of honour, that I shall prove that 
 he is quite innocent of what is charged against him." 
 [Lord Lyndhurst. " So you think me fool enough to 
 believe that, do you ?"] 
 
 Sometimes the shaft of muttered sarcasm was 
 directed against himself. As for example. A barrister 
 was pleading, whom he had not before heard. He 
 was a man of real ability ; but happened to open his 
 case in a confused and halting way. " What a fool 
 the man is ! " muttered the Chancellor. As the 
 speaker advanced, he grew clearer and more to the 
 point. " Aha ! " was the comment, " not such a fool
 
 1 83 1. INTIMATE RELATIONS WITH WELLINGTON. 287 
 
 as I thought ! " Warming in his work, the counsel 
 proceeded with unmistakeable effect. " Egad ! " was 
 the next exclamation. " It is I that was the fool ! " x 
 
 The intimate personal relations which had long 
 subsisted between Lord Lyndhurst and the Duke of 
 Wellington continued after the Duke's retirement 
 from~office. What the Duke thought of him as a 
 political coadjutor may be gathered from his language 
 in speaking of him (June 1831) to Mr. Charles 
 Greville, as " the best colleague that any man ever 
 had," adding " that he should be very sorry ever to go 
 into any Cabinet of which he was not a member." On 
 the other hand, Lord Lyndhurst looked to the Duke 
 as his political leader, and reported of him, that " in the 
 Cabinet he was always candid, reasonable, and ready 
 to discuss fairly every subject, but not so Peel." 
 (Greville's 'Memoirs,' vol. ii. p. 144.) He was in con- 
 stant communication with the Duke, even consulting 
 with him before speaking on questions of legal reform. 
 Thus the Duke writes to him (i4th September, 1831), 
 in answer to a letter in which he had stated some 
 objections to a Bill on Bankruptcy Reform, brought 
 in by Lord Brougham 
 
 In the circumstances of the times you must not pay much 
 attention to the eccentric movements and actions of others. 
 Act upon a principle, and allow nothing to pass by that is 
 essentially wrong, and you may rely upon it that you will 
 come out of the difficulties of the moment with increased 
 reputation and honour. 
 
 On the line thus laid down Lord Lyndhurst acted 
 in dealing with the various measures of legal reform 
 introduced by Lord Brougham in his first years as 
 Chancellor, doing what he could to strengthen them 
 
 1 From a Memoir of Lord Lyndhurst printed for private circulation. 
 London, 1865.
 
 288 OPPOSITION TO REFORM BILL. CHAP. XL 
 
 where they were weak, and to cut them down where 
 they seemed to be inequitable or impolitic. He con- 
 fined himself to these topics in his speeches in the 
 House of Lords, until the Reform Bill came up from 
 the Commons in October 1831, when he threw himself 
 actively into the struggle, and became in fact the most 
 formidable opponent of the measure ! 
 
 He had previously shown that, so far from being 
 fettered by his acceptance of the office of Chief Baron, 
 he would be found, where Lord Brougham had expected 
 he would be found, in the front rank of the opponents 
 to the Ministry. Their Reform Bill went far beyond the 
 limits which he regarded as prudent or even safe ; and 
 his convictions were too strong to admit of his keeping 
 silence upon a measure by which he thought the very 
 elements of the Constitution were imperilled. 1 He 
 possessed, moreover, the entire confidence of his party, 
 and they trusted to his power in debate to uphold 
 their views against the strong array of argument and 
 eloquence with which the measure was certain to 
 be advocated in the Upper House. 
 
 It had come up from the Commons, with the prestige 
 of a majority of 106, in a new Parliament, returned for 
 the purpose of carrying the measure. Against some 
 of its provisions no reasonable argument could be 
 brought, and it could only be resisted fairly upon the 
 ground, that it involved a principle calculated ulti- 
 mately to disturb the balance of the three estates, 
 which had hitherto been recognised as the funda- 
 mental excellence of the Constitution, by throwing the 
 preponderance of political power into the hands 
 
 1 Lord Qampbell, as usual, is at pains to insinuate that Lyndhurst was guided 
 in his line of action solely by calculations of selfish interest. He sided, says Camp- 
 bell, with the Tories because the Whigs had nothing more to give him ; and, 
 besides, their tenure of office was likely to be very short, " as Lord Grey, and his 
 colleagues, at starting, by no means enjoyed public confidence." (' Life,' p. 74.)
 
 1831. FOLLOWS BROUGHAM IN THE DEBATE. 289 
 
 of a mere numerical majority. Though fifty years 
 have since elapsed, it is still too early to judge whether 
 the apprehensions of the opponents of the measure 
 were well founded. But of the sincerity of their con- 
 viction, that a great danger impended over the State, 
 there cannot be a doubt. History and all experience 
 had made them distrustful of democracy. The very 
 passions of the populace, which had been within the pre- 
 ceding year called into play by violent reformers, to 
 bear down the resistance of their opponents, and which 
 were afterwards set loose in scenes of riot and de- 
 struction at Derby, Nottingham, and Bristol, intensified 
 their distrust, and recalled forcibly to their minds the 
 old Ciceronian maxim, " Maxim* in republicd tenendum 
 esf, ne plurimum plurimi valeant" 
 
 It was not till the fifth and last night of the debate 
 that Lord Lyndhurst rose to address the House. The 
 impassioned and high-strung eloquence of Lord 
 Brougham, in what will always rank among the fore- 
 most of his oratorical displays, was still vibrating in 
 the ears and hearts of his audience. Only a speaker 
 of Lyndhurst's power could have ventured into the 
 lists against such a rival ; and if it was true, as he 
 told Sir Henry Holland, that he " never rose to 
 speak in Parliament without some degree of nervous 
 emotion " (' Recollections,' p. 202), the magnitude 
 of the issue, and the rivalry with so great a master of 
 declamatory rhetoric, who had that evening shown 
 himself at his best, must have filled him with unusual 
 trepidation. This feeling was gracefully expressed 
 in the opening of his speech. 
 
 " After the splendid declamation," he said, " which you have 
 just heard from my noble and learned friend, which has never 
 been surpassed on any occasion even by the noble and learned 
 Lord himself, it is no matter of surprise that I should present 
 
 U
 
 2 90 LYNDHURSTS SPEECH CHAP. xi. 
 
 myself to your Lordships with great hesitation and anxiety ; 
 but feeling the situation in which I now stand, and recollecting 
 the position which I formerly had the honour of holding in 
 this House, I presume it would be considered a shrinking from 
 an imperious duty if I satisfied myself by giving a silent vote 
 on so important and momentous an occasion." 
 
 He then addressed himself to the question, how 
 far the Bill corresponded with the language of the 
 King's Speech, which had pointed to a measure in 
 which " the prerogatives of the Crown, the authority of 
 both Houses of Parliament, and the rights and liberties 
 of the people were to be equally secured." Such a 
 measure, he said, would have received his cordial 
 support, but the measure now before the House he felt 
 it his duty to oppose, because it appeared to run 
 counter to every one of these conditions, subverting 
 the old Constitution, and substituting a new one in its 
 place, introducing a representative body of an entirely 
 new character, based upon a principle which could not 
 ultimately stop short of universal suffrage, and which 
 would place property at the mercy of those who were 
 intolerant of well-being in others which was not shared 
 by themselves. To innovations demanded by the 
 altered circumstances of the community he was 
 prepared to yield ; but he dreaded the sweeping 
 changes involved in the Bill. He manifestly felt with 
 Bacon, that " It was good that men in their innovations 
 should follow the example of time itself, which indeed 
 innovateth greatly, but quietly, and by degrees scarcely 
 to be perceived." 
 
 The present measure went far beyond what had 
 been in former years indicated by Earl Grey, Lord 
 John Russell, Lord Melbourne, and Lord Brougham, 
 in their own speeches as what was alone desirable in 
 any measure of Parliamentary Reform. Lord Lynd-
 
 1 8s r. A GAINST REFORM BILL. 2 9 1 
 
 hurst had no difficulty in establishing this seeming 
 inconsistency by quotations from these speeches. But 
 this part of his argument was used not so much as 
 implying in them any unjustifiable change of view an 
 imputation which, being personal, is ever of doubtful 
 efficacy, and with the recollection of his own changes 
 of opinion on the Catholic Relief question, one that 
 laid the speaker open to effective retort but for the 
 purpose of" contrasting the opinions formed by men of 
 high talent in times of calmness and deliberation with 
 opinions formed in a time of intense excitement." 
 Lord Lyndhurst was no doubt well aware of the mis- 
 givings which subsequent revelations have shown to 
 have existed even then in the minds of all these eminent 
 men, whether the reforms embodied in the Bill did not 
 go too far ; and it was legitimate in him to remind 
 them, as he did, that the tempest of popular clamour, 
 to which they had themselves in some measure bent, 
 and were now calling upon the House of Lords to 
 bow, was mainly of their own raising. It was they, 
 he urged, who had brought the country into circum- 
 stances of peril. Let them remain in office he pre- 
 ferred that they should do so to introduce and carry 
 a more moderate measure of Reform. 
 
 " Allow me now, my Lords," he proceeded, " to call your 
 attention to another point which even in this last stage I think 
 it necessary to revive. What, I ask, is the nature of our Con- 
 stitution ? It consists of three estates, not opposing or counter- 
 acting each other the one estate influencing the other, the 
 Lords influencing the Commons : the Commons the Lords, 
 the King both Lords and Commons, both Lords and Commons 
 the King. What has been the result ? That we have 
 obtained a Constitution consisting of the Sovereign Power, the 
 Aristocracy, and the Democracy, so combined and blended as 
 to form the most perfect system of government ever known in 
 the civilised world. Such a system as the philosophical 
 
 U 2
 
 LYNDHURSTS SPEECH CHAP. xi. 
 
 Roman historian tells us is, indeed, to be desired, but can 
 seldom be hoped for; and, if obtained, can hardly be of long 
 duration. Let us be cautious, then, how we abandon or even 
 hazard it. What is the object of the present Bill ? It is to 
 make, not a slight alteration in the most important and 
 influential of the three estates, but to make an entire change 
 in the persons who are to elect, and consequently an entire 
 change in the persons to be elected. The object is to give a 
 greater degree of power and preponderance to one estate to 
 destroy the nice balance now existing, and in this respect to 
 give us a new Constitution. Whether hereafter we may be 
 able, by any fortuitous combination of circumstances, again 
 to adjust the balance, is a secret yet hidden in the womb of 
 Time. 
 
 " Having, then, such a Constitution, serving all its purposes 
 so well, will you risk it upon an untried experiment, which 
 may be fatal, and if fatal, utterly irretrievable ? We have 
 heard something of the theory of our Constitution ; from what 
 is that theory formed ? From its practice. Our Constitution 
 is not the work of a day ; it has been built by Time, and we 
 have been most fortunate in its construction. When persons 
 draw a supposed theory from our Constitution, they invert the 
 order of things, and hence the extravagance of their progress. 
 What is the reason that the growth of our Constitution has 
 uniformly failed when transplanted to other countries ? This : 
 that the supposed theory of that Constitution has been made 
 the basis of the new experiment. The new Constitution did 
 not resemble our own, but the Bill upon the table, which is to 
 be its substitute. A noble friend of mine, while in Naples, 
 was consulted by Joachim Murat on the subject of a new 
 Constitution, and his reply was, ' Constitutions cannot be made 
 they are the growth of time ; ' and his reply not being 
 sufficiently understood, he wrote an explanatory letter to a 
 Neapolitan nobleman, containing the following passage, which 
 most eloquently and beautifully expresses the sentiments I 
 would convey, ' Constitutions cannot be created or trans- 
 planted ; they are the growth of time, not the invention of 
 individuals. To attempt to form a perfect system of govern- 
 ment depending upon reverence and experience, is as absurd 
 as to attempt to build a dream. ' '
 
 1831. AGAINST REFORM BILL. 293 
 
 While far from contending that " the Constitution 
 of the House of Commons was perfect, or not liable to 
 objection," Lord Lyndhurst then proceeded to show how 
 well it had worked in curbing the undue power of the 
 Crown, and establishing a system of civil liberty, 
 " such as is enjoyed by no other country on the face 
 of the globe," in controlling expenditure, and in main- 
 taining the name and dignity of the kingdom through- 
 out the world. Are we then warranted, he asked, in 
 cashiering it, and substituting what he showed must in 
 time become " a fierce democratic assembly," by the 
 action of influences to which the proposed changes 
 would inevitably give predominance ? 
 
 - 
 
 "I know," he continued, "the House of Commons. I 
 have served a long apprenticeship in it. I know that it is 
 often unmanageable ; but if those who are conversant with 
 that House will advert to the changes to which I refer, they 
 will agree with me in saying that it will be a most unmanage- 
 able democratic body, and that by adopting this measure, we 
 shall alike endanger the Crown and the Constitution. What- 
 ever name the Government choose to give to this Bill, it is 
 in fact and in substance a revolutionary measure. To the 
 monarchical institutions of the country I have been attached 
 both by habit and education. I do not wish for a change 
 that might affect the rights and privileges of the Crown, nor 
 for one which will bring about a republic, or a republic in the 
 shape of a limited monarchy. Republics are tyrannical and 
 vicious, arbitrary and cruel and unsteady. I do not charge the 
 Ministry with having introduced this Bill for the purpose of 
 subverting our form of government ; but such will be its effect." 
 
 He then went on to illustrate in what way this 
 would come about. The Church of Ireland would be 
 sure to fall. "It is supported," he said, " by persons 
 who form but a small portion of the people there, but 
 they possess political power, most of the power, the 
 wealth and the intelligence of the country, and by
 
 294 LYNDHURSTS SPEECH CHAP. xi. 
 
 these means they had been enabled to stand against the 
 Catholics." The effect of the Bill will be to transfer 
 that power to the Catholics. Since it was introduced 
 the cry for the Repeal of the Union, he said, had been 
 silenced. Why ? Because its advocates knew this 
 Bill would end in accomplishing their object in another 
 way. 
 
 The noble Earl at the head of the Government says, 
 Give largely in order that the people may not want more. 
 That is a most extraordinary way of proceeding. Are men 
 so little interested in the extending of their own power that 
 v they will cease to grasp at anything more, when they have 
 I the means of effecting their own wishes in their own hands ? 
 But though the noble Earl may be mistaken on this point, 
 the Reformers do not disguise the matter. The noble Earl 
 proposes to open the door to their wishes. He is ready to 
 throw open the floodgates that will admit the torrent of 
 democratic power. That torrent will rush in and overpower 
 him. The noble Lord on the Woolsack, with his activity and 
 power, may for a time float upon the tide, and play his 
 gambols upon the surface ; but the least check will overturn 
 him, and he will sink beneath the waves. 
 
 This, he went on to argue, was but the first step 
 in the career of Change. " Reformers do not ask for 
 reform, for the sake of reform, but for the sake of the 
 consequences." And what were these ? the destruc- 
 tion of the Church in Ireland, abolition of tithes, the 
 ballot, attacks on funded property on the plea of getting 
 rid of the national debt, abolition of the Corn Laws, 
 cutting adrift from our colonial possessions, and other 
 consequences, with which the country is now face to 
 face, but which, if the speaker anticipated them, as no 
 doubt he did, he forebore with a wise reserve to 
 mention in detail. 
 
 The speech concluded in the same strain of im-
 
 1 83 1. AGAINST REFORM BILL. 295 
 
 pressive and reasoned eloquence which it had main- 
 tained throughout. 
 
 It is said, we must pass the Bill. We have been threatened 
 'with the consequences which will result from our refusal. Out 
 of doors we have been menaced in every variety of form in 
 the hypocritical shape of friendly advice contained in anony- 
 mous pamphlets, and in the most undisguised and virulent 
 language of the daily and weekly press. The cry of the 
 seventeenth century, of malignant and rotten-hearted Lords, 
 has been revived, and appeals have even been made to the 
 soldiers. It is true that the supporters of the Bill in this 
 House have not made use of the language of menace, but the 
 noble Earl at the head of His Majesty's Government, and the 
 noble and learned Lord on the Woolsack, have conveyed the 
 impression in allusions as sufficiently and intelligibly strong, 
 and in a manner as forcible as if terms of menace had been 
 employed. My Lords, I owe the situation I have the honour 
 to hold in this House to the generous kindness of my late 
 Sovereign a monarch largely endowed with great and princely 
 qualities. I cannot boast an illustrious descent. I have sprung 
 from the people. I am proud of being thus associated with the 
 descendants of those illustrious names which have shed lustre 
 upon the history of our country. But if I thought that your 
 Lordships were capable of being influenced by the unworthy 
 measures which have been resorted to, and that you could from 
 such motives be induced to swerve from the discharge of your 
 duty on this important occasion when everything valuable in our 
 institutions is at stake, I should be ashamed of this dignity, and 
 take refuge from it in the comparative obscurity of private 
 life, rather than mix with men so unmindful of the obligations 
 imposed upon them by their high station and illustrious birth. 
 
 We are placed here, my Lords, not to pass Vestry Acts or 
 Road Bills, but for the purpose of guarding against any rash 
 result from the advisers of the Crown, and against the wishes 
 of the people, when they might lead to destruction. I say, 
 my Lords, I fear not the threats with which we are menaced. 
 The people of England are noble and generous. If they 
 think that we have not done our duty, but have deserted it 
 from base personal or selfish motives, they would turn from
 
 296 SPEECH OF EARL GREY. CHAP, xi, 
 
 the contemplation of our conduct with disgust. On the other 
 hand, whatever may be their inclinations, and however vehe- 
 ment their desires, if they see that we honestly perform our 
 duty, be our decision what it may, they will receive it with 
 approbation and applause. I believe that in what has been 
 said respecting the public feeling, there is much exaggeration. 
 I do not speak of the mere multitude but of the enlightened 
 portion of the community. And I am convinced that if they 
 were satisfied that if from any base personal motives we neg- 
 lected to do what in our conscience we conceived to be our 
 duty, they would turn from us with contempt and disgust. 
 My Lords, I am satisfied too, that whatever may be the con- 
 clusion to which we come, if we perform our duty according 
 to our own view of it although that should be contrary to 
 their inclination they will abstain from all violence. If, on the 
 contrary, we should by our vote this night give the people 
 reason to suppose that, contrary to the dictates of our con- 
 sciences, and what we believe to be our duty, we, urged by 
 unworthy motives, should decide in favour of the Bill, our 
 titles, our possessions, and the liberties of the people would 
 all be forfeited, and we should be for ever debased. Perilous 
 as is the situation in which we are placed, it is, at the same 
 time, a proud one, the eyes of the country are anxiously 
 turned upon us, and, if we decide as becomes us, we shall 
 merit the eternal gratitude of every friend of the Constitution 
 and of the British Empire. ^^^ 
 
 In the speech with which Earl Grey closed tne 
 debate he had little difficulty in shdwing that, if he was 
 guilty of inconsistency in advocating a measure which 
 went further than he had formerly thought was to be 
 desired, he had done no more than Lord Lyndhurst 
 had done in the case of the Catholic Disabilities. Now, 
 as in that case, circumstances had changed ; the public 
 demands had grown, and any more limited measure 
 of reform would fail to satisfy them. " Upon this 
 very question of Parliamentary Reform," he asked, 
 " were Lord Lyndhurst's opinions never different from 
 those which he had that night supported ? " This
 
 1 83 1. SIR DENIS LE MARCHANT AND CAMPBELL. 297 
 
 imputation of apostasy was one to which, by whomso- 
 ever brought, Lord Lyndhurst would never submit in 
 silence. He had dealt once and for all on a former 
 occasion with the question of his change of action on 
 the Catholic Claims. On that point, therefore, he 
 made no remonstrance ; but when Earl Grey s 
 down, he rose and said ^ 
 
 The noble Earl has been pleased in the course of his 
 speech to allude to me, and he seemed to consider that at one 
 period of my life I entertained opinions opposed to those I 
 now avow and act upon. But, if the noble Earl entertained 
 any such impressions, I beg to assure him that he is grossly 
 misinformed, and utterly mistaken. 
 
 Earl Grey. My Lords, I did understand that the noble 
 and learned Lord at one period of his life entertained opinions 
 favourable to the consideration of the question of parliamentary 
 reform. 
 
 Lord Lyndhurst. Never ! 
 
 It is said by Sir Denis Le Marchant (' Memoir 
 of Earl Spencer,' p. 350'), that Mr. Denman on this 
 whispered to him, " Villain no, he was a Democrat ! " 
 founding his assertion on expressions of Lord Lynd- 
 hurst's in the days when they had been on the same 
 circuit. But in a matter of this sort, the testimony of 
 a bitter Whig partisan, based upon the loose, irrespon- 
 sible talk of a barrister's circle, is surely entitled to 
 little weight as against the evidence of Lord Lyndhurst's 
 own early recorded opinions, and his unqualified 
 contradiction to the imputation on all occasions, 
 whether made privately or in public. 1 It will, moreover, 
 be seen hereafter, that Denman, when challenged 
 
 1 Either Sir Denis Le Marchant or Lord Campbell must be wrong in their 
 record of the story. Le Marchant says, Denman whispered the remark to him. 
 Campbell says, ' ' Denman was then standing by me. Shaking his fist in a manner 
 which made me afraid he would draw upon himself the notice of the House, he 
 exclaimed, ' Villain, lying villain ! ' " Which of these versions of the story are 
 we to accept ?
 
 298 REFORM BILL REJECTED IN LORDS. CHAP. xi. 
 
 by Lord Lyndhurst to the House of Lords to make 
 good his charge, utterly failed in the attempt. 
 
 Lord Lyndhurst's speech is said to have been one 
 of the few that have been known to influence a 
 parliamentary decision. It was indeed well calculated 
 to put courage into the hearts of the waverers, who 
 had been intimidated by " the pressure from without." 
 Most certainly it embittered the animosity of the 
 Whigs and Radicals against him, for they looked upon 
 him as mainly instrumental in arraying against the 
 Bill the majority of forty-one by which it was thrown 
 out. When the courtly and kindly Duke of Devon- 
 shire, according to Mr. Charles Greville, could say to 
 Lady Lyndhurst that her husband " ought to resign 
 his judicial situation " because of his open hostility to 
 the Government, what wonder if in the House of 
 Commons the super-fervid rage of Mr. Sheil boiled 
 over (loth October) in the words, tKat Earl Grey's 
 "patronage should not be bestowed where it would be 
 requited with perfidy " ? 
 
 The Ministry were for the moment staggered by 
 the magnitude of their defeat. 1 They were by no 
 means all of one mind that their scheme of Reform 
 did not go too far. To curtail it would, however, cost 
 them their popularity ; yet how could they hope to get 
 it through the House of Lords without recourse to 
 the desperate expedient, which many of their number 
 were by no means prepared to face, of swamping 
 that branch of the legislature by the creation of an 
 enormous batch of peers ? In these circumstances 
 might it not be better to resign and trust to the Tories 
 to do as they had done on the Catholic question- 
 bring in the measure of Reform, a measure by no 
 
 1 See letter from Lord Althorp to his father next day (8th October, 1831) 
 cited by Mr. McCullagh Torrens, ' Memoirs of Lord Melbourne,' vol. i. p. 384.
 
 1831. NEW BILL BROUGHT IN. 299 
 
 means illiberal, which they had professed themselves 
 ready to support. 
 
 Had there been any signs of that reaction in the 
 public mind on which their adversaries had counted, 
 this course might possibly have been taken. But every 
 day brought fresh proofs that the Ministry had the 
 great preponderance of popular opinion at their back. 
 To have resigned, with the passions of the populace 
 in many of the great cities of the kingdom inflamed 
 to fever heat by rage and disappointment, would more- 
 over have certainly involved the most disastrous 
 consequences, as the incendiarism and riot which 
 actually occurred at Nottingham, Bristol, and else- 
 where, placed beyond a doubt. The Ministry therefore 
 resolved to remain at their posts, and to bring in a 
 fresh Reform Bill after a brief prorogation, adopting 
 in it some of the suggestions which had been made by 
 their opponents, but retaining all the main features of 
 the former Bill. 
 
 The increase of their majority on the third reading 
 in the House of Commons, which had been 'as seven 
 to five oh the 6th of July, 1831, to two to one" on the 
 i yth of December, justified their decision. The Lords, 
 on the Bill coming up to them, altered their tactics, 
 and allowed the Bill to be read a second time by a 
 majority of nine. But their hostility to the measure 
 was unabated, and their power of crippling its details 
 in Committee, if they were so minded, was overwhelm- 
 ing. Again Lord Lyndhurst appeared in the front 
 rank of its opponents ; and the Ministry had every 
 reason to apprehend that, while, to use Lord Brougham's 
 words ('Memoirs, 'vol. iii. p. 189), their opponents would, 
 under his guidance, " avoid giving us the advantage 
 of defeating any essential part as long as they could, 
 they would throw out or alter one after the other of
 
 300 DEFEAT OF MINISTERS, CHAP. XL 
 
 the lesser provisions, so that we should be left in the 
 greatest possible difficulty." What he and his friends 
 wanted, therefore, was that their adversaries should 
 make some move which they could allege struck at the 
 principle of the Bill, and so bring on a crisis, upon which 
 an appeal might be made to the country to insist upon 
 "the Bill, the whole Bill, and nothing but the Bill," and 
 Ministers might claim the King's consent to such a 
 creation of peers as would bear down all opposition. 
 
 When, therefore, Lord Lyndhurst moved in Com- 
 mittee that the consideration of the clauses for dis- 
 franchisement should be adjourned until the clauses 
 for enfranchisement had been disposed of a point 
 surely not in itself material and carried the House 
 with him by a majority of thirty-five, Ministers seized 
 upon the vote as giving them the opportunity they 
 desired. Earl Grey and Lord Brougham had both 
 declared that a defeat on this point would be regarded 
 by them as no less fatal than if the Bill had been lost 
 upon the second reading. As a piece of parliamentary 
 tactics this stroke was well imagined ; and its full 
 
 bearing must have flashed upon the Opposition leaders 
 when presently Earl Grey moved to delay the further 
 
 I consideration of the Bill for three days. This meant 
 either resignation, for which the Tories were not 
 prepared, or the resolve to obtain the King's permis- 
 sion to create peers a power which Wellington, 
 Lyndhurst, and others, had for some time had reason 
 to surmise would, if pressed, not be refused. 1 
 
 It was not wonderful that the King should not 
 share the view taken of the vote by Earl Grey and 
 
 1 The Duke of Wellington in a letter (5th January, 1832) to Lord Lyndhurst, 
 who was then in the country, writes from London, ' ' They say here that the object 
 of Lord Grey's visit to Brighton is to create peers. If it is so, I am convinced that 
 he will be successful, and that there is an end to the character and independence of 
 the House of Lords."
 
 1832. LYNDHURST SENT FOR BY KING. 301 
 
 Lord Brougham, in the face of the earnest statements 
 of several leading peers during the debate, that they 
 had no desire to maim the Bill, and were prepared to 
 deal liberally with the extension of the franchise. 
 When, therefore, they put before him the alternative, 
 that they must resign, or the creation be sanctioned of 
 " sixty or perhaps even eighty peers" (Lord Brougham, 
 'Memoirs,' vol. iii. p. 193), His Majesty recoiled from 
 the latter alternative ; and on the gth of May both 
 Houses were informed that Ministers had resigned. 
 In his embarrassment at finding himself thus suddenly 
 deserted by his Ministers, His Majesty turned most 
 naturally to Lord Lyndhurst, on "whose capacity and 
 judgment he placed great reliance ; and who,' being, 
 to use the phrase of Sir Robert Peel, " out of the 
 immediate vortex of political affairs," might be better 
 able to place before him a true estimate of the state 
 of parties, and of the country. " Now," says Lord 
 Campbell, " was the most splendid moment of Lynd- 
 hurst's career," and he proceeds to give an elaborate 
 and purely fictitious 'narrative of the conversation which 
 passed^ between the King and his ex-Chancellor. 1 
 
 Wherein the splendour of the moment consists is 
 not very apparent. It was no new thing for one who 
 had for years occupied the office of Chancellor to be 
 appealed to by his Sovereign for advice. But anxiety 
 rather than splendour must to Lord Lyndhurst have 
 been the prevailing feature of the present Royal 
 summons. The moment was a critical one, and with 
 Lord Lyndhurst's strong convictions on the question 
 of Reform, as dealt with by the Grey Administration, 
 
 1 In vain has Swift written of his visit to Glubbdubdrib, where Gulliver 
 ' ' discovered the roguery and ignorance of those who pretend to write anecdotes, 
 or secret history, will repeat a discourse between a Prince and Chief Minister, 
 where no -witness -was by, unlock the thoughts and cabinets of Embassadors and 
 Secretaries of State, and have the perpetual misfortune to be mistaken*
 
 302 FAILURE TO FORM TORY MINISTRY. CHAP. xi. 
 
 it is not surprising that he suggested to the King the 
 propriety of taking counsel with the leaders of the 
 Opposition, and ascertaining their views as to the 
 possibility of forming an administration that would 
 undertake to bring forward a measure of Parliamentary 
 Reform as broad as that to which the King was pledged, 
 and which might satisfy the mass of the intelligence 
 of the country. With the King's authority Lord 
 Lyndhurst laid the whole circumstances before the 
 Duke of Wellington, Sir Robert Peel, and a few other 
 leading men of the party. 1 The Duke was prepared, 
 at every sacrifice of feeling, to assist in relieving the 
 King from the painful dilemma in which he was 
 placed. Sir Robert Peel, however, at once declared 
 that he, who had resisted and would continue to resist 
 the principle of Earl Grey's Reform Bill to the last, 
 would not accept office " on the condition of introdu- 
 cing an extensive measure of Reform." This view 
 was taken by others who were appealed to. But the 
 refusal of Peel was in itself conclusive, as he was the 
 only possible premier of a Tory Ministry. 
 
 When Lord Lyndhurst had communicated to the 
 King the result of his various interviews, and had 
 conveyed the Royal request that the Duke of Welling- 
 ton should come to Windsor Castle, his mission 
 terminated. These were his own words in the expla- 
 nation of what had passed, which he made in the 
 
 1 " He first went to Sir Robert Peel," says Lord Campbell, "who treated 
 the proposal with scorn." Lord Lyndhurst, in his explanation in Parliament 
 (i7th May), says that he first went to the Duke of Wellington. We may judge of 
 Peel's scorn from his language in the House of Commons (i8th May), where he 
 speaks of "his noble friend for whom, notwithstanding all the calumnies that 
 have been directed against him, I avow that I entertain the sincerest esteem I 
 mean Lord Lyndhurst ; yes, Sir, I will not shrink, notwithstanding the difference 
 of opinion which a majority of this House may express, from making an avowal 
 of the high opinion I entertain of the talents and of the public character of that 
 noble Lord." (Hansard, 3rd Series, vol. xii. p. 1073.)
 
 1 832. Z YNDHURSTS REPL Y TO PERSONAL A TTA CKS. 303 
 
 House of Lords, 1 7th May. But he did not escape 
 the imputation of having eagerly engaged in a base 
 political intrigue for the gratification of his personal 
 ambition. That he should be " traduced, maligned, 
 calumniated," in every Whig and Radical journal, he 
 accepted as a matter of course. " They may wound 
 me," he said, " and wound me deeply too, through 
 connections which are dear to me ; but, as far as I am 
 myself concerned, I treat them with ineffable scorn." 
 But he was stung into noticing in his place in Par- 
 liament the language of Sir Francis Burdett, who 
 had a few nights before denounced him in the House 
 of Commons, as violating his duty as a judge by 
 meddling with politics, as an intriguer " who had un- 
 dermined the King's late Ministers," and as a "violent 
 political partisan, heading a virulent faction." What 
 he said on this point explains so clearly his action 
 and motives throughout in opposing the Reform Bill, 
 fe give his words at length. 
 
 Sir F. Burdett is reported to have affirmed that I acted in- 
 consistently with my duty as a judge of the land. I say that 
 if he asserted this, he must, taking it at the best, be ignorant 
 of the Constitution of the country. He ought to know that, as 
 a member of the Privy Council, I am bound by virtue of my 
 office to give advice to my Sovereign if he requires it More 
 than this, he ought to know, if he knows anything of the 
 Constitution, that I have taken an oath to this effect ; and 
 more, he ought to know that as a judge I am bound to volun- 
 teer my advice to His Majesty if I consider any proposed course 
 of proceeding inimical to the safety of the Crown. My Lords, 
 excuse me if I go one step farther ; he has charged me, as a 
 judge, with being the leader of a violent and virulent party in 
 this House. Whether there is or is not such a faction in this 
 House I will not stay to inquire ; I wish to have no motives 
 imputed to me ; I impute none to other men. I will only say 
 that I never aspired to such a position as that of leader of a
 
 304 OPINIONS OF BROUGHAM ON CRISIS. CHAP. xi. 
 
 party ; it is alike foreign to my inclination and my habits. 
 Since the noble Earl became a Minister of the Crown, I have 
 seldom attended the House ; I have taken no part in its pro- 
 ceedings. I never engaged in political discussions. At last, 
 when the Reform Bill was introduced, I did come forward. If 
 I thought that the tendency of this measure was to destroy the 
 monarchy and the Constitution, was it not my duty as a judge of 
 the land, as a Privy Councillor, as a Member of your Lordships' 
 House, with all my power to oppose it ? If this measure had 
 originated with, and was supported by, my earliest and most 
 valued friends by the very friends of my bosom I would 
 have acted in the same way. So much for my conduct and 
 the attacks upon me. For the rest, the Reformers are 
 triumphant the barriers are broken down, the waters are 
 out who can predict their course, or tell the devastation they 
 will occasion ? " z 
 
 r 
 
 So eager was the Duke of Wellington to prevent 
 the swamping of the House of Lords, a step which in his 
 eyes would have been fatal to the Constitution, that 
 even after Sir Robert Peel's refusal he continued his 
 efforts to form an administration. Sharing his alarms 
 as he did, and now as always thoroughly loyal to him, 
 Lord Lyndhurst would beyond all doubt have thrown 
 in his lot with him, had he succeeded in these efforts. 
 It was thought by many, that, if the leaders of the 
 party had stood by them, they might have had a fair 
 chance of success. Lord Brougham was himself of that 
 opinion. " The rally, "lie says, " of the Tory party all 
 over the country, would have been most zealous and 
 powerful ; the demand of eighty peerages certainly 
 would, after a little reflection, have been a fair ground 
 of attack upon us ; there would have been no small 
 number of men in the House of Commons disposed to 
 form a strong government from various motives ; and, 
 above all, as time was no object, so firm a chief as the 
 
 1 Hansard, 3rd Series, vol. xii. p. 1001.
 
 1832. REFORM BILL PASSED. 
 
 Duke keeping the peace everywhere unbroken, by 
 degrees the Reform fever, as it was called, would have 
 been allayed, the more respectable of even our stoutest 
 supporters giving no encouragement to violent courses. 
 His great object being to maintain the Constitution, 
 by supporting the King and the House of Lords, and, 
 as he thought, saving the House of Commons from 
 the mob-power, he conceived that a great opportunity 
 had been lost by Peel's refusal." (' Memoirs,' vol. iii. 
 p. 196.) 
 
 It may have been so ; but, even if Peel had not 
 refused, the chances of a peaceful solution of the diffi- 
 culty would have been small indeed, with the country 
 almost given over into the hands of that mob-power with 
 which the Duke would everywhere have had to reckon. 
 No one, at all events, can now regret that he found 
 himself constrained to abandon a task, which he had 
 undertaken from a chivalrous devotion to his Sovereign 
 and to the established order of things ; and that by 
 the prevalence of moderate counsels, the power to 
 create an overwhelming number of peers, which Earl 
 Grey insisted on being placed in his hands, as the 
 condition of his retaining office, was not called into 
 play. When the Bill came to be read a third time, 
 only 22 peers attended in their places to vote against 
 it, while 1 06 votes were counted in its favour. Neither 
 the Duke nor Lord Lyndhurst were in that small 
 minority. They bent to the storm, and stood aside 
 until circumstances might again put them in a position 
 to fight the cause of their party with effect. 
 
 x
 
 ( 306 ) 
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 Speech on Local Courts Bill Described by Mr. S. Warren Death of 
 Lady Lyndhurst Melbourne Administration in difficulties Failure 
 to form Coalition with Peel Death of Lord Spencer Duke of 
 Wellington called in by King to form Administration Holds office 
 until Peel's return from Italy Lyndhurst again Chancellor. 
 
 ONE reason for the great influence which Lord Lynd- 
 hurst exercised in the House of Lords was the convic- 
 tion among his brother peers that, when he chose to 
 bring his great powers as a speaker into play, the 
 occasion was sure to be a worthy one. In this he 
 presented a marked contrast to his great rival 
 Brougham, whose restless energy and love of display 
 were such, that he lost weight there by speaking 
 too often and too long. Brougham, greedy of 
 applause, whether of the crowd or of "the listening 
 senate," was continually thrusting himself before 
 the public. Lyndhurst, who set very little store 
 by the arbitrium popularis aur&> partly from a certain 
 indifference to praise, partly from the love of a 
 quiet life, required the stimulus of some important 
 question to make him descend into the arena of parlia- 
 mentary conflict. But, when he did so descend, it 
 was felt that he came there with his weapons well 
 prepared, and brought into the field the concentrated 
 force of ripened thought and well studied method. 
 What to say was more his care than how to say it. 
 Having fixed his facts and his line of argument, he
 
 1 833. HOW HE PREPARED HIS SPEECHES. 307 
 
 trusted to their clothing themselves in fitting words 
 when he came to speak, not spending pains, as most 
 great speakers have done, in preparing passages on 
 which to rely for giving brilliancy or weight to the 
 less apt language or looser rhetoric which the moment 
 might suggest. 
 
 " Brougham," he said once to Mr. Whitwell Elwin, 
 "says that he prepares the great passages in his 
 speeches ; and he weaves them with wonderful dex- 
 terity into the extempore portions. The seams are 
 never apparent. I am not able to perform that double 
 operation. Such an effort of verbal memory would 
 interfere with the free exercise of my mind upon the 
 parts which were not prepared. My practice is to 
 think my subject over and over to any extent you 
 please ; but with the exception of certain phrases, 
 which necessarily grow out of the process of thinking, 
 I am obliged to leave the wording of my argument to 
 the moment of delivery." 
 
 He might well do so. Though, like all great 
 orators, 1 he never rose to speak, as we have seen 
 from his own admission, without nervous emotion, 
 this in no way interfered with his power of thinking as 
 he spoke, and calling into play the fittest language to 
 express what he thought. The intensity with which 
 his intellect worked became contagious. He got his 
 hearers' minds within his grasp, he made them think 
 with him, see things with the same clearness as he him- 
 self saw them, and so led them insensibly up to his 
 
 1 It is recorded of Cicero, that "he shuddered visibly over his whole body 
 when he first began to speak." The late Lord Derby, to all appearance the most 
 self-possessed of orators, told the late Sir A. Alison that "he never rose to speak, 
 even in an after-dinner assembly, without experiencing a certain degree of nervous 
 tremor, which did not go off till he warmed to the subject." (Alison's 'Memoirs,' 
 vol. ii. p. 50.) Great actors, it is known, suffer in the same way, until they lose 
 themselves in their parts. 
 
 X 2
 
 308 HIS MODE OF SPEAKING. CHAP. xn. 
 
 own conclusions. In looking back on his speeches, 
 whether judicial or parliamentary, which we had the 
 good fortune to hear, his speaking recalls what Ben 
 Jonson said of Lord Bacon's " No man ever spoke 
 more neatly, more pressly, more weightily, or suffered 
 less emptiness, less idleness in what he uttered. No 
 member of his speech but consisted of his own graces. 
 His hearers could not cough, or look aside from him, 
 without loss. He commanded when he spoke." It 
 was well said of him by a writer in 1833 : " You can 
 hear a pin fall while he is addressing the House ; you 
 may imagine yourself listening to looking at Cicero. 
 His person, gesture, countenance and voice are alike 
 dignified, forcible and persuasive. No speaker of the 
 present day has such a commanding use of the right 
 hand and arm as he. With his long white extended 
 forefinger he seems, as it were, to finish off his sentences 
 with a visible point. He stands steadily, however 
 vehement and impassioned in what he is delivering, 
 never suffering himself to ' overstep the modesty of 
 nature,' ^to be betrayed into ungainly gesticulations " 
 presenting in this respect a striking contrast to his 
 great rival Lord Brougham. 
 
 The qualities of the two men were conspicuously 
 shown in the debates on the Local Courts Bill in the 
 session of 1833. The principle of the measure was 
 sound, and was subsequently applied with great ad- 
 vantage on the establishment of the County Courts. 
 But there were serious defects in its details, as 
 might indeed be expected in a measure which 
 aimed at making legal redress cheap, and estab- 
 lishing a new set of courts for that purpose. 
 It threatened the interests of London attorneys, by 
 removing into the country a large portion of their 
 profitable business ; it staggered lawyers of the old
 
 1 833. SPEECH ON LOCAL COURTS BILL. 309 
 
 school by founding tribunals where law might be 
 cheap, but had little chance, according to their views, 
 of being sound ; it became a subject of party conflict, 
 because of the vast amount of patronage which it 
 would have at once thrown into the hands of the 
 Government. The measure was one of the Chancellor's 
 pet schemes of law reform, and it was allowed to go 
 without resistance to a second reading. This was 
 probably due to the circumstance of Lord Lyndhurst 
 being absent from London upon circuit. He had, 
 however, prepared the Chancellor by a letter from 
 the country to anticipate opposition ; and on the 
 motion to send the Bill into committee, he stated his 
 objections to the measure in detail with his usual 
 clearness and force. 
 
 " He would freely admit," he said, " that with the multitude 
 this was a popular measure. Well it might be so. It 
 promised cheap it promised expeditious law. These were 
 plausible topics topics well calculated to catch the breath of 
 popular opinion. But it should be borne in mind and he 
 trusted the country and their Lordships would think well 
 upon it that cheap law did not always mean cheap justice, 
 nor expeditious law expeditious justice. . . . He was ready 
 to admit the existence of the great evils, and inconvenien- 
 ces, and hardships complained of in our present system, 
 but unfortunately those hardships and inconveniences were 
 almost inseparable from any system that could be devised. 
 Justice must be administered upon some general rules, and in 
 the adherence to those rules it would be impossible to avoid 
 hardships and inconveniences in some cases. He was sure 
 that, even in the new system which his noble and learned 
 friend proposed, it would be impossible to avoid them." 
 
 After pointing out that in no country was more 
 attention paid to the administration of justice between 
 man and man, or with such excellent results as our 
 own, he proceeded
 
 ^10 SPEECH ON LOCAL COURTS BILL: CHAP. xn. 
 
 w 
 
 To what is this to be ascribed ? To the central system 
 by which the law is administered in" England. Twelve or 
 fifteen judges, educated in the same manner, sitting together 
 at one time and in one place, consulting each other daily, and, 
 if need be, hourly, subject to the criticism of their compeers, 
 subject also to the examination of an acute and vigilant bar, 
 kept constantly alive to the justice of the decision of the 
 judges by their regard for the interests of the judges and 
 their own credit, ensure for the suitors a certainty, a pre- 
 cision, a purity, and even a freedom from the suspicion of 
 corruption, such as no other country in the world could ever 
 boast of. 
 
 He then dwelt upon the danger likely to result 
 from placing the power of settling disputes, often 
 involving intricate principles, in the hands of a tri- 
 bunal composed of barristers of limited experience, 
 where these securities for knowledge and freedom 
 from personal bias could not be expected to exist ; 
 and skilfully illustrated his proposition by reference 
 to abuses both in this country and abroad, where 
 tribunals of a similar character had prevailed. In 
 conclusion, he said, " he had told his noble and 
 learned friend, some time since, that he should con- 
 sider this Bill with candour and fairness. To the 
 best of his ability he had so considered it, and he now 
 thought its principle so mischievous that he felt 
 himself bound, in discharge of the duty which he owed 
 to his country, to Westminster Hall, and to himself, 
 to arrest its progress at this stage." 
 
 This, however, he did not succeed in doing. The 
 Bill was allowed to go without a division into Com- 
 mittee, where its clauses were elaborately discussed. 
 But the more they were discussed, the less did the 
 Bill grow in favour with the Opposition ; and, when 
 it came on for third reading (gth July, 1833), it was 
 known that a still more determined attack than before
 
 1 833. DESCRIPTION BY MR. SAMUEL WARREN. 311 
 
 was to be made upon it by Lord Lyndhurst and 
 those who shared his views. 
 
 A vivid account of what took place appeared at 
 the time in a pamphlet by the late Mr. Samuel 
 Warren, Q.C., from which we extract the following 
 passages 
 
 " We went to the House of Lords, expecting to see in 
 the language of pugilistic eloquence 'a fair stand up fight 
 between the two big 'uns,' and were not disappointed. We 
 knew that each had every incentive to exert himself to the 
 uttermost on that occasion. It was the present and the ex- 
 Chancellors fairly pitted against one another. . . . 
 
 " The House was soon filled, and the spaces at the bar and 
 the throne crowded with members of the House of Commons. 
 Precisely at five o'clock, the slim, spare, pinched-up figure of 
 Lord Brougham was discovered sitting on the woolsack, his 
 features full of feverish anxiety, and his gestures of impatience 
 beckoning hurriedly now to this, and now to the other friend, 
 as he observed the Opposition peers flowing into the House. 
 
 " Lord Lyndhurst was one of the last that entered. Ac- 
 customed as we are to see his noble figure in the flowing 
 costume of the Bench, we hardly recognised him in plain dress. 
 His black surtout, elegant waistcoat, brown curly wig, and 
 ton-ish hat and gloves, give you the idea rather of a colonel of 
 a cavalry regiment, than of a grave law lord. Without an atom 
 of foppery, there is a certain fashionable air about him which 
 surprises one familiar only with the stateliness of the full- 
 bottomed wig, bands, and ermine robe. A few papers peeping 
 out of the breast-pocket of his surtout, together with a certain 
 flush on his features, assured one that he had come prepared 
 for battle. . . . 
 
 " The debate was opened by Lord Wharncliffe and some 
 other peers. When Lord Lyndhurst rose almost every peer 
 present turned instantly towards him in an attitude of pro- 
 found attention of anxious interest and continued so till he 
 had concluded ; as well they might, while listening to one of 
 the most masterly speeches ever delivered in Parliament. 
 There was a manly fervour, a serious energy, in his tone and
 
 312 LORD LYNDHURSTS SPEECH CHAP. xn. 
 
 manner a severe simplicity of style a beauty and compre- 
 hensiveness of detail a graceful, good-humoured, but most 
 caustic sarcasm a convincing strength of argument, which 
 elicited repeated cheeringfrom the House followed, at its close, 
 by several minutes' applause ; but the speech received from the 
 Chancellor only one short allusion, and that characterising it 
 as a piece of ' carping declamatory sneering.' Not a syllable 
 of kindness scarce of frigid courtesy escaped his lips ; while 
 replying to a speech from his splendid rival, destitute of 
 even a tinge of acrimony or personality. He was obviously 
 mortified and alarmed at the powerful impression produced 
 on all sides of the House by their ex-Chancellor. Lord 
 Plunkett, on the contrary, commenced his reply, such as it 
 was, with an admission, ' that he feared the House would 
 consider him presumptuous in offering himself to their Lord- 
 ships after the transcendant and masterly speech to which 
 they had been listening ; but he did not come forward in the 
 hope of answering it.' " 
 
 Some excuse for Lord Brougham's failure to re- 
 cognise the remarkable excellence of his adversary's 
 speech may be found in the fact that he must have 
 heard in it the death-knell of his Bill. The massive 
 strength of Lyndhurst's argument was not to be over- 
 thrown. Brougham's embarrassment and chagrin are 
 apparent throughout his long and vehement reply. 1 
 Lord Campbell says that the relative strength of 
 political parties was fairly tried on the occasion. " The 
 whippers-in on both sides exerted themselves to the 
 
 1 " It would not be easy,'' says Mr. C. Greville ('Memoirs,' vol. iii. p. 7) " t 
 decide which made the ablest speech ; that of Lyndhurst was clear, logical, and 
 profound, replete with a sort of judicial weight and dignity, with a fine and cutting 
 vein of sarcasm, constantly peeping from behind a thick veil of complimentary 
 phraseology. Brougham, more various, more imaginative, more impassioned, 
 more eloquent and exceedingly dexterous. ... It appears to have been a great 
 exhibition. There was Lyndhurst after his speech, drinking tea, not a bit tired, 
 elated and chuckling : ' Well, how long will the Chancellor speak, do you think, 
 eh ? We shall have some good fun from him. What lies he will tell, and how he 
 will misrepresent everything ! Come, let's have done our tea, that we mayn't 
 miss him, eh ? '
 
 1833. ON LOCAL COURTS BILL. 313 
 
 utmost in the muster of peers and proxies from remote 
 parts of Europe." It probably was so. The third 
 reading was negatived by a majority of only five ; and 
 not till twelve years afterwards was one of the main 
 objects of the Bill effected by the establishment of the 
 County Courts. 
 
 Lord Brougham was deeply mortified by the 
 rejection of his Bill ; but not even he ventured to 
 impute it to " blind Tory bigotry," as some modern 
 critics have done. He knew very well that its ad- 
 versaries were right in several of the points that were 
 made against the measure, and that it might have 
 passed had it not aimed at doing too much. 
 
 He had drawn his chief arguments in its favour from 
 foreign systems of jurisprudence. When a deputation 
 of the principal agency firms of London attorneys 
 waited upon Lord Lyndhurst, to ask him to oppose 
 the Bill, he pointed this out to them, and told them 
 he knew little or nothing of these systems. On this 
 they undertook to obtain full information for him, 
 and at their request Mr. Abraham Hayward, who had 
 made a special study of foreign systems of jurispru- 
 dence, drew up a pamphlet, of which Lord Lyndhurst 
 availed himself, and from which he showed that " his 
 noble and learned friend had exceeded his usual 
 allowance of inaccuracies." After the Bill was thrown 
 out, the attorneys waited upon Lord Lyndhurst to make 
 grateful acknowledgment for the service he had done 
 them, when with his characteristic generosity he said, 
 " Thank Mr. Hayward he has done it all ! " ' 
 
 Lord Lyndhurst took no active part in Parliament 
 
 1 ' Quarterly Review,' January, 1869, p. 27. Mr. Hayward, who had the best 
 means of knowing, there says, Lord Lyndhurst had not prepared himself for his 
 first speech against the Bill, but that he had fused his materials thoroughly in his 
 own mind before making his speech on the third reading. It is certainly the 
 better speech of the two.
 
 3 1 4 DEA TH OF LAD Y L YND HURST. CHAP. xii. 
 
 during the session of 1834, devoting his whole energies 
 to his judicial work, which was very heavy. But he 
 had another reason for keeping retired in the un- 
 expected death of his wife, to whom he was sincerely 
 attached. She had been spending the autumn with 
 her daughters in Paris, where he had joined her at the 
 end of 1833 for his brief holiday. She was to have 
 returned with him to London, and actually came with 
 him as far as Beauvais, when, feeling unwell, she 
 decided to go back to Paris. She was there seized 
 with congestion of the lungs, and died not many 
 days afterwards (i5th of January, 1834). The tidings 
 reached him on the bench of the Court of Exchequer/ 
 The shock of the death of this beautiful woman, in 
 the flower of her womanhood, she was only thirty-nine 
 was very great, and it was long before he gained 
 his usual buoyancy of mind. " His spirits," says his 
 sister writing to Mrs. Greene five months afterwards, 
 "are as good as I can expect, but he feels his loss 
 severely. It is fortunate that his business engrosses 
 so much of his time." 
 
 His visit to Paris at Christmas 1833 had a special 
 interest for him in the presence there of Mrs. Amory, 
 the daughter of his elder sister, Mrs. Greene. In her 
 4 Life of Copley ' (p. 363) Mrs. Amory writes 
 
 " Lord Lyndhurst was older and graver than I expected. 
 His first words [on our meeting] were, 'You look like my 
 sister, my dear, and she was very pretty ! ' He asked 
 
 1 This is how Lord Campbell mentions this event : " He was sitting as Chief 
 Baron in the Court of Exchequer when he received the fatal news. He 
 swallowed a large qtiantity of laudanum, and set off to see her remains. But 
 his strength of mind soon again fitted him for the duties and pleasures of 
 life." Had Lord Campbell really known anything of Lord Lyndhurst as a friend, 
 he would have known that he never travelled at night without taking a small 
 phial of laudanum with him mixed with water, to make him sleep. Out of this 
 fact Lord Campbell's fiction was manufactured.
 
 1833. MINISTERIAL DIFFICULTIES, 315 
 
 questions about Boston as if he had trod its streets but 
 yesterday. ... I saw him every day during that holiday visit. 
 Late on New Year's Eve, coming to my gay apartment, he 
 said, ' I bring you something, my dear, as fair as yourself, to 
 open to-morrow morning,' and a lovely dress of the softest 
 white satin rolled out at my feet, and made my heart glad." 
 
 Lord Lyndhurst's action in the House of Lords 
 during this session was confined to carrying through 
 a Bill, which was warmly supported by Lord 
 Brougham, for neutralising to some extent the 
 mischievous operation of Mr. Thellusson's celebrated 
 will. He was content to stand aloof from the 
 political conflicts of the hour, and to watch the 
 growing disorganisation of the Liberal party, and 
 the increasing weakness of the Grey Administration 
 In May 1833 its efficiency received a rude shock 
 from the secession of Mr. (afterwards Lord) Stanley, 
 the Duke of Richmond, Lord Ripon and Sir James 
 Graham. Earl Grey, who on this occurring had 
 only waived his own desire to throw up the office of 
 Premier in deference to the King's urgent request that 
 he should remain, not long afterwards found his 
 position to be so unsatisfactory that he resigned. His 
 resignation, which he announced to the House of 
 Lords on the Qth of July, seemed to the King to 
 present an opening for a Ministry composed of the 
 moderate men of both parties, strong enough to resist 
 the pressure of the Radical party for reforms which 
 he viewed with alarm. He opened his mind on this 
 point to Lord Melbourne, and through him communi- 
 cations were made to the Duke of Wellington, Sir 
 Robert Peel and Mr. Stanley. Lord Lyndhurst was 
 then absent on circuit ; but it will be seen from the 
 following letter to him from Sir Robert Peel, explain- 
 ing what had taken place and why such a fusion as
 
 316 LETTER FROM SIR R. PEEL CHAP. xn. 
 
 the King had hoped to effect was found to be im- 
 practicable, that, so far from any estrangement 
 having arisen between them after the events of 1831, 
 as has been often said, they were still working 
 as cordially together as they had previously done. 
 
 Whitehall, July 15, 1834. 
 
 My dear Lord Lyndhurst, I dare say that you have 
 heard from other quarters authentic accounts of what has 
 been recently passing in respect to the formation of a Govern- 
 ment consequent on the retirement of Lord Grey. Still, I am 
 unwilling that the transaction should be brought to a close 
 without your receiving any communication directly from me. 
 Had I thought there could be any doubt as to the course to 
 be pursued, or that there could be the slightest reason for 
 pressing your return to London, I should without scruple have 
 written to you at once. 
 
 On Friday last Lord Melbourne wrote to me a letter 
 stating that the day after Lord Grey's retirement the King 
 had sent for him, and had delivered to him a memorandum x 
 expressive of His Majesty's anxious wish to unite in one 
 administration members of the late Government with the 
 Duke of Wellington, Mr. Stanley and myself, and other 
 persons agreeing with us in political opinions ; that to this 
 memorandum Lord Melbourne had written a detailed reply, 
 stating the difficulties which opposed themselves to such an 
 arrangement, his own unwillingness to attempt to overcome 
 them, and his conviction that they were insuperable. 2 
 
 This reply Lord Melbourne was desired to communicate 
 to the Duke, to me, and to Mr. Stanley, which he accordingly 
 did in separate letters, adding that the tenor of his reply 
 would show that he acted only in obedience to the express 
 commands of the King. 
 
 In answer to a communication of this extraordinary 
 nature, which referred me for the King's own sentiments not 
 
 1 See this memorandum published in Baron Stockmar's ' Memoirs,' vol. i. pp. 
 324-5. English Translation. London, 1872. 
 
 2 This reply is printed in Mr. Torrens's ' Memoirs of Lord Melbourne,' vol. ii. 
 p. 4, et seq.
 
 1 833. TO LORD LYNDHURST. 317 
 
 to the King's memorandum, but to the reply to that memo- 
 randum, and which alluded to a negotiation which was 
 declared by the negotiator from the outset to be perfectly 
 hopeless, and inconsistent with the character of the parties 
 whom it was proposed to include in it, I merely replied that 
 I was very sensible of the King's condescension in directing 
 such a communication to be made, but did not consider 
 myself called upon or authorised to make any further remark 
 upon it. 
 
 On Saturday I received another letter from Lord Mel- 
 bourne, informing me that the King wished me to make any 
 remarks which might occur to me, and to send them through 
 him. 
 
 On Sunday I sent to Lord Melbourne, open, a memo- 
 randum addressed directly to the King, in which I gave it as 
 my opinion, that any junction between myself and members 
 of the late Government was perfectly impracticable. I 
 observed that, so far as I had the means of forming a judg- 
 ment, the Government of Lord Grey broke up, not in 
 consequence of opposition to its measures by hostile majorities, 
 but in consequence of conflicting opinions among its own 
 members, on certain questions involving either public prin- 
 ciples, or considerations of policy so grave, that a compromise 
 upon them was inconsistent with personal honour or a sense 
 of public duty. If they, who agreed generally in their views 
 of public affairs, could not with honour adjust their differences 
 on specific measures pending in the Parliament, how could I, 
 who disagreed in general views, and was still more opposed 
 to their specific measures that are still pending, than any 
 among themselves could be how could I, with honour or 
 advantage to the King's service, unite with any portion of the 
 late government ? 
 
 To prevent a possible misrepresentation to the King, that 
 it was I who refused to listen even to the King's proposal to 
 consider the possibility of a union, I added these words : 
 " Lord Melbourne justly observes that measures still under 
 discussion or open to review, which he considers vital and 
 essential measures, have lately encountered opposition from 
 those with whom Your Majesty has desired Lord Melbourne 
 to communicate, and I must therefore express my entire
 
 318 MELBOURNE IN DIFFICULTIES. CHAP. xn. 
 
 concurrence in the opinion which Lord Melbourne has already 
 expressed to Your Majesty, that there can be no successful 
 result of negotiations, in which, according to his own expres- 
 sion, Lord Melbourne would have everything to demand and 
 nothing to concede." 
 
 The answer from the King to this was from himself a 
 very civil one admitting that he thought the objections to 
 union unanswerable. His practical conclusion was, to put the 
 formation of the Government into the hands of Lord 
 Melbourne. 
 
 The curtain will be drawn up on Thursday next at five 
 o'clock, and the performances commence immediately after- 
 wards. Lord Althorpe, I apprehend (of course by particular 
 desire), will repeat the character of Chancellor of the 
 Exchequer ; but I have not heard what changes are con- 
 templated in the other dramatis persona, or whether any part 
 has been assigned to Lord Durham, 1 who seems to breathe, 
 through the Times of this morning, dissatisfaction with the 
 present state of affairs. Ever most truly yours, 
 
 (Signed) ROBERT PEEL. 
 
 The allusion in this letter to Lord Althorp is signi- 
 ficant. It was well known that he had long desired to 
 shake off the cares of office. " Nature," he used to say, 
 " intended me to be a grazier, but men will insist on 
 making me a statesman." But his character and 
 influence were such that without his support it was 
 notorious that Lord Melbourne could neither hope to 
 form a Ministry, nor would have accepted the re- 
 sponsibility of acting as their leader. To his pressing 
 solicitations, therefore, Lord Althorp yielded, sacrificing 
 his personal inclinations to the good of his party. But 
 his continuance in office was precarious. His father 
 Lord Spencer was failing in health, and on his death, and 
 Lord Althorp's consequent elevation to the House of 
 Lords, the Ministry must lose his support in the Lower 
 House, where it was all-important in binding together 
 
 1 No part was assigned to him.
 
 1834- DBA TH OF LORD SPENCER. 3 1 9 
 
 the discordant elements of the Liberal party. The 
 events of the session of 1834 made it more than ever 
 clear that without his aid the Ministry would find them- 
 selves seriously crippled. They were, moreover, far 
 from being in perfect accord among themselves. Not 
 only, too, were the opinions of several of their number, 
 in regard especially to the Church in Ireland, viewed 
 with extreme suspicion by the King, but the secession 
 of two at least of their most important members, who 
 shared His Majesty's misgivings, was imminent, if 
 these opinions were pressed. 
 
 Such was the state of things when early in October 
 Lord Melbourne learned that Lord Spencer's death 
 might be hourly expected. Upon this he wrote to the 
 King (loth November, 1834) that he " apprehended the 
 most serious difficulty and embarrassment would be 
 the consequence of this event." x The same night Lord 
 Spencer died, when Lord Melbourne again wrote to 
 the King : "In the difficulty produced by this event, 
 the first point to be looked to is to secure the continu- 
 ance of the present Earl Spencer's services in some 
 high and responsible office. His character and influ- 
 ence in the country render this a matter of primary 
 importance." He then proceeded to express his 
 apprehension that Lord Spencer would adhere to 
 his formerly expressed resolution to retire from office 
 on his father's death, but he still hoped "that a 
 sense of duty and the evident difficulties of the 
 country would be sufficient to overcome this deter- 
 mination." To this the King replied the same day 
 that he was quite sensible of the value of Viscount 
 Althorp's services in any station or situation, and of the 
 
 1 The extracts from this and the other letters which passed between Lord 
 Melbourne and the King, are taken from the copy furnished to Lord Lyndhurst 
 immediately afterwards by the King.
 
 320 LORD MELBOURNE AND THE KING. CHAP. xn. 
 
 advantages of securing them in some high and re- 
 sponsible office, but he "always considered that the 
 embarrassment which the event which has happened 
 would entail upon the Government, of which he is a 
 member, would be chiefly felt in the loss of his services 
 in the House of Commons." 
 
 The next day Lord Melbourne wrote again to the 
 King, expressing anxiety to wait upon the King and 
 receive His Majesty's commands. 
 
 " Your Majesty," he added, " will recollect, that the Govern- 
 ment in its present form was mainly founded upon the personal 
 weight and influence possessed by Earl Spencer in the House 
 of Commons, and upon the arrangement which placed in his 
 hands the conduct of the business of Government in that 
 assembly. That foundation is now withdrawn by the eleva- 
 tion of that nobleman to the House of Peers ; and in these 
 new and altered circumstances, it is for Your Majesty to 
 consider whether it is your pleasure to authorise Viscount 
 Melbourne to attempt to make such fresh arrangements as may 
 enable Your Majesty's present servants to continue to conduct 
 the affairs of the country, or whether Your Majesty deems it 
 advisable to adopt any other course." 
 
 Lord Melbourne concluded by stating his inten- 
 tion to wait upon the King at Brighton next day to 
 assist His Majesty's views by "a full and unreserved 
 personal communication upon the present state of 
 affairs." The language of his letter was certainly not 
 that of a man confident that he could make arrange- 
 
 o 
 
 ments to fill with satisfaction to himself the void created 
 by the removal of Lord Spencer to the House of Peers. 
 So at least the King appears to have read it, for in his 
 reply, while echoing Lord Melbourne's words above 
 quoted, he adds : "He cannot help feeling also, that 
 the Government exists by that [the Commons] branch 
 only of the Legislature, and therefore that the loss of
 
 1834- LORD MELBOURNE AND THE KING. 321 
 
 Viscount Althorp's services in that House must be 
 viewed also with reference to that contingency." 
 
 Even before his interview with Lord Melbourne it 
 is more than probable that the King had come to the 
 conclusion that a change of Ministry was necessary. 
 He was much blamed at the time and since, as though 
 he had ex proprio motu dismissed his Ministers. But 
 some excuse may surely be found for him in the way 
 Lord Melbourne spontaneously put before His Majesty 
 the fact, that the very foundation on which his Ad- 
 ministration rested was withdrawn, urging what Lord 
 Grey had previously done, as appears from a passage 
 in one of the King's letters, that without Lord Spencer 
 the Government could not go on. 
 
 The difficulties which had thus been presented to 
 the King's mind were not removed by his personal 
 conference with the Premier. Lord Melbourne's 
 biographer admits that, although himself convinced 
 that Lord Spencer's ministerial aid was not indis- 
 pensable, " he could not bring himself to say so to 
 a weak and suspicious Sovereign." The loss of Lord 
 Spencer, it appears however, was by no means the 
 only difficulty. In the King's memorandum of the 
 interview, dated the I4th of November, he says 
 
 His Majesty was aware also, from what Lord Melbourne 
 had stated to him, that both Lord Lansdowne and Mr. Spring 
 Rice had signified their intention of retiring, if the measures 
 contemplated by some of their colleagues should be pressed ; 
 hence a schism in the Cabinet was threatened upon a leading 
 question, and one upon which His Majesty was in feeling 
 and principle opposed to the advocates of encroachment. 
 
 The alternative which now presents itself could therefore 
 not be long deferred, and His Majesty might find himself 
 called upon to make his decision at a period and under 
 circumstances which might be productive of much greater 
 embarrassment and difficulty than any which could pos- 
 
 Y
 
 322 CHANGE OF GOVERNMENT. CHAP. xn. 
 
 sibly in his opinion result from a change of Government at 
 present. 
 
 Lord Melbourne has fairly admitted that he could not 
 hope for success from any attempt at coalition at present, any 
 more than he did when he accepted his present office, and 
 His Majesty had reason therefore to apprehend the accession of 
 strength and official aid must be sought in the ranks of those 
 whom His Majesty could not look upon as being influenced by 
 those Conservative principles for which he gave credit to his 
 lordship and to some of his colleagues, to whom he looked 
 for a correspondence of feeling with a confidence which the 
 introduction of others less willing to support the established 
 institutions of the country could not fail to diminish. Hence 
 both His Majesty and his principal Ministers would be found 
 in a false position. 1 
 
 The King told Lord Melbourne that he should send 
 for the Duke of Wellington, and his lordship returned 
 to London to inform his astonished colleagues that 
 their reign was at an end. Before leaving Brighton, 
 however, he wrote to Lord Spencer to tell him what 
 had occurred ; and the language of his letter shows 
 that he thought his correspondent would be neither 
 surprised nor grieved, " as it would both relieve him 
 from any further annoyance, and also fall in with his 
 own opinion, viz. that it would be better that the 
 Tories should make one more effort to form a Govern- 
 
 1 Mr. Torrens, in writing his 'Life of Lord Melbourne, ' does not seem to have 
 had^before him the correspondence we have quoted. He dwells upon the King's 
 complaints about "the recent antics of the Chancellor," and his general dis- 
 satisfaction with him, as one of the chief motives of His Majesty's decision. 
 Such topics are not even hinted at, either in the King's letters, or in his memor- 
 andum quoted in the text. It was well known at the time that the King, at 
 Lord Melbourne's desire, altered the letter dispensing with the further services 
 of the Ministry, omitting a passage which, it was thought, might wound the 
 feelings of some of the Cabinet. Mr.'_Torrens says (vol. ii. p. 40) : " The personal 
 allusions to Lord John and the Chancellor were thus omitted, together with the 
 imprudent declaration of Royal hostility to Irish Church Reform." The copy 
 furnished to Lord Lyndhurst of this first letter is now before us. It contains not 
 a word that can by possibility be referred either to Lord Broughham or to the Irish 
 Church.
 
 1834. DUKE OF WELLINGTON SENT FOR. 323 
 
 ment." The King's decision, he added, whether wise 
 or not, he was convinced had been come to con- 
 scientiously, and upon his own conviction, and not in 
 consequence of any other advice or influence whatever. 
 ('Life of Lord Melbourne,' vol. ii. p. 41.) 
 
 Reaching London late in the evening, Lord 
 Melbourne had resolved to delay till next day the 
 announcement to his colleagues of what had taken 
 place. But by an evil chance Lord Brougham called 
 on his way home from dining at Holland House. 
 Mad with rage on learning what had occurred, he at 
 once concluded that the King's decision was the result 
 of a party intrigue, of which Queen Adelaide was the 
 head. He posted off to the Times office with the 
 news, and next morning the Cabinet learned from that 
 paper, at the same time as the rest of the world, that 
 they were no longer in office, and that " the Queen 
 had done it all." 
 
 Meanwhile the Duke of Wellington, who had not 
 seen or communicated with the King for more than 
 three months, received a royal summons at Straths- 
 fieldsaye, as he was starting for the hunting field. He 
 posted off at once, and reached Brighton late on the 
 evening of the I5th. No one was more surprised than 
 the Queen to find the Duke's name unexpectedly on 
 her list of guests for the day, for the King had told her 
 nothing of what had been going on. The Duke was 
 quite unprepared to find how matters stood. The 
 Government had still an overwhelming majority in the 
 House of Commons ; and although it was tolerably clear 
 that, if things went on a little longer as they had for 
 some time been doing, it must break up, he pressed upon 
 the King, as it might have been expected he would, 
 the inexpediency and danger of discarding a Ministry 
 who could plead this warrant for its continuance. For 
 
 Y 2
 
 324 CHANGE OF GOVERNMENT. CHAP. xii. 
 
 a new Minister to carry on the Government successfully 
 with the present House of Commons was hopeless ; 
 and it was by no means certain that a reaction in the 
 country had taken place, which would upon a new 
 election strengthen his hands sufficiently to make this 
 task more feasible. While urging these views, the 
 King's secretary, Sir Herbert Taylor, entered, and 
 called His Majesty's attention to the paragraph in that 
 morning's Times, with the offensive charge in it 
 against the Queen. The King jumped to the conclusion, 
 as nobody but Lord Melbourne knew the previous 
 night what had taken place at their meeting, that he 
 was the delinquent. " You see, Duke," he said, " how 
 I am betrayed and insulted : will your grace compel me 
 to take back people who have treated me in this way ? " 
 The Duke, thinking that the treatment was certainly 
 not what the King was entitled to expect, especially 
 as Lord Melbourne had by his letters almost courted 
 the result which had taken place, yielded to His 
 Majesty's wishes. He would however only act under 
 Sir Robert Peel, who had gone to Italy for the winter, 
 for he considered that except with him at its head no 
 Conservative Government was possible. The Duke 
 seems not to have doubted that Lord Lyndhurst would 
 follow his example, and he left the King, promising to 
 communicate at once with him, and to despatch a 
 messenger to Italy in search of Sir Robert Peel. 
 
 Had Lord Lyndhurst consulted merely selfish 
 interest, he might well have hesitated to forego his 
 office of Lord Chief Baron, with its handsome salary, 
 for the uncertain tenure of that of Lord Chancellor. 
 For uncertain he must have known it to be, with the 
 combination of both Whigs and Radicals which was 
 sure to follow upon the act of the King. But he was 
 not the man to turn back from the appeal made to him
 
 i834- LYNDHURST SECOND TIME CHANCELLOR. 325 
 
 by the King, and his friend the Duke of Wellington ; 
 and he at once gave in his consent to the Duke's 
 arrangements, waiting for Sir Robert Peel's return, to 
 confirm his nomination as Chancellor, and never doubt- 
 ing that Peel would undertake the onerous task 
 which had been so unexpectedly thrown upon him. 
 One thing is certain. Lord Lyndhurst always main- 
 tained that the King had reason on his side, and he 
 accepted his full share of the responsibility of the dis- 
 missal of Ministers which attached to himself and his 
 friends from taking office as their successors. In doing 
 so he used the very words of Lord Melbourne's letter 
 to the King of the nth of November. "When," he 
 said, " Lord Melbourne went to His Majesty, and said 
 the foundation on which his Cabinet had been formed had 
 been taken away, it was for His Majesty to say whether 
 he should refer to other counsels, or whether Lord 
 Melbourne should endeavour to continue the Govern- 
 ment. * * * If I had been called upon to act in such 
 circumstances, I should have acted exactly as His 
 Majesty acted. I consider myself one of the Ministers 
 responsible for what was done." (Hansard, 3rd Series, 
 vol. xxvi. 129-30.) 
 
 On Sir Robert Peel reaching London (gth December) 
 he immediately put himself in communication with 
 Lord Lyndhurst, on whose courage and t loyal support 
 he knew he could count under all circumstances. The 
 difficulties which he saw ahead made such a colleague 
 of especial value both in council and in action. They 
 acted in concert in all their deliberations, and it was 
 after a Cabinet dinner at Lord Lyndhurst's that Peel's 
 letter to his constituents / known as the " Tamworth 
 Manifesto," announcing the character of his future 
 policy, was discussed and finally settled. 1 This letter, 
 
 1 Lord Campbell, with more than his usual recklessness, says ('Life,' p. 95) :
 
 326 ATTACKS ON LORD LYNDHURST. CHAP. XH. 
 
 which gave promise of several measures of legal, 
 fiscal and ecclesiastical reform, was well received 
 by the country. In England the effect was visible in 
 the large preponderance of Conservative members 
 returned to the new Parliament. In Scotland the 
 balance of votes remained unaltered, while in Ireland 
 the number of Mr. O'Connell's adherents turned the 
 scale in favour of the Liberal party. 
 
 That party were not slow to seize the advantage 
 given to them by what the King had done. It furnished 
 them with that best of electioneering influences, a 
 good cry. The abuse of the Royal Prerogative in 
 seeking to over-ride the people's will as represented 
 by the Liberal majority of the former Parliament, was 
 descanted upon with a vehemence of invective which 
 knew no bounds, and in which the men who had 
 reluctantly come to the King's assistance were 
 denounced as selfish intriguers, even by those who 
 were cognizant of the real state of the facts ! ' The 
 triumph of party was, as usual, more thought of than 
 
 "Peel, on returning from Italy, although he acquiesced in Lord Lyndhurst's 
 appointment as Chancellor, reposed little confidence in him, and without consulting 
 him wrote his ' Tamworth Manifesto? " 
 
 1 " The great fault of the present time," Lord Melbourne wrote to Lord 
 Auckland (nth of February, 1835), " is that men hate each other so damnably ; for 
 my part, I love them all." The language of not a few of his supporters must then 
 have been very little to his taste, for the records of what was said by them at the 
 time, both in and out of Parliament, speak little to their credit. Here is a specimen 
 of the sort of stuff with which Mr. Joseph Hume entertained the House of 
 Commons (27th of February, 1835) : "What was Lord Lyndhurst? He was an 
 apostate a notorious apostate from the principles of his early youth. There were 
 many Honourable Members in the House who could prove it. They remembered 
 the time when he was brought from America, where he had been educated in repub- 
 lican principles, and where he had imbibed doctrines, which he afterwards openly 
 professed, far more radical than any which I have ever avowed." One wonders 
 who the Honourable Members were who could speak to the facts here so con- 
 fidently asserted. The republican principles and radical doctrines of a child of three 
 years old, which Copley was when he was brought from America, would have been 
 a curious contribution to human story. Why, one might ask, are men who from 
 Whigs become Tories called apostates, and never those who from Tories become 
 Radicals ?
 
 1835. PEEL GOVERNMENT ATTACKED. 327 
 
 the interests of the State ; and, whatever measures 
 might be brought forward by Sir Robert Peel, how- 
 ever urgent in themselves, however salutary, it was 
 resolved by his opponents should be resisted, as the 
 projects of "sham Reformers." But it was hoped they 
 might be kept from being so much as launched by 
 such defeats in the early stages of the session as must 
 compel Sir Robert Peel to resign. 
 
 On the election of the Speaker, the first of these 
 defeats was inflicted, by the election of Mr. Aber- 
 cromby in opposition to the Government nominee, 
 Mr. Manners Sutton. An amendment to the Address 
 was also carried, after three nights' debate in the 
 Commons, by a majority of seven, expressive of 
 regret that the progress of salutary reforms had been 
 interrupted and endangered by the dissolution of 
 the late Parliament. A similar amendment was moved 
 by Lord Melbourne in the House of Lords. He 
 could not have hoped for success, but the motion 
 afforded an opportunity for Lord Brougham, in concert 
 with whom the amendment had been drawn up, to 
 make a furious onslaught upon the Ministry for 
 giving countenance to what he stigmatised as an 
 unprecedented abuse of the Royal Prerogative. As 
 no member of the late Government had stronger 
 reason than himself for resentment at what the King 
 had done, the bitterness of his invective is easily 
 understood, Not even his friend Lyndhurst was 
 spared ; but going the length of suggesting that his 
 change of views on the Catholic question had been 
 due, not to honest conviction, but to the wish to 
 retain office, he provoked the Chancellor into giving 
 him such a negative as had not often been heard in the 
 House of Lords, 
 
 The noble and learned Lord has dared to say that
 
 328 LORD BROUGHAM. CHAP. xii. 
 
 I pursued the course I took for the purpose of retaining my 
 possession of office. I deny peremptorily the statement of the 
 noble and learned Lord. I say, if I may make use of the 
 expression, he has uttered an untruth in so expressing himself. 
 So far from that measure being brought forward and supported 
 by us with a view to preserve our places, it must be well 
 known that we hazarded our places by pursuing that course. 
 What right, then, has the noble and learned Lord in his fluent, 
 and, I may say, flippant manner, to attack me as he has dared 
 to do? (Hansard, 3rd Series, vol. xxvi. 127.) 
 
 Later in the evening, Lord Brougham tried to 
 explain that his language imputed no such charge ; 
 but with his wonted lack of good taste, although Lord 
 Lyndhurst then took occasion to apologise for the 
 warmth he had evinced, Brougham sulkily declined to 
 retract any of the expressions he had used. This 
 may have been due to the fact that he was still smart- 
 ing under the seventy of Lyndhurst's exposure of the 
 misstatements on which his wild declaration had been 
 based, and especially of the charge which he had 
 brought against the Duke of Wellington, that he had 
 repudiated his personal responsibility for the King's 
 act, whereas the Duke had immediately before avowed 
 in the broadest terms that the whole Ministry accepted 
 that responsibility in its fullest extent. 
 
 It is one of the evils of writing speeches, as 
 Brougham did, beforehand, that the speaker does not 
 like to have his studied bursts of noble indignation 
 thrown away, and so ignores the facts which render 
 them inapplicable. Lyndhurst could make large 
 allowances for his friend's peculiarities, and he was 
 not the man to forget what Brougham had done in 
 making him Chief Baron. Angry as the words 
 were which passed between them on this occasion, 
 they made no breach in their friendship a fact to 
 which Brougham bore testimony a few months after-
 
 1835. SIR K- PEEL RESIGNS. 329 
 
 wards during the debate on the Corporation Reform 
 Bill (3Oth August) in the words, "In all our con- 
 flicts, political and professional, nothing has for a 
 moment interfered with that friendship which unites 
 us personally." (Hansard, 3rd Series, vol. xxx. 447.) 
 It says much for Lord Lyndhurst's forbearance that 
 this was so, for the provocation he had received 
 from the intemperate energy of Brougham during the 
 immediately preceding months was such as might 
 well have occasioned a lasting estrangement. 
 
 Lord Brougham fought with double zeal, because 
 he looked to being thereby enabled to resume the 
 seat upon the Woolsack from which he had been so 
 suddenly deposed. Great was his chagrin to find, when 
 Peel resigned (April i83"5)> after being defeated by a 
 majority of 33 on a motion of Lord John "Russell in 
 regard to the temporalities of the Church of Ireland, 
 that this hope was not to be realised. But he was so 
 far appeased for the time, that he became a zealous 
 and certainly most useful supporter of the new 
 Melbourne Administration during the remainder of 
 the session.
 
 ( 330 ) 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 Municipal Reform Bill Opposed by Lord Lyndhurst Attacked by Lord 
 Melbourne and Lord Denman for having once held Radical opinions 
 Vindicates himself Lord Lyndhurst's relations with Sir Robert Peel 
 No foundation for statement that he had at any time sought to supersede 
 Peel. 
 
 LORD LYNDHURST descended once more from the 
 Chancellor's seat with perfect equanimity. His 
 leader, Sir Robert Peel, had fought the battle of his 
 party manfully and with skill, leaving behind him, 
 even in his defeat, an impression which was sure to be 
 serviceable at some future, perhaps not distant, day. 
 It is recorded by one of the Chancellor's guests, on 
 the day of his resignation of the Great Seal, that he 
 was in jovial humour, and quoted after dinner, with 
 a characteristic gaiety of manner, the lines of his 
 favourite poet : 
 
 ". . . . o fortes, pejoraque passi, 
 Nunc vino pellite curas." 
 
 If he did not add the lines that follow, their 
 equivalent was certainly present to his mind. " The 
 whirligig of time," he knew, was sure to " bring in its 
 revenges," and sooner or later the combination of 
 the discordant forces, Whigs, Radicals and Repealers, 
 which had upset the Peel Ministry, and on which their 
 successors rested, must crumble to pieces. 
 
 Being now released from constant judicial duty, 
 Lord Lyndhurst was free to devote his energies to
 
 1835. MUNICIPAL REFORM BILL. 331 
 
 work in Parliament. His first appearance there was to 
 introduce (June, 1835) a Bill to make void marriages' 
 with a deceased wife's sister, which had hitherto only - 
 been voidable. As this state of the law was productive I 
 of great injustice and inconvenience, it was a boon 
 to society to make that nullity certain, which had 
 hitherto been certain or uncertain, according as the 
 marriage had been impugned or not. The Bill only 
 affirmed, but did not alter, the existing law, which had 
 been uniformly enforced when a marriage of this 
 nature came before the Courts. This measure met 
 with no serious resistance and became law. 
 
 Lord Lyndhurst did not, however, put forth his 
 strength until the Government measure for Municipal 
 Reform came up to the House of Lords. It had 
 long been obvious that this was a question which must 
 be dealt with in a comprehensive way. A Royal 
 Commission had been appointed when Lord Brougham 
 was Chancellor, to inquire into the state of the Mu- 
 nicipal Corporations ; and from the allusion to this 
 fact in the King's Speech, it may be concluded that 
 some measure of reform would have been introduced 
 by Sir Robert Peel, had he remained in office. He 
 had done his best during the discussions in the 
 Commons so to modify the Government Bill that it 
 should not confiscate the existing rights of freemen, 
 or be made an instrument for throwing power exclu- 
 sively into the hands of the Radicals. But his 
 amendments on these and other points had been 
 rejected ; and the Bill was sent to the Upper House 
 in a form which was sure to bring upon it a storm 
 of opposition. There were special reasons why this 
 should be so. The Commissioners, with one excep- 
 tion, had been all avowed Whigs or Radicals. Some 
 of them had conducted their inquiries in several
 
 332 LYNDHURSTS OPPOSITION CHAP. xm. 
 
 instances with great laxity, if not unfairness, and the 
 evidence on which their report was based was not 
 made public, although charges of abuse by corporations 
 of their privileges were stated in the preamble of the 
 Bill as one of its chief foundations. 
 
 The charge of the Bill in the House of Lords was 
 entrusted to Lord Brougham ; and, although the suc- 
 cess of Lord Lyndhurst in various stages of his oppo- 
 sition must have been very galling to him, he did not 
 fall again into the error of attacking him on personal 
 grounds. Not so, however, some of the other peers, 
 who, finding themselves unable to meet argument 
 by argument and fact by fact, had recourse again to 
 the old charge against their formidable assailant, that 
 he had abandoned the Reform principles of his early 
 manhood for those which he now held. 
 
 The first to take up this note was Lord Lansdowne. 
 In dealing with the constitution of the Royal Com- 
 mission, Lord Lyndhurst had spoken of the Com- 
 missioners as being all, except Sir Francis Palgrave, 
 " Whigs or something more." He made no charge 
 against them on this ground, but simply pointed to 
 the fact as throwing a suspicion on the impartiality of 
 their conclusions, which ought to have been avoided 
 by the appointment of a less prejudiced tribunal. Turn- 
 ing this into a charge against the political opinions of 
 the individuals, Lord Lansdowne added, " if the cir- 
 cumstance of an individual having been ' a Whig or 
 something more ' were to be a disqualification, it would 
 reach to much higher and more eminent characters 
 than those who have been the subject of the noble 
 and learned Lord's insinuations." The logic here was 
 as bad as the innuendo was unjustifiable. 
 
 " I beg to say in explanation," said Lord Lyndhurst, 
 " that I made no charge against the Commissioners ; my charge
 
 1835. TO MUNICIPAL REFORM BILL. 333 
 
 was against those who appointed them. I did not intend to say 
 that the Commissioners had not acted according to their best 
 judgment, but everybody knew that party feelings might give 
 a bias to men's minds. Further, I feel that the noble 
 Marquis, in what he has said of those who were Whigs and 
 something more than Whigs, has conveyed an insinuation 
 against me. I never belonged to any political party till I 
 came into Parliament. I never belonged to any political 
 society. I have been in Parliament sixteen years, and I wish 
 the noble Marquis to point out any speech or act of mine 
 which can justify my being described as a Whig, or something 
 more than a Whig." 
 
 To this challenge Lord Lansdowne made no reply 
 for none could be made. But in the further dis- 
 cussions, when Lord Lyndhurst had carried amend- 
 ment after amendment, supporting his views by a 
 weight of argument, before which even Lord 
 Brougham showed himself powerless, the attack was 
 renewed (i3th August) by Lord Melbourne, and upon 
 the same pretext of vindicating the Commissioners. 
 
 " When," he said, " the noble and learned Lord stood in 
 the situations of these barristers, when the noble and learned 
 Lord was at the Bar, if any man had said of him that he was 
 a Whig, would he not have said that he was treated with 
 injustice ? And yet, my Lords, if any man had acted upon 
 the general reputation of that noble and learned Lord, or had 
 formed his opinion of that noble and learned Lord's political 
 sentiments from the reputation of his most private friends and 
 companions, undoubtedly he would have so characterised him. 
 Does the noble and learned Lord deny that such was his 
 character. No ; on the contrary, he admits it." 
 
 Here Lord Lyndhurst started up and interposed 
 
 The noble Lord says I admit it. My Lords, I never did 
 admit it, I do not admit it ; there is not the slightest founda- 
 tion for the statement. I heard of the attack, and I repelled it, 
 and it never was renewed till lately. It is a base calumny,
 
 334 LORD LYNDHURST CHAP. xm. 
 
 and I give it the most unqualified contradiction" (Hansard, 
 3rd Series, vol. xxx. 439.) 
 
 Even if it had been true that Lord Lyndhurst's 
 political opinions had undergone a change from the 
 wildest Radicalism, what had this to do with the 
 question whether and in what way municipal insti- 
 tutions were to be reformed ? What the friends of 
 the Ministry had to do was to meet his amendments 
 by argument, not by reference to opinions of a past 
 day. But being unable to do this, his professed friend 
 Lord Denman came down to the House a fortnight 
 afterwards, not having been present to hear Lord 
 Lyndhurst's repeated disclaimer of any complaint 
 against the political opinions of the Commissioners, 
 to again accuse him of having attacked them, and 
 to repeat the personal charge against himself. 
 
 "The Commissioners," he said, "had been described as 
 entertaining extreme opinions on political subjects. Such an 
 imputation was more applicable to the noble and learned 
 person by whom it had been made. For that noble and 
 learned Lord he had a great respect ; he was indebted to 
 him for a long succession of kindnesses ; if it was a calumny 
 to declare that he had changed his opinions on such subjects, 
 he could only declare that he uttered it with perfect good 
 faith, and that he believed it was the perfect conviction of all 
 who knew that noble and learned Lord." (Hansard, vol. xxx. 
 1042.) 
 
 Here at length was an opportunity of grappling 
 with one who vouched himself as an authority for 
 the often exploded charge. Lord Lyndhurst seized 
 it with avidity. 
 
 " My noble and learned friend," he said (Lord Denman was 
 now Chief Justice), "has alluded to opinions which he states 
 were formerly entertained by me, as a matter of accusation 
 against me ; but he had not condescended to adduce a single
 
 1 835. AND LORD DENMAN. 335 
 
 fact in support of his charge. I have nothing, therefore, to 
 meet. I do recollect, however, that in the other House of 
 Parliament my noble and learned friend did, during my 
 absence, bring a charge against me of a somewhat similar 
 nature to that which he has to-night preferred ; and the only 
 fact which he brought forward in confirmation of his state- 
 ment was, that I supported some of the opinions of Sir Samuel 
 Romilly. I suppose my noble and learned friend alluded 
 (I cannot assert positively what was his meaning) to my having 
 supported the views of Sir S. Romilly with respect to the 
 amelioration of the criminal code. Now the fact is, I sup- 
 ported some of the attempts which that learned individual 
 made to ameliorate the criminal code. I opposed other 
 attempts of his for the same object. That, however, was the 
 only direct charge which my noble and learned friend then 
 alleged against me with reference to the general accusations 
 which he preferred. 
 
 " When a fact is stated I know how to meet it ; when any 
 particular opinion is impugned I know how to rebut the alle- 
 gation ; but whilst my noble and learned friend throws his 
 arrows in the dark, I know not what to combat. I have been 
 on terms of intimacy with my noble and learned friend for a 
 long period ; I went the same circuit with him ; I have been 
 engaged in conversation with him at different times ; and if 
 he speaks of a period of twenty years past, I can only say I 
 am unable to call to my recollection the particular opinions 
 which I might have then entertained or expressed with refer- 
 ence to political measures ; but I can assert that I never 
 belonged to any party or political society whatever. 
 
 " In the absence of any specific facts, I am driven to the 
 conjecture, that my noble and learned friend alluded to my 
 conduct at the time Lord Sidmouth was at the head of the 
 Government ; during that time I had some connection with 
 some persons in that Government ; and my disposition and 
 wish were so far from thwarting (as the noble and learned 
 Lord would seem to imply), that I was desirous to support 
 the course of that particular Government. I then never 
 embarked in politics ; I did not belong to any society or 
 party ; and I never wrote a political article on either side of 
 any question which might then have been agitated. This was
 
 336 LORD LYNDHURST CHAP. xin. 
 
 my conduct until I came into the other House of Parliament, 
 now twenty years ago. From that time my life has been 
 before the public ; my course has been direct and straight- 
 forward. I have always belonged to the same party, and I 
 have entertained the same opinions from that time to the 
 present. Previously to the time of my entrance into Parlia- 
 ment, what expressions I uttered on individual measures it is 
 impossible for me to state, but I can unhesitatingly aver that 
 I belonged to no party, and that I was attached neither to the 
 Whigs nor to the Tories, nor, as my noble and learned friend 
 would insinuate, to the Radicals. This is a plain exposition 
 of my political life. My noble and learned friend, alluding 
 to discussions on measures more than twenty years ago, states 
 no fact, no opinion, or anything in favour of the deductions 
 which he has now drawn." 
 
 Lord Denman had come down to the House 
 expressly to demonstrate that Lord Lyndhurst had 
 "said the thing that was not" in the point-blank 
 denial which he had given a fortnight before to Lord 
 Melbourne. This came out very awkwardly for him 
 in a weak apology made for him by Lord Brougham 
 later in the evening. Here then was the opportunity 
 to make good assertions which he had been actively 
 circulating for years, and to prove that Lord Lyndhurst 
 was the "villain and democrat" he had called him 
 (ante, p. 297). Thus challenged, however, he had 
 nothing to fall back upon but vague assertions of 
 an impression generally prevailing, that Lord Lynd- 
 hurst, when at the Bar, had entertained what were 
 called Liberal opinions. Finding this would not do, 
 Lord Denman then set up the preposterous pretext, 
 that Lord Lyndhurst had owed his early successes 
 at the Bar to the prevailing impression that this was 
 the case. Lord Lyndhurst's reply was conclusive, for 
 the only political trial in which he had appeared for 
 the defence was, as the reader will remember, Watson's,
 
 1835. AND LORD DENMAN. 337 
 
 where he had been selected by the arch-Tory, Sir 
 Charles Wetherell, to act as his junior. The impres- 
 sion produced in the House by what passed was so 
 entirely in Lord Lyndhurst's favour, that no attempt 
 was ever afterwards made by Lord Denman or any 
 one else to renew in his presence the charge, which, 
 if true, would have really been of no moment, that he 
 had abandoned his early political opinions. The in- 
 sinuation that he had done so for place and favour, 
 one of the stock falsehoods of party malevolence, was 
 one which he never stooped to notice. 
 
 Lord Campbell has been at pains, by introducing 
 words of his own, by garbling some passages of 
 Hansard, and by wholly omitting others, to give so 
 false an impression of what took place on this occasion, 
 that, in justice to Lord Lyndhurst, it is necessary to 
 give Hansard's report verbatim. Lord Denman 
 began his reply by saying that the calumny of which 
 Lord Lyndhurst complained was one which had often 
 been repeated. He does not venture to say that it 
 was true, but only that he had stated it, "believing 
 it to be true, and that he would now believe it to 
 be true" but for Lord Lyndhurst's assertion to the 
 contrary. He continued 
 
 And really I feel somewhat astonished that when the 
 question is, as to what really were the political sentiments of 
 my noble and learned friend, he should plead forgetfulness 
 with reference to opinions he entertained twenty years ago 
 undoubtedly, but still when he was of the mature age of thirty. 
 Up to the period that he came into Parliament the universal 
 impression of those who lived on terms of close intimacy 
 with my noble and learned friend, 1 was that his opinions were 
 (not with reference to any one particular measure, or any 
 
 1 Were these the gentlemen referred to by Mr. Joseph Hume, who professed 
 to have known him when " he was brought from America, imbued with republi- 
 can principles " ? 
 
 Z
 
 338 LORD LYNDHURST CHAP. xm. 
 
 one occasion) generally and unequivocally what would now 
 be called Liberal. Those opinions were not uttered merely in 
 the presence of those who were intimate with him, or in the 
 course of private conversation, but they were avowed rather 
 as if my noble and learned friend felt a pride in entertaining 
 and avowing them. And I will take the liberty of telling my 
 noble and learned friend, that though his great talents must 
 have ultimately secured to him the rank he holds, yet that he 
 undoubtedly owed his first advancement to his devotion to 
 those who entertained the most Liberal opinions in politics. 
 With regard to my noble and learned friend's opinions re- 
 specting Lord Sidmouth's Administration, it was the conviction, 
 I venture to say, among those who know him best, that he 
 was favourable to the sentiments of the opposition of that 
 period. I beg to be understood as standing corrected in that 
 opinion.* * * 
 
 Lord Lyndhurst. I don't understand what my noble and 
 learned friend means by the term " Liberal opinions," when he 
 says that I owed my political advancement to those who pro- 
 fessed them. Up to the time of my entering Parliament, I 
 was engaged in my profession, and I had no object out of it- 
 I received a note from Lord Liverpool, asking we to call on him. 
 I went to him and was quite surprised when he asked me if I 
 had any objection to enter Parliament. I required some time to 
 consider, and the restilt was, that I consented and went into 
 Parliament. That was my first embarkation upon the stormy 
 sea of politics one very uncongenial to my feelings, very foreign 
 to my habits, and on which I am engaged on this occasion purely 
 accidentally. 
 
 Lord Denman. If I said that my noble and learned 
 friend owed his advancement in political life to his coinciding 
 with those who entertained Liberal opinions I meant to allude 
 to his professional advancement. [Truly a strange confusion 
 of ideas for a Chief Justice.] My memory, however, deceives 
 me very much, if those who encouraged his rising talents, and 
 stimulated his early and constant attention to his professional 
 pursuits, were not inclined to do so by their impression of 
 his Liberal opinions in politics. 
 
 Lord Lynd/mrst. I was never engaged but in one 
 political defence. That was on the trial of Watson. On
 
 1835. AND LORD DENMAN. 339 
 
 that occasion Sir Charles Wetherell called on me as a common- 
 law lawyer ; and asked me if Izvould agree to join him in the 
 conduct of that defence. After taking a short time to consider, 
 I answered that I would. Now that is the real history of 
 that transaction. 
 
 Lord Denman had little reason to congratulate 
 himself on the events of that evening. He had 
 intended to injure as far as he could the character for 
 truthfulness of the man to whom by his own admission 
 he owed a succession of kindnesses (and of whom, it 
 may be said in passing, he did not scruple afterwards 
 to ask, and not unsuccessfully, for more), and in doing 
 so he had, as Lord Ashburton presently said in the 
 House, " introduced a degree of violence and person- 
 ality into the debate of the evening, of which he, Lord 
 Ashburton, had seen no example in that House." But 
 Lord Lyndhurst could have desired nothing better 
 than that he should thus be brought face to face with his 
 accuser, and compel him to own the flimsy pretexts 
 on which his accusations rested. It is pitiable to see 
 them dwindling down to conclusions drawn from the 
 fact that Lyndhurst, when struggling into notice at 
 the Bar, had acted for Nottingham machine breakers, 
 and had excited general attention by his masterly 
 defence of Watson. 
 
 Although Lord Brougham did his best that even- 
 ing in defence of Denman, he obviously did not 
 attach much weight to what he said of Copley's early 
 opinions, or regard the imputation that he had been a 
 Jacobin as more than a crotchet of Denman's. (See 
 Brougham's ' Life,' vol. iii. p. 435.) He at least was 
 too generous an adversary not to acknowledge that 
 Lyndhurst had fought the opposition to the Municipal 
 Corporation Bill upon the broad ground of principle, 
 supported by well-ascertained facts, with courtesy 
 
 z 2
 
 340 LORD LYNDHURST CHAP. xill. 
 
 to his opponents, and the absence of all personal 
 bitterness. Looking back upon their struggles upon 
 this Bill, Lord Brougham, writing in 1861, says of 
 Lyndhurst 
 
 He was a most effective adversary in the Lords. His 
 legal learning and reputation, his former official experience 
 and character, his admirable power of clear, condensed state- 
 ment, far exceeding that of any man I ever knew ; his firm 
 courage, his handsome presence, his musical voice, his power 
 of labour, when he chose, though generally hating work made 
 him a most formidable antagonist. No one can better speak 
 of his great resources and powers than I can. We alone 
 fought the Municipal Bill in 1835. No one helped me for it, 
 no one helped him against it ; he beat me on some important 
 points ; but I succeeded upon the whole. 
 
 Lyndhurst did not try to defeat the Bill. He 
 honestly attempted to improve it ; and the best 
 evidence that he succeeded is the fact that the 
 Commons accepted his most important amendments, 
 and modified others in a way to which he did not object. 
 An amicable adjustment between the two Houses 
 was thus arrived at, and the Bill, which has proved 
 an excellent one in practice, became law. 
 
 Lord Campbell, who was sponsor for the Bill in 
 the Commons, has of course no good word to say 
 for Lord Lyndhurst's interference with his handiwork. 
 He makes much of the fact that on one or two minor 
 points Sir Robert Peel did not object to clauses which 
 Lyndhurst attacked. He even records that, when the 
 Bill was in the Lords' Committee he took Lyndhurst 
 aside "and reproached him with striking out clauses 
 which Peel had approved of, and supported in the 
 Commons," showing in this a true partisan's incapacity 
 to understand that any member of a party should 
 exercise his independence of judgment. He seems
 
 1835. AND SIR ROBERT PEEL. 34! 
 
 not to have seen that if Lyndhurst had given way to an 
 appeal of this kind, he would have implicitly admitted 
 that he had no faith in his own objections to the 
 
 clauses. " Peel ! What is Peel to me ? D n 
 
 Peel ! " was the only answer his impertinence for 
 impertinence it was drew from Lord Lyndhurst. 
 
 The divergence between the views of Sir Robert 
 Peel and Lord Lyndhurst on several points of the 
 Government Bill was made the most of by the Govern- 
 ment and their friends. While it was in Committee 
 in the Lords, and Lyndhurst was carrying amendment 
 after amendment, Peel went down to Drayton Manor, 
 in a pet, it is said, and with the intention not to 
 return to lead a party which seemed to have chosen 
 Lyndhurst for their chief. It was therefore a sur- 
 prise, when he came back to town, and took part in 
 the discussions in the House of Commons upon the 
 Lords' Amendments. These had been carried by 
 such large majorities, that some of the Cabinet had 
 doubted whether they could go on with so formidable 
 an array against them in the House of Lords, while 
 others were for rejecting the amendments, and appeal 
 ing to the country against this aristocratic defiance of 
 the Commons' majorities. Lyndhurst, .however, felt 
 assured they would do nothing of the kind, and said so 
 to Charles Greville (2Oth August). " Oh, they will 
 take the Bill," were his words, " because they know it 
 does their business," that is, gave political predomi- 
 nance to their party " though not so completely as 
 they desire." 
 
 The idea that Lyndhurst aspired to ousting Peel 
 from the leadership of his party, because he adopted a 
 course of his own in resisting this particular Bill was, 
 however, commonly taken up by his adversaries ; and 
 this circumstance, combined with the rumour that the
 
 342 LORD LYNDHURST CHAP. xin. 
 
 Ministry were shaken by his successes in the House 
 of Lords, probably gave rise to a report, to which 
 currency was given by the able memoir of him which 
 appeared in the Times (i3th October, 1863), the day 
 after his death, and given with an air of unquestionable 
 authority. 
 
 "While," said the writer, "the Melbourne Ministry was 
 tottering, and Sir Robert Peel was simultaneously silent in 
 the House of Commons, or sulking at Drayton Manor, His 
 Majesty, not liking to ask the Duke a second time, directly 
 appealed to Lord Lyndhurst to take the reins if Peel refused. 
 The high courage and self-confidence of Lord Lyndhurst could 
 only admit of one answer. He accepted His Majesty's 
 expression of his desire as an injunction, and the terms on 
 which he was to assume the Premiership were as formally 
 arranged as such terms ever are. He was to have twelve seats 
 placed at his disposal in the Commons for young aspirants 
 of his party capable of rendering him service in debate. Those 
 who were to occupy them were indicated wholly or in 
 part, and our readers will learn a remarkable proof of his 
 lordship's discrimination, when we mention that the first on 
 the list was Mr. Disraeli, then a young man not yet recog- 
 nised by the public as a statesman. Another was Sir 
 Frederick Thesiger, and a third Mr. Beckham Escott. At the 
 suggestion of the King himself, Lord Lyndhurst was to have 
 had an earldom, and with the title of ' Earl Copley ' was to 
 have led the ranks of the reaction, and to have dictated the 
 policy which the country was now evidently preparing to 
 receive from a Conservative Ministry." 
 
 This is a choice specimen of the way history is 
 falsified. A statement is made with a circumstan- 
 tiality of detail which seems to vouch for its truth. 
 It is published in a quarter where accuracy is pre- 
 sumed. The chief actor in the story is dead, and 
 as it can receive no authoritative contradiction from 
 him, it gets repeated until it passes into general belief. 
 In no one particular is there the slightest foundation
 
 1835. AND SIR ROBERT PEEL. 343 
 
 for the story thus elaborately told. Monstrous in 
 itself, as implying gross treachery in both the King 
 and Lord Lyndhurst, in the King to his Ministry, 
 to whom he was ostensibly giving his confidence, and 
 in Lord Lyndhurst to Sir R. Peel, with whom he was 
 then acting, and under whom he was ready to act on 
 all questions of general policy it is ludicrous in the 
 suggestion that twelve seats in a Reformed House of 
 Commons could have been placed at Lyndhurst's dis- 
 posal, or that he would have displaced the tried men 
 of his party in order to face with novices in the 
 political arena the combined forces of Whigs and 
 Radicals whom he would have had to encounter. 
 However Lyndhurst may have differed on particular 
 questions from Peel, or thought him mistaken, as it is 
 well known he did think him, in not having infused 
 new blood, and a spirit more in consonance with the 
 altered circumstances of the times, into his last Min- 
 istry, still he looked steadily to him as entitled by 
 experience and by his influence in the country, to be the 
 leader of his party. Moreover, under no circumstances 
 whatever would he have agreed to become Premier 
 either then or at any other time. His ambition 
 was regulated by knowledge of what he could and 
 what he could not do. What he could not do 
 thoroughly and well he would not do at all ; and for 
 the labours attending that office he considered himself 
 wholly unfitted. 
 
 Lord Lyndhurst throughout this contest was fight- 
 ing for principles. He was the chosen mouthpiece of 
 the Peers with whom he generally acted. As he said 
 himself, he was no volunteer, but had yielded to their 
 solicitations that he would take the management of 
 the Opposition, in a question on which they thought 
 from his professional habits he was qualified to lead
 
 344 LYNDHURSTS AMBITION SATISFIED. CHAP. xilL 
 
 their forces. His last words in the final discussion 
 on the Bill were 
 
 I yielded to their solicitations ; and, having done so, I 
 have endeavoured to discharge my duty to them, and to my 
 country, firmly, strenuously, and to the best of my ability. I 
 have been charged with having some party views to accom- 
 plish, some indirect ambition to gratify by this opposition. 
 I deny it once and for ever. All my ambition has long been 
 satisfied. I have twice, to borrow a phrase from these muni- 
 cipal proceedings, passed that chair [pointing to the wool- 
 sack]. I have twice, to borrow a phrase from a successful 
 revolutionary usurper, had that splendid bauble [pointing to 
 the mace which lay on the woolsack] carried before me. 
 Whatever ambitious views I may have had in early life have 
 all been fulfilled. My ambition has been gratified. I have 
 no wishes unfulfilled. (Hansard, vol. xxx. 1351.) 
 
 These words were sincerely spoken. But his 
 country had yet further claims upon him ; and when 
 such claims arise, it rests not with men so eminently 
 endowed as he to determine, " what they shall do or 
 what refuse."
 
 ( 345 ) 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 Irish Municipal Corporations Bill Opposed by Lyndhurst Vindication 
 by him of his Speech in Opposition Replies to Sheil, O'Connell and 
 Lord John Russell Bill defeated Lyndhurst opposes Government 
 Measures of Legal Reform His Reasons First Review of the Session 
 Death of his Mother Letters from the Duke of Wellington and 
 Lord Brougham. 
 
 WHEN in the next session (1836) the Ministry in- 
 troduced their Irish Municipal Corporations Bill, there 
 was no room for saying that any difference of views 
 existed between Peel and Lyndhurst. The arguments 
 advanced by Peel in the House of Commons against 
 the Bill without success, were taken up and pushed 
 vigorously home by Lyndhurst in the Lords. The 
 result was that the measure was there cut to pieces ; 
 the Commons refused to give way, the Lords would 
 not yield, and the Bill was lost. The working of the 
 English Bill had already given some colour to the 
 apprehension of the Conservatives, that it would be 
 used for political purposes, and it told by no means in 
 favour of a similar measure for Ireland that O'Connell, 
 who was now in intimate alliance with those very 
 Whigs, on whom he had for years poured the phials of 
 his bitterest wrath, had said of the new Town Councils, 
 that " there was not one of them that will not be 
 converted into a normal school for teaching the 
 science of political agitation." Too long had agitation 
 been the chronic affliction of Ireland, fatal to its social 
 welfare, and to the extinction of the party rancour by
 
 346 IRISH MUNICIPAL CORPORATIONS. CHAP. XI v. 
 
 which the country was torn. That the existing Irish 
 corporations ministered to the evil, by the fact that 
 the power under them was all in the hands of the 
 Protestant party, was admitted alike by Tories and 
 by Whigs. Peel and his friends were quite content 
 that they should be extinguished, but they objected 
 to the setting up by the proposed Bill of new corpora- 
 tions, which would merely intensify the evil by taking 
 the preponderance of power from the Protestants and 
 throwing it into the hands of the Catholic party, 
 whose avowed aim, now openly inculcated from one 
 end of the island to the other, was the downfall of the 
 \Protestant Church, and the dismemberment of the 
 ' /Empire. 
 
 The burden of the contest fell, as might have been 
 expected, on Lord Lyndhurst. His speeches can be 
 read now with instruction for the way in which the 
 causes of Ireland's failure to take its due place in the 
 United Kingdom, and the remedies needful for its 
 peace, are discussed. They were, like all his speeches, 
 weighty with argument, and attractive by the purity 
 and force of their style. The phrase which is said to 
 have been applied by him in one of them to the Irish, 
 that they were " aliens in blood, and language and 
 religion," was pounced upon by O'Connell, Sheil and 
 others, and used to stimulate the indignation of their 
 countrymen against the House of Lords, and parti- 
 cularly against him who was now by far the most 
 influential man in its debates. Hansard will be 
 searched in vain for the phrase, and Lord Lyndhurst 
 always denied that he used it. The only passage 
 out of which such a phrase could be construed 
 occurs at the close of Lord Lyndhurst's speech (26th 
 April, 1836). 
 
 He had been arguing against the proposition that,
 
 1836. LYNDHURSrS SPEECH. 347 
 
 because England and Scotland had corporations, 
 Ireland also ought to have them. 
 
 "Ireland," he said, "stood in a situation quite different 
 from either England or Scotland. Ireland originally consisted 
 of two parts one part English, the other Irish and these 
 two were diametrically opposed to each other. Unfortunately, 
 at the time of the Restoration another principle of division 
 was introduced between these two parties, and it was now 
 English and Protestant, Irish and Catholic. These parties 
 were opposed to each other with great bitterness, and on 
 many occasions with great intensity of feeling. Who, then, 
 would say that what was good in one country must neces- 
 sarily be good in the other ? that what was adopted here, 
 and found to be beneficial, must necessarily be beneficial to 
 Ireland, and ought at once to be extended to that country ? 
 The reasoning was perfectly childish, and if it were allowed 
 to obtain for any length of time, or to govern the mind of 
 such an assembly as their Lordships, it would, indeed, be 
 working out one of the sayings attributed to one of the 
 chancellors of Ireland ' making of history an old almanac.' " l 
 (Hansard, vol. xxxiii. 297.) 
 
 There is here not a word to justify the phrase 
 "aliens in language;" but the germ of the other 
 words of the well-known sentence is undoubtedly 
 there. Lord Lyndhurst, as we shall presently see, 
 would not admit that he used that sentence. Lord 
 John Russell (in a debate on the Lords' amendments, 
 9th June) vouches, that with his own ears he heard 
 Lord Lyndhurst say, that " three-fourths of the people 
 of Ireland were aliens in blood, differing in language, 
 differing in religion, and waiting only for a favourable 
 opportunity of throwing off the government of this 
 
 1 Lord Plunkett was the author of the phrase. He did net, as is commonly 
 said, "call history an old almanac," but he said, if legislators did not "vary the 
 forms and aspects of their institutions so as to reflect the varying aspects and forms," 
 which the flight of time and the development of new conditions produced, 
 "philosophy would be impertinent, and history no better than an old almanac."
 
 348 LORD LYNDHURSTS VINDICATION CHAP. xiv. 
 
 country as the yoke of a tyrannical oppressor." The 
 very next day Lord Lyndhurst dealt with the charge, 
 when presenting a petition from Rochdale in favour 
 of the Lords' amendments on the Bill. 
 
 " There are," he said, " two descriptions of misrepresenta- 
 tion. The one is of words used by a speaker, the other of 
 the sense in which they were used, and of their application to 
 his argument. The latter species of misrepresentation is 
 more artful and more mischievous than the former, because it 
 is not so easily detected and exposed. Such misrepresenta- 
 tion, whether of the one kind or the other, whether it pro- 
 ceeded from a demagogue on the hustings, a hired mercenary, 
 who had not inaptly described himself as speaking daggers 
 but using none, and as one whose weapons were words, or 
 from a Minister of State in his place in the Senate, could 
 not but be considered by every fair and honourable mind, he 
 would not say contemptible, but in the highest degree repre- 
 hensible and unwarrantable. The time would, however, soon 
 arrive when, having heard all the charges that could be 
 brought against him, he should have an opportunity of 
 answering them, of exposing their author, and of proving 
 their utter futility, whether they had reference to what he 
 might have said at the bar of the House, or what he might 
 have said standing in his place among their Lordships." 
 (Hansard, vol. xxxiv. 297.) 
 
 Lord Lyndhurst was not aggressive. No one 
 bore better than he a well-delivered rejoinder in 
 debate. But touch him on a point of honour, or strike 
 a foul blow, and Nemo me impune lacessit was his 
 motto. The opportunity he referred to came a few 
 nights afterwards when the debate on the Bill 
 was resumed on its coming back with the Commons' 
 
 o 
 
 amendments. A fine display of his powers was 
 expected. Charles Greville was present, and he says, 
 " Lyndhurst spoke very ably, by far the finest style 
 of speaking, so measured, grave, and earnest, nothing
 
 1836. OF HIS SPEECH ON IRELAND. 349 
 
 glittering and gaudy, but a manly and severe 
 style of eloquence." The criticism is in all respects 
 just. Lord Melbourne had opened the debate in a 
 speech chiefly made up of a personal attack upon 
 Lyndhurst. Point by point was taken up in the reply, 
 and with crushing effect. Melbourne had referred to 
 the old, stale topic of the Catholic Disabilities Bills, 
 and made it matter of complaint that Lyndhurst had 
 said that the consequences which resulted from the 
 Relief Bill had proved contrary to his expectations. 
 " I repeat that observation," said Lyndhurst in reply : 
 "the consequences which have resulted from that 
 measure, the conduct of those individuals who were 
 parties to it, and who were eager for its accomplish- 
 ment, have disappointed my expectations." He 
 then turned the tables on the Premier by a reference 
 to his own speech, in which he had illustrated the 
 halcyon calm that was to result from Catholic emanci- 
 pation, by a quotation of the well-known passage from 
 Horace (Odes, i. 12), in which a sea storm is lulled on 
 the appearance of the Alba Stella of Leda's twins. 
 "Mark," he continued, " the effects which have flowed 
 from that measure. Step by step, since then, en- 
 croachments have been made upon the Protestant 
 establishment, and continued with pertinacious ani- 
 mosity, contrary to the pledges at that time made 
 as an encouragement to pursue the course we then 
 adopted." 
 
 Lord Melbourne had also in his speech fallen into 
 the strain of menace, which at that time was prevalent 
 among his more violent supporters, against the House 
 of Lords for venturing to entertain an opinion of its 
 own as to what was the best way of improving the 
 municipal system in Ireland. 
 
 " Both Houses," said Lord Lyndhurst, in words worthy
 
 350 SPEECH ON IRELAND. CHAP. xiv. 
 
 to be remembered, "have agreed that those institutions are 
 vicious and ought to be reformed ; but they are not agreed upon 
 the means by which this is to be effected. The noble Viscount 
 seems to conceive that we are, to a certain extent, bound to 
 follow the opinions of the other House upon this subject. I 
 beg leave to say that this House also represents the nation 
 that we are no less the representatives of the nation than the 
 House of Commons, which is stated to represent the people ; 
 and I believe at this moment, that we as fully, and no less 
 fairly, represent the opinions, the sentiments, the feelings of 
 the great body of the nation, as their representatives in the 
 other House of Parliament. I feel the utmost possible 
 respect for the opinions of the other House, and whenever I 
 have the misfortune to differ from them upon any conclusion 
 of state policy and I am sure my noble friends around me 
 are impressed with the same conviction I feel it to be my 
 duty cautiously to deliberate, and fully to consider that 
 difference ; but when I am not entirely convinced by the 
 reasons they allege, it is my duty, as an independent member 
 of Parliament and of this House, to act according to the 
 dictates of my unbiassed judgment. That is the course I 
 have pursued the course which the noble Lords with whom 
 I am acting have, I am persuaded, pursued. It is because 
 we feel that the consequence of the measure as sent up to us 
 originally by the other House and as presented to us in its 
 amended form, would be productive of mischief to the United 
 Empire, and of great evil and calamity to Ireland itself, and 
 that it would be fatal to the Protestant interests of the 
 country it is because we are impressed with this conviction, 
 that we refused to pass the Bill in its former shape, and it is 
 on the same grounds that we are disinclined to adopt the 
 amendments now proposed to us." 
 
 The speaker then turned to the personal attacks 
 upon himself for what he had said on the 26th of April. 
 Who, he asked, were his accusers ? First came Mr. 
 Sheil, whom he dealt with lightly and playfully, and 
 then turned to Mr. O'Connell. Very adroitly he 
 called into play a description of the arch-agitator
 
 1836. LYNDHURST ON G 1 CON NELL. 351 
 
 given not long before by Lord Melbourne, as far 
 surpassing in vividness of delineation any portrait 
 which he could himself hope to draw. But he then 
 proceeded 
 
 This person has so scathed himself, has so exhibited 
 himself in a variety of postures not always the most seemly 
 and decent amid the shouts and applause of a multitude, that 
 all description upon my part is wholly unnecessary. But 
 these exhibitions have not been bootless to him ; he has 
 received lavish contributions, I may say ducal contributions, 
 from the connections of the present Government, while at the 
 same time he has wrung, by the aid of the priests, the miser- 
 able pittance from the hands of the starving and famishing 
 peasant. This person has, in every shape and form, insulted 
 your Lordships, your Lordships' House, and many of you 
 individually he has denounced you, doomed you to de- 
 struction, and, availing himself of your courtesy, he comes to 
 your Lordships' bar, he listens to your proceedings, he marks 
 you and measures you as his victims " Etiam in senatum 
 venit ; notat, designatque oculis ad ccedem unumquemque 
 nostnlm" The person whom these expressions originally 
 defined had at least one redeeming quality witness the last 
 scene of his life, if you read it in the description of the his- 
 torian. Mindful of his former elevation and dignity, so able, 
 so politic, so eloquent, he ever retained the virtue of courage. 
 Where was the accusation against me made, and under what 
 circumstances ? At a meeting of the inhabitants of this city, 
 in the midst of the friends of free institutions, those declaimers 
 for justice eternal justice there did he, for the edification 
 of his audience, vent his coarse and scurrilous jests at the 
 murder of a monarch, and at the same time, and almost in the 
 same breath, insulted by the insidious venom of his flattery 
 the successor of that monarch, our present most gracious 
 Sovereign. 
 
 Charles Greville mentions that O'Connell was not 
 in the House during Lyndhurst's philippic, but came 
 in soon after. Even his presence however could scarcely
 
 352 LYNDHURST ON LORD JOHN RUSSELL. CHAP. xiv. 
 
 have heightened the effect of Lyndhurst's scathing 
 invective, or the happy application to him of the passage 
 from Cicero's denunciation of Catiline. 
 
 From merciless invective Lord Lyndhurst now 
 changed to scarcely less merciless sarcasm in dealing 
 with his next assailant, Lord John Russell. Assailant, 
 he would not call him, but ''reported accuser," for on 
 that subject he was incredulous, and he was sure the 
 House would share his incredulity. Lord John had 
 long been a Member of Parliament. As a Whig he 
 must have studied the Constitution of the House of 
 Commons. As its leader, it was his duty to attend to 
 the order and regularity of its proceedings ; as a writer 
 on the Constitution he must know the importance of 
 preserving the independence of the two Houses of 
 Parliament. " Is it possible, then," he continued, 
 "to suppose that a person so circumstanced should, 
 availing himself of your Lordships' courtesy, come to 
 the bar of this House, collect words spoken in the heat 
 of debate, and then, going to the other House there 
 repeat them, and attack and denounce the speaker of 
 them ? Am I not doing justice to the noble Lord in 
 supposing that he could not so have acted ? " 
 
 As another ground for his incredulity he argued, 
 from his own House of Commons experience, that any 
 member acting in this way would have been stopped 
 by the Speaker. " I am now speaking of past times." 
 Still the present Speaker, Mr. Abercromby, a friend of 
 his own, a lawyer, and therefore of necessity acquainted 
 with constitutional law and practice, must surely have 
 interfered to check a proceeding of so much irregularity 
 as that attributed to the noble Lord. But he had yet 
 another reason for his incredulity. The noble Lord, 
 as Secretary of State for the Home Department, 
 presided in some sort over the justice of the country.
 
 .1836. LYNDHURSTS VINDICATION. 353 
 
 He must be well acquainted with the first principles of 
 justice, and no principle was more sacred than this that a man 
 should not be put upon his trial in his absence. I cannot 
 therefore believe that the noble Lord would have made such a 
 charge in a place where it was impossible for me to defend it. 
 ... I am the more confirmed in this opinion, when I recollect 
 that that noble Lord is the author of a dramatic work, in which 
 the Grand Inquisitor is made to boast of the fair manner in 
 which his Court is conducted in comparison with ordinary 
 Courts. He observes that even an act of accusation is not 
 allowed to issue against a person until he has been heard in 
 his defence. The poetical lines, my Lords, are these : 
 
 "It does not hold its prisoners accused 
 Till they themselves are heard." 
 
 Having thus brought his assailants before his 
 audience in terms which had kept their minds in a 
 state of delighted excitement, he now turned to the 
 charge itself. What was it ? he asked ; it was, that he 
 had stated as a reason for not granting municipal 
 institutions to the Irish, that " they were aliens by 
 descent, that they spoke a different language, and had 
 different habits from ours ; that they considered us to 
 be invaders of their soil, and were desirous of remov- 
 ing us from the country ! / made no such state- 
 ment" 'he continued, " nor did I say anything at all 
 resembling it. No expressions ever fell from me upon 
 which any person, not of a weak intellect, or not 
 disposed to misunderstand and misrepresent what I 
 stated, could have put such a construction." 
 
 This was obvious, he contended, from the conduct 
 of the noble Lords opposite. Not a word had fallen 
 from Lord Melbourne in comment on what " are now 
 considered as most extraordinary and unjustifiable ex- 
 pressions." Lord Lansdowne, who took an active part 
 in the debate, remained equally silent. True, fourteen 
 days afterwards he made allusion to what he then 
 
 2 A
 
 
 354 LORD LYNDHURST VINDICATES CHAP, xiv, 
 
 called " never to be forgotten expressions." Here 
 Lord Lansdowne broke in saying, that he had alluded 
 to them only a few days after the discussion. "It 
 was a great many days afterwards," rejoined Lord 
 Lyndhurst, correct as usual, specifying the occasion 
 (yth of June), just seventeen days after the words were 
 said to have been used. He had then pledged him- 
 self to satisfy the House that he had never made the 
 statement attributed to him, and he would now direct 
 their Lordships' attention to the statement he had 
 really made, " every word of which he would com- 
 pletely justify." 
 
 " It was frequently asked," he said, " during the debates on 
 the Irish Municipal Bill, and on the occasion to which allusion 
 has been particularly made, ' Will you deny to Ireland what 
 you have granted to England ? ' What was the answer given 
 to that question ? It was this that the Ministers have them- 
 selves in their own Bill proceeded on the principle of applying 
 different provisions to Ireland, and have refused, in con- 
 sequence of the peculiar state of Ireland, to grant the same 
 powers to the Irish municipal corporations as they granted to 
 the English corporations. One of the arguments which I used 
 on the evening alluded to was to this effect that it was absurd, 
 unless the state of society in the two countries could be shown 
 to be the same, to say that the institutions which are good in 
 the one country must necessarily be good in the other ; and I 
 illustrated my meaning by a kind of school-boy reference to the 
 bed of Procrustes. 
 
 "Again. The Ministers proposed to abolish the present 
 corporations in Ireland ; for what reason ? Because they are 
 party institutions, and therefore productive of evil. I observed 
 that there were two parties in Ireland much embittered 
 against each other ; and that the establishment of new cor- 
 porations according to the ministerial plan would be a sub- 
 stitution of party corporations of a new sort, in lieu of those 
 which might be abolished. 
 
 " That was my argument, and that led legitimately and 
 properly to a description of the two parties in Ireland. And
 
 1836. HIS SPEECH ON IRELAND. 
 
 what was the description I gave of them ? I do not flinch 
 from it ; I repeat it. On the one side, I said, there is one- 
 fourth of the population of English descent and habits^Pro- 
 testants in religion, and adhering warmly to the connection 
 with this country. Is that an accurate description of one 
 of the parties ? Who were on the other side ? Persons of a 
 different and, with regard to the English party to whom I re- 
 ferred, of an alien descent. The sense in which these words 
 were used is quite obvious. They differ to a great extent in 
 manners, language, habits and religion, and they look on us 
 as invaders. I admit that I said they were anxious for a 
 separation, and desirous to drive us from the country. Is this, 
 or is it not, a correct description of the two parties in Ireland ? 
 When I gave that description, I at least acted fairly. I so 
 thought, and so considered. And who, my Lords, were my 
 instructors ? Those persons who now denounce and accuse 
 me. They were my instructors. Who is it, that, whenever it 
 suits his purpose, works on the feelings and prejudices, arising 
 out of a difference of descent, that calls the Protestants 
 of Ireland foreigners, Saxons, Sassenachs ? Who is it, that 
 over and over again, whenever it suited his particular object, 
 declared that he never would cease to excite one portion of 
 the population against the other 
 
 'As long as Popish spade and scythe 
 Shall dig and cut the Sassenach's tithe ' ? 
 
 "Who is it that has applied, with the same view of exciting 
 a feeling of hostility and antipathy, the term ' Sassenach ' to 
 a noble Lord, formerly Secretary for Ireland [Lord Stanley], 
 and received from that noble individual such a castigation as 
 recalled to one's recollection the lines in an ancient fable : 
 
 ' Clamanti cutis est summos derepta per artus, 
 Nee quidquam nisi vulnus erat ' ? 
 
 "Who is it, again, that has denominated this Imperial 
 Parliament, both by word of mouth and in writings, a foreign 
 Parliament : has called this House an assembly of foreigners, 
 and applied the same terms to the Protestants of Ireland ? 
 Who is it that, in reference to this very Parliament, has made 
 use of the term ' alien ' ? He, who is now my accuser. This 
 is my defence, if defence be necessary. 
 
 2 A 2
 
 356 LORD LYND HURST VINDICATES CHAP. xiv. 
 
 " Who is it, but another of my accusers, that, speaking of 
 Ireland, described the Irish and English to be divided against 
 each other, with enmity even stronger than that felt by the 
 Welsh mountaineers for their Saxon invaders ? Who told us 
 that this enmity was not the consequence of difference of 
 religion, but was hereditary that it existed when the two 
 parties were of the same religion ? One of my accusers. So 
 much, then, as to the description of the two parties into which 
 Ireland is divided. 
 
 " And now as to the use of the term ' invaders.' Who is it 
 that called the English ' invaders of Ireland ' ? that dated 
 the misery and degradation of that country from the first day 
 when the English banner was planted on its soil ? Who is it 
 , that called the ' Union ' an atrocious and most abominable 
 | measure ; that pledged himself over and over again to repeal 
 that Union, though every man knows, and no one better than 
 the individual I refer to, that the repeal of the Union is, in 
 fact, the entire and total separation of the two countries ? 
 Who is it that told Ireland that it should not be a petty and 
 paltry province, but a free and independent nation ; and that 
 the Saxons should be taught that lesson ? My accuser. His 
 cry for repeal is now dropped, his exertions are suspended ; 
 but on what terms and conditions ? Mark ! ' Justice to 
 Ireland ! ' And what description has that individual, within 
 a very small space of time, given of the meaning he attaches 
 to the words v Justice to Ireland ' ? It is this, my Lords the 
 complete and entire government of the country by Roman 
 Catholics, the extinction of tithe in any shape or form, the 
 introduction of the voluntary system, and the entire demoli- 
 tion of the Protestant establishment in Ireland. These are 
 his terms, the terms on which alone he is content to lay aside 
 his exertions at present for the repeal of the Union and the 
 separation of Ireland. Allow me, my Lords, before I leave 
 this subject, to repeat a stanza out of an Irish ballad, sung 
 in the streets of Kilkenny at the time when a man was being 
 tried for murder, arising out of resistance to tithes. 
 
 ' The day of ransom, thank Heaven, is dated, 
 These cursed demons must quit the land : 
 It's now these foreign and proud invaders 
 Shall feel the weight of each Irish hand.'
 
 1836. HIS SPEECH ON IRELAND. 357 
 
 " Have I not, my Lords, made out what I undertook to 
 establish ? If I expressed myself too strongly on the subject, 
 are not my accusers the very persons who supplied me with 
 the language they now affect to condemn ? I now quit this 
 subject, I hope for ever." 
 
 We have given these lengthened extracts, not only 
 as interesting examples of Lyndhurst's oratorical 
 power, but as his own vindication of language to this 
 day often misrepresented, which was unfairly condensed 
 into an epigrammatic phrase, for the purpose of making 
 him obnoxious to the Liberal, and especially the Irish 
 Liberal party. Whatever view may be taken of these 
 extracts, it cannot justly be said, as it has been 
 by a recent writer, 1 that Lord Lyndhurst, " tardily 
 convinced " of the imprudence of his original 
 speech, " had sought to attenuate its force by various 
 explanatory observations." Lord Lyndhurst was not 
 a man at any time to run away from his words or 
 to equivocate with their meaning. Had he been 
 convinced of their imprudence, he would have said so 
 frankly. But the reader can judge for himself whether, 
 so far from the charge thus made being true, it is not 
 the fact, that he established, beyond dispute, that he 
 had said no more, even if he had used the very words 
 attributed to him, than had been said over and over 
 again by Mr. O'Connell and his followers. In any 
 case, he carried the House of Lords with him ; and 
 the speech produced so much sympathy throughout 
 England, where the alliance which had been patched up 
 between O'Connell and the Whigs was regarded with 
 no favour, that his adversaries found it impossible to 
 raise an effective storm against the House of Lords, 
 although it rejected the Commons' amendments by the 
 large majority of ninety-seven. It is painful to note, 
 
 1 Mr. Torrens in his ' Life of Lord Melbourne," vol. ii. p. 186.
 
 358 LYNDHURSTS OPPOSITION CHAP. xiv. 
 
 that the lapse of nearly fifty years finds Ireland still 
 standing in the same attitude of antagonism to England, 
 still suffering from the same internal dissensions, still 
 possessed by the same delusions which Lyndhurst 
 deplored, and which it has been the study of the 
 successors of O'Connell to maintain. 
 
 Lyndhurst had not to encounter Brougham as an 
 antagonist during the session of 1836. The ex-Chan- 
 cellor, disgusted and mortified at finding himself passed 
 over, and Pepys raised as Lord Cottenham to the 
 Woolsack, which he considered to be his by right, 
 took no part in politics during that year, remaining 
 in seclusion at Brougham Hall during the early part 
 of the session, and only attending the autumn sittings 
 of the Privy Council when he [came to town. The 
 Ministry no doubt suffered from his absence ; but 
 in the discussions of all measures of legal reform 
 Lyndhurst seems to have taken an unusually active 
 part, so that their merits might be as fully canvassed 
 as if Brougham had been present. The results were 
 not favourable to the Ministerial measures, which would 
 not bear the searching scrutiny to which they were sub- 
 jected. One by one they had to be dropped, and, 
 party spirit being what it is, it was natural that their 
 failure should be attributed by their promoters to his 
 " factious " opposition. But he showed the injustice of 
 the charge by his conduct in regard to the Bill for 
 authorising the defence by counsel of prisoners in 
 criminal trials. The Bill was originated in the House 
 of Commons by the Whigs ; and on coming up to the 
 House of Lords, so little disposition to proceed with it 
 was shown by Ministers or their friends, that after it 
 had been allowed to lie dormant for several weeks, 
 Lyndhurst took it up, moved the second reading, 
 and fought it vigorously through its subsequent
 
 1836. TO GOVERNMENT MEASURES. 359 
 
 stages. This he did, careless that he was reproached, 
 even by those who favoured the Bill, with having 
 opposed a similar measure when he was Attorney- 
 General. His answer was, not that he then had many 
 of the most experienced judges and lawyers upon his 
 side, but that, having since gone thoroughly into the 
 question with Lord Brougham and others, he was 
 satisfied that the balance of advantage was in favour 
 of the measure, and that to " withhold from prisoners 
 in any case the aid of counsel was a disgraceful 
 remnant of our criminal code." 
 
 This was the man. If a measure was in his opinion 
 bad, he would oppose it to the uttermost ; if good, 
 he would support it, and give his best aid to make it 
 perfect. Whatever his views might have been before, if 
 fuller experience or reflection had modified them, he 
 was never ashamed to own that he had been wrong, 
 and to "do the right because it was the right, in scorn 
 of consequence." The principle on which his party in 
 the House of Lords and himself acted throughout the 
 session was stated (i8th of August) to be this. When 
 any Bill, Government Bill or not, came up from the 
 Commons, " we have examined it /with care, with 
 industry and attention. If we have found it vicious in 
 principle, we have proposed its rejection ; while, if it 
 has occurred to us, on a careful investigation, that it 
 might be so modified as to answer the purposes for 
 which it was intended, we have carefully directed our 
 efforts and perseverance to the accomplishment of 
 that object." 
 
 But that the same freedom in opposing measures 
 which they thought mischievous should be claimed by 
 the Tories, as the Whigs claimed for themselves when 
 out of office, was intolerable. Opposition for opposi- 
 tion's sake was set down as their only motive, and
 
 360 LORD LYNDHURSTS CHAP. xiv. 
 
 malice aforethought was ascribed by Lord Holland to 
 Lord Lyndhurst as his reason for what he called his 
 " mutilation " of the Government measures. Lyndhurst 
 had no reason to love his political adversaries ; they 
 had not scrupled to attack him whenever they could 
 with every artifice of innuendo, and with unsparing 
 imputations of want of principle. Seeing how ill their 
 measures had fared during the session, not only in the 
 House of Lords, but, through the divisions of their 
 friends, in the Commons, Lord Holland's remark was 
 singularly indiscreet. At once Lyndhurst took up the 
 gauntlet thus rashly thrown down, and on the i8th 
 of August delivered the first of those reviews of the 
 session which did much to shake the Melbourne Ad- 
 ministration. " Lord Holland," says Mr. C. Greville, 
 " who endeavoured to answer it, said he thought it one 
 of the best speeches he had ever heard in Parliament." 
 (Vol. iii. p. 363.) In him Lord Lyndhurst had at least 
 no friendly, if not indeed an austere, judge, for Lord 
 Holland's answer was not a success, but an endeavour 
 bordering on failure. He had said the conduct of the 
 Peers was calculated to excite " disgust " in the 
 country ; but, when Lyndhurst sat down, Lord Holland 
 might well regret that this, which he himself called an 
 " unlucky expression," had furnished the peg on which 
 to hang such an indictment as formed the staple of 
 Lord Lyndhurst's address. 
 
 "Had the charges," he said, "been confined to this 
 House, I should have reposed under them in silence, because 
 all that has passed has passed in your presence ; and I should 
 not have feared, under such circumstances, your judgment 
 with respect to my conduct. But it was obvious that these 
 charges were intended to take a wider range, and to embrace 
 a much more extensive sphere ; and it is therefore I have felt 
 myself called upon to rise, for the purpose of entering upon a
 
 1836. FIRST REVIEW OF THE SESSION. 361 
 
 vindication of my conduct, and to justify to your Lordships 
 and the country the part I have taken in these proceedings." 
 
 He then claimed credit for those who sat with him 
 for moderation and forbearance to the Government. 
 They had made no motions for papers or for inquiry, 
 passed no resolutions of distrust or censure, used none 
 of the ordinary weapons of Parliamentary warfare. 
 They had been ready to pass the Government Bills 
 if they were good Bills, and to mend those that wanted 
 mending. Their course, in short, had been purely de- 
 fensive, and as forbearing as was consistent with their 
 duty to the country. 
 
 " My Lords," he continued, " it is impossible to enter upon 
 a consideration, however general, of the subjects to which I 
 am about to direct your attention, without referring to His 
 Majesty's Speech at the commencement of the present session, 
 and without contrasting the brilliant anticipations contained 
 in that Speech with the sad reality that had since occurred, a 
 result as disproportioned in execution to the expectations 
 which were held out, as the lofty position of the noble Viscount 
 at that period with what he will allow me to style his humble 
 condition at the present moment. Gazing on these two 
 pictures, one is tempted to apply to the noble Viscount that 
 which was said of a predecessor of the noble Viscount in the 
 high office of First Minister of the Crown, who, in the careless 
 confidence of his character, I cannot help thinking, bore some 
 resemblance to his noble successor : 
 
 ' His promises were, as he then was mighty, 
 But his performance, as he is now nothing."' 
 
 The speaker then proceeded to deal in detail with 
 the measures promised in the King's Speech, which 
 the Government had brought in. First in order had 
 come, after a long delay, a Bill for Chancery reform, 
 produced by the Lord Chancellor, which, said Lynd- 
 hurst, he had " too great a respect for his understand- 
 ing to suppose could be his own production. I said
 
 362 LORD LYNDHURSTS CHAP. xiv. 
 
 this measure was produced. Yes, it appeared for a 
 moment, and in a moment it fell from my noble and 
 learned friend's arms, stillborn, on your Lordships' 
 table. . . . Neither Whig nor Tory, Radical nor Con- 
 servative, defended it. ... I pass, therefore, over this 
 measure Requiescat in pace I will not disturb its 
 ashes." 
 
 The Bill for the reconstruction of the Ecclesiastical 
 Courts, a measure of great importance, after being 
 reported on by a Select Committee, had been allowed 
 to slumber. "It would almost seem, from the course 
 pursued with respect to it, as if there had been a dis- 
 position to justify the expression of ' the dormitory ' 
 supposed to have been applied in so courteous a spirit 
 to your Lordships' House by an officer of the Crown, 
 a learned gentleman of great talent and experience in 
 his profession, in a manner not very consistent with 
 his usual prudence and caution." 
 
 The Stannaries Court Bill next came under review. 
 It struck at the independence of the judge of that 
 Court. Lord [Holland had been its chief supporter. 
 After dwelling on the law which had since the Act 
 of Settlement secured the independence of British 
 judges, the speaker proceeded 
 
 This Bill the Bill of a reforming and Whig Government 
 is, I believe, the first exception to the rule. But, my Lords, 
 by whom were the arguments of my noble and learned friends 
 combated. Who was the great defender of this first infringe- 
 ment of so just a principle ? Proh pudor ! Would your 
 Lordships have believed it, if you had not witnessed the 
 scene ? . . . It was, my Lords, the noble baron opposite (Lord 
 Holland) ; he whom I have always been accustomed to regard 
 as a sort of concentration of Whig liberty and constitutional 
 principle. ... So much, then, as to this part of the Speech 
 from the Throne. There is, in the first place, so far as the 
 Court of Chancery is concerned, a measure that has proved
 
 1836. FIRST REVIEW OF THE SESSION. 363 
 
 a miserable abortion. With respect to the Ecclesiastical 
 Courts Bill, a measure abandoned ; and as to this last Bill, 
 a violation of an important principle which for more than a 
 century has been considered sacred. 
 
 The Irish Municipal Corporation Bill, the News- 
 paper Stamps Bill, the Irish Tithes Bill, the Charitable 
 Trusts Bill, were then treated in detail, and the 
 reasons for their failure repeated. " These are a few," 
 said the speaker, " and I state them merely as a sample 
 of those measures which the noble Baron has de- 
 nounced and upon which he appeals to the country. 
 I join him in such appeal, and look to the issue 
 with anticipated triumph. As a part of the great 
 Council of the nation, as representing its best interests, 
 and as accountable to it for the manner in which we 
 discharge our high duties, we accept his challenge. 
 . . . We may have erred, but our aim at least has been 
 just, and great and noble, and corresponding to the 
 position which I trust we shall long hold in the hearts 
 of the nation." 
 
 But Lord Lyndhurst had not yet done with his 
 catalogue of the Government failures. He went on to 
 mention several other Bills which they had brought 
 up to certain stages, and then abandoned in order to 
 prevent a rupture among their own supporters. " And 
 this, my Lords," he continued, 
 
 " is a Government ! Was there ever, in the history of this 
 country, a body of men who would have condescended so low 
 as to attempt to carry on the government under such circum- 
 stances ? In this House they are utterly powerless ; they can 
 effect nothing. We on this side of the House are obliged to 
 perform the duties of government for them. In the other House 
 of Parliament, measures which they themselves have advised 
 and prepared, and brought forward, involving, as they tell us, 
 the most important interests of the country, they without 
 scruple tamely abandon at the dictation of any section of
 
 364 REVIEW OF THE SESSION. CHAP. xiv. 
 
 their supporters. Yet, thus disgraced and trampled upon, they 
 still condescend to hold the reins of government. Proud 
 men, eminent statesmen, distinguished and high-minded 
 rulers ! " 
 
 He then turned to review their policy in Spain, 
 which he contended had rendered us odious to that 
 country and contemptible to the rest of the world, and 
 concluded thus 
 
 In former times, my Lords, amid such defeats, and unable 
 to carry those measures which he considered essential and 
 necessary, a Minister would have thought that he had only one 
 course to pursue. These are antiquated notions everything 
 has changed. This fastidious delicacy forms no part of the 
 character of the noble Viscount. He has told us, and his 
 acts correspond with his assertions, that, notwithstanding the 
 insubordination which prevails around him, in spite of the 
 mutinous and sullen temper of his crew, he will stick to the 
 vessel while a single plank remains afloat. Let me, however, 
 as a friendly adviser of the noble Viscount, recommend him 
 to get her as speedily as possible into still water. " Fortiter 
 occupa portum." 
 
 Let the noble Viscount look to the empty benches around 
 him. 
 
 "... Nonne vides, ut nudum remigio latus, . . . ac sine funibus 
 vix durare carinae possint imperiosius asquor ? " 
 
 After all, there is something in the efforts and exertions of 
 the noble Viscount not altogether unamusing, It is impossible, 
 under any circumstances, not to respect 
 
 "A brave man struggling in the storms of fate." 
 May a part, at least, of what follows be averted : 
 " And greatly falling with a falling state." 
 
 My consolation is, that whatever be the disposition of the 
 noble Viscount, he has not sufficient strength, though his locks, 
 I believe, are yet unshorn, to pull down the pillars of the 
 building, and involve the whole in his ruin. I trust it will long 
 survive his fall.
 
 1836. LORD MELBOURNE'S REPLY. 365 
 
 The speech had served its purpose as a manifesto 
 and a defence, and it therefore concluded with a merely 
 formal motion for a return of the Bills of the session 
 which had been passed, withdrawn or rejected. This 
 furnished an obvious taunt to Lord Melbourne in his 
 reply, that such an indictment of his Ministry ought to 
 have been followed by an address to the King to 
 remove them from his councils. Deeply stung by its 
 truth, no less than by the terrible force with which 
 it had been urged, the opening sentences of Lord 
 Melbourne's speech are charged with a bitterness, if 
 not indeed discourtesy, little in accordance with his 
 usual fine temper and genial disposition. 
 
 " I readily admit," he said, " the great powers and elo- 
 quence possessed by the noble and learned Lord opposite 
 his clearness in argument and his dexterity in sarcasm cannot 
 be denied ; and if the noble and learned Lord will be satisfied 
 with a compliment confined strictly to his abilities, I am ready 
 to render that homage to him But, my Lords, ability is not 
 everything propriety of conduct the verecundia should also 
 be combined with the ingenium, to make a great man and a 
 statesman, and not a man dura frontis, perdita aiidada. The 
 noble and learned Lord has referred in the course of his speech 
 to many matters in history, quoted Shakespeare, and quoted 
 the particulars of a great number of statesmen of former times, 
 to whom he is pleased to say that I bear some resemblance. I 
 beg in return to refer him to what was once said by the Earl 
 of Bristol of another great statesman of former times (the 
 Earl of Strafford), to whom, I think, the noble and learned 
 Lord might not inaptly be compared. 'The malignity of 
 his practices was hugely aggravated by his vast talents, 
 whereof God had given him the use, but the devil the 
 application.' " * 
 
 1 This was said by Lord Digby, in his speech in the House of Lords against 
 Lord Strafford 's Bill of Attainder. We give the whole passage. "The name 
 of the Earl of Strafford is a name of hatred in the present age by his practices, 
 and fit to be made a terror to future ages by his punishment. I am still the same 
 in my opinions and affections as to the Earl of Strafford. I believe him to be the
 
 366 THE DUKE OF WELLINGTON. CHAP. xiv. 
 
 Both Lord Holland and Lord Melbourne com- 
 plained almost querulously of the bitterness of Lord 
 Lyndhurst's invectives ; but it would be impossible to 
 find in any of his speeches a retort so unmannerly as 
 this. The Duke of Wellington, who followed Lord 
 Melbourne, remarked that they "appeared totally to 
 have forgotten the harsh terms which had been used 
 by them towards " Lord Lyndhurst, and how long his 
 noble and learned friend had been accustomed "to 
 hear hard language levelled against himself and those 
 with whom he acted "in the House of Lords. The 
 Duke then dealt with the taunt that his party had not 
 ventured on an Address to the King to obtain Lord 
 Melbourne's and his colleagues' removal, adding some 
 weighty words in expression of a principle which every 
 constitutional Minister ought to bear in mind. 
 
 " If," he said, " the noble Viscount would look at the manner 
 in which they were appointed to office, if he would look at the 
 whole history of the last twelve months, I think he would find 
 sufficient reason for our not having adopted that course of pro- 
 ceeding. ... I would take the liberty," he added, "to recom- 
 mend the noble Viscount to consider himself not as the Minis- 
 ter of a democratic body in another place, but as the Minister 
 of a Sovereign in a limited monarchy, in a country great in 
 point of extent, great in its possessions, and in the various in- 
 terests which it comprises ; and that, considering this, he should 
 in future concoct such measures as he has reason to think may 
 pass with the approval and suit the general interests of all, 
 meet the good-will of all, and not of one particular party, in 
 one particular place only. If he will but follow that course 
 for some little time, he will find no difficulty in conducting 
 the business of the government in this House, but will find every 
 
 most dangerous minister, the most insupportable to free subjects, that can be 
 charactered. I believe his practices in themselves as high, as tyrannical, as any 
 subject ever ventured upon, and the malignity of them highly aggravated by these 
 rare qualities of his, whereof God has given him the use, but the devil the 
 application." (Weldon's Memoirs, London, 1700, p. 57.)
 
 1836. LYND HURST AND MELBOURNE. 367 
 
 facility afforded him in forwarding his measures." (Hansard, 
 vol. xxxv. 1311.) 
 
 It has been reported that Lord Melbourne, on some 
 one expressing surprise at his cordiality towards Lord 
 Brougham, when in the later years of his ministry 
 he had reason indeed to complain of the dura fronsy. 
 the perdita audacia of his former Chancellor, replied, 
 " You must have a very mean opinion of politicians,' 
 if you think that political quarrels or political h 
 necessities are to poison all their relations in private^ 
 life." The feeling thus expressed is sound and 
 manly. Still one reads with some surprise Lord 
 Campbell's statement that, when the debate was over, 
 " the desperate audacity of the noble and learned 
 Lord [Lyndhurst] was converted into a good-humoured 
 smile, and, going over to Lord Melbourne, they 
 laughed and joked together, both pleased with them- 
 selves, thinking that in their rencontre each had tilted 
 to the admiration of the bystanders." Incredulity as 
 to Lord Campbell's knowledge of their thoughts is 
 inevitably extended to the fact he professes to record. 
 Self-respect would keep the kindliest of men from 
 acting as he says these oratorical gladiators acted. 
 But the statement is moreover all the more impro- 
 bable, seeing that, immediately after the debate ended, 
 a fresh and very hot debate on the Municipal Elections 
 Bill was opened by Lord Lyndhurst, in which Lord 
 Melbourne took part and was defeated, by which 
 another paragraph was added to the Ministerial 
 chapter of accidents. 
 
 In the January of this year Lord Lyndhurst lost 
 his mother, at the great age of 91. To the end of her 
 days she retained her memory and intellect unimpaired, 
 and even her personal beauty. The mutual love of 
 parent and son burned steadily to the last she proud
 
 LORD LYNDHURST IN PARIS. CHAP. xiv. 
 
 of his triumphs, and grateful for his unfailing devotion ; 
 he turning to her with the tenderness and reverence 
 which she had inspired in him from childhood upwards. 
 
 Besides the severe political fatigues of the session, 
 Lord Lyndhurst had taken a large share of the work of 
 appeals in the House of Lords as well as of the business 
 of the Privy Council. He had thus well earned a 
 holiday, and he sought it in Paris, where he was always 
 happy. He went there in September 1836, and re- 
 mained till the middle of January. Mr. C. Greville, 
 who met him there, mentions that Lyndhurst told him 
 he had never passed such an agreeable time. " Not a 
 moment of ennui; he had become acquainted with a 
 host of remarkable people of all sorts, and the littera- 
 teurs, such as Victor Hugo, Balzac, &c., the latter of 
 whom he says is a very agreeable man. He [Balzac] 
 told me ' Le Pere Goriot ' is a true story, and that 
 since its publication he had become acquainted with 
 some more circumstances which would have made it 
 still more striking" (vol. iii. p. 378). Lyndhurst also 
 told Mr. Greville, that he should not "go on" in the 
 House of Lords this year (1837) as he had done in 
 the last that he had been induced by circumstances 
 and some little excitement to take a more prominent 
 part than usual, but that he did not see what he got 
 by it but abuse. " I thought I should not hear any 
 of the abuse that was poured upon me when I came 
 here, and got out of the reach of the English news- 
 papers ; but, on the contrary, I find it all concentrated 
 in Galignani." 
 
 While in Paris he received the following letter 
 from the Duke of Wellington 
 
 Walmer Castle, October 15, 1836. 
 
 My dear Lord Lyndhurst, As I understand that Brad- 
 .shawe is going to Paris, I avail myself of this opportunity
 
 1836. LETTER FROM DUKE OF WELLINGTON. 369 
 
 of sending you a glass such as that in my possession, which 
 you liked. The two together, in the form of a circle, make a 
 glass of the strength that you use in general. Separately, each 
 is of half that strength, and will be found useful in looking at 
 pictures, or some countenances across the House of Lords. 
 
 I have nothing new to tell you. It is quite obvious that 
 Parliament will not meet till the usual time in February. I 
 believe that we in the House of Lords must follow the same 
 course as last year : that is to say, confine ourselves to 
 legislation ; to originate nothing on our side of the House, but 
 to allow nothing to pass which shall be thought inconsistent 
 with principle, or with the interests of the country. 
 
 I should think that Lord Melbourne would be disposed to 
 keep the House of Lords in a state of inaction as long as 
 possible. But if Brougham should appear among us, it is not 
 probable that he will relish or will permit this state of tran- 
 quillity. There are some measures which may be brought 
 fonvard immediately the Insolvent Debtors' Bill, the Church 
 Regulation Bills, and the Charity Regulation Bill. 
 
 You will have seen Brougham's correspondence with the 
 corporation of Edinburgh upon ah invitation to dine with 
 them, and you will judge for yourself of the probability of his 
 being present during the next session. I see that it is 
 announced in this day's paper that he is on his way to 
 London from Brougham Hall. 
 
 However, whatever may be the course adopted by him, I 
 venture to give you my opinion that you ought to be in 
 England at an early period. You have established yourself 
 not only as the first speaker in the House of Lords, but as the 
 first in your profession, whether in a court of law or of equity, 
 or in the House of Lords. It is a great satisfaction to your 
 friends and to the public at large, to feel that, as long as you 
 can attend to public business, no great and manifest injury 
 can be done to any man by decisions partial, unjust, or 
 contrary to law. I hope that you will not lose sight of this 
 position, so honourable to your character and so important to 
 the country in the circumstances in which it is placed ; that 
 you will keep up your customary relations with the Bar ; and 
 that, above all, you will not be absent from Parliament at the 
 commencement of the sessions. If there should be no other 
 
 2 B
 
 370 LYNDHURST AND WELLINGTON. CHAP. xiv. 
 
 business there will be that of appeals. Indeed, there is one 
 upon which your presence will be necessary when the 
 judgment will be given. 
 
 I have taken the liberty of adverting to these points, as it 
 appeared when you were here that you were thinking of remain- 
 ing abroad. Lady Burghersh and Georgina de Ros are still here. 
 
 Lady Salisbury went away a fortnight ago. We have 
 had here for the last week Lord St. Vincent and Miss Jervis. 
 Believe me, ever yours most sincerely, 
 
 (Signed) WELLINGTON. 
 
 This letter furnishes the best of all answers to the 
 charge against the Duke and his friend of having 
 been actuated by factious motives in their line of 
 policy during the previous session, confirming as it 
 does what Lord Lyndhurst in his review of the 
 session had defined that policy to be. It is moreover 
 specially interesting as showing what the Duke con- 
 ceived to be the unique position, both as judge and as 
 statesman, which Lord Lyndhurst had made for himself 
 in general estimation. 
 
 Amid the manifold distractions of Paris Lord 
 Lyndhurst took care to keep well t posted up in all 
 that was going on in England. His friend Mr. Francis 
 Barlow fed him with such of the political news of the 
 day as the newspapers did not supply. In answer to 
 one of Mr. Barlow's bulletins he wrote the following 
 letter, without date as usual, but, as the reference to 
 the Duke of Wellington's letter shows, later in the 
 year 1836. 
 
 My dear Barlow, Many thanks for your nouvelles d 
 la main. They put me au fait as to the state of things 
 admirably. Pray continue them. Any fragments will be 
 acceptable. As I have no country house, and as I hate 
 a watering-place, and cannot bear the winter smoke of 
 London, I don't see why I am not as well at Paris as else- 
 where. I am as near to London as Wharncliffe and as many
 
 1836. LETTER FROM LORD BROUGHAM. 371 
 
 other of our Conservative leaders, and will come, if seriously 
 wanted, at a moment's warning. What can I say more ? 
 But I find I am proscribed by the Irish Association, and this 
 is adopted with great glee by the Chronicle. N'importe ! 
 If the cause triumphs, I am totally indifferent about myself. 
 But things at this distance appear to be getting serious. It 
 is impossible that a Government can go on for any time 
 independently with such a rival Parliament as this Associa- 
 tion. It must either adopt and try to use it, or be destroyed 
 by it. I suppose, notwithstanding what Ebrington has said, 
 there will be a dissolution. I wish you would sift this well. I 
 have no objection to bring in the Bill you mention, or do any 
 other useful act in my power. You may proceed upon this, 
 getting together all the necessary information. The Duke 
 thinks (private) that we should do as the last session 
 confine ourselves to legislation. Here they hope we shall 
 attack Palmerston all parties. Ever yours, 
 
 (Signed) LYNDHURST. 
 
 A letter from Lord Brougham from Worthing, 
 (aoth December) gave warning note that, having 
 recovered from the illness which had for many months 
 confined him to Westmoreland, he might be expected, 
 as the Duke of Wellington had predicted, to throw 
 the House of Lords into a state of ferment in the 
 coming session. 
 
 My dear L., I am extremely obliged to you for your 
 friendly inquiries and congratulations. In fact, I am as well 
 as ever I was in my life, if not better. But I don't quite 
 relish the prospect of being shut up in the mornings hearing 
 appeals, which I suppose will be our fate when Parliament 
 meets, to say nothing of the trouble I shall have with you 
 Conservative gentry in the evenings. 
 
 The Prisoners Counsel Bill is differently talked of by 
 different persons. Denman considers that it has not length- 
 ened the sessions above two days, which would only be 
 twenty-four in the year. However, were it more, that is no 
 reason against the measure, for, if necessary for justice, the 
 country is bound to find time, that is, judges, and if not 
 
 2 B 2
 
 372 LORD BROUGHAM. CHAP. xiv. 
 
 necessary, it is wrong on that score. But there is a general 
 belief and, I think from all I can learn, a well-grounded one, 
 that it has led to acquittals in no small number against the 
 truth of the case. This is the fault, however, not of the Bill, 
 but of there being no counsel for the prosecution. The judge 
 cannot (if he chose) do the business of the prosecutor, and he 
 ought not to choose to place himself in so odious a position. 
 Though the Bill had never passed, I should have said a pro- 
 secution without counsel ought not to be, but the Bill makes it 
 quite clear something must be done to remedy this glaring 
 defect. 
 
 In my opinion they should have began with the Central 
 Court, and might have done so without a general measure in 
 the first instance. I need hardly add, after what I have said 
 that there has been no instance of wrong conviction owing to 
 the Bill. It has been all the other way, which is the lesser 
 evil by much. 
 
 I envy you Paris, and did so still more than I now do, 
 while we were sitting at the Privy Council on Indian and 
 Consistorial cases, some of which lasted three days. We had 
 three weeks of it, often from ten to near six, and scarcely one 
 less than seven hours. Nothing can be more satisfactory than 
 the hearing by four, and giving in rotation written j udgments 
 on all the points, whether we affirm or reverse ; but it is 
 hardish work, especially compared with the former course of 
 the court, which I have known to be terminer, rather than 
 oyer y especially of late times. . . . 
 
 Yours ever sincerely, 
 
 H. B. 
 
 Next session found Brougham at his post, vexing 
 the soul of his old Whig friends, but ready as ever to 
 break a lance with Lord Lyndhurst in honourable 
 encounter when their views happened to clash, as they 
 very often did.
 
 ( 373 ) 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 Irish Municipal Corporations Bill Opposed by Lord Lyndhurst Attack 
 by Mr. Sheil Lord Lyndhurst's answer Death of William IV. 
 Accession of Queen Victoria Lord Lyndhurst and Mr. Disraeli 
 Marries Miss Goldsmith Speech on Juvenile Offenders Bill Visit 
 of his sister to England Second Review of the Session Fall of 
 Melbourne Ministry Lyndhurst again becomes Chancellor. 
 
 THROUGHOUT the session of 1837, Lord Lyndhurst's 
 work was chiefly judicial. There was little in the Bills 
 brought up from the Commons to engage his atten- 
 tion. The Cabinet, as usual, was not lucky with its 
 measures. Whether through mismanagement, or the 
 growing difficulty of expediting business in the House 
 of Commons, retarded as it was by the useless talk 
 which even then threatened to bring that assembly 
 into discredit, most of them were either dropped, or 
 sent up so late to the House of Lords that their 
 Lordships refused to let them proceed. Several Bills, 
 however, for the reform of the criminal law were 
 brought up, the main objects of which were warmly 
 approved by Lord Lyndhurst. But as sent up 
 from the Commons, they were full of flaws both of 
 omission and inconsistency, which he exposed in the 
 debate on the second reading with convincing clear- 
 ness. In Committee he spared no pains to remedy 
 these defects, which, but for his close scrutiny and legal 
 knowledge, might have escaped notice, and to bring 
 the Bills into a shape in which they could be passed 
 with credit. It could scarcely have been pleasant, how- 
 ever, to the Attorney-General to have the crudity of his
 
 374 LORD BROUGHAM CHAP. xv. 
 
 proposed legislation pointed out an office which it 
 was Lord Lyndhurst's frequent duty at other times to 
 perform and as that official was Sir John Campbell, 
 hence probably the peculiar bitterness with which he 
 speaks of Lord Lyndhurst's action at this period. 
 
 Lord Brougham, who by this time knew that he had 
 been thrown over by his Whig friends, now became, 
 according to Lord Campbell, Lord Lyndhurst's tool, 
 urged on by him to do what would be annoying to 
 the Government, while he himself remained silent, 
 befooling Brougham with the idea that he exercised a 
 paramount influence over Lyndhurst's own mind, and 
 that Lyndhurst was prepared to play a secondary part 
 to him in the House of Lords ! The statement is made 
 without a shadow of warrant. That Lyndhurst acquired 
 great ascendency over Brougham's mind is certain ; 
 but it was the ascendency which one man of genius 
 insensibly acquires over another by sheer force of 
 intellect and of character. No effort on Lyndhurst's 
 part was needed to establish or maintain it, and none 
 was exerted. On the other hand, Lyndhurst liked 
 Brougham as a friend, he admired his versatility, his 
 enormous energy, the rhetorical fire of his speeches, 
 and would not silently hear him disparaged ; but 
 he was too fully alive to his want of prudence, of 
 dignity and self-control, to place himself in any matter 
 under his guidance. Brougham on his part had 
 formed too high an estimate of Lyndhurst's powers 
 to dream of becoming his leader, and Lyndhurst 
 was incapable of the meanness attributed to him by 
 Campbell, of fostering such a delusion. On several 
 occasions this session they were found in conflict, and 
 their only agreement was in reference to certain legal 
 reforms. 
 
 Brougham, no doubt, became a thorn in the side
 
 1837. AND LORD LYNDHURST. 375 
 
 of the men who he conceived had treated him un- 
 fairly, but he needed no instigation beyond his own 
 sense of wrong ; neither was Lyndhurst the man to 
 court such an auxiliary in the task of showing up the 
 inefficiency of the Government, a task to which he 
 knew himself to be fully equal single handed. But 
 Lord Campbell, eager to disparage both men whenever 
 he can, gratuitously accuses them of entering into an 
 alliance, which existed only in his own imagination. 
 
 When Lord Lyndhurst wished to strike a blow at 
 the Ministry he trusted not to others, but to himself. 
 He showed this notably in a speech (23rd of June) on 
 the state of public business, where he renewed his 
 charge of last session against the Ministry, for delay- 
 ing most of their measures till a period of the session 
 when it was impossible to get them passed, and for 
 dropping others that ought to have been pressed. 
 Instead of joining in this censure, however, Lord 
 Brougham took up wholly different ground, blaming 
 the House of Commons as the cause of all obstruction 
 a House without organisation, without clear aims, 
 and compounded on the Liberal side of discordant 
 elements, which made decisive action on the part of 
 the Ministry impossible. 
 
 Still more notably was it shown in Lord Lynd- 
 hurst's speech on the Irish Municipal Corporations Bill 
 (gth of June), when it came up from the Commons in 
 substantially the same form as the Bill of the previous 
 year. His defeat of that measure had naturally roused 
 a feeling of the bitterest rancour in the breasts of 
 O'Connell and his party. They exhausted all the 
 epithets in their copious vocabulary of abuse, whenever 
 his name was introduced, and his allusion to the 
 alien element in the Irish population furnished a 
 theme on which they were never weary of descanting.
 
 376 MR. SHEWS ATTACK. CHAP. xv. 
 
 When the Bill of this session was under discussion 
 in the House of Commons (23rd of February) Lord 
 Lyndhurst, although well aware that he would be 
 savagely attacked by Mr. Lalor Sheil, took a place 
 below the bar to listen to his assailant. His presence 
 lent additional fire to the speaker's rhetorical fervour, 
 and Mr. Sheil made what has always been considered 
 the greatest of his speeches. The incident is thus 
 very graphically described by one who was present. 
 
 " Lord Lyndhurst was pretty sure he would be honoured 
 with full notice by the speaker ; but it was not his habit to 
 shrink from any attack or to be disconcerted by any abuse. 
 In a short time it was evident that he was to be singled out 
 for attack. Mr. Sheil worked himself up to his full fury, 
 gesticulating, foaming, screeching in his loudest and shrillest 
 tones ; he denounced the man, pointing full at him, seated 
 below the bar, as he did so, who had dared to describe the 
 Irish as aliens in blood, in language, and in religion. The scene 
 that followed was most extraordinary. A universal howl of 
 execration rose from the Ministerial benches as all eyes turned 
 in the direction of Sheil's finger. The more excitable members 
 started to their feet, and for an instant it seemed as if they 
 would precipitate themselves upon the object of their fury. 
 He, in the meantime, sat through the storm unmoved ; with 
 steady eye and unaltered mien he gazed on the howling crowd 
 in front of him. And the tumult was only momentary. In a 
 short time the remembrance of who they were, and where 
 they were, did its work ; and, though the remainder of Mr. 
 Sheil's speech was continued in the same tone, and the cheers 
 of his partizans were vehement as well as incessant, there 
 was no further outburst of feeling or any occasion to call for 
 the interposition of the Speaker." (Morning 1 Herald, I3th of 
 October, 1863.) 
 
 Lord Lyndhurst's answer to this philippic was a 
 speech against the Bill, when it came up to the House 
 of Lords, in which he showed he had not forgotten
 
 1837. IRISH MUNICIPAL REFORM BILL. 377 
 
 the way in which the Ministerial benches had cheered 
 their Irish ally. 
 
 " What, my Lords," he said, " is the situation in which His 
 Majesty's Ministers stand ? In no former period of our history 
 has the Government of this country been placed in such a 
 position. To whom do they look for support ? To the 
 enemies of the Protestant Establishment. In Ireland their 
 supporters are composed of the declared enemies of the 
 Protestant Establishment. In England the political dissenters 
 are their mainstay and support. Deprive them of the aid of 
 the one or of the other, and what becomes of the Govern- 
 ment ? . . . My Lords, where is this to stop ? Concession, 
 we know, leads to still further concession, according to the 
 natural course of events. Give these men a part of the spoils 
 of the Church yield to them what they ask for now, and 
 you encourage them to make further demands. When will 
 the noble Viscount pause in his downward career ? This is 
 no speculation. These reasonings are generally speculative ; 
 but, unfortunately, this is matter of fact. What are we told 
 by those persons ? They say they will receive all you offer, 
 but that they will take it only as an instalment, and that they 
 will never cease agitating that they will never cease con- 
 vulsing the Empire, until they strip the National Church of 
 its property. . . . What are the supporters of the Government 
 asking for now ? The prostration of the Church of Ireland. 
 This Bill conceded to them, they gain that object. What is 
 their next demand ? They tell you that you must repeal the 
 Union." 1 (Hansard, vol. xxxviii. 1315.) 
 
 In a condensed form, Lord Lyndhurst repeated 
 his argument against the Bill of the previous session, 
 and with the same result. The House by a majority of 
 eighty-six refused to allow it to go into Committee. 
 
 1 Any one who is curious to see the licence Lord Campbell took in garbling 
 ostensible quotations from Hansard, may find this well illustrated by comparing 
 the whole of this passage in Hansard with the professed quotation given on p. 118 
 of his ' Life of Lyndhurst.' One addition he makes is of incredible audacity. He 
 makes Lyndhurst say: "It seems, my Lords, that we Protestant Englishmen 
 are to be governed by those who are aliens in blood, and language, and religion." 
 Neither these words, nor anything like them, are to be found in Hansard.
 
 37^ ACCESSION OF QUEEN VICTORIA. CHAP. xv. 
 
 The Bill was again defeated in the two following 
 sessions, and only passed in 1840, after it had under- 
 gone material modifications in the direction indicated 
 by Lord Lyndhurst. 
 
 The session came to a close earlier than usual, in 
 consequence of the death of King William the Fourth, 
 on the 2Oth of June. Lord Lyndhurst was among the 
 members of the Privy Council summoned to attend 
 the young Queen Victoria's first Council the same 
 day. 
 
 " I accompanied him," Mr. Disraeli wrote in the general 
 preface to his works (1870), "to Kensington Palace, when on 
 the accession of the Queen, the Peers and Privy Councillors, 
 and chief personages of the realm, pledged their fealty to their 
 new Sovereign. He was greatly affected by the unusual 
 scene : a youthful maiden, receiving the homage of her subjects, 
 most of them illustrious, in a palace, in a garden, and all with 
 a sweet and natural dignity. He gave me, as we drove home, 
 an animated picture of what had occurred in the Presence 
 Chamber, marked by all that penetrating observation and 
 happy terseness of description which distinguished him. 
 Eight years afterwards, with my memory still under the 
 influence of his effective narrative, I reproduced the scene in 
 ' Sibyl,' and I feel sure it may be referred to for its historical 
 accuracy." x 
 
 Lord Lyndhurst had been among the first to dis- 
 cern the promise of a brilliant future in the young 
 Disraeli, whose originality, independence and courage 
 had a special charm for him. It was to him that Mr. 
 Disraeli's first political essay, ' A Vindication of the 
 English Constitution,' published in 1835, was ad- 
 dressed. The young novelist was always a welcome 
 visitor at his house, and when the celebrated ' Runny- 
 mede Letters' appeared in the Times, in 1836, it was 
 commonly said that they were the joint production of 
 
 1 The description referred to occurs in the 6th chapter of the first book.
 
 1837. MR. DISRAELI. 379 
 
 the ex-Chancellor and the author of ' Vivian Grey/ 
 In this common report was true to its proverbial 
 character. Neither of the men was of the kind to 
 court assistance in such handicraft. Lord Lyndhurst 
 did his best to help Mr. Disraeli to get into Parlia- 
 ment, which after several disappointments was ac- 
 complished in 1837. In that year 'Venetia' was 
 dedicated to him by his young friend as a " record of 
 his regard and affection," with the hope that a time 
 might come when in its "pages he might find " some 
 relaxation from the cares, and some distraction from 
 the sorrows of existence," words which seem to have 
 reference to a recent grief for the death of Lord 
 Lyndhurst's second daughter Susan, who had died 
 of consumption, after a short illness, some months 
 before. 
 
 The regard and affection of the younger for the 
 veteran statesman, of whom he speaks as one of the two 
 " best friends he ever had," grew as the years went on, 
 and after Lord Lyndhurst's death they found eloquent 
 expression in the preface already quoted. "The 
 world," he said, " has recognised the political courage, 
 the versatile ability, and the masculine eloquence of 
 Lord Lyndhurst ; but his intimates only were ac- 
 quainted with the tenderness of his disposition, the 
 sweetness of his temper, and the playfulness of his 
 bright and airy spirit." Lord Lyndhurst read with 
 avidity all that Mr. Disraeli wrote, and we find him 
 writing from Paris in January 1838 to his friend Mr. 
 Barlow, to beg that ' Henrietta Temple,' which had 
 just appeared, might be sent to him. 
 
 At the close of the session he had gone for his 
 usual holiday to Paris. Here he was introduced to 
 Georgiana, daughter of Louis Goldsmith, Esq., to 
 whom, after a short interval, he was married on the
 
 380 MARRIES MISS GOLDSMITH, CHAP, xv. 
 
 5th of August. Of this union, it is only necessary to 
 say, that it was one of unbroken happiness. 1 
 
 Lord Lyndhurst was back in his place in the autumn 
 session, which was held after the general election 
 consequent on the accession of the Sovereign, and 
 did eminent service in moulding into shape a Bill for 
 the abolishment of imprisonment for debt, which he 
 showed had been sent up from the Commons, "so 
 full of imperfections and defects that he would not 
 wear out their Lordships' patience in attempting to go 
 through them." Lord Brougham, an eager advocate 
 for a change in the existing law, paid a tribute to the 
 "candour and fairness" with which Lord Lyndhurst's 
 objections to the details of the Bill had been urged, and 
 concurred in the majority of them. Between them 
 the measure was ultimately worked into satisfactory 
 form. The Bill was one of Sir John Campbell's. 2 
 
 During the session of 1838 Lord Lyndhurst spoke 
 but little. His chief efforts were directed to legal 
 reform in the interests of children and women, to 
 both of whom he was always tender. In supporting 
 the Juvenile Offenders Bill, he took occasion to call 
 attention to the cruel treatment of young children 
 in reformatories which had lately come out before a 
 Government Committee. He instanced the case of a 
 girl of ten shut up for three successive years in a cell, 
 as he said, " No larger than that table." As to the 
 exercise allowed her, such as it was, he said 
 
 1 One child was born of this marriage, the Honourable Georgiana Susan, now 
 wife of Sir Charles Du Cane. Of the first marriage two daughters only survived : 
 the Honourable Sarah Elizabeth, married to Henry John Selwin, Esq., and who 
 died in 1865 ; and the Honourable Sophia Clarence, still living, married to 
 Hamilton Beckett, Esq. An only son by the first marriage died in childhood. 
 
 2 Was this the reason why he makes a reference to this Bill ('Lyndhurst's 
 Life,' p. Il8) a vehicle for introducing anew the wretched falsehood about the 
 executions in Lyndhurst's house, and talking of his dread of personal incon- 
 venience from some of its provisions ? Lord Lyndhurst's speech on the Bill is 
 conclusive against the accuracy of Campbell's whole statement.
 
 1838. SPEECH ON JUVENILE OFFENDERS BILL. 381 
 
 Merely putting one leg before the other was not sufficient 
 for a child. The exercise ought to be of every kind and 
 variety ; every part of the body ought to be brought into 
 activity ; and at the same time the mind should be employed 
 to render the exercise beneficial. 
 
 Then as to the confinement 
 
 In order that the child might derive no instruction from 
 without, the window-cills were so high as to prevent her from 
 looking out ; and there was that child kept for twenty-one 
 hours out of the twenty-four, not kept there for punishment, 
 but for the reformation of her morals and the improvement of 
 her mind. 
 
 He then diverged into an illustration of a kind 
 in which he rarely indulged, but which given with the 
 rich sonorous tender cadence of voice, which he had 
 eminently at command, must have produced a deep 
 impression. 
 
 There was a beautiful passage of a French author, Bernardin 
 de St. Pierre, in which he spoke of the impression produced by 
 external objects on the mind of a child, and of the manner 
 in which the young mind gradually expanded under the 
 influence of those impressions ; but here they acted on the 
 principle of shutting out all external sources of improvement 
 from the mind of the child, and of barbarising and stupefying its 
 mind. He hoped therefore they should be told, that a system 
 of this kind was not to be established under this Bill. The 
 beautiful lines of their great epic poet afforded almost a literal 
 description of the situation of that child placed under the 
 cruelties of that system. 
 
 "Thus with the year 
 Seasons return ; but not to me returns 
 Day, or the sweet approach of eve or morn, 
 Or sight of vernal bloom, or summer's rose, 
 Or flocks, or herds, or human face divine ; 
 But cloud instead, and ever-during dark 
 Surrounds me, from the cheerful ways of men 
 Cut off, and for the book of knowledge fair 
 Presented with a universal blank 
 Of Nature's works, to me expunged and rased."
 
 382 CUSTODY OF INFANTS BILL. CHAP. xv. 
 
 The same evening (3Oth July) he brought in a 
 Bill to regulate the Custody of Infants, in a speech in 
 which he urged with great effect the hardship of the 
 existing law, which excluded a wife separated from 
 her husband, no matter how infamous that husband's 
 conduct might be, from access to the children of their 
 marriage except by permission of the husband. The 
 Bill had been keenly contested in the Lower House, 
 but it had been carried there by large majorities. It 
 did no more] than place it in the power of the court, 
 on a review of all the circumstances, to say whether or 
 not the mother should not have reasonable access to 
 her children. Strangely enough, the Bill was strenu- 
 ously opposed by Lord Brougham. There were only 
 twenty-one peers in the House when the division 
 was taken, and of these eleven voted against it. 
 Thus this excellent Bill was lost for the session, but 
 it became law the following year. 
 
 The late summer and autumn were spent by Lord 
 Lyndhurst and his family at Baden-Baden. In their 
 absence his favourite sister, Mrs. Greene, arrived in 
 England from America, on her way to Italy with an 
 invalid daughter. A letter announcing her intention 
 had miscarried, and on her arrival in November at the 
 old house in George Street, there was no one but the 
 housekeeper to receive her. She hurried on to Paris, 
 warned against delay by the severity of the weather. 
 Her disappointment was not greater than her brother's, 
 who wrote immediately on hearing of her arrival in 
 Europe. 
 
 Baden-Baden, November 17, 1838. 
 
 My dearest Sister, I hope this may reach you before 
 you leave Paris. I have enclosed it to Mr. Goldsmith, my 
 wife's father, who will find you out, if you should still be in 
 Paris, upon its arrival. 
 
 I can't describe to you how much we have lamented our
 
 1838. MRS. GREENE. 383 
 
 absence from England at the time of your visit. To have 
 received you after so long a separation upon the spot where 
 we passed together so many of our early years, would have 
 been to Mary [his sister, Miss Copley] and myself the highest 
 possible gratification. Nothing could have been more un- 
 fortunate than our absence. We heard only last night, by 
 a letter from Mr. Winslow, of your arrival in Europe, and 
 anxious as we were to see you, we deeply lament the cause 
 of your journey. It was our intention to have passed the 
 winter in Italy, but the distance has prevented, as I must 
 be back soon after Christmas. If you should go by the 
 Tyrol, Baden will not be out of the way ; but I fear you will 
 prefer hastening to the South. In that case we must delay 
 till your return the happiness we shall enjoy in meeting you. 
 I have learnt much of Italy, and there is no place that will 
 answer your object satisfactorily north of Naples. 
 
 Mrs. Greene did not take the route of the Tyrol, 
 and had to postpone till the following spring the 
 pleasure which both had so fondly anticipated. The 
 Lyndhurst family lingered on at Baden-Baden, from 
 which Lord Lyndhurst wrote (2ist of November) to 
 his friend Mr. Barlow. 
 
 My dear Barlow, Your letter was as food to the hungry, 
 as the refreshing fountain to the thirsty traveller. Pray 
 write again. ... It is true I read the Times and Galignani, 
 but the little gossip is what I sigh for ; be it true or false, it 
 equally interests in this retirement. We are pleasantly and 
 comfortably housed ; and the cuisine is on a good footing, and 
 we are five in the salon, not counting baby, 1 so we get on pretty 
 well and enjoy ourselves selon nous in the stagnant season. 
 
 It is odd, but the Durham Proclamation 2 reached us 
 several days before you had it in London. It came to Havre 
 and was published in Galignani long before you received it in 
 London. The Durham mustard will be hot indeed ! . . . 
 
 1 The daughter, now Lady Du Cane, born this summer. 
 
 2 The proclamation issued by Lord Durham, on his throwing up his appoint- 
 ment as Governor-General of Canada, in which he showed his mortification at the 
 treatment he had received from the Melbourne Ministry.
 
 384 MEETING WITH MRS. GREENE. CHAP. xv. 
 
 The early part of 1839 was spent by Lord Lynd- 
 hurst and his family in Paris. He would if possible 
 have remained to meet Mrs. Greene, but he wrote 
 to her (5th of May) that he had to return for the 
 sittings of the House of Lords. " You will," he said, 
 " find London very pleasant about the season of your 
 arrival, and I can't tell you how happy we shall all be 
 to see you, and the dear friends who are with you." 
 
 The brother and sister, parted since 1800, met 
 in London soon afterwards. Mrs. Greene had many 
 points of character like his own. She was thoroughly 
 well read, loved art, and understood it ; her heart 
 was warm, and, like her brother, she was full of 
 that considerateness for others which is the basis of 
 true courtesy, and her intellect was clear and com- 
 prehensive. The lapse of forty years had wrought 
 marked changes in the persons of both, but the old 
 affection was there with all the tender memories of 
 the happy home where they had grown up side by 
 side. It was not on his conflicts or his triumphs, 
 writes his niece Mrs. Amory, 1 that he dwelt, neither 
 did she descant upon her distant, home and adopted 
 land ; " but they went back to the days of their child- 
 hood and youth, to the memories of the father and 
 mother, and the thousand little home reminiscences, 
 that never fade entirely away" from such minds as 
 theirs. Mrs. Greene returned to America the same 
 year, but the brother and sister were again to meet 
 after an interval of years. 
 
 Meanwhile the Melbourne Government, which had 
 by its own weakness lost all the advantage it had 
 gained at the general election in 1837, had come to a 
 standstill in consequence of a division in the House 
 of Commons on their Jamaica Bill (yth of May), which 
 
 1 'Life of J. S.Copley,' p. 378.
 
 1 839. MELBOURNE'S MINISTRY PROLONGED. 385 
 
 left them with a majority of only five. They resolved 
 to resign. The Duke of Wellington was thereupon 
 sent for by the Queen, and recommended that the 
 task of forming a Ministry should be entrusted to Sir 
 Robert Peel. Peel undertook it, and had formed his 
 Ministry, among whom Lord Lyndhurst was again 
 to take the place of Lord Chancellor, when the unfor- 
 tunate misunderstanding with the Queen as to the 
 appointment of certain Ladies of the Bedchamber led 
 him to decline to proceed further with his arrange- 
 ments. 
 
 Upon this Lord Melbourne resumed his position 
 as Premier, with the disadvantage that his Cabinet was 
 the same which a few days before had admitted that 
 they no longer possessed the confidence of the country. 
 With this they were taunted in the most stinging terms 
 by their alienated friend Lord Brougham, and incurred 
 widespread ridicule as returning to office behind the 
 petticoats of the Ladies of the Bedchamber. The lead- 
 ing Tories were not chagrined. They knew well that 
 it was better for their interest not to return to office 
 with a majority against them, which would unquestion- 
 ably be used to cripple their action ; while on the other 
 hand, the incapacity of the Melbourne Government, 
 as the event proved, was such, that their hold upon the 
 country would in all likelihood speedily be so greatly 
 weakened, as to make the accession of the Opposition 
 to power generally well received. 
 
 No one of his party was more ready to bide his 
 time patiently than Lord Lyndhurst, come when it 
 might. He took little part in the general debates, 
 but on the 23rd of August he delivered a review of 
 the work, or rather no work, of the session, more 
 comprehensive, more incisive, more crushing in its 
 invective, than even his famous review of 1836. In 
 
 2 c
 
 386 DEBATE ON LORD LYNDHURSTS CHAP. xv. 
 
 replying, Lord Melbourne, as on the previous occasion, 
 lost his temper, became offensively personal, and com- 
 mitted the grievous error of trying to make light of 
 the heavy and closely argued indictment against his 
 Government as a mere piece of factious and tiresome 
 rhetoric. He could not but feel bitterly how such an 
 assault must tell against himself and his Cabinet ; but 
 how could he hope to better his position in that assembly 
 by addressing language of studied insult to a man 
 whom it regarded as one of its brightest ornaments, or 
 by affecting contempt for a speech which for nearly 
 three hours had held it as under a spell, and beneath 
 the influence of which its pulses were still vibrating ? 
 
 There was one generous political adversary who at 
 once shook himself free from all participation in such 
 treatment of the speaker. When Lord Melbourne 
 sat down, Lord Brougham rose. To him it was 
 intolerable to have such a masterpiece of argument 
 and eloquence talked of in such terms. He spoke 
 of the "singularly lucid, the pellucid yet sparkling 
 clearness which distinguished the whole statement 
 of his noble and learned friend opposite," and then 
 continued 
 
 On one point I totally differ from my noble friend 
 (Lord Melbourne). It was not at all correct to say that this 
 was an annual exercitation of my noble and learned friend, by 
 which he wound up every session ; it is the second time, accord- 
 ing to my recollection, that my noble and learned friend has 
 brought forward this, in my opinion, most useful, most 
 wholesome and most necessary summary of the session ; 
 useful, wholesome, and necessary as often as the session had 
 proved a failure, useful, wholesome and necessary as often as 
 the Government had shown their indolence or incapacity, or 
 both combined. I do not believe that my noble friend's 
 attention flagged for one instant during the eloquent state- 
 ment of my noble and learned friend opposite. It was only
 
 1839. REVIEW OF THE SESSION. 387 
 
 when he proceeded to answer it that my noble friend's power 
 was unequal to the task. 
 
 Lord Melbourne had said that Lord Lyndhurst's 
 attack might possibly show that the Ministry was unfit 
 for the difficult situation they were placed in ; "but as 
 to gaining for himself anything of character, or con- 
 ciliating any confidence towards himself and those 
 who would have to administer the affairs of the 
 Government, if it had the misfortune to be placed in 
 their hands, he [Lord Lyndhurst] might depend upon 
 it, that if his powers were ten thousand times what 
 they were, he would be utterly unable to effect any 
 such Herculean, indeed, impossible labour." 
 
 Here was an opportunity for retort, of which Lord 
 Brougham could not fail to take advantage. What, 
 he said, had Lyndhurst and his friends done since 
 the yth of May to forfeit confidence, or to lose the 
 respect either of Parliament or the nation ? Had 
 they not then received a certificate of character 
 from Lord Melbourne himself, when he recommended 
 the Queen to employ them ? Why recommend the 
 Queen to send for them, if he knew that no con- 
 fidence, esteem, or respect were felt for them by 
 Parliament or the public ? " Why," he continued, 
 ''they had the confidence of all but an extremely 
 narrow majority in the House of Commons ; and this 
 narrow majority was all that the noble Viscount's 
 party had to rely on." If Lord Melbourne had been 
 wounded by the trenchant blade of Lord Lyndhurst, 
 the sarcasms which Lord Brougham went on to pile 
 one upon another must have rubbed vitriol into his 
 wounds. But while Brougham did not spare his old 
 friends in this speech, he said enough to show that he 
 had no sympathy with the political opinions of the 
 
 2 c 2
 
 388 LORD LYNDHURST AT BADEN CHAP. xv. 
 
 Opposition, and was as ready as ever to resist them 
 when occasion offered. 
 
 At the end of the session Lord Lyndhurst went 
 with his family to the Continent, and lingered on with 
 them at Baden till late in December, when they were 
 overtaken by the snow. His presence in London, at 
 the beginning of the year to take counsel with his 
 political friends, and to sit upon judicial business, was 
 indispensable, and on the 28th of December we find 
 him writing to Mr. Barlow 
 
 It is now snowing charmingly. It will be a devil of a 
 journey for me. I must leave women and children behind ! 
 If I start on the I5th, I shall reach Paris the 2Oth, stay there 
 two days, and be in London the 25th. That is my calculation. 
 I predict that neither Peel nor the Duke will be there so soon. 
 I am delighted that Wetherell has followed my example 
 [in getting married]. I hope the precedent will apply through- 
 out, and that in due time fruit will appear. Tell him, these 
 things are the consequence of being out of office. Idleness, 
 you know, &c. Is it true that he has got ^"60,000 with his 
 bride ? I did not set him that example. 
 
 It was no part of the policy of the leaders of the 
 Opposition unduly to press the Melbourne Administra- 
 tion during the session of 1 840. The troubles at home 
 were great, owing to the disaffected state of Ireland, 
 and a growing spirit of discontent among the labour- 
 ing classes elsewhere. Abroad we were on the eve 
 
 O 
 
 of being embroiled with France about the Eastern 
 Question ; and, true to the good old practice, the 
 Opposition upheld the foreign policy of the Govern- 
 ment, so much so, that Lord Melbourne told the 
 Queen that the Duke of Wellington was their best 
 friend. 1 Lord Lyndhurst lent his aid to the settlement 
 of the great question of Parliamentary Privilege raised 
 
 1 'Life of the Prince Consort,' vol. i. p. 100, note.
 
 1840. AND MARIENBAD. 389 
 
 by the case of Stockdale v. Hansard, and, having suc- 
 ceeded in bringing the Irish Municipal Corporations 
 Bill to a less objectionable shape, he withdrew from 
 further opposition to it. But he was disabled by a 
 severe attack of illness in the early part of the session 
 his only serious illness during his long life from taking 
 his usual active part in the business of the House of 
 Lords. 
 
 In the autumn he went with Lady Lyndhurst to 
 Marienbad to drink the waters. From that in those 
 days comparatively inaccessible region, he sends this 
 amusing cry of a soul thirsting for news from a body 
 sorely tried by meagre fare and drastic waters. 
 
 Marienbad, Bohemia, September 7, 1840. 
 
 My dear Barlow, This letter may perhaps reach you. 
 If so, it may induce you to regard with some little compassion 
 two exiles who would give worlds to know what is going on 
 in your region. Here we are surrounded by stupid, dirty- 
 looking, spitting, smoking Germans, without a single English- 
 man, or even a Frenchman to speak to. We know nothing 
 of how the world moves in more cultivated districts, and we 
 implore your compassion to give us a peep into something 
 that is civilised. Our new habits (not clothes) will surprise 
 you. We rise before six drink several quarts of water 
 walk two hours, and then come home to breakfast. After- 
 wards we walk again and again bathe, dine at three walk, 
 walk, walk and go to bed at nine. 
 
 This horse-in-a-mill life is something quite laborious. 
 Whether I shall be able to stand it for five weeks is a little 
 doubtful. We have got through only one as yet. I said we 
 dined at three dined indeed ! There is nothing that we can 
 eat, and we are in a fair way of being starved. What shall 
 we be reduced to ? Gallons of water full of Glauber salts, 
 and nothing in the shape of a cuisine to soften the effects. 
 We shall be like thread-papers before we return, if indeed we 
 shall retain sufficient physical strength to get away. A little 
 bit of politics, a little law, a little gossip, would be like water 
 in the desert. Pray, have pity upon us. The weather is
 
 390 ELECTED HIGH STEWARD OF CAMBRIDGE. CHAP, xv 
 
 getting gloomy, but the spot we are in is rather pretty. 
 Write, write, write ! Yours ever. 
 
 He was still at Marienbad when the tidings reached 
 him, through the public papers, that his friends had 
 started him as candidate for the vacant office of High 
 Steward of the University of Cambridge (see ante> 
 p. 238). At once he wrote to Mr. Barlow (22nd of 
 October) 
 
 Pray act for me in this business, for I know I can 
 entirely rely on your judgment and discretion. I will not run 
 any risk. It would be very mortifying to me to be defeated. 
 It would also be, in some degree, a blow to the Conservative 
 cause at least, it would be so interpreted by the Radicals. 
 Pray, consider this well, and don't let me be committed. It 
 is fighting at great odds, as the loss to me (in the event of loss) 
 would far exceed any ad vantage from the appointment . . . But 
 you are on the spot, and can judge better than I can here. 
 
 He had soon the satisfaction to learn that he ran 
 no risk. Men of all shades of opinion combined to 
 support him, his friends the Duke of Wellington and 
 Sir Robert Peel among the first. 1 It was an honour 
 which he prized as one of the chief distinctions of his 
 career, and which was made more valuable by the 
 immense majority (973 to 488) in his favour. 
 
 On Lord Lyndhurst's return to England, being- 
 weary of having to seek rest and recreation abroad, 
 he took a fourteen years' lease of a property called 
 Turville Park, in Buckinghamshire, about six miles 
 from Henley-on-Thames. The house was a good 
 
 1 One half of the fund subscribed to support his candidature was returned to 
 the subscribers, the surplus of the other half was applied in procuring and present- 
 ing a bust of Lord Lyndhurst, by Behnes, to Lady Lyndhurst. It remained in 
 her possession till July 1876, when it was presented by her to Trinity College, 
 Cambridge, where it now stands in the Library opposite to the bust of his contem- 
 porary and friend, Baron Bolland. The bust in Lincoln's Inn Hall is a copy by 
 Morton Edwards, one of Behnes' pupils, which was obtained and presented to the 
 Benchers by a few of Lord Lyndhurst's friends.
 
 1 840 HIS FARM AT TURVILLE. 391 
 
 one, but not in very good order. Its attraction for the 
 new tenant lay in its being well situated, in a quiet 
 neighbourhood, with about sixty acres of land attached, 
 a " modus agri non if a magnus" which enabled him 
 to gratify his strong love of the country and its pursuits. 
 Before the end of the year we learn, from one of his 
 sister's letters, that he had upon it 100 sheep, four cows, 
 and above eighty head of poultry, " so that you will 
 perceive," she says, "we are great farmers." Here 
 during fourteen years Lord Lyndhurst spent his 
 leisure hours. It was his delight to look after the 
 improvement of his little farm, the sibi se reddentis 
 agelli and the cultivation of his garden, and to refresh 
 his mind with the best books on literature and science, 
 old as well as new, from which he had been so long 
 debarred by the exacting labours of his professional and 
 public duties. 
 
 But not yet was he to find much leisure for such 
 occupations. The fall of the Melbourne Ministry, long 
 anticipated, came at last, when, in a new Parliament, 
 by which they had hoped to strengthen their position, 
 a vote of no confidence was carried (iQth August) by 
 a majority of 91 in a house of 629 members. 
 
 One of the many causes that conduced to the un- 
 popularity of the Melbourne Administration was the 
 appointment just before the general election of their 
 Attorney-General, Sir John Campbell, as Lord Chan- 
 cellor of Ireland. He had seen that the days of the 
 Ministry were numbered, and pressed with an impor- 
 tunity that greatly disconcerted his political friends his 
 claims to a peerage and some high judicial appointment, 
 as the reward for long and disinterested services. The 
 mode resorted to of satisfying his demands created 
 general indignation, when it became known that, in 
 order to make way for him, Lord Plunkett, himself an
 
 392 SIJR . PEEL AGAIN PREMIER. CHAP. XV. 
 
 Irishman beloved and honoured by the Irish Bar, and in 
 the full vigour of his powers, had been in effect driven 
 from office, much against his will, to make way for 
 an Englishman confessedly in all respects his inferior. 1 
 This practical specimen of that abhorrence of jobs, 
 which was a prominent article of the Whig creed, had 
 its effect on the elections of 1841. A less generous 
 man than Lord Lyndhurst might have discoursed upon 
 the text it presented in a way to make his future 
 biographer feel even more strongly "like a convict 
 led out to execution " than he admits himself to have 
 felt, when he came over from Ireland to take his seat 
 in the House of Lords. But the shame of being 
 involved in such a transaction was in Lord Lyndhurst's 
 eyes sufficient punishment for the offender. 
 
 When Sir Robert Peel was called upon to form a 
 Ministry, there was of course not a moment's question 
 as to who should be his Chancellor. The personal 
 friend, with whom, as he had written only a few 
 months before (see ante, p. 238), " in office and out of 
 office he had always been on the most confidential 
 intercourse on public matters," was not likely to be 
 overlooked. But knowing by experience of what 
 value Lyndhurst was in a Cabinet, he looked to him 
 as one of the mainstays of his government, as one on 
 whom, again to use his own words (ante, p. 239), he 
 " could confidently rely when real difficulties were to 
 be encountered." 
 
 And yet Lord Campbell has written, and his phrases 
 have been again and again repeated by writers who 
 take him as their guide, that " Lord Lyndhurst had 
 little weight in the Cabinet ; Peel placed no confidence 
 in him, and would have been well pleased to have 
 got rid of him altogether." 
 
 1 Torrens's ' Life of Lord Melbourne,' vol. ii. pp. 360-362.
 
 1841. LORD LYNDHURST AGAIN CHANCELLOR. 393 
 
 Of a piece with this, in point of accuracy, is his 
 statement, that when Lord Lyndhurst, on the 6th 
 of September, 1841, entered the House of Lords, 
 preceded by his mace-bearer and his purse-bearer, 
 once more to take his place upon the woolsack, "he 
 was excessively nervous, and, looking bewildered, did 
 not seem at all to recollect the forms with which he had 
 so long been familiar." 1 The idea of Lyndhurst, with 
 his immense power of self-command, and his unerring 
 memory, presenting such an appearance is preposterous. 
 But there are people alive who were present, and 
 remember that at no time did he show himself more 
 self-possessed, more worthy by his bearing and lan- 
 guage to represent the great office on which he now 
 entered for the third time. 
 
 1 " Lord Melbourne," Campbell writes, "in a loud whisper," these wonderful 
 episodes of Campbell's are always given in a "stage whisper" or a "loud 
 whisper," "said to me, 'Who would think that this is the same impudent dog 
 who bullied us so unconscionably in his " Reviews of the Session " ? ' " The ob- 
 servation, if true, is little to Lord Melbourne's credit. But it is so unlike the man, 
 so absolutely inconsistent with the real facts of Lord Lyndhurst's resumption of 
 his place on the woolsack, that it may safely be dismissed as unworthy of credit.
 
 ( 394 ) 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 Lord Lyndhurst as a Judge Promotes Legal Reform Speech in favour 
 of Copyright Bill His Defence of Irish Lord Chancellor Longing 
 for Retirement Illness Sir R. Peel's Anxiety Failure of Lord John 
 Russell to form a Ministry Peel resumes Office Lyndhurst remains 
 as Chancellor Speech on Charitable Trusts Bill Bill defeated 
 Government Coercion Bill rejected Ministry resigns Lyndhurst's 
 Delight at Release from Office. 
 
 LORD LYNDHURST was now in his sixty-ninth year. 
 But he was hale and strong. " I wish," his sister writes 
 (28th September, 1841) to Mrs. Greene, "he were a 
 few years younger. He has led a comparatively idle 
 life so long that it is hard work to begin again." But 
 she adds, "he gets through his hard work with ease; 
 he is remarkably well." 
 
 It was easier for him than for most men to resume 
 the duties of his office ; his marvellous memory had 
 at command all the professional lore which he had 
 stored up in former years, and he had not failed 
 to keep himself posted up in all the decisions of im- 
 portance which had been given since he formerly 
 occupied the Woolsack. Lord Campbell alleges, that 
 he had been "so absorbed in political intrigue" 
 (' Life/ p. 134), that he had neglected his legal studies 
 in the interim. The one assertion is as true as the 
 other, and both are as unfounded as the statement 
 which immediately follows, that, " with one exception 
 he never sat in the Judicial Committee of the Privy 
 Council," that exception being the celebrated case of 
 an appeal from the Court of Arches on the subject
 
 1841. LORD LYNDHURST AS JUDGE. 395 
 
 of " Jamie Wood's Will." On this subject the Edin- 
 burgh Reviewer of Lord Campbell's ' Life of Lyndhurst * 
 speaks with authority. 
 
 " The Reports," he says, " show that the statement is in- 
 correct. But Lord Campbell has also wholly omitted to state, 
 that Lord Lyndhurst was one of the chief promoters of the 
 Act which gave the Privy Council its jurisdiction for the 
 Extension of Patents. From his love of mechanical inventions, 
 he took great interest in these matters ; and for many years 
 he sat at the Privy Council on all the Patent Cases which were 
 heard there, and he framed the rules which still govern these 
 proceedings." ('Edinburgh Review,' April 1869, p. 562.) 
 
 No man entertained a higher estimate of judicial 
 duty than Lord Lyndhurst, or expressed his views 
 of it on several public occasions more strongly. He 
 spared no pains with his cases. The more intricate and 
 difficult they were, the greater their attraction for him ; 
 for the pride and ambition of his life was distinction 
 as a lawyer, rather than as a statesman. Lord 
 Campbell's allegation, that " he was by no means over 
 anxious or scrupulous about the business of his Court 
 being disposed of satisfactorily," is at variance with the 
 conviction of those who had direct access to know how 
 conscientiously Lord Lyndhurst laboured to ensure 
 justice being done in every matter that came before him 
 judicially, no less than with the opinion of the outside 
 but very critical world of professional men who could 
 judge only by results ! Everyone who knows anything 
 of the legal profession knows that no man can be a great 
 lawyer by fits and starts, or by cramming for special 
 cases. If Lord Lyndhurst had been what Lord Camp- 
 bell asserts he was, how comes it to pass that he never 
 delivered judgment in any important case, or spoke on 
 any question of constitutional principle or legal reform, 
 without producing the impression that he was so
 
 396 LORD LYNDHURST AS JUDGE. CHAP. xvi. 
 
 thoroughly master of the whole law on the subject, that 
 it cost him no effort to state it with a clearness and a 
 brevity unattained by any other lawyer of his time ? 
 
 Lord Campbell also says (p. 134), that "such was 
 Lord Lyndhurst's disinclination to judicial work," that 
 "he could not prevail on him to attend the hearing of 
 the appeal in the House of Lords on which the dis- 
 ruption of the Church of Scotland depended. His 
 presence might have saved a great national calamity." 
 Contrast with this Lord Lyndhurst's own words, in a 
 debate upon the Church of Scotland, brought on by 
 Lord Campbell himself (3ist March, 1843) 
 
 It would be productive of the most serious consequences 
 if any doubt should be entertained in Scotland as to the 
 unanimity of the decision of your Lordships with respect to the 
 decision of your Lordships in the Auchterarder Case. I was 
 not present when the case was argued for the first time, but 
 when it came before this House for the second time I had the 
 honour of presiding at the hearing of it. Everybody ac- 
 quainted with the subject knows that the second case was con- 
 nected with and arose out of the first. It therefore became 
 my duty, before the judgment was pronounced in the second 
 case, to consult all the papers, and all the arguments which 
 had been adduced in the first. I paid every attention to the 
 subject, I consulted all the judgments of the judges in the 
 courts of law, and the opinion I arrived at was, that it was 
 perfectly impossible, consistently with every legal principle, 
 to come to any other decision than that which was pronounced 
 in the first Auchterarder Case. (Hansard, vol. Ixviii. 272.) 
 
 If this were so, how could his presence at the 
 hearing of the first appeal have averted a great 
 national calamity ? 
 
 Again, Lord Campbell expresses surprise that 
 Lyndhurst's recorded decisions during his third Chan- 
 cellorship were few and unimportant. Surely quality, 
 not quantity, is the true test of the excellence of a
 
 1843. LORD LYNDHURST AS JUDGE. 397 
 
 judge's decisions. In general it is the weak and ill- 
 instructed man who loads the reports indiscriminately 
 with elaborate judgments. But when the question was 
 new, or difficult, or important, when " a reasoned judg- 
 ment," to use Lord Campbell's phrase, was appropriate, 
 Lyndhurst was not found wanting. 
 
 Another ground of charge against him by Lord 
 Campbell is, that he almost always affirmed. And why 
 not, if the judgment appealed from was sound ? Which 
 is the more likely to be right the man who comes 
 with an open mind to the investigation of a case, or 
 he who, like Lyndhurst's successor, Lord Cottenham, 
 approached, according to Lord Campbell, the con- 
 sideration of every question brought before him on 
 appeal in such a way, that it was said of him that 
 "he always presumed the decree to be wrong till the 
 contrary was clearly proved " ? The quality of mind 
 which this indicates is not that dispassionate judgment 
 "which tries all things, proves all things," but an 
 inward self-complacency, which starts with setting up 
 its own fancied astuteness as superior to that of other 
 men, and out of a desire to show its independence or 
 originality is more often apt to be wrong than right in 
 its conclusions. To affirm heedlessly is obviously as 
 fatal to a judge's character as to give an original judg- 
 ment heedlessly. Lord Campbell graciously allows to 
 Lord Lyndhurst the merit of " never being influenced 
 by any improper motive in deciding for one party 
 rather than the other ; " but in the very next sentence 
 he accuses him of "taking the course which was likely 
 to give himself least trouble," apparently unconscious 
 that any more improper motive short of direct bribery 
 could not be alleged against a judge, particularly a judge 
 in Appeal implying as it does a total indifference to 
 the rights of the parties before him.
 
 398 LORD LYNDHURST AS JUDGE. CHAP. xvi. 
 
 Lord Brougham (' Memoirs,' vol. iii. p. 436) says, 
 " Great as Lyndhurst was as a judge, the common 
 impression was, that on the bench he was not in 
 earnest ;" and in this verdict he expresses his con- 
 currence. Unfortunately, he does not explain on what 
 the impression was founded. How a man can be a 
 great judge, and at the same time not be in earnest 
 when on the bench, is a problem not easy to under- 
 stand. The imputation may have arisen from the fact, 
 that he did not show the same eagerness as other judges 
 to display his great judicial aptitude, and was well 
 content to let his coadjutors in the House of Lords 
 or in the Privy Council take a lead in the disposal of 
 cases which he might have claimed for himself. Lord 
 Campbell points in this direction, when he says, in 
 speaking of his treatment of cases in the House 
 of Lords (p. 139), " Lyndhurst never betrayed the 
 smallest degree of jealousy or envy. In truth, being 
 indifferent about judicial fame himself," this might be 
 so, for he already enjoyed it " it gave him no un- 
 easiness to see it enjoyed by others." The truth was, 
 he abhorred the idea of a judge courting popularity 
 by anything like display on the bench. It was a defect 
 which he reprobated in Lord Campbell himself. Speak- 
 ing one day to Mr. Whitwell Elwin of Campbell's ex- 
 cellent qualities as a judge in many respects, he said, 
 " Apart from his laying himself out in Court for mob 
 applause, he is a very considerable Chief Justice." 
 
 Supported as he was in the judicial proceedings of 
 the House of Lords by such men as Lord Brougham, 
 Lord Cottenham, and Lord Campbell, Lord Lynd- 
 hurst, with the burden upon him of the vast and multi- 
 farious duties of a Lord Chancellor, might be excused 
 for leaving upon occasions the labouring oar in their 
 hands. But in all important cases he came to the front,
 
 1 843. THE a CONN ELL CASE. 399 
 
 and sustained his great reputation by the learning and 
 ability of his judgments. 
 
 For one high quality he was conspicuous : the 
 passions of the politician never entered the breast 
 or warped the conclusions of the judge. Of no 
 man, for example, had he spoken in intenser terms 
 of scorn and reprobation than Mr. O'Connell. But 
 when the writ of error in the case of O'Connell v. 
 the Queen came before the House of Lords on 
 appeal, for setting aside the conviction of the great 
 agitator in 1 843 for high treason, no trace of partiality 
 or prejudice was to be discerned in Lord Lyndhurst. 
 "The demeanour of the Chancellor," says Lord 
 Campbell, "was that of a dignified magistrate, whose 
 only object was to arrive at a right conclusion, and 
 to do justice between the Crown and the subject." 
 He, along with Lord Brougham, was in favour of 
 sustaining the judgment of the Court below. Lord 
 Denman and Lord Campbell took a different view, 
 and therefore, according to the maxim always applied 
 in the House of Lords, prczsumitur pro negante, the 
 judgment was reversed. Lord Brougham could not 
 conceal his chagrin, and said in his place, that it was 
 a decision which would "go forth without authority, 
 and come back without respect ; " but Lord Lynd- 
 hurst, whatever he may have thought, accepted the 
 result with a dignified silence. Lawyers may differ 
 as to the soundness of the views of the reversing 
 judges, but politically the result was not to be 
 regretted. It proved to the Irish adherents of 
 O'Connell that England, however provoked, dealt 
 fairly with her adversaries, and it robbed their orators 
 of a favourite theme for their invectives. By the time 
 the decision was given (4th September, 1844,) the 
 excitement caused by Mr. O'Connell's trial had died
 
 4OO ZEAL FOR LA W REFORM. CHAP. xvi. 
 
 down ; and when he was liberated his power for 
 mischief was at an end. 1 
 
 Lord Lyndhurst's speeches in the House of Lords 
 during his third Chancellorship were confined almost 
 exclusively to questions of legal reform. Of these 
 several were introduced by himself; but his powers 
 were applied no less conspicuously in stopping the 
 progress of bad or crudely devised measures, and in 
 correcting and perfecting those that were good. In 
 the latter task he was not unfrequently brought into 
 collision with his future biographer, who generally 
 came bruised and discomfited out of the conflict. 
 Unluckily for Campbell, Brougham was in most cases 
 found fighting against his measures by the side of 
 Lyndhurst, and as Brougham's ardour for legal 
 reform admitted of no question, this raised a strong 
 presumption that, in these cases at least, Lyndhurst 
 was in the right. Campbell's struggles to make head 
 against two such adversaries were more daring than 
 skilful. His taunts as to what he chose to consider 
 an unnatural union for the purpose of mere obstruction 
 brought down upon him on several occasions the 
 heavy hand of Brougham with sledgehammer force. 
 Lyndhurst, with a tenderer touch, flashed his airy 
 sarcasms round him, with the manner of a man rather 
 amused than otherwise by Campbell's heavy attempts 
 at irony or invective. It required something more 
 important than any of Campbell's speeches to draw 
 Lyndhurst's thunder. But more than once he made 
 Campbell feel the weight of his silent scorn, as when 
 
 1 On the day of the release of O'Connell and the other prisoners (7th of 
 September, 1844), a triumphal procession, in which O'Connell was seated on a 
 car, was got up. The present writer saw it pass clown Sackville Street. A 
 more forlorn exhibition could not be imagined. It was obvious that the spell 
 was broken, and a few hollow cheers told very plainly that the old enthusiasm 
 for the man was dead.
 
 i45- THE COPYRIGHT BILL. 401 
 
 (4th August, 1845) Campbell spoke with a sneer 
 of what Lyndhurst had said in support of one of the 
 Government Bills, as "a most ingenious speech, 
 which his noble and learned friend on the woolsack 
 is able to make on any occasion, and in support of 
 any cause." What wonder, if Lyndhurst were, as 
 Campbell complains that he was, " disposed to treat 
 somewhat cavalierly" the man who could speak of 
 him in such terms ! 
 
 Loving literature as he did, it was natural that 
 Lord Lyndhurst should take up the Copyright Ques- 
 tion. Serjeant Talfourd had for years been attempting 
 to obtain an alteration of the existing law, which 
 limited the author's exclusive right of publication to 
 twenty-eight years, or the termination of his life. Long 
 and strenuous effort was needed to overcome the 
 influence of his opponents, but in the session of 1843 
 a Bill was introduced by Lord Mahon which, as it 
 passed the Commons, extended the term to forty-two 
 years, or to seven years after the author's death, should 
 he die within that term. When the Bill came up to 
 the Lords, the Chancellor became its most strenuous 
 supporter, with Lord Brougham for his chief opponent. 
 Lord Lyndhurst's speech, as usual, exhausted the 
 subject, and placed the author's case upon unan- 
 swerable grounds. Some passages are of permanent 
 interest 
 
 " The plain principle of common sense," he said, " applies 
 to the question that the more encouragement that is given 
 to literature, the more valuable the productions of genius are 
 rendered, the greater will be the likelihood of extending their 
 number and increasing their importance. But what is the 
 argument by which the supporters of the extension of the 
 copyright are met ? The first objection commonly urged is 
 the monopoly the Bill would give. 'This is monopoly,' it 
 is said ; ' will you encourage monopoly ? ' Why, every man 
 
 2, D
 
 402 THE COPYRIGHT BILL. CHAP. xvr. 
 
 that possesses a house is in that sense a monopolist. The 
 house is his property, therefore he has a monopoly of it. So 
 with the man who possesses a farm. It is his his exclusively ; 
 he has a monopoly of it. And so should it be with respect to 
 copyright. Is there any harm in such a monopoly ? So far 
 from it, copyright is, of all descriptions of property, the very 
 last from which any public harm can result from the possession 
 of monopoly, for it is a property that is of no value unless it 
 is communicated to the public, and the extent of its value 
 depends upon the extent to which it is communicated. Copy- 
 right, properly and justly protected, has all the advantages of 
 property, and none of the evils of monopoly. . . . 
 
 " What is the language of the existing law ? It says to 
 the author, 'Your property shall not be touched during your 
 life ; but the moment you die the doors of your house shall be 
 opened ; the rabble shall be let in, your household treasures 
 seized and distributed among the multitude.' Then, again, it 
 is said, ' This Bill is objectionable, because it will enhance the 
 price of books.' Suppose it does, I do not admit that this 
 would be a valid reason against the Bill. It enhances the 
 price of books ; and for what purpose ? For the sake of the 
 authors. For the sake of repaying the author for his labours 
 for the sake of repaying the man who created the work, and 
 laboured to complete it. ... The individual who created the 
 work is not to be sacrificed for the sake of saving small sums 
 to the public." 
 
 But that the effect of the Bill would be to enhance 
 the price of books, he would not admit, on the broad 
 ground which experience has proved to be just, that 
 the extension of the term of copyright would, by 
 diminishing the risk of publication, induce a larger 
 investment of capital in the publication of books. It 
 is obvious that Lord Lyndhurst was prepared to have 
 given a larger amount of protection to the author 
 than was given by the Bill. But he refrained from 
 attempting this, knowing the dangers which attended 
 any reopening of the question ; and the Bill, which
 
 1845. DISMISSAL OF IRISH MAGISTRATES. 403 
 
 soon afterwards became law (5 and 6 Viet. c. 45), still 
 continues to regulate the rights of authors. 
 
 The only speech of a political character made by 
 the Chancellor during his tenure of office was on the 
 i4th of July, 1845, in a debate on which he was, by 
 reason of his official position, compelled to take part. 
 For some time Ireland had been brought into a most 
 critical state by the boldness of the Repeal agitation. 
 Meetings of enormous masses of the people were being 
 drawn together by O'Connell, at which, under the 
 thinnest disguise, the doctrine of insurrection against 
 English rule was inculcated. Midnight drilling was 
 carried on, " Repeal infantry and cavalry " were being 
 secretly organised, and the rallying cry " Repeal or 
 Blood " was given to assembled thousands by the less 
 cautious followers of the great agitator. As to the 
 character and objects of these meetings there could be 
 no doubt ; and the Lord Chancellor of Ireland (Sugden) 
 had felt it his duty to strike out of the Commission of 
 the Peace Lord Ffrench and other justices who had 
 given them direct countenance either by convening or 
 attending them. This was made the foundation of a 
 formal charge against the Irish Government and the 
 Irish Chancellor in a resolution, proposed by Lord 
 Clanricarde to the House of Lords, condemning their 
 action in the matter as "unconstitutional, unjust, and 
 inexpedient." 
 
 At the end of a long debate, in which the Duke of 
 Wellington spoke with great effect, Lord Lyndhurst 
 rose to vindicate the action of the Irish Chancellor. 
 With merciless logic he exposed the flimsy pretext set 
 up by the Opposition, that these meetings were legal 
 and harmless, and convened merely for the exercise of 
 the constitutional right of petitioning. He called atten- 
 tion to the state of things in Ireland which had been 
 
 2 D 2
 
 404 REPEAL ASSOCIA TION. CHAP. xvi. 
 
 brought about by the Repeal Association, whose object 
 was the dismemberment of the Empire, for, as he said, 
 " no person can for a moment doubt that the repeal 
 of the Union must necessarily be followed by the dis- 
 memberment of the Empire." He then called atten- 
 tion to the fact that the Association numbered in its 
 ranks " almost the whole of the Romish hierarchy 
 in Ireland," and that in every parish officers, called 
 Repeal Wardens, had been proved to have been ap- 
 pointed to drill and discipline the population, and to 
 render them capable of being set in motion within 
 twenty-four hours. The immense sums levied by so- 
 called voluntary contributions upon the people for 
 carrying on the operations of the Association were 
 then adverted to, and he proceeded 
 
 It is by this Association, thus constituted, that those 
 meetings are assembled, and the whole proceedings take place 
 under the direction and counsel of one great leader. I ask 
 your Lordships, if in any civilised country such power as this 
 has ever existed a conspiracy more formidable, one more 
 dangerous to the State, and more pregnant with mischief. But 
 let us see the objects of this Association, for when we are con- 
 sidering the conduct of the Lord Chancellor of Ireland, it is 
 proper to take the whole case into our consideration. What 
 then are the objects ? This organisation this foul conspiracy, 
 because it cannot be called by a better name has for its object 
 the repeal of the Union. This is its first step. They then 
 propose to establish an Irish Parliament an Irish House of 
 Commons in Dublin which are to be collected together by 
 universal suffrage. They are next to constitute a peerage, com- 
 posed in a manner which is to be dictated by the Association. 
 I am yet but repeating what has been publicly stated by their 
 leader. The next object they have in view, which has been 
 publicly declared, is the destruction of the Protestant Church 
 of Ireland the confiscation of the property of the Church for 
 such objects as the Association may hereafter think right and 
 proper. The third object is to establish fixity of tenure that
 
 1845. DEFENCE OF IRISH CHANCELLOR. 405 
 
 is, a transfer of property from the landlords to the tenants, 
 which is proposed for the purpose 'of flattering the passions, 
 and exciting to agitation the great mass of the people. 
 
 After showing the character of these meetings, the 
 inflammatory nature of the speeches, the assurances 
 there reiterated to great crowds, that " by union, and 
 energy and courage, they need not be afraid in a con- 
 test with the soldiery " are such meetings, he asked, 
 for discussing petitions to Parliament are they not 
 rather " the first step in the march towards rebellion 
 and intended to encourage the people and prepare 
 them for such a result ? " 
 
 It is said that some of these magistrates, Lord Ffrench, 
 for instance, had done nothing. Why, Lord Ffrench's name 
 was attached to a proclamation calling one of these meetings ! 
 Is that doing nothing ? How is it possible for any rational 
 man to get up and contend that the dismissal under such cir- 
 cumstances is unconstitutional ? My Lords, this I am con- 
 vinced of, that no person should be allowed to hold an office 
 under the Crown, who attends meetings of this description 
 deliberately and advisedly, and had I held the office of Chan- 
 cellor of Ireland, I should have felt it my duty to do the very 
 same thing. 
 
 This declaration, by which the English Chancellor 
 threw the aegis of his authority over his Irish brother, 
 was conclusive, and only 29 peers followed Lord 
 Clanricarde, while 69 voted against the resolution. It 
 was natural that the Irish Chancellor should feel 
 warmly the defence so fearlessly urged by Lord 
 Lyndhurst. This feeling he expressed in the following 
 letter. 
 
 July 26, 1843. 
 
 My dear Lord Lyndhurst, I read with great pleasure 
 your very kind defence of me. Although I could not but be 
 flattered to be so spoken of from such a quarter, yet it was the 
 tone of personal kindness which attracted me, and for which
 
 406 LORD LYNDHURST ANXIOUS CHAP. xvi. 
 
 I do most heartily thank you. Believe me with great truth, 
 my dear Lord, ever most faithfully yours, 
 
 (Signed) EDWD. B. SUGDEN. 1 
 
 By this time Lord Lyndhurst was beginning to 
 long for rest from the fatigues of office. On the 3rd 
 of April, 1843, his sister writes to Mrs. Greene, "My 
 brother has been remarkably well ; he gets over his 
 hard work with more ease than I expected. How 
 you would be delighted to see him Chancellor ! Do, 
 pray, come, but it must be soon, for he says he will 
 not retain the office long, and indeed he sighs for 
 repose from his labours." His farm and garden at 
 Turville Park were growing more and more attractive 
 to him. His holidays were spent there, and to them 
 he escaped at other times whenever he could upon 
 Saturday, returning to his work in town on Monday. 
 Again on the 2nd of April, 1844, his sister writes that 
 "he has been and is remarkably well, sometimes tired 
 with the hard work of office, which he does not intend 
 to hold much longer." In truth, his value in the Cabinet 
 was so great, that his Chief could not afford to let him 
 go. But, so far as personal feeling went, he would at 
 any time have been glad to quit office. 
 
 He was therefore quite prepared to follow Sir 
 Robert Peel's lead, when the defeat of the Ministry 
 (i4th June, 1844) on the Sugar Duties, owing to the 
 defection of some of the members of his party, nearly 
 brought about that result. It was averted for a time 
 by a resolution at a meeting of the Conservatives 
 on the 1 8th, assuring the Premier of the general and 
 united support of the party, and by a vote the same 
 evening reversing the decision of the I4th. It is to 
 
 1 Lord Campbell (p. 172) says that up to 1851 Sugden was an object of Lynd- 
 hurst's "special aversion." So far from this being the case, they had been for 
 years on terms of cordial intimacy, of which the proofs exist in their correspondence.
 
 1 845. TO RETIRE FROM OFFICE. 407 
 
 this that Lord Lyndhurst's sister alludes in a letter to 
 Mrs. Greene next day. 
 
 . . . We are all well, I am happy to say my brother 
 remarkably so. For the last few days we have been in a state 
 of excitement, thinking that the Ministry might be compelled 
 to resign, but the division in the House last night has set 
 things at rest for the present. As far as we are personally 
 concerned, we do not care much about it, but upon party con- 
 siderations it is mortifying to be defeated. 
 
 Lord Lyndhurst bore well the fatigues of that 
 session, and the next. He spoke little in the House 
 of Lords, but his services to the Government were 
 always available in the Cabinet, where his opinion was 
 eagerly sought by Sir Robert Peel, who found him 
 uniformly helpful and full of resource in difficulty, as 
 well as loyal in devotion, during a period when, it is 
 well known, the ability and courage of that statesman 
 were most severely taxed. In him the Premier found a 
 supporter of all the liberal measures, which were so 
 objectionable to the laggards of his party, and were 
 already cooling their allegiance to their leader. The 
 question of the Corn Laws also was rapidly coming 
 to the front ; and it was no doubt with the view of 
 preparing himself for a decision in regard to it, that we 
 find Lord Lyndhurst writing to Mr. Gladstone (i4th 
 May, 1845)'- 
 
 My dear Gladstone, Will you have the goodness to lend 
 me something very full, but at the same time concise, upon the 
 subject of the Corn Laws the cream, if you please. Excuse 
 this trouble, and believe me ever yours. 
 
 The result of Lord Lyndhurst's studies was his 
 
 1 Lord Lyndhurst, as already mentioned, had the bad habit of rarely putting a 
 elate to his letters. If we are right in assigning this letter to 1845, Mr. Gladstone 
 was not then in the Cabinet, having retired in January on the question of the 
 Grant to Maynooth, but he continued to support the Government.
 
 408 ILLNESS OF LORD LYNDHURST. CHAP. xvi. 
 
 adherence to Sir Robert Peel, when some months later 
 he was compelled, much against his will, to become the 
 instrument for the Repeal of the Corn Laws. At the 
 time when the threatened failure of the potato crop 
 throughout the kingdom, and chiefly in Ireland, be- 
 tokened an impending crisis, in which Ireland would 
 again be England's greatest difficulty, Lord Lyndhurst 
 was seized with a sharp attack of illness. This was in 
 November, early in which the holding of four Cabinet 
 Councils in one week, according to Mr. Disraeli, 
 "agitated England, perplexed the sagacious Tuileries, 
 and disturbed even the serene intelligence of the pro- 
 found Metternich." Happily the attack was of short 
 duration ; but for a time it caused serious anxiety to 
 Lyndhurst's friends, and to none more than to Sir 
 Robert Peel, to whom his convalescence, as will be 
 seen from the following letter, was a great relief. 
 
 Whitehall, November 20, 1845. 
 
 My dear Lady Lyndhurst, Do not send me any acknow- 
 ledgment of this, for I know how incessantly and anxiously 
 you must be occupied, and I receive regularly from Sir James 
 Graham the accounts of Lyndhurst. I only write in satisfac- 
 tion to my own feelings, to say to you, and through you to 
 Lyndhurst, how truly and cordially I rejoice, in common with 
 his friends and colleagues, at the improvement which has 
 taken place, and how earnestly I pray that it may be pro- 
 gressive, and soon end in complete recovery. Believe me, my 
 dear Lady Lyndhurst, most faithfully yours. 1 
 
 1 Contrast this letter with Lord Campbell's statement ('Lyndhurst,' p. 154), 
 that Sir R. Peel was at that time "about to transfer the Great Seal to some one 
 for whom he had more respect," and that the Chancellor "was certainly treat ed 
 with undisguised neglect by his colleagues." Chief in this treatment Sir James 
 Graham is mentioned in another place. Seven years afterwards (25th June, 
 1852), this was what he said in Parliament of Lord Lyndhurst : " I must speak of 
 him as a friend, and a colleague with whom I am proud to have served. Among his 
 characteristics there was one that particularly distinguished my noble and learned 
 friend, and that was his love of justice." (Hansard, vol. cxxii. 1323.) Observe, 
 too, how Lyndhurst speaks of Graham in the following memorandum, written the 
 26th of October, 1861, on hearing of his death : "News of death of Sir J. Graham,
 
 1845. HIS ATTACHMENT TO PEEL. 409 
 
 Sir Robert Peel, when he wrote this letter, was not 
 aware how soon he should have to make a demand 
 upon the attachment of his Chancellor, by whom he 
 had been already told, that as he was now 76 years old, 
 and was rapidly losing the sight of his only good eye, 
 he could not remain in office another session. Lord 
 John Russell's famous letter to his constituents from 
 Edinburgh (22nd November, 1845), abandoning his 
 former opinions and declaring in favour of a total repeal 
 of the Corn Laws, forced the Premier's hand. Repeal 
 was now inevitable. But it was not for him, who 
 had come into power upon Protectionist principles, 
 to propose it. He therefore determined on leaving 
 that task to the political adversary who had thus pro- 
 claimed its necessity, and he placed his resignation in 
 Her Majesty's hands. Lord Russell's failure to form 
 a Ministry 1 threw upon Sir Robert Peel the task of 
 resuming the responsibilities of office under conditions 
 which nothing but a sense of duty to the country 
 and his Sovereign would have induced him to under- 
 take, seeing, as he did, before him the alienation of 
 old friends, the disruption of party ties, the charge of 
 treachery and dishonour, and all that torrent of obloquy 
 and reproach which is sure to be directed against the 
 statesman who has the courage to act counter to a 
 
 one of my former colleagues ; age 69. Able and industrious administrator, cautious 
 and somewhat timid statesman. Always spoke with weight in the House. Not 
 popular ; always obliging and kind to me, always ready to defend me in the House 
 of Commons. Instance the Chancery Officers Compensations." 
 
 1 It is well known that Lord Russell's movement was anything but welcome 
 to his party. Of this we have an indication in the following passage in a letter 
 (i 7th of December) to Lord Lyndhurst from Lord Clarendon : " Up to this hour 
 I cannot comprehend the reason why Sir R. Peel's Administration has been broken 
 up, but whatever difficulties he had in carrying it on, they must be incalculably 
 greater in forming another, and I still cling to the hope that they will be found 
 insuperable. I hear Lord John has gone down to Windsor to-night, and I can 
 assure you that the most acceptable news he can bring back to his -whole party 
 would be that he had not considered himself justified in undertaking the task 
 proposed to him by the Queen."
 
 410 HOPES OF RELEASE FROM OFFICE. CHAP. xvi. 
 
 creed which he has outgrown. With the exception of 
 Lord Stanley, who was succeeded by Mr. Gladstone, 
 the Peel Cabinet remained unchanged. At such a 
 moment of difficulty Lord Lyndhurst was not likely 
 to desert his chief. He put aside all personal con- 
 siderations, and determined to stand by him through 
 the coming struggle. A few days afterwards (2 2nd of 
 December, 1845), we find Sir Robert Peel writing 
 to him 
 
 My dear Lyndhurst, Will you have the goodness to direct 
 the immediate preparation of the Bill for opening Municipal 
 Offices to the Jews that we may mention the subject and 
 read the draft of the Bill at the first Cabinet ? It cannot be 
 in so good hands as yours. Most truly yours. 
 
 How the Ministerial crisis was regarded in the 
 home in George Street, and how welcome to himself 
 and those about him had been the first prospect of 
 release from office, may be seen by the following letter 
 from Miss Copley to Mrs. Greene. 
 
 Turville Park, December 10, 1845. 
 
 In my last letter I had the happiness of telling you that 
 our dear brother was recovering from his severe attack of 
 illness. ... I daresay that he feels something like a school- 
 boy going home for the holidays. You, of course, will have 
 heard before this reaches you of the resignation of Sir Robert 
 Peel's Cabinet, and that Lord John Russell is the new 
 Premier. I own I am sorry for the change, excepting as far 
 as my brother is concerned. He has been waiting for a good 
 opportunity to resign, but would not do so while his friends 
 were surrounded with difficulties, so that we have personally 
 no cause to regret the change. 
 
 Writing again on the 3rd of February, 1846, Miss 
 Copley tells her sister, "it is at present very uncer- 
 tain what turn political affairs may take ; but we are all 
 urgent for my brother to resign his office, which he will 
 do if the present Government keeps in, and, of course,
 
 1845. SPEECH ON CHARITABLE TRUSTS BILL. 411 
 
 if they go out, he goes too." That the time for their 
 going out was not far distant, he could not but be 
 aware. The Liberals were almost to a man ready to 
 support Sir Robert Peel, until he had carried the Repeal 
 of the Corn Laws, which they were not in a position 
 themselves to carry ; but, that done, it was obvious, 
 they would seize the very first opportunity to place him 
 in a minority, aided by the large body of Protectionists 
 who were prepared to join with them in effecting that 
 result. But in the meantime Lord Lyndhurst did not 
 slacken in his endeavours to sustain the reputation of 
 the Ministry in promoting sound practical reforms. 
 
 One great speech he made with the painful convic- 
 tion that he would not carry with him that majority 
 which hitherto had never failed him. On the same night 
 (i8th of May) that the Corn Importation Bill was 
 read a first time in the House of Lords, he moved the 
 second reading of the Charitable Trusts Bill, a measure 
 which had passed through that House triumphantly the 
 previous year, but too late to be carried through the 
 Commons. The measure was urgently demanded, 
 to stop the scandalous misappropriation of funds be- 
 queathed for charitable purposes. It was a reform 
 which Lord Lyndhurst had very much at heart, and he 
 threw into his speech all his powers of exposition, of 
 humour and of earnest persuasion. His audience, as 
 usual, listened with delight, for, as Campbell truly says 
 in speaking of this speech, "no one could be within 
 sound of his voice without earnestly listening." With ex- 
 quisite humour he described, in illustration of the abuses 
 at which the Bill was meant to strike, the way in 
 which the Mercers' Company 1 expended annually on 
 a breakfast, luncheon and dinner, a sum of about 
 
 1 Not the Lord Mayor and Aldermen of London, as stated by Lord Campbell 
 P- 155).
 
 4 1 2 DEFEA T OF CHARITABLE TRUSTS SILL. CHAP. xvi. 
 
 during a visit of certain of their number to Greenwich, 
 to examine the accounts of a charity, a duty for which 
 the founder, the Earl of Northampton, in the reign 
 of James I., had directed that only the sum of ^5 
 a year should be applied. The elaborate menu of the 
 dinner was enough to inspire hunger in an anchorite. 
 The Chancellor was speaking at seven o'clock, and pre- 
 faced his perusal of it with the remark, that it was " an 
 awkward hour to speak of such things, and that he 
 was afraid he would have a very thin audience after 
 reading it." A needless fear, for what attraction could 
 turn the scale, where so much humour, strong sense, and 
 vigorous argument in the mouth of a speaker who never 
 threw a word away formed the counter-attraction ? 
 
 But there was another reason for keeping the 
 House together, more potent than even Lyndhurst's 
 eloquence. A combination had been formed between 
 the Whigs and the Protectionist Peers to inflict a 
 defeat upon the Government. Party, as usual, where 
 place was in prospect, predominated with the Opposi- 
 tion over patriotism, and in their van Lord (Tottenham 
 and Lord Campbell stepped forward to shield abuses, 
 which such pure Reformers were bound by every 
 principle of their creed to denounce. Lord Brougham, 
 to his honour, not only would not countenance this 
 unholy alliance, but spoke in favour of the Bill in 
 his best style. But neither his eloquence nor Lynd- 
 hurst's almost impassioned appeal to their Lordships' 
 "sense of justice a principle which had always been 
 revered and considered sacred in that House," had 
 any effect, and the Peers declared against the second 
 reading of the Bill by a majority of two. 1 The 
 
 1 Lord Campbell says, "It was thrown out, and, I must with shame confess, 
 very factiously. . . . We, alas ! had not the virtue to withstand the temptation 
 of snatching a vote against the Government " at the cost, he might have added, 
 of a great public wrong. Contrast with this the Queen's eulogium (7th of July)
 
 1845. FALL OF THE PEEL ADMINISTRATION. 413 
 
 result was serious, for not till 1853 was a legislative 
 remedy applied to abuses which, owing to this factious 
 coalition, were left in full play for eight more years. 
 
 This vote was a certain presage of the speedy 
 close of the Peel Administration. Early in the session 
 they had introduced a Coercion Bill for Ireland, which 
 the official information at their command suggested 
 as the only means for checking the terrorism and 
 assassination which were once more gaining a head 
 in that distracted country. It suited the Opposition 
 to make light of the Ministerial apprehensions, and 
 to snatch at the popularity which is always within 
 reach of those who represent as tyrannical and op- 
 pressive all swift and resolute action for the suppres- 
 sion of violence and sedition. Availing themselves of 
 the hostility of the Protectionists to the Government, 
 it was not difficult to defeat the Coercion Bill, and a 
 majority of seventy-eight against it on the 26th of June 
 justified Sir Robert Peel in passing the cares and re- 
 sponsibilities of government into hands which he well 
 knew would have bitter cause before long to regret 
 the line of action they had adopted in regard to this 
 very Bill. A dissolution in the then state of parties 
 would not have given him a working majority, and, 
 to use his own words in the House of Commons, 
 " anything was preferable to maintaining ourselves in 
 office without a full measure of the confidence of 
 this House." 
 
 Sir Robert Peel had indeed, like his Chancellor, long 
 been desirous of retiring from office ; and, while he 
 was writing (4th of July) to Lord Hardinge in India, 
 
 on Sir Robert Peel and Lord Aberdeen on their resigning office : " Never during 
 the five years that they were with me did they ever recommend a person or a thing 
 that was not for my or the country's best, and never for the party's advantage 
 only." ('Life of Prince Consort,' vol. i. p. 328.)
 
 414 SATISFACTION OF LORD LYNDHURST CHAP. xvi. 
 
 from Drayton Manor, that he had " every disposition 
 to forgive his enemies for having conferred upon him 
 the blessing of the loss of power," this is the way 
 that blessing was regarded in Lord Lyndhurst's home. 
 His sister writes (3rd of July) to Mrs. Greene 
 
 ... Of course you will have heard before this reaches 
 you of the resignation of the Peel Ministry, and that the 
 Whigs have taken their places. We bear our defeat with 
 great philosophy. To be sure, my brother had made up his 
 mind some time since to retire from the fatigues of office upon 
 the first convenient opportunity ; still, it would have been 
 more agreeable to have left the other members of Government 
 behind. He is as well as I have known him to be for a long 
 time, and quite delighted at the idea of a little leisure. . . . 
 
 That leisure he had well earned. He descended 
 from his high office with a fulness and brilliancy 
 of reputation which might have satisfied the most 
 aspiring ambition, and with no thought that he was 
 to be permitted to apply his great gifts with signal 
 effect again and again, through many years, for the 
 public good. As soon as possible he got away 
 from the town to the quiet of his country house. 
 Many years had elapsed since he had written to the 
 beloved sister in America, with whom we have seen 
 him during his first years at the Bar in frequent cor- 
 respondence. But when Christmas came round, and 
 found him for the first time a free man, he resumed 
 his pen, and wrote to her in the old, simple, affec- 
 tionate strain. 
 
 Turville Park, December 30, 1846. 
 
 My dearest Sister, It would be quite scandalous, as 
 I am now free from all my fetters, at this season of festivity 
 and mirth, if I were to neglect writing to one so dear to me, 
 and with whom I passed so many years of my early life. 
 Hitherto our correspondence has been carried on by Mary,
 
 1845. AT RELEASE FROM OFFICE. 415 
 
 whom we dignify with the title of Aunty ; but I have no 
 longer any excuse for not taking a part in it. She was much 
 shaken some time back by an asthmatical attack ; this has 
 rendered her very prudent and cautious, and she has now 
 pretty well recovered from the effects of it. I also have 
 suffered from illness, but of a transitory nature, and I am now 
 quite blooming, and that too in spite of the deep snow with 
 which this hill country is crowned. But you will laugh at my 
 talking of snow in Old England it is such a mere sprinkling 
 to the inhabitants of New England. 
 
 And so you have got into War I What a foolish or wicked 
 gentleman your Mr. Polk seems to be ! Does he think you 
 have not already acres enough ? or that the addition which 
 he seeks will add to the happiness or even to the power of the 
 Union ? But it is a hasty move, I presume, and it is not 
 intelligible upon any other principle ! You can't spare Sarah, 
 [her daughter] or it would give us great pleasure to see her 
 again in England. You know she took a fancy to this side of 
 the water, and I have no doubt another expedition would do 
 her good. If she could be persuaded to come, and you could 
 be persuaded to part with her for six months, we would return 
 her safe and sound at the expiration of that period. 
 
 We have been passing the winter here, now and then, with 
 a few friends ; and this tranquil sort of life is a great relief 
 and a great pleasure to me, after the constant dull routine of 
 office, and of public life for so many years. You would, I am 
 sure, sympathise with me in this feeling, you who always 
 loved peace and tranquillity, and the society of your family 
 and friends. We cannot, my dearest sister, count on many 
 more years. It is time for me to set my house in order. 
 Yours has happily always been in that state. I wish we could 
 exchange kisses at this moment, but as that cannot be done 
 even with the aid of the electric telegraph, I must content 
 myself with wishing to you and yours, not only a pleasant 
 time now, but every sort of blessing and happiness. 
 
 I remain, my dearest sister, your affectionate brother, 
 
 (Signed) LYNDHURST.
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 Unsuccessful attempt to reunite the Conservative party Attack by Lord 
 George Bentinck Lord Lyndhurst's reply Communication with 
 Lord Stanley as to future policy of the Opposition Life at Turville 
 Park His social circle Speech on Canada Bill for compensating 
 losses in Rebellion Failure of Sight Temporary Retirement from 
 public life Is operated on for cataract Sight restored. 
 
 LORD LYNDHURST left office with the determination 
 never again to return to it. Its honours and its 
 emoluments were alike indifferent to him. But he 
 could not regard without deep concern the distracted 
 state of the great Conservative party, to whom he 
 looked for holding in check the democratic rashness 
 of the new school of Liberals. To unite them again 
 on the common ground which they had occupied 
 before they were divided into Peelites and Protec- 
 tionists, was a task in which he of all men was most 
 likely to succeed. Stormy times were ahead both at 
 home and abroad. Ireland was every day advancing 
 nearer and nearer to famine and insurrection, and on 
 the political horizon abroad the clouds were already 
 gathering which broke in the revolutionary storms 
 of 1848. The Whig Government was notoriously 
 weak, dependent, as was very early seen, for its very 
 existence upon the support of Sir Robert Peel and his 
 friends ; while the only leader of the broken ranks of 
 the Conservatives, who had as yet come to the front, 
 was Lord George Bentinck. His capacity, however, 
 for the task had yet to be proved, and his antece- 
 dent history had not inspired confidence in the great
 
 1846. BREAK UP OF CONSERVATIVE PARTY. 417 
 
 body of Conservatives, who had been used to look to 
 Sir Robert Peel and the Duke of Wellington as their 
 leaders. It was obviously of the highest importance, 
 therefore, that a reunion of the broken ranks of the 
 party in opposition should, if possible, be effected ; 
 and, as Lord Lyndhurst notoriously could have no 
 motive of personal aggrandisement in the return of 
 his party to office, and held a position of neutrality 
 between the sections into which they were divided, 
 he was obviously the fittest person to attempt their 
 reconciliation. 
 
 His reasons for undertaking the work were given 
 by himself in the House of Lords (22nd of August, 
 1846)- 
 
 M Immediately after the present Government was formed, 
 the different members of the Conservative party appeared to 
 me to show a desire to unite and to forget their differences. 
 That was the case in this House, and it appeared to me 
 extremely desirable to effect the same object in the other 
 House. I thought it desirable, because, from the position in 
 which I stood, it was well-known that I was not a candidate 
 for official appointment, and I thought I might undertake the 
 task without a suspicion that I had any personal objects in 
 view. I therefore communicated with several of my friends 
 who were members of the other House. I represented to 
 them that it was of great importance that former differences 
 should be forgotten, now that the great measure was passed 
 which had led to these differences. I stated that, not with 
 reference to any particular measure or set of measures. I 
 desired that the Conservative party should be re-formed, and 
 that they might then take such a course as was considered 
 advisable." (Hansard, vol. Ixxxviii. 9/3.) 
 
 Lord Lyndhurst was aware that Sir Robert Peel, 
 like himself, had bidden adieu to office for ever. In 
 any case he was not likely to take part in a scheme for 
 reuniting the Conservative body, after the treatment 
 
 2 E.
 
 41 8 SIR ROBERT PEEL. CHAP. xvn. 
 
 he had received from the leaders of the Protectionists. 
 Still, as Lord Lyndhurst said in the same speech, 
 in order that he might not be subjected to misrepre- 
 sentation, he thought it desirable to communicate 
 with his former chief, after some progress had been 
 made in ascertaining the views of other members of 
 the late Government, and of the party which sup- 
 ported it. When they met, Sir Robert Peel stated that 
 he was not prepared to enter into any party combina- 
 tion with a view to his own return to office, and should 
 leave " to those with whom he had been previously 
 connected in political life the entire liberty to judge 
 for themselves with regard to the formation of any 
 new party connection." 1 
 
 The Duke of Wellington was also made aware of 
 what was going on, as in such a matter Lord Lynd- 
 hurst was not the man to stir without opening his pur- 
 pose frankly to his friends and oldest political allies. 
 But, as will be seen from the following letter, the 
 Duke, whilst most desirous to see the breach in the 
 Conservative ranks healed, did not consider it con- 
 sistent with his duty as Commander-in-Chief to act 
 in direct concert with " any political party not con- 
 nected with the existing administration." 
 
 " London, July 23, 1846. 
 
 " My dear Lord Lyndhurst, I told you that in consequence 
 of Her Majesty having conveyed to me her commands that 
 I should continue to fill the office of Commander-in-Chief of 
 Her Majesty's land forces, through her Minister, Lord John 
 Russell, I had given my consent ; but that I had explained 
 
 1 "Lyndhurst," says Campbell ( ' Lyndhurst's Life,' p. 166), "never forgave 
 Peel the cruel rebuff which he now received, instead of expected thanks, with 
 perhaps an offer of becoming Chancellor qttinto. Peel relented as little, and the 
 estrangement continued down to the premature death of that distinguished 
 statesman.' Instead of being estranged, they remained all along on the best 
 terms. Lord and Lady Lyndhurst, as already mentioned, visited Sir Robert Peel 
 at Drayton Manor, in October 1848, and the reader will emember what his host 
 wrote of him a few days afterwards (ante, p. 239).
 
 1846. THE DUKE OF WELLINGTON. 419 
 
 myself to Lord John nearly in the very words of, and had 
 referred to, a letter which I had written to Her Majesty in 
 December last, when Her Majesty had herself in writing 
 intimated the same command to me on the occasion of the 
 retirement of Sir Robert Peel from Her Majesty's service, and 
 Lord John Russell having received her commands to form a 
 Government. 
 
 " Here follow the very terms used : ' It is impossible for 
 F.M. the Duke of Wellington to form a political connection 
 with Lord John Russell, or to have any relations with the 
 political course of the Government over which he will preside. 
 Such arrangement would not conciliate public confidence, be 
 creditable to either party, or be useful to the service of Your 
 Majesty ; nor indeed would the performance of the duties of 
 the Commander-in-Chief require that it should exist. On the 
 other hand, the performance of these duties would require that 
 the person filling the office should avoid to belong to, or to 
 act in concert with, any political party opposed to the Govern- 
 ment.' 
 
 " Her Majesty was thus made aware of the position in which 
 I was about to place myself, in case Her Majesty should 
 communicate to me her official command that I should resume 
 the command of her army. 
 
 " I stated to you the substance, and I believe the very words 
 above written in conversation at my house, on one afternoon 
 that you called upon me. I had stated them to others. The 
 conversation between you and me related to a meeting of the 
 House of Lords, at which I had not been present. 
 
 " I lamented with you the divisions occasioned by late 
 measures and events, in parties, among friends, and even 
 between individuals of the same families ; and I expressed the 
 anxious wish and desire that for the sake of individuals, of 
 society, and for the benefit of the State itself, these should no 
 longer exist ; but that all should be reconciled, that everything 
 injudicious that had been said might be buried in oblivion, and 
 that all might again unite as heretofore in the service of the 
 public. I observed that you must see that, situated as I 
 was, it was impossible for me to belong to or to act in concert 
 with any political party not connected with the Administra- 
 tion under which I was holding office by command of Her 
 
 2 E 2
 
 420 LORD STANLEY. CHAP. xvu. 
 
 Majesty. I could see clearly the course which was desirable 
 for those to take in society with whom I was living, and with 
 whom I had been acting, and for the State ; but my pro- 
 fessional position prevented me from taking this course ; and 
 that I must decline to interfere in any manner, and that 
 I should attend Parliament but little, if at all, after the un- 
 finished measures of Sir Robert Peel's Government had been 
 brought to a close. 
 
 " I think that this is the substance of what passed between 
 you and me on the occasion referred to. I have explained 
 myself in the same way to others, and I am anxious that in 
 any communication which you may have with any, in which 
 my course may be discussed, you will bear in your re- 
 collection the contents of this note. Believe me ever yours 
 most sincerely, (Signed) " WELLINGTON." 
 
 It was to Lord Stanley that Lord Lyndhurst, in 
 common with the rest of his party, looked as the 
 future leader of the Conservatives, and with him 
 accordingly he entered into communication, and re- 
 ceived his entire approval of the attempt on which he 
 had entered. Lord Campbell states (p. 164), "Lord 
 Stanley happened to be in the country, and knew 
 nothing of it till it had blown up." The following 
 letter to him from Lord Lyndhurst (8th of July, 1846) 
 is conclusive evidence to the contrary 
 
 " My dear Lord Stanley, I wish I could have two minutes 
 conversation with you before you leave town to-morrow. I 
 have been endeavouring to bring the two parties together 
 during the whole of this day, and I think with some prospect 
 of success. If you will assist me, I have no doubt the object 
 will be accomplished, and then we shall be truly formidable. 
 I hope your dinner went off well to-day. Ever yours 
 faithfully." 
 
 The desired meeting took place, and Lord 
 Stanley was fully informed of what had been done. 
 But he had to leave town, and it occurred to Lord
 
 iS46. LORD GEORGE BENTINCK. 421 
 
 Lyndhurst that, as Lord George Bentinck was the 
 head of the Protectionist party in the House of 
 Commons, it would be right to open a communication 
 with him. They were personally unacquainted ; and 
 a message was sent to Lord George Bentinck, through 
 one of his friends, with this view. What this message 
 was, and how it was received, is best shown by the 
 words of the Memorandum (now before us) of what 
 passed, furnished to Lord Lyndhurst at the time by 
 the gentleman who carried it. 
 
 " I stated to Lord G. Bentinck that I came with a message 
 from Lord Lyndhurst. The object of the message was to 
 express his desire that the Conservative party, now unfortu- 
 nately split up, should be reunited as speedily as possible, and 
 to say that he would be happy to come into personal com- 
 munication with Lord George with that view." To this Lord 
 George answered, " that he was acting under Lord Stanley, 
 and as both Lord Stanley and Lord Lyndhurst were in the 
 House of Peers, he thought it better that all communication 
 should pass between these Lords, as he was in cordial co- 
 operation with Lord Stanley." 
 
 The tone of this reply was sufficient to satisfy 
 Lord Lyndhurst that no co-operation was to be ex- 
 pected in that quarter. 
 
 " I then," he said in the speech already quoted, " dismissed 
 the subject from my mind. I tried in two or three quarters to 
 see if I could advance the object in view ; but I found so much 
 bitterness of feeling and personal hostility, that I abandoned 
 it, and took no further steps. I made no concealment what- 
 ever ; the whole matter was universally known ; I even stated 
 it to some noble Lords on the opposite side of the House. . . . 
 What is the story built on this ? It is, that I wanted to raise 
 a factious opposition to the Sugar Bill. This I utterly deny. 
 I took no part in the discussion on that Bill, and did not even 
 vote."
 
 422 ATTACK ON LORD LYNDHURST CHAP. xvn. 
 
 This legitimate and open attempt to reunite the 
 Conservative party is spoken of by Lord Campbell as 
 an " intrigue " for what in the state of parties would 
 have been the insane purpose of getting the Protec- 
 tionists and Peelites to join in opposing the Sugar 
 Duties Bill. He says also, that Lord George Bentinck, 
 on receiving the proposal, "was thrown into a frenzy of 
 passion. He immediately went down to the House of 
 Commons and denounced it." It was on the loth of 
 July that Lord Lyndhurst's ambassador waited on Lord 
 George. It was not till the 2ist of August that 
 Lord George mentioned the matter in the House of 
 Commons. Nor would he then have done so, had he 
 not found it convenient to drag the subject forward, 
 when driven to the wall by the consequences of his own 
 unseemly rashness in an attack upon the ex-Chancellor. 
 
 Only those who fancy they can divine motives 
 will venture to say that Lord George was " driven to 
 frenzy " by the fact that a man of Lyndhurst's great 
 sagacity should have thought the interests of the Con- 
 servative party would be best served by making up 
 their differences. But certainly for some reason he 
 seems at the time to have been anxious to injure 
 Lord Lyndhurst in the public estimation. With this 
 view he brought, on the i8th of August, a charge 
 against him of having been a party to what he called 
 a " nefarious job," of a complicated kind. Stated as he 
 put them, the facts were these. Sir Henry Roper, 
 Chief Justice of Bombay, on the eve of the Peel 
 Ministry going out of office, had been superseded, and 
 Mr. David Pollock, one of the Chief Commissioners 
 in London for the Relief of Insolvent Debtors, had 
 been appointed in his stead, the appointment having 
 been " pressed upon him by the Lord Chancellor.'* 
 The motive invented by Lord George Bentinck for
 
 1846. BY LORD GEORGE BENTINCK. 423 
 
 this was to make a place for Mr. Phillips, the Com- 
 missioner of the Bankruptcy Court of Liverpool, in 
 order that the vacancy thus created might be given 
 to Mr. Perry, one of the Lord Chancellor's secretaries. 
 Nor was this all. The appointment of the Chief 
 Justice of India rested not with the Chancellor, but 
 with the President of the Board of Control (Lord 
 Ripon), and his consent to the transaction, Lord 
 George Bentinck alleged, had been bought by the 
 Chancellor appointing a nominee of Lord Ripon's to 
 the living of Nocton. 
 
 The charge was advanced in the most unqualified 
 and offensive terms. Levelled generally against the 
 late government, it was mainly directed against Lord 
 Lyndhurst. Mr. Disraeli knew Lord Lyndhurst too 
 well not to be convinced that no charge of such a 
 nature could be sustained against him, and, speaking 
 after Lord George Bentinck, he said 
 
 "No one intimately acquainted with that noble and 
 learned Lord could suppose him influenced by selfish pur- 
 poses. On the contrary, I believe there never has been a 
 public man animated by more generous impulses. I re- 
 member that on one occasion the noble and learned Lord, 
 expressing his opinions on the subject of patronage, said that 
 during a long, and it might be added an illustrious career, he 
 had been influenced by three considerations : the first, his 
 duty to the public ; the second, his duty to his party ; and the 
 third, his duty to his friends. I believe those were the prin- 
 ciples which animated Lord Lyndhurst, and I am sure, if 
 this question were investigated, the conduct of the noble and 
 learned Lord would come out perfectly immaculate." (Han- 
 sard, vol. Ixxxviii. 870.) 
 
 It would have been well for Lord George 
 Bentinck, had he taken counsel with Mr. Disraeli 
 before moving in the matter. He had succeeded
 
 424 REPLY OF LORD LYNDHURST CHAP. XVH. 
 
 in rousing Lord Lyndhurst's anger, and two days 
 afterwards it fell upon him in an exposition of the 
 absolute groundlessness of every item of his charges, 
 followed by a withering denunciation of his rashness, 
 of a kind to which fortunately public men do not often 
 expose themselves. Lord Lyndhurst proved, that he 
 had nothing whatever to do with the appointment of 
 either Mr. Pollock or Mr. Phillips that, there being 
 a vacancy, he had appointed in Mr. Perry a man 
 thoroughly qualified to succeed Mr. Phillips and 
 he read his correspondence with Lord Ripon, which 
 showed conclusively that the appointment to the 
 living of Nocton was made upon local considerations 
 only. This done, he proceeded 
 
 "My Lords, I have now gone through and met every one 
 of the charges preferred against me and my noble friend 
 [Lord Ripon] ; and I ask with confidence, whether there is 
 any foundation whatever for any part of his accusations ? I 
 confess that, for my own part, I am at a loss to account for 
 the course pursued by the noble Lord. I do not know to 
 what principle I am to refer it. Does it accord with his 
 sense of justice, that he should bring forward charges of this 
 description, without requiring first some explanation from 
 the parties against whom they are directed, or without giving 
 notice of his intention to bring them forward ? Is that the 
 conduct of a discreet public man ? My Lords, can any person 
 justify such conduct ? Perhaps the noble Lord thinks that 
 everything is fair in party politics that to blacken and 
 traduce the character of political opponents, by means how- 
 ever base or foul, is perfectly justifiable. The noble Lord 
 may perhaps have acted upon that principle, or perhaps from 
 his early associations and his early habits he may have been 
 led to form so low an opinion of the principles on which man- 
 kind act, as to suppose that every man in his transactions of 
 life must be directed by some base, selfish, sordid motives. 
 I cannot ascribe it to any other principle but one of those to 
 which I have referred. It has been said, and well said, that
 
 1846. TO LORD GEORGE BENTINCK. 425 
 
 to be praised by a person who is the subject of praise adds 
 tenfold to the value of the acknowledgment. The same 
 principle will apply to calumny, and the best antidote to 
 calumny will often be found in the character of the calumniator. 
 I do not know, with respect to the noble Lord's slander, that 
 it is, as the poet says, " sharp as the point of a sword," but if 
 " his tongue does not outvenom all the worms of Nile," it is 
 not from the want of will or inclination, but from the want of 
 power. A distinguished writer has this allusion in reference 
 to persons unjustly assailed: "the sting of the wasp may 
 fester and inflame, though long after the venomous insect has 
 left his life and sting in the wound." . . . Yes, my Lords, 
 although refuted, these attacks are not harmless ; they have a 
 public effect, sometimes a lasting effect. Persons remember 
 the attack they do not always remember the defence." 
 (Ibid. 903.) 
 
 As to the facts, Lord Lyndhurst had left Lord 
 George Bentinck without an inch of ground to stand 
 upon. So when the Protectionist champion came to 
 speak next day in reply to what Lord Lyndhurst had 
 said, he thought to strip the ex-Chancellor's invec- 
 tive of its force, by asking why, if he were the 
 man to whom it had been imputed that there " was 
 nothing too great for his malignity, or too small for 
 the grasp of his rapacity," should Lord Lyndhurst 
 on the loth of July previous have sent a messenger 
 to say that he was prepared to meet him ? He 
 then gave an account of what had taken place 
 between Lord Lyndhurst's ambassador and himself, 
 of which it is only necessary to say, that Lord 
 Lyndhurst, the very next day, in his place in 
 Parliament, founding on the Memorandum already 
 quoted, denied its accuracy in every particular. 
 The ambassador was no friend of his ; he had not 
 seen him in the business, and selected him solely 
 because he was mentioned to him by his secretary
 
 426 LETTER FROM DUKE OF WELLINGTON. CHAP. XVH. 
 
 "as a gentleman of great respectability, and an in- 
 timate acquaintance of Lord George Bentinck." x 
 
 Nothing could have been more ill-advised than 
 to attack Lord Lyndhurst on a question of patron- 
 age. In what Mr. Disraeli said of him in this 
 respect every public man would have concurred. 
 Not many months before (i8th of May), Lord 
 Brougham, in the debate on the Charitable Trusts 
 Bill, had borne testimony, that " There never was a 
 Minister, a Chancellor, or a member of the Executive 
 Government, who, being a member of a government 
 which effected great reforms, stood higher or more im- 
 pregnable than my noble and learned friend on the 
 ground of patronage." On the well-known principle 
 that we may safely draw conclusions as to the 
 character of a man from the way his friends write 
 to him, the following characteristic letter to Lynd- 
 hurst from the Duke of Wellington is a pretty 
 distinct indication how scrupulous in such matters 
 he was known to be. 
 
 "London, December 17, 1844. 
 
 " My dear Lord Chancellor I receive thousands of appli- 
 cations for the same favour as the enclosed. But I make it a 
 rule never to trouble you with one of them. Everybody has, 
 or claims a right to solicit me for everything ! But I cannot 
 become the Solicitor-General in favour of any ; and bring 
 upon others the disappointment of their expectations respec- 
 tively ! But this is a peculiar case. The Sir Alexander Gordon 
 whom the lady mentions, a brother of Lord Aberdeen's, 
 
 1 Lord Campbell gives the following ostensible quotation from Lord George's 
 speech : " Sir, I will not say of Lord Lyndhurst as he has said of me, that 
 his calumnies are coarse, or that his weapons are of the same description. I 
 will not deny that his sarcasms are dressed in more classical language than 
 mine ; I admire the sharp edge and polish of his weapons. I admit that while 
 I wield the broadsword and bayonet, he has skill to use the rapier, and uses it 
 with the power of a giant. But I am an honest man, and my past career ivill 
 bear a scrutiny perhaps better than that of the meddling ex- Chancellor :" It is 
 painful to have to call attention to the fact, that neither the words in italics, nor 
 any words of a similar import, appear in Hansard, or in the Times report.
 
 1846. CO-OPERATION WITH LORD STANLEY. 427 
 
 was my aide-de-camp for many years, killed by my side in 
 the battle of Waterloo, or rather received at my side in the 
 battle the wound of which he died after his thigh was ampu- 
 tated. If not inconvenient to you I should be glad if this 
 lady's husband could be provided for at the Mines ; particu- 
 larly if it should prove that he is as deserving of your notice 
 as is stated. Believe me ever, yours most sincerely, 
 
 (Signed) " WELLINGTON." 
 
 Lord Lyndhurst was now well content to retire 
 for a time from any active participation in the debates 
 in the House of Lords. But he kept up intimate 
 relations with the leading men of his party, ready, 
 if occasion called him, to lend a helping hand in re- 
 uniting their broken ranks, and in maintaining a sound 
 Conservative policy. On the 9th of December, 1846, 
 we find Lord Stanley writing to him in terms which 
 show what importance he attached to his assistance. 
 
 "Knowsley, December 10, 1846. 
 
 " Dear Lord Lyndhurst, On the I4th of last month I sent 
 you, by Brougham's desire, a letter from him with a request 
 that you would return it. I have not heard from you since, 
 and am ignorant whether it may have reached you. I now 
 send you a second from the same source, which, considering 
 that he is in London, appears to me rather a circuitous mode of 
 carrying on his correspondence. However, I obey his orders. 
 
 " I believe^Parliament will certainly meet on the iQth of 
 January, when I hope that we shall meet in London, and 
 that, notwithstanding the breach made in the Conservative 
 party by the events of last year, and all that took place 
 latterly, personally unpleasant to yourself, we may be able 
 to act cordially together and co-operate in maintaining a 
 defensive and Conservative policy, watching, but not un- 
 necessarily assailing the Government, and seeking to reunite 
 the scattered fragments of the great Conservative party. 
 This is the object at which I intend to aim as far as I can 
 exercise any influence. I cannot of course answer for all ; 
 but I trust that in our House, at least, the difficulties will be
 
 428 LETTER TO LORD STANLEY. CHAP. xvn. 
 
 comparatively small. Your co-operation would infinitely reduce 
 them. Believe me, dear Lord Lyndhurst, yours sincerely, 
 
 (Signed) " STANLEY." 
 
 Here is Lord Lyndhurst's reply from Turville 
 (i6th December) 
 
 " My dear Stanley, Many thanks for your letters and the 
 pothooks and hangers which they enclosed. You may ascribe 
 the delay in answering them to the time necessarily employed 
 in attempting to decipher these documents. Brougham is a 
 proficient in many arts and sciences, but in these he has 
 competitors. In the mystery of unintelligible writing he 
 stands unrivalled and alone. 
 
 " I have pretty well recovered from the bilious attack with 
 which I was visited at the close of the last session, but the 
 
 foolery of had nearly brought on a relapse. I shall be up 
 
 at the meeting of Parliament. 
 
 " If Ireland was Peel's difficulty, what is it to Lord John ? 
 Never was there such a mess. But how can Ministers justify 
 month after month spending such large sums of the public 
 money without calling Parliament together to sanction it ? 
 
 "As to the Spanish Marriage it is all nonsense. I think 
 with you that the Treaty of Utrecht has nothing to do with 
 it. 1 But I cannot help suspecting a little trickery to get out 
 of the understanding as arranged at d'Eu." 
 
 Retribution for their conduct on Peel's Irish 
 Coercion Bill had by this time overtaken the Whigs. 
 The increase of crime and lawless outrages, which that 
 measure would certainly have checked, had now 
 become so formidable as to demand a stringent 
 remedy in the shape of the renewal of the Irish Arms 
 Act. So closely pressed, however, was Lord John 
 Russell by many of his supporters, who turned against 
 
 1 Lord Palmerston, after the marriage of the Duke of Montpensier with the 
 sister of the Queen of Spain, set up the Treaty of Utrecht as excluding the Princes 
 of the House of Orleans from the Spanish throne. Lord Lyndhurst, in common 
 with the most experienced jurists, obviously held that this was putting a strain upon 
 the language of the treaty which it would not bear.
 
 1846. LIFE AT TURVILLE PARK. 429 
 
 him the arguments which he had used to defeat Sir 
 Robert Peel's Bill, that he had to withdraw his own 
 Bill after it had passed the second reading. The 
 weakness of this indecision, which has found a parallel 
 in more recent times, resulted, as it was sure to do, 
 in an increase of the evil, and in the necessity for 
 sterner measures of repression. Accordingly in Novem- 
 ber 1847, when Ireland had been brought practically to 
 a state of civil war, and when, to use Lord Stanley's I 
 words, it was " an admitted fact that it was safer 1 X 
 in that island to violate than to obey the law," the I 
 Government were compelled to introduce a Coercion 
 Bill of their own. Meanwhile famine was spreading 
 through the land, and the Ministry which had rejected 
 a statesmanlike proposal of Lord George Bentinck's 
 in the previous session to give employment to the 
 people in the construction of arterial lines of railway, \y 
 which were greatly needed, had spent profuse sums 
 of money in the making of roads and bridges, which 
 were not wanted at all. It is to these circumstances 
 that Lord Lyndhurst alludes in the letter just quoted. 
 
 During the next two years he spent much of his 
 time at Turville Park, where he found pleasant occu- 
 pation in looking after his farm, and in cultivating his 
 garden, in which he took great delight. He also 
 expended a good deal of money in laying out and im- 
 proving the roads in the parish, making among other 
 things a new road to the parish church, which was 
 much wanted. For what he did in this way, as well 
 as for his general kindness, the people of the district 
 still speak of him warmly. 
 
 The Revolutionary Epoch of 1848 lulled for a 
 time the strife of parties, both sides being equally 
 interested in steering England tranquilly through that 
 time of trouble, and in putting down the rebellious
 
 430 LORD LYNDHURST CHAP. xvn. 
 
 designs of the Young Ireland party, which were 
 only prevented from proving serious to the peace of 
 England, as well as of -Ireland, how serious has 
 never yet been told by the firm action of the 
 Government through Lord Clarendon as their Lord 
 Lieutenant. At this time, too, Lord Lyndhurst re- 
 sumed with great interest his favourite studies in 
 mathematics as well as in literature. No new book 
 of value was left unread. Of the statement of Lord 
 Campbell that " his reading did not extend beyond 
 the volumes supplied by a circulating library," it is 
 enough to say that it is directly contrary to the fact. 
 
 The house of such a man was sure to be the resort 
 of all that was best and brightest in London society. 
 He was catholic in his tastes. Artists, authors, and 
 men of science were as welcome there as politicians 
 or members of the diplomatic body, or as beautiful 
 and gifted women. All were charmed by his bright, 
 genial, playful manner, and his special faculty for 
 putting other people at their ease in his society. 
 There was one man who had no opportunity of 
 judging what he was in the social circle that used to 
 gather round him, either at Turville or in his house 
 in George Street. This was Lord Campbell, who was 
 never admitted to it ; and yet he has not scrupled to 
 say, borrowing the idea from a speech of Sir Peter 
 Teazle in ' The School for Scandal,' 1 that in visiting it 
 "it was expedient to go late and stay the last; for I 
 observed the practice to be that each visitor, on de- 
 parting, furnished a subject of satirical remark for the 
 master of the house and those who remained " (p. 168). 
 In another place (p. 209) he says, that Lyndhurst's 
 <f grand resource in conversation was to abuse or to 
 
 1 Act ii. sc. 3: "Your Ladyship [Lady Sneerwell] must excuse me. I am 
 called away by particular business, but I leave my character behind me. "
 
 1848. IN SOCIETY. 431 
 
 ridicule the absent. . . . He was accustomed when 
 conversing with political opponents to abuse and laugh 
 at his own colleagues and associates, and above all 
 to abuse and laugh at the rivals of those whom he 
 was addressing." Men of this peculiar baseness are 
 speedily found out, and are left without friends. But 
 it was well known in Lord Lyndhurst's own circle that, 
 as he never dropped an old friend, whatever his 
 circumstances or station in life, so he never lost one. 
 He was liked and admired for himself by many men 
 with whom he had fought stout battles, and few could 
 number as attached friends more men of the most 
 varied turn of mind and character. Our own inquiries 
 enable us to confirm what was said by Mr. Hayward 
 in commenting on this charge of Lord Campbell's in 
 the ' Quarterly Review' (No. 251). 
 
 " We have consulted every surviving friend of his that we 
 could discover, and they are unanimous in denouncing these 
 charges of backbiting and social treachery as utterly ground- 
 less. He was never driven to what was termed his ' grand 
 resource ; ' for it was by variety, fecundity and playfulness, 
 that he charmed. He had humour if not wit." 
 
 Of this Mr. Hayward gives a pleasant illustration. 
 At a dinner at his chambers, where, besides Lord 
 Lyndhurst, James Smith, Theodore Hook, and Mrs. 
 Norton were present, Mr. Hayward invented the 
 remark, by way of illustrating Madame de Genlis's 
 prudery, that she kept her books in detached cases, the 
 male authors in one, and the female authors in another. 
 " I suppose," said Lyndhurst, "she did not wish to 
 add to her library." 
 
 Lord Lyndhurst had at this time a strong reason for 
 avoiding public life as much as possible. The blindness 
 which had been for some time growing upon him had
 
 432 LORD LYNDHURSTS SPEECH CHAP. xvir. 
 
 increased so much that through the greater part of 1 849 
 he could neither read nor write. His thoughts under 
 these circumstances were little likely to be occupied 
 with the project imputed to him by Lord Campbell 
 (p. 169), of annoying the Government, and getting him- 
 self enrolled in the ranks of the Protectionists for the 
 purpose. Lord Stanley, we have seen, had from the 
 first appealed to him for assistance, and of that assist- 
 ance he had been assured. But with such a calamity 
 impending over him Lord Lyndhurst could have had 
 little hope of being in the future of active service to 
 his party. It was certainly as much a surprise to his 
 friends as to the Opposition, when he appeared, on the 
 1 9th of June, 1849, in the House of Lords, to which 
 he had long been a stranger, and rose to speak in 
 support of a motion by Lord Brougham, 1 to effect the 
 suspension of the royal assent to an Act passed by the 
 Canadian Legislature, under which he contended that 
 persons who had aided and abetted the rebellion in 
 Canada in 1837 and 1838 might receive compensation 
 for losses sustained by them in consequence of the 
 measures used to suppress it. The question was an 
 important one, because only an extreme necessity 
 could have justified the Home Government in apply- 
 ing its power of veto to an Act of the local legislature. 
 But the case surely fell within that description, if the 
 language of the Act were such, that men who had 
 raised the standard of rebellion could under it insist 
 on compensation for the losses created by their own 
 rebellious acts. That it had this effect was contended 
 by Lord Brougham, who was answered by Earl Grey 
 in a long but by no means convincing speech. When 
 he sat down, Lord Lyndhurst with much difficulty 
 
 1 Not Lord Stanley, as stated by Lord Campbell, to help out his theory of 
 Lyndhurst being a "new recruit to the Protectionists."
 
 1 849. ON CANADIAN LOSSES COMPENSATION BILL. 433 
 
 rose from his seat. His look showed how seriously 
 his eyes were affected, and a deathlike stillness reigned 
 throughout the crowded assembly, as in deep, grave, 
 sonorous tones, he began thus 
 
 " I have not been in the habit, for many years, of address- 
 ing your Lordships ; but bearing in mind the relation in 
 which I have been placed to the Crown and to your Lord- 
 ships, when I held office at different times, I feel imperatively 
 called upon by a sense of my duty to your Lordships, and of 
 my duty to the Crown, to express my opinion on the subject 
 of this debate, and my entire disapprobation of the measure 
 to which the noble and learned Lord has called your Lord- 
 ships' attention." * 
 
 He then proceeded to state the grounds upon 
 which he had arrived at this conclusion, and to meet 
 the arguments advanced by Lord Grey with his 
 wonted skill in statement, and the same logical force 
 by which he had in former days riveted the attention 
 of the House. The speech, although it occupied 
 nearly an hour, seemed to his audience only too short, 
 and as they looked at the face marked with the lines 
 of suffering, and the figure, "majestic, though in ruin," 
 which seemed to make his words prophetic, it was 
 with a pang that they heard him, while expressing 
 his regret at having, contrary to his ordinary practice, 
 had occasion to address their Lordships, add in 
 earnest tones, " and perhaps it is the last time I shall 
 ever do so." 
 
 Words more inapplicable cannot be imagined 
 than those applied by Lord Campbell to this speech, 
 of which he says it was " the most factious, the most 
 
 1 This is what he actually said, as we can vouch from having heard the speech. 
 What he did not say is what Lord Campbell (pp. 169-70) represents him to have 
 said. Strange that even he did not see the absurdity of putting such verbiage into 
 Lord Lyndhurst's mouth upon a question of this kind as " I could not descend to 
 the tomb with peace of mind if I did not make a dying effort to save my 
 country ! " 
 
 2 F
 
 434 SPEECH ON CANADIAN LOSSES CHAP. xvn. 
 
 democratical, and the most sophistical," he ever heard 
 in Parliament. Although he was rash enough to rise to 
 speak immediately after Lord Lyndhurst, he did not 
 venture to charge it with any one of these qualities. Its 
 argument he was unable to displace ; but he opened 
 his speech with a series of offensive personalities, 
 recurring to the old accusation about Lord Lyndhurst 
 having been once an extreme Radical. He was going 
 on to impute motives to the ex-Chancellor, when 
 he was stopped by indignant cries of " order." He 
 then charged Lord Lyndhurst with refusing to deal 
 with Lower Canada differently from Upper Canada, 
 coupling the imputation with the suggestion that he 
 did so, because its population was mainly French, and 
 "aliens in blood, and language, and religion." The 
 House listened with impatience, and the rest of the 
 speech was all but drowned in a buzz of conversation. 1 
 Lord Campbell was not allowed to escape without 
 hearing from Lord Stanley what was thought of this 
 unprovoked display of personal rancour. The " Rupert 
 of Debate" elicited the cheers of the House when 
 he said 
 
 " My Lords, I can very easily give credit to the observa- 
 tions with which the noble and learned Lord who has just sat 
 down commenced his remarks, namely, that he listened to 
 the speech of my noble and learned friend behind me with 
 great pain. But I must say for myself and I think I can 
 answer for the rest of the House, not excepting even noble 
 
 1 "Who is that man speaking now? "a lady standing near us asked Lord 
 Brougham, who had come down to the bar, and was conversing with her. The 
 answer was not complimentary to Campbell, for it was in the spirit, and as 
 nearly as possible in the words, of Beatrice to Benedick : " I wonder that you 
 will still be talking; nobody marks you." What Brougham said was of a piece 
 with a passage in one of his letters published in the Macvey Napier Cor- 
 respondence : ' ' Edinburgh is now celebrated for having given us the two 
 most perfect bores that have ever yet been known in London, for Jack Campbell 
 in the House of Lords is just what Tom Macaulay is in private society. "
 
 1 849. COMPENSATION BILL. 435 
 
 Lords on the other side that we listened to that able, 
 lucid and powerful speech with a feeling of anything but 
 pain. I think we must all have listened with a feeling 
 of admiration at the power of language, the undiminished 
 clearness of intellect, the conciseness and force with which my 
 noble and learned friend grappled with the argument before 
 him. But while, on the one hand, we see that age has in no 
 degree impaired the vigour of his intellect, we can, on the 
 other, only feel regret at the announcement he has made of so 
 suddenly ceasing to occupy the attention of the House. I 
 should have thought that if there was one feeling which it 
 would be impossible for any man to entertain, after hearing 
 that speech, it was a feeling akin to that exhibited by the 
 noble and learned Lord [Campbell], when he attempted to 
 answer that speech by an unworthy taunt. I should have 
 thought that my noble and learned friend's high position and 
 long experience, his high character, his eminent and distin- 
 guished abilities, would have secured him, in the honoured 
 decline of his years, from any such unworthy taunts as the 
 noble and learned Lord has not thought it beneath him on 
 such an occasion to address to such a man. If the noble and 
 learned Lord listened with pain to the able statement of my 
 noble and learned friend, sure I am that there is no friend of 
 the noble and learned Lord who must not have listened with 
 deeper pain to what he has addressed to the House." 
 
 Lord Campbell admits (p. 1 70) that he himself 
 spoke "with considerable intemperance," but all grace 
 is taken from the admission by the epithets which he 
 applies in cold blood to Lord Lyndhurst's speech, and 
 by the fact that his statement of its contents is in 
 absolute discordance with the speech itself, while he 
 quotes ostensibly from his own speech a passage 
 which not only he did not speak, but which bears no 
 resemblance to what he did say, except in the quotation 
 of a very stale French couplet. 
 
 It was two o'clock in the morning before a division 
 was taken. Lord Lyndhurst remained to the last, and 
 
 2 F 2
 
 436 OPINIONS ON CANADIAN SPEECH. CHAP, xvn- 
 
 the resolution he had supported was only lost by a 
 majority of three. 
 
 How highly even Lord Lyndhurst's political 
 adversaries thought of what Campbell calls " the most 
 factious, most democratic, and most sophistical" of 
 speeches, may be judged by the following letters from 
 the Duke of Sutherland and the Earl of Ellesmere 
 
 " June 20, 1849. 
 
 "My dear Lord Lyndhurst, Though incapacitated by 
 deafness from attending in Parliament, I cannot refrain from 
 expressing my feeling of admiration at your speech of yester- 
 day, after reading it. I must do so for my own satisfaction. 
 Ever, my dear Lord, very faithfully yours, 
 
 (Signed) " SUTHERLAND." 
 
 " 18 Belgrave Square, June 21, 1849. 
 
 " My dear Lord, Will you excuse a silent member of the 
 majority against you expressing his extreme admiration of 
 your speech on the Canada Question ? It is difficult for 
 bystanders to believe that such performances give you any 
 trouble or exertion, and they can hardly help hoping you will 
 repeat them. Your very humble servant, 
 
 (Signed) " EGERTON ELLESMERE." x 
 
 1 Anxious to give colour to the vievr that he was on terms of social intimacy 
 with Lord Lyndhurst, Lord Campbell states ('Lyndhurst's Life,' p. 171), that 
 after he was appointed Chief Justice in 1850, Lord Lyndhurst invited him to 
 dinner, and desiring him to fill a bumper of still champagne, said to him : 
 " Here, Campbell, in this loving cup let me drown for ever all our animosities." 
 A letter of Lord Campbell's to his brother (i7th November, 1850), printed in his 
 ' Life,' vol. ii. p. 284, shows that the dinner referred to was not at Lyndhurst's 
 house, but was one given by Justice Patteson, to celebrate his entry into the 
 twenty-first year of his judgeship. "We had a very jolly day," writes Campbell, 
 ' ' Lyndhurst himself being present with six other judges whom he had made, and 
 all excellent ones. I told him that his appointment of good judges would cover a 
 multitude of sins. He said he had some thoughts of dying a Whig, that I might 
 > deal mercifully with him ; and, asking me to drink wirTe with him, he declared that 
 ' all enmities between us down to that moment were to be considered as buried and 
 forgotten in the champagne." Campbell was one of the Scotchmen, of whom 
 Sydney Smith's saying about their impenetrability to a joke was true. He never 
 could understand the subacid irony of the fun of which Lord Lyndhurst delighted in 
 making him the subject. Lyndhurst die a Whig ! With true Liberals he had many 
 points of sympathy ; but, writing to a friend in 1855, he says : "Whiggery (a real 
 and selfish aristocracy, under the pretence of liberty) is an impudent fraud."
 
 1850. LOSS OF SIGHT. 437 
 
 Lord Lyndhurst did not again take part in the 
 debates of the House of Lords till 1851. The reason 
 was the state of his eyes. "My brother," Miss Copley 
 writes (iQth February, 1850) to Mrs. Greene, " has been 
 afflicted during the last seven months with a gradual 
 decay of sight, and we are hoping that he will be ready 
 for an operation before the season will be too far 
 advanced, as we are told that it must be performed 
 before the end of May, or not until the autumn." On 
 the 1 5th of April, 1850, she writes, "He bears his 
 deprivation with patience, looking forward to a speedy 
 cure. . . . For the last two months he could not even 
 walk without some one to take care of him, and now 
 he is perfectly helpless." By the 2ist of June she 
 was able to write to Mrs. Greene, that the cataract 
 had been successfully removed, and that they were 
 looking forward to the time when their brother would 
 see as well as ever he did. A month later he was 
 able to relieve Mrs. Greene's anxiety by the following 
 letter to her from himself : 
 
 " George Street, July 29, 1850. 
 
 " My dearest Sister, I write you a few lines upon a subject 
 which I know deeply interests you the state of my sight. It 
 is six weeks since the cataract was extracted, and you will 
 be most happy to learn that the result has been in the highest 
 degree favourable for all the ordinary purposes of life. The 
 sight is sufficient, and when I am allowed to use glasses, 
 for which I must wait a few weeks longer, I shall see as per- 
 fectly as at any former period of my life. I feel very grateful 
 to the operator, Mr. Dairy mple, who has effected this result, 
 without causing any pain or suffering, and with very little 
 inconvenience. 
 
 " My friends here, who were indefatigable in their attention 
 to me during my blindness (with the exception only of my wife), 
 are, as you may suppose, delighted with the result. Georgie 
 writes this. I mean the elder Georgie, [Lady Lyndhurst], 
 and complacently inserted the above parenthesis. We are
 
 438 RECOVERS HIS SIGHT. CHAP. XVH. 
 
 just upon the break up, at the close of the season, and shall 
 be at Turville in a few days. Sarah and her husband [Mr. and 
 Mrs. Selwin] are wandering upon the Rhine, enjoying them- 
 selves greatly. Georgie has got a new pony, and is very happy. 
 Aunty and Sophy are perfectly well. Pray remember me 
 kindly to Copley Greene, to Sarah, and to all our kind friends, 
 whom I would mention by name only that the line would last 
 out to the ' crack of doom.' 
 
 " Ever, my dear, dearest sister, your affectionate brother, 
 
 (Signed) " LYNDHURST." 
 
 The affection of those about him led them to be 
 " eyes to the blind," and so sweetly and patiently was 
 his privation borne, that they did not even weary over 
 the reading to him of the Law Reports and the Blue- 
 Books, in which he felt an interest. The enforced rest 
 at this advanced period of his life was probably of 
 great advantage to his general health, especially as 
 he accepted his condition with a cheerful spirit, and 
 looked, as was his habit, on the brighter side of things. 
 In the following letters from Miss Copley and himself 
 a glimpse is given of his home habits. 
 
 "Turville Park, October 3, 1850; 
 
 " We are all settled down quietly here in our old occupa- 
 tions and habits. My brother is engaged and amused, with 
 his farm ; he reads as long as the daylight lasts ; from that 
 time till dinner Sophy [his second daughter] and I read to 
 him ; in the evening, which does not begin till near nine 
 o'clock, we talk, play at backgammon, and our old game of 
 whist, which has been discontinued for a year. 
 
 " His health is as good as it ever was, but we are both, 
 of course, growing older every day, as we must expect to 
 do." 
 
 " My dearest Sister, I write a line at the foot of 
 Aunty's, because I am sure it will give you great pleasure to 
 receive it, as the best proof of the success of the operation 
 which has restored to me the blessing of sight, the full value
 
 i8si. REAPPEARS IN PARLIAMENT. 439 
 
 of which those only can justly appreciate who have had the 
 misfortune to be deprived of it. 
 
 " I only wish I had the opportunity of using it to recall the 
 features of my dear sister, whose destiny, though happy, 
 has had to me one dark shade, occasioned by the distance 
 which has so long separated us from each other. God bless 
 you. 
 
 (Signed) " LYNDHURST." 
 
 Rest, country air, and careful nursing, had their 
 wonted effects upon a constitution still sound at the 
 core, and when Lord Lyndhurst reappeared in Parlia- 
 ment in the session of 1851, his sight was no longer 
 dimmed, "neither was his natural strength abated." 
 He spoke with all his wonted energy, and seemed 
 indeed to have advanced from strength to strength in 
 point of intellectual power.
 
 ( 440 ) 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 Lord Lyndhurst's great reputation Refuses again to take office in 1852 
 Threatened with loss of sight Speaks on Baron de Bode's Case 
 Couched for cataract Speaks on Oaths Bill Active for Legal Reform 
 Opposition to Russian encroachments on Turkey Visits Paris in 
 1855 Opposition to Life Peerages Amendment of Law of Divorce. 
 
 LORD LYNDHURST, now verging on his eightieth year, 
 might well look back with gratitude and satisfaction 
 upon his already long life. He had been singularly for- 
 tunate in the home in which he had been reared : a home 
 brightened in a rare degree by intellect, refinement, 
 and affection, where the struggles with the embarrass- 
 ments of scanty means had only served to bind its 
 members more closely to each other. Blest, too, he had 
 been, in the gift of a strong head and a warm heart, and 
 in the necessity to work which forced him to cultivate 
 his powers to their highest point blest in the oppor- 
 tunities to show the greatness of those powers, and in 
 the success which rarely fails to wait on him who can 
 seize and turn his opportunities to account blest in 
 having attained on three successive occasions the highest 
 prize of a great lawyer's ambition blest above all in 
 having worn his honours worthily, and so discharged the 
 duties attached to them that he alone may be said to- 
 have viewed his laying of them down without regret. 
 Moreover, he had been exceptionally happy, in that no 
 failure of health or strength had at any time impaired 
 his powers, unnerved his self-reliance, or caused that 
 waste of time and energy which is the saddest of regrets
 
 LORD LYNDHUR3T. 
 
 XETAT 89. 
 
 Engraved by Edward Whywper. 
 
 Front a Ptwtograph by Mayall.
 
 1 851. LYNDHURSTS GREAT REPUTATION. 441 
 
 to active and aspiring spirits. In his married home, too, 
 he was happy, as his loving, considerate, cheerful nature 
 deserved to be, cherished by those he loved, and who 
 loved him in return. Age, with its physical changes, 
 had left his spirit untouched. When Lord Brougham, 
 in the House of Lords (25th of July, 1859), said of 
 Lord Lyndhurst and himself that they were sufferers 
 from the imputation of old age, " I do not admit that 
 I am a sufferer," broke in the ex-Chancellor. He 
 was then seventy-seven, but he was right. The true 
 Lyndhurst, the soul that made him what he was, was 
 still young and fresh and elastic. To the last he was 
 playful as a boy. Wordsworth's "wise cheerfulness" 
 was his in a remarkable degree. His playfulness was 
 never indulged at the sacrifice of personal dignity; 
 and in him his friends saw a fine appreciation of La 
 Bruyere's aphorism " Celui qui n'a jamais ses heures 
 de folie est moins sage qu'il ne pense." 
 
 In reading the debates of the next ten years, one 
 cannot fail to be struck by the tributes of admiration 
 paid " to the old man eloquent " by his political con- 
 temporaries. Thus for example, the Duke of Newcastle, 
 speaking in the House of Lords on the Ecclesiastical 
 Titles Bill (22nd of July, 1851), while expressing his 
 regret at the grounds on which Lord Lyndhurst had 
 the same evening vindicated his support of that 
 measure, says that this regret was deepened by " the 
 attachment he felt to him, the admiration with which 
 he had ever looked up to him, the reverence he might 
 almost say he entertained for him, the respect with 
 which he regarded his position in that House." Pages 
 might be filled with similar expressions by other no less 
 distinguished men, growing in warmth as the years went 
 on, and Lyndhurst's splendid powers of mind were 
 brought into higher relief by the external signs of an
 
 442 LORD TRURO. CHAP. xvm. 
 
 almost patriarchal age. To win his approbation was 
 not less the pride and ambition of men of high posi- 
 tion. Thus Lord Ellesmere, writing (iyth of June, 
 1852) to Lady Lyndhurst, who had told him that Lord 
 Lyndhurst thought highly of a speech he had made, 
 says, " his approbation is in my estimation worth 
 that of the rest of the three estates of the realm 
 put together. He is an audience in himself, and a 
 full compensation for a thin House and exhausted 
 majorities." 
 
 By the beginning of 1851, Lord Lyndhurst's health 
 enabled him to be frequently in his place in the 
 House of Lords, a watchful spectator of all that was 
 going on. He gave great attention to the measures 
 of legal reform, of which he now became a most 
 vigilant and active promoter. The Chancellor (Lord 
 Truro) was in no way fit to cope with such a rival, 
 and being by no means a zealous advocate for legal 
 change, he was frequently embarrassed by the questions 
 and remonstrances of Lord Brougham as well as 
 of Lord Lyndhurst. But there is not a shadow of 
 foundation for Lord Campbell's statement (' Lynd- 
 hurst's Life,' p. 173), that they had formed a "com- 
 bination to drive him from the woolsack." On the 
 contrary, Lord Lyndhurst and he were always on 
 the best terms, and in the House of Lords (3Oth 
 of June, 1852) Lord Lyndhurst went out of his 
 way to say, " that there was not a person of more 
 integrity, honour, and steady perseverance " than Lord 
 Truro. But if his Bills were bad, friendship for 
 their author would not weigh with Lord Lyndhurst 
 against public duty ; and early in the session he 
 strangled in its birth a Bill of his for Chancery Reform, 
 which had been ordered to be brought in the Lower 
 House, by a speech which, irregular as it was, inas-
 
 iSsi HIS CHANCERY REFORM BILL. 443 
 
 much as it dealt with a measure that was not before their 
 Lordships, was welcomed on all hands as stopping 
 the further progress of a scheme on which discussion 
 would have been thrown away. He argued that a 
 Bill dealing with questions of appellate jurisdiction 
 might much more fitly be first brought forward in the 
 House of Lords, and made a good point against the 
 Government, in suggesting a reason why the Bill had 
 been launched in the Lower House. 
 
 " One of its enactments," he said, " was to transfer by a 
 kind of sleight-of-hand movement all the patronage of his 
 noble and learned friend on the woolsack into the lap of the 
 First Lord of the Treasury, already sufficiently laden with 
 patronage of this description. The noble Lord at the head of 
 the Government had of late been worsted in contests with his 
 foes, and he now trenched upon his friends, and sought to 
 signalise his doings by the plunder of his colleague. 
 
 ' So much 'tis safer through the camp to go, 
 And rob a subject than despoil a foe.' 
 
 " The noble Lord [Russell] had taken the Bill under his 
 own care, because he could not call upon the Lord Chancellor 
 to commit so suicidal an act" 
 
 Lord Lyndhurst had little difficulty in dealing with 
 the reason which had been put forward for an act of 
 spoliation naturally abhorrent to an ex-Chancellor. 
 
 " Did their Lordships suppose that when the Great Seal 
 was held by Lord Hardwicke, by Lord Thurlow, by Lord 
 Eldon, that any attempt of this kind would have been made, 
 or that his noble and learned friend near him [Lord Brougham] 
 would have stood still like a caged bird while such an invasion 
 was made on the privileges of his office ? . . . He felt sure his 
 noble and learned friend on the woolsack would not submit to 
 such a degradation. He knew no one more unselfish, more 
 indifferent to personal interests ; but let his noble and learned 
 friend recollect that he ought to regard the question in the 
 light that he was merely a trustee for his successors that as
 
 444 LORD DERBY'S PREPARATIONS CHAP. xvin. 
 
 he had received this high office, with all its dignities, patron- 
 age and emoluments, he ought to transmit it unimpaired to 
 those who were to follow him." 
 
 As the Bill went no further, the patronage of 
 the Chancellor, which Lord Lyndhurst was well known 
 to have personally regarded as an irksome burden, 
 remained undisturbed. 
 
 The defeat of Lord John Russell, at which Lord 
 Lyndhurst glanced, was the adverse division, about a 
 month before, on Mr. Locke King's motion to assimi- 
 late the County to the Borough Franchise, which, 
 coming after other mishaps, had led to Lord John's 
 temporary resignation, followed by an ineffectual 
 attempt by Lord Derby to form a Ministry, and the 
 recall of the Russell Ministry to office. Lord Derby 
 had been met on the threshold by so many difficulties, 
 that he had no occasion to approach Lord Lyndhurst 
 on the subject. But seeing, from indications not to be 
 mistaken, that the life of the Russell Ministry, though 
 prolonged for the time, must soon come to an end, and 
 that a fresh appeal to form a Conservative Adminis- 
 tration was sure to be made to himself before very 
 long, Lord Derby addressed himself earnestly to the 
 task of ascertaining on whom in that event he could 
 rely to join him. Wishing to secure Lord Lyndhurst, 
 but too considerate to approach him on the subject, 
 until he had ascertained whether consent might 
 imperil his health, Lord Derby wrote (5th of 
 May, 1851) to Lady Lyndhurst a letter in which 
 he said 
 
 " The fact is, that I wish to make my views of what is for 
 the public interest in some degree subordinate to my feelings 
 of real private friendship, and I am, therefore, unwilling to 
 make a proposition to Lord Lyndhurst, which a sense of public 
 duty might lead him to accept, without ascertaining from you
 
 1851. FOR A CONSERVATIVE MINISTRY. 445 
 
 that he might do so without injury to his health or comfort. 
 I cannot believe, from what I see, that the Government can 
 survive the present session ; and the event of last Friday 
 confirms me in the belief that their end is fast approaching 
 Whenever they fall, I must, at all hazards, undertake the 
 formation of a Government ; and I am now prepared, if 
 necessary, to do that which two months ago I was not in 
 a condition to undertake. 
 
 " But your lord's co-operation, given officially, even if it 
 were but for a short period, would very much strengthen 
 my position ; and my object in writing to you is to ascertain 
 whether you would give your consent, if I can obtain his, to 
 his taking a seat in any Cabinet which I may be called upon 
 to form, with high station, but involving no veiy heavy amount 
 of labour. I could not, of course, think of asking him to 
 resume for the fourth time his laborious duties as head of the 
 Bar ; but his counsels would be very useful to me in the 
 Cabinet, and his strength would not be unduly taxed by the 
 acceptance of the office of President of the Council, the main 
 and only real duties of which consist in superintending the 
 proceedings of the Committee of Council on Education. If he 
 were willing to undertake the duties of this office, which to 
 him would be play, my Cabinet would be complete, with a 
 cast of parts which I think would satisfy him ; and I should 
 be prepared to submit a programme to the Queen within six 
 hours of my being again called upon. . . . You see that I write 
 as if I were already Minister, but perhaps with an absence of 
 ministerial reserve, which I am afraid I should take some 
 time to learn. I trust, however, that I may rely on your 
 entire secrecy as to this communication, though I leave you at 
 liberty to name it to Lord Lyndhurst, should you think that 
 he might safely accept the task which I propose to place upon 
 him. I need not say that it is only the consideration of his 
 health, as it might be affected by office, which induces me to 
 write on the subject to you, rather than to himself." 
 
 Lady Lyndhurst disliked the idea ; and thinking 
 that in any case it would be time enough to deal 
 with the question of office when it actually arose, 
 the matter was left in abeyance.
 
 446 LORD LYND HURST REFUSES OFFICE. CHAP. xvm. 
 
 Lord John Russell's Ministry survived the session, 
 but it fell early in the following session, after being de- 
 feated on the Militia Bill upon an Opposition headed 
 by Lord Palmerston. Such was the state of parties, 
 that for the moment no government but one com- 
 posed of Protectionists was possible. Lord Stanley 
 (now Lord Derby) undertook (22nd February, 1852) 
 to form a Ministry, and at once appealed to Lord 
 Lyndhurst to enter his Cabinet. " I have undertaken 
 the task," he wrote to him the same day, "but it is 
 heavy work. You would greatly aid my Cabinet by 
 consenting to become a member of it. Even if 
 your eyes did not allow you to undertake the duties 
 of President of the Council, the Privy Seal would 
 involve no labour or expense, and I should be happy 
 to recommend Her Majesty to add an earldom to 
 it." This was his answer, the answer of the man, 
 to whom in 1851, according to Lord Campbell, was 
 " imputed the design of forming a party of his own, 
 and himself becoming Prime Minister." 
 
 " Dear Lord Derby, I would not refuse your flattering offer 
 without due consideration, so I have slept upon it. I will act 
 in concert with your Government as far as my strength will 
 permit But you must allow me to decline office, for, to tell 
 you frankly, I cannot afford to accept it. I sincerely wish you 
 every success. Believe me, dear Lord Derby, yours very 
 faithfully." 
 
 The same night Lord Derby reiterated his 
 request. 
 
 " February, 23, at night. 
 
 " Dear Lord Lyndhurst, We are fairly launched. Sugden 
 all right on Chancery Reform ; but we must have you in the 
 Cabinet, even without an office but with an earldom, which 
 I am authorised to offer you as the accompaniment. Yours 
 sincerely."
 
 1851. IS GROWING BLIND. 447 
 
 Lord Lyndhurst, however, was not to be moved 
 from his resolution. To the fatigue of the office offered 
 to him he was quite equal. But he knew well, that, 
 besides the fees of the title, a sum not unimportant 
 to a man of his limited means, the expense of living 
 to a Cabinet Minister with a higher title than before 
 would run beyond his income. Besides, he had tasted 
 the sweets of freedom. Much as he loved his party, he 
 loved his country more ; and at his years he might well 
 claim for himself the liberty to speak unfettered by the 
 ties of party. He was now, moreover, fast losing his 
 sight once more, and had again become dependent for 
 his study of documents, Blue-Books, Law Reports, and 
 Acts of Parliament upon the eyes of his family. All 
 around him seem to have vied in making his misfor- 
 tune as light to him as possible. " My brother," Miss 
 Copley writes (i4th of April, 1852) to Mrs. Greene, 
 " is quite overcome by the kindness of his friends, from 
 whom he had no right to expect so much. He has 
 made up his mind to have the other eye operated 
 upon, and I pray that it may prove successful, for it is 
 a sad privation that he cannot read or write." On 
 the 4th of May Miss Copley again writes, " My 
 brother is better than I have known him for a long 
 time. He attends Parliament regularly, and hopes to 
 do the work there. If he could but use his eyes, what 
 a blessing it would be ! " 
 
 Notwithstanding the disadvantage he laboured 
 under at this time of being unable to read for 
 himself, he showed throughout this session a 
 familiarity with the details of all the questions on 
 which he addressed the House and they were very 
 numerous, and chiefly on questions on legal reform 
 which spoke volumes for his industry and marvellous 
 memory. But he even surpassed himself in moving
 
 448 BARON DE BODE'S CASE. CHAP. xvni. 
 
 for a select Committee (nth of June) to consider 
 the claims of Baron de Bode for compensation out 
 of the funds paid by France to the English Govern- 
 ment, under the treaty of 1815, for losses sustained 
 by the Baron's father a British subject through the 
 confiscation of his estates in Alsace. The claim, 
 from lapse of time and other causes, was a very hope- 
 less one, and Lord Lyndhurst, while convinced of 
 its justice, had most reluctantly agreed to bring it 
 forward, telling Baron de Bode at the same time 
 that he did not believe there was the least chance 
 of his getting anything, as the money received from 
 France had all been spent. In a pliant hour, how- 
 ever, he had promised to do what he could for the 
 claimant, and, crippled though he was for the 
 investigation of a case of unusual complexity, he 
 performed his task in a way that created surprise even 
 in those who knew him best. He was now eighty, 
 almost blind, and compelled while he spoke to sup- 
 port himself by leaning upon a stick. 1 
 
 " His voice," says Lord Campbell, " was strong, articulate, 
 and musical, his arrangement lucid, his reasoning ingenious 
 and plausible, and he displayed a power of memory which at 
 any age would have appeared almost miraculous. He had to 
 narrate very complicated proceedings, extending over a very 
 long period of time, and to specify numerous dates and sums 
 of money forming items in voluminous accounts, and the 
 names of many foreign places and persons yet in a speech of 
 two hours he never was at fault, he never hesitated, he never 
 looked at a note, and he never made a mistake. This was the 
 most wonderful effort of a public speaker I ever witnessed." 
 
 Lord Campbell adds that the speaker had a very 
 bad case. Lawyers as able as he took a very different 
 
 1 In future years a low rail was fixed to the bench in front of Lord Lyndhurst's 
 usual seat in the House of Lords, upon which he was able to lean for support while 
 speaking. 

 
 1853- LETTER FROM SIR J. GRAHAM. 449 
 
 view, among others the former Whig Chancellor, Lord 
 Truro. So, too, did the Committee to whom the 
 House of Lords remitted its consideration. On every 
 point they reported unanimously in Baron de Bode's 
 favour. But when in the following session (ist August, 
 1853) Lord Lyndhurst, in a speech of equal ability 
 to the first, endeavoured to persuade the Aberdeen 
 Government, who were now in power, to act upon the 
 Committee's report, he was unsuccessful. The money, 
 out of which the Baron might have been paid part of 
 his claim at least, had been spent, and the all-powerful 
 voice of a recalcitrant Treasury drowned every other 
 consideration. 
 
 Among the few letters from public men preserved 
 by Lord Lyndhurst is one at this period from Sir 
 James Graham, interesting both for the opinion it 
 expresses of the ex-Chancellor's character, and as 
 soliciting his good word to obtain a peerage for Baron 
 Parke, over whom the question of the legality of Life 
 Peerages was to be fought three years afterwards, 
 with Lord Lyndhurst at the head of the opposition. 
 
 "June 13, 1852. 
 
 " My dear Lord Lyndhurst, Before Lord Cranworth was 
 raised to his peerage, I heard there was a question of promoting 
 Baron Parke also ; but he was weighed in the balance, and 
 found wanting in Whiggery, and was passed over. I very much 
 regretted this, for I thought that Parke had earned some 
 repose ; that we had disappointed him when we put Pollock 
 over his head ; and that he would have been useful as an 
 Appellate Judge both in the House of Peers and in the Privy 
 Council. I never spoke to Lord John Russell on the subject ; 
 indeed during his reign I never approached either him or his 
 colleagues. Much less can I now interfere on such a subject 
 with Lord Derby. There may be insuperable objections to 
 the creation of any new peers ; but Baron Parke has no son ; 
 and his elevation would be no permanent addition to the 
 
 2 G
 
 450 LORD LYNDHURST COUCHED CHAP. xvm. 
 
 Peerage ; and this is the only reward that could be bestowed 
 on a faithful and meritorious judge, who has now grown old 
 in the service, and who has been disappointed more than once. 
 You are always considerate and kind in these matters. Parke 
 has long served under you ; and if you could give him a help- 
 ing hand, he would be grateful. His feelings and inclinations 
 would lead him to the support of the present Government. 
 1 am, my dear Lord, yours very faithfully." 
 
 Lord Lyndhurst shared to the full Sir James 
 Graham's high opinion of the deserts of Baron Parke. 
 But during the short and troubled life of the Derby 
 Administration, which terminated in the December 
 of this year, it was not possible to secure attention to 
 his claims, and Sir James Graham as a member of 
 the new Ministry, was himself in an excellent position 
 to press them upon the consideration of the Premier, 
 Lord Aberdeen. 
 
 In July 1852 the operation for cataract was 
 performed by Mr. Bowman, the eminent oculist, with 
 success, and Lord Lyndhurst was removed to 
 Turville Park, from which Miss Copley writes (i2th 
 August) to Mrs. Greene 
 
 "We are just established here, and all well. My brother's 
 eye is quite restored, but he is to be very careful. He is still 
 kept in a dark room, and is not to use glasses for three 
 months, and not to read for six. It will be a great blessing 
 when he can help himself again. He has borne his privation 
 with great patience, and now that we know it is to end, we do 
 not mind the present inconvenience." 
 
 By October Miss Copley was able to assure Mrs. 
 Greene that their hopes about her brother's sight were 
 fully confirmed ; "he is allowed to read occasionally, 
 for a quarter of an hour, and in six months, Mr. 
 Bowman tells him, he may do as he pleases." 
 
 Lord Lyndhurst had felt deeply the death of his
 
 1853. FOR CATARACT. 451 
 
 old friend and chief, the Duke of Wellington, the 
 month before (i6th September). Had his strength 
 permitted, he would not have failed to be present when 
 "the good grey head" was laid to rest in St. Paul's ; 
 but this was not to be. 
 
 "Yesterday," Miss Copley writes (i9th November) to Mrs. 
 Greene, "we had the solemn scene of the Duke's funeral. 
 Lady Lyndhurst and the two girls went to see the procession 
 It was very imposing and solemn. My brother and I stayed at 
 home. It was too fatiguing and exciting for us old people." 
 
 The session of 1853 found him in his wonted 
 place in the House of Lords. A fit of the gout 
 his first had relieved his system, and with the 
 recovery of his sight all his vivacity and energy had 
 returned. " In fact," writes Miss Copley (yth July), 
 " if it were not for his lameness, he would be quite a 
 young man." He gave proof of this in a speech on 
 the 3ist of May, in which he made his first public 
 effort to obtain the admission of Jews into Parlia- 
 ment. Here he was in direct opposition to his 
 friend Lord Derby, who had hitherto frustrated by 
 large majorities every attempt in the same direc- 
 tion. The measure which Lord Lyndhurst proposed 
 was not immediately directed to this object, although 
 probably, had it gone down to the Commons, it would 
 have effected it. It proposed to consolidate the 
 existing oaths of allegiance, abjuration, and supremacy 
 into one short oath, which might be taken by all 
 loyal subjects. From this he proposed to omit the 
 renunciation, by this time become an absurdity, of 
 all allegiance to the descendants of James II., but to 
 retain the words "on the true faith of a Christian." 
 These he retained, he said, against his own conviction, 
 and solely because he knew that, if they were ex- 
 cluded, his Bill had no chance of passing the House 
 
 2 G 2
 
 452 OATHS BILL. CHAP. xvm. 
 
 of Lords. As usual, he brought before the House, 
 in the fewest and clearest words, the whole history of 
 these oaths, winding up with a demonstration that the 
 words "without mental reservation and on the true 
 faith of a Christian," had originally been inserted, not 
 for the purpose of excluding Jews from Parliament, but 
 to prevent Roman Catholics from taking the oath 
 under certain mental reserves, which, according to some 
 of their teachers, would save them from being bound 
 by it. It was thus that he concluded 
 
 " It is the mainspring of our glorious Constitution that no 
 British subject no natural-born subject of the Queen ought 
 to be deprived of the rights enjoyed by his fellow-subjects, 
 unless he has committed some crime, or unless he is excluded 
 by some positive enactment of the Legislature directed against 
 him or against the class to which he belongs. None can be 
 rightfully excluded unless by the concurrent voice of the two 
 Houses of Parliament and with the assent of the Crown. If 
 you exclude them by the casual operation of a clause which 
 was never directed against them or the class to which they 
 belong, you unjustly deprive them of their birthright. I say 
 then, my Lords, that if I retain these words ' on the true faith 
 of a Christian ' in my Bill, I retain them solely ex necessitate 
 and entirely against my own deliberate conviction.'' (Hansard, 
 vol. cxxvii. 847.) 
 
 The Bill was allowed by Lord Derby to be read a 
 second time, but on the motion to go into "committee 
 two nights afterwards it was opposed both by him and 
 by Lord Ellenborough, not because they disapproved 
 of the Bill in itself on the contrary, had it come up 
 from the Commons, it should have had their support, 
 but because they anticipated that on reaching the 
 Commons it would be amended, so as to carry out 
 the again and again declared wishes of the majority 
 there, and that a collision between the two Houses
 
 1853. LEGAL REFORM. 453 
 
 would thus be brought about. Their views prevailed, 
 and the motion was lost by a majority of 15, com- 
 posed exclusively of Lyndhurst's political allies. 
 But this did not shake his resolution to persevere 
 for the abolition of this last remnant of ecclesiastical 
 illiberality. 
 
 Much of his time was devoted during the session 
 to the consideration in Select Committees of important 
 measures of legal reform, where his services were of 
 the greatest value. Lord Campbell himself admits 
 that in their deliberations, " Lyndhurst always showed 
 admirable good sense as well as acuteness and 
 logical discrimination." The eminent lawyers who 
 worked with him in these committees would have 
 thought this a poor acknowledgment of his services 
 in converting crude and conflicting into workable and 
 consistent legislation. In no such measured terms 
 does Lord Campbell speak of him in one of his letters 
 about this time (roth of July). Lord Lyndhurst had 
 been present at a dinner given by Lord Campbell to 
 his brethren of the Bench, and his host writes, " Lord 
 Lyndhurst is, I think, the most remarkable man of 
 this generation. He is eighty-two, with his mental 
 faculties as vigorous as they were half a century ago. 
 He hears as well as ever, and having undergone 
 the operation of couching, he sees very tolerably. 
 On this occasion he was quite boyish, giving various 
 toasts, and was the life of the company." (Campbell's 
 ' Life,' vol. ii. p. 314.) 
 
 Owing to his failing sight Lord Lyndhurst had 
 declined to sit upon Appeals to the House of Lords, 
 when he ceased to be Lord Chancellor. He did, 
 however, sit upon one occasion during the present 
 session. This was upon the great Bridgwater Case, 
 in which the succession to estates of the value of
 
 454 ENGLAND AND RUSSIA. CHAP. xvm. 
 
 ,80,000 a year depended upon the construction of 
 the will of the seventh Earl of Bridgwater. The 
 chief interest of the case to Lord Lyndhurst lay in 
 the fact that it involved an important question of 
 principle, whether or not a condition in the Earl's will 
 was legal, which provided that his estates should not 
 pass to his heir unless that heir should have previously 
 acquired the title of a duke or marquis. 
 
 His speech on delivering his opinion was marked 
 by all the characteristics which made his former judicial 
 appearances in important cases famous. The con- 
 clusion arrived at was contrary to that of Lord 
 Cranworth, as Vice-Chancellor, and of a majority of 
 the judges consulted, but being concurred in by Lord 
 Brougham, Lord Truro, and Lord St. Leonards, the 
 appeal was sustained. Who was in the right, how- 
 ever, is we believe even now a moot question with 
 lawyers. 
 
 The mind of all England during the latter half of 
 this year was turned on the movements of Russia upon 
 the Turkish frontier, and the Czar's obvious deter- 
 mination to carry out the hereditary Russian policy of 
 obtaining possession of both banks of the Danube, as 
 well as the command of the Bosphorus. The question 
 of the various interests involved was one on which 
 Lord Lyndhurst entertained very decided views. 
 Long since he had made himself master of all its 
 details. He had no doubt as to the sinister purposes 
 of Russia, and was convinced that nothing would 
 check the determination of the Czar to bring the 
 Sultan to his feet, but the certainty that the first 
 step towards Constantinople would make England 
 his enemy. The timorous and vacillating policy of 
 Lord Aberdeen, therefore, found no favour with him, 
 foreseeing as he did that it would in the end involve 

 
 1853. LORD LYNDHURST DENOUNCES RUSSIA. 455 
 
 England in a war, which might have been averted, 
 had a resolute attitude been adopted by the Cabinet in 
 the first instance. 
 
 So early as the i2th of July, 1853, he put questions in 
 the House of Lords to Lord Clarendon which showed 
 his strong distrust of Russia. But it was not till the 
 iQth of June in the following year, when the Russian 
 mask had been thrown off, and when the revelations of 
 Sir Hamilton Seymour's celebrated Memorandum of his 
 conversation with the Czar had given fresh nerve to 
 the resolution of Englishmen to prosecute the war in 
 which they were now involved to the bitter end, that 
 Lord Lyndhurst came forward to give a voice to the 
 prevailing feeling, and to infuse, if possible, some of 
 the national fervour into the still hesitating action of 
 the Government. The speech, which under any cir- 
 cumstances would have been a remarkable one, for 
 its masterly exposition of facts, its nobleness of tone, 
 and nervous energy of diction, was felt to be a mar- 
 vellous physical as well as mental effort for a man of 
 eighty-three. The speaker was terribly in earnest, as 
 befitted a man to whom the civilisation and the well- 
 being of his fellow-creatures, and the triumph of well- 
 ordered liberty abroad as well at home, were beyond 
 all things dear. His heart spoke out, and it moved 
 his audience, and through them all England, as with a 
 trumpet sound. 
 
 After showing by instances after instances how 
 Russia had proved by her faithlessness and falsehood 
 that she could not be trusted to adhere to her engage- 
 ments : he asked, " Is this the system, and are these the 
 persons on whose assurances we are to depend ? . . . 
 Look at her whole conduct, and then, if any person can 
 be credulous enough to trust in any statement of 
 Russia, or in any engagement into which she may enter
 
 456 LORD LYNDHURSTS GREAT CHAP. XVIII. 
 
 contrary to her own interests, all I can say is, that I 
 admire the extent of his faith." 
 
 " When," he continued, " the interests of millions are at 
 stake, where the rise or fall of empires may depend upon the 
 issue, away with confidence ! Confidence generally ends in 
 credulity. This is true of statesmen, as of individuals. Their 
 duty in such a position is to exercise caution, vigilance, jealousy. 
 ' Oh, for the good old Parliamentary word "jealousy," 
 exclaimed Mr. Fox, in one of those bursts of feeling so usual 
 with him, ' instead of its modern substitute " confidence " ! ' 
 And if such be the true policy, which I think it is, as between 
 Parliament and the Ministers of the Crown, 1 how much more 
 ought it to prevail in the conflicting affairs of nations, where 
 such mighty interests are concerned. If confidence, with its 
 natural tendency, should degenerate into credulity, to what 
 disastrous consequences may it not lead ? 
 
 " But in the case of Russia, nothing but the extreme of 
 blindness and credulity could lead to a departure from these 
 principles. Her history, from the establishment of the Empire 
 down to the present moment, is a history of fraud, duplicity, 
 trickery, artifice, and violence. The present Emperor has 
 proclaimed himself protector of the Greek Church in Turkey, 
 just as the Empress Catherine declared herself protector of the 
 Greek Church in Poland. By means of that protectorate she 
 fomented dissensions and stirred up political strife in the 
 country. She then marched into Poland under the pretence 
 of allaying tumults, and stripped the kingdom of some of its 
 fairest provinces. We know the ultimate and disastrous issue 
 
 1 And not only between Parliament and Ministers, according to Lord 
 Lyndhurst, should this jealousy be maintained, but between Parliament and the 
 Crown also. Thus, speaking (22nd February, 1856), on the Wensleydale Peerage 
 Case, he said: "My Lords, the principle upon which I proceed the old Con- 
 stitutional principle is, that I will give the Crown no power that is capable of 
 being abused, unless some great and overruling necessity can be shown to exist. 
 I look with all Constitutional jealousy, and not with confidence, to those who are 
 the depositaries of power. I remember it was over and over again said by one 
 of the most illustrious statesmen England ever produced, that jealousy, and not 
 confidence, was the maxim on which the British Constitution was based. I believe 
 the noble Marquis opposite (Lord Lansdowne) is a decided, uniform, and constant 
 adherent to that principle. Jealousy, and not confidence, is the eternal governing 
 principle of the British Constitution. " (Hansard, vol. cxl. 1168.)
 
 1854 SPEECH AGAINST RUSSIA. 457 
 
 of these intrigues the impression they created is strong, and 
 will be lasting. 
 
 " Look at another instance of Russian policy of more recent 
 occurrence. Russia agreed to a treaty with Turkey, by which 
 she recognised the independence of the Crimea. Nevertheless 
 she stirred up insurrections in that country, under the old 
 pretext of protecting one party against another ; and, when 
 the opportunity offered, she sent Suwaroff, one of her most 
 barbarous generals, into the Crimea, who murdered the inha- 
 bitants and despoiled them of their territory, while a line of 
 Russian ships invested the coast, and cut off all communica- 
 tion with Constantinople. At the very time when this was 
 being done, Russia was not only at peace with Turkey, but 
 was actually negotiating a treaty of commerce with her." 
 
 Lord Lyndhurst then referred to the conspiracy in 
 which Russia had been engaged with Persia and other 
 powers in the East^ against England t in 1834 and 
 1835, and to her advances upon Khiva, in which she 
 had sacrificed two armies, " not with a view to any 
 beneficial trade, but evidently as a convenient centre 
 from which to form combinations and carry on 
 intrigues for the disturbance of our Indian Empire." 
 He then adverted to the most recent instance of 
 her machinations. 
 
 "As to Turkey, it is now known, from recent disclosures, 
 that while the Emperor Nicholas was pretending to act the 
 part of protector of Turkey, and trying to cajole the Sultan 
 with professions of friendship and esteem, he was at that 
 very moment planning the partition of his Empire." 
 
 Russia, then, being what he had shown her to be, 
 if any engagement was to be made with her, it must, 
 he contended, be covered by something more than 
 pledges upon paper, by some material guarantee, 
 which might afford the assurance of a lasting peace. 
 
 " If I am asked," he continued, " what course would you 
 pursue ? What is your policy ? My reply is, that this will
 
 458 INFLUENCES GOVERNMENT ACTION. CHAP. xvur. 
 
 depend a good deal upon the events of the war. This, how- 
 ever, I unhesitatingly declare, that in no event, except that of 
 extreme necessity, ought we to make peace without previously 
 destroying the Russian fleet in the Black Sea, and laying 
 prostrate the fortifications by which it is defended. 
 
 " What Russia may further attempt, if successful in her 
 present efforts, time alone can disclose. That she will not 
 . remain stationary we may confidently predict. Ambition, like 
 ! other passions, grows by what it feeds on. This much I firmly 
 believe, that if this barbarous nation, this enemy of all pro- 
 gress except that which leads to strengthen and consolidate 
 its own power, this State which punishes education as a crime, 
 should once succeed in establishing itself in the heart of Europe, 
 it would be the greatest calamity that could befall the human 
 race." 
 
 These words, no less significant now than then, 
 interpreted the feeling that was working in men's 
 minds from one end of the country to the other. 
 They were not without their weight in the Cabinet, 
 for Ministers entertained a salutary fear of a critic, 
 so sternly intolerant of vacillation or weakness where 
 a national interest was at stake. He carried both 
 country and Cabinet with him, when, at a later date, 
 he said that a mere return to the status quo before 
 the war would not content the nation, or give to 
 Central Europe the security for her commerce to 
 which she was entitled, and argued that a cession of 
 territory must be exacted from Russia at the mouth of 
 the Danube, so as to ensure the free and uninterrupted 
 navigation of that river. Acting on this view, the 
 concession of Bessarabia was afterwards insisted on by 
 Lord Clarendon throughout the peace negotiations at 
 Paris. Russia resisted even so far as to threaten to 
 break off the negotiations ; but Lord Clarendon was 
 firm, and the concession was granted. The gain was 
 great to England and to Europe. What would Lord
 
 1 85 5. VISITS PARIS IN EXHIBITION YEAR. 459 
 
 Lyndhurst have said, when not many years afterwards 
 it was surrendered without equivalent at the mere 
 demand of Russia ? 
 
 Having now grown very lame and altogether 
 too infirm to occupy himself longer in farming, this 
 summer he gave up his lease of Turville Park. 
 It was the year of the first great French Exhibition, 
 and, like the rest of the world, he was drawn by its 
 attractions to Paris. Here he passed several months, 
 enjoying to the full the countless sights, and the 
 varied and interesting society which made Paris 
 always a favourite'resort with him, more brilliant that 
 year than it had ever been. How he enjoyed 
 himself may be seen from a letter, reproaching his 
 old secretary Mr. Perry for not having taken his 
 holiday there. 
 
 " There was so much to see, so much to amuse and instruct 
 you. You would have carried home a store of information 
 and of agreeable impressions, that would have added in no 
 small degree to the pleasure of your future life. Mrs. Perry, 
 too, would have been charmed while she herself would have 
 been charming those around her. Indeed, you have made 
 a great mistake. Even I, old as I am, have transplanted myself 
 and taken root in France the last four months. 
 
 " Here we are all for peace, while you seem all for war ! 
 How is this to be reconciled ? What is to become of the 
 
 entente cordiale ? C and his wife come here at Christmas, 
 
 so you see everybody is more adventurous than you ; and yet 
 Liverpool has the reputation of being the seat of adventure. 
 But you have not caught the infection." 
 
 The way things were being managed in the 
 negotiations for peace which were now going on, seems 
 to have been anything but pleasing to him. Thus we 
 find him writing in November to Mr. Barlow 
 
 " We are playing so completely second fiddle to France,
 
 460 THE EMPEROR NAPOLEON III. CHAP. xvm. 
 
 that I begin to be sick of the war and yet I find by the 
 Bombay papers that the Russians are busy with a consider- 
 able military force in Central Asia, and they are also looking, 
 as I find in the Times, to an establishment to the north of 
 Norway, i.e. in the Atlantic. Between the active ambition of 
 France and the creeping wiles of Russia it may be difficult to 
 choose." 
 
 Lord Lyndhurst had often met the Prince Louis 
 Napoleon in London, at Lady Blessington's. He had 
 no particular liking for the Prince, and indeed he knew 
 him only as one knows those one meets at a friend's 
 house. But a man so distinguished as Lord Lynd- 
 hurst could not be resident for any time in Paris 
 without the Prince, now Emperor, desiring to show 
 him courtesy. Accordingly, an intimation reached 
 him from the Tuileries, that the presence there of 
 himself with Lady Lyndhurst and his daughter was 
 desired. Such an intimation was a command. Here 
 is Lord Lyndhurst's own account of what passed, 
 written the same day (3rd of December, 1855), to his 
 friend Mr. Barlow. 
 
 " I was presented to-day, with Lady Lyndhurst and 
 Georgie [their daughter], to the Emperor and Empress in 
 private. We remained in active conversation, no other person 
 present, for more than an hour. The affair was full of 
 interest. Everybody here is for peace. Can't say what the 
 Emperor thinks. I speak of all but him. It seems at home 
 we are all for war, even Fox the Quaker." 
 
 The Emperor's position was indeed a difficult one. 
 France was weary of the war, and would have closed it 
 upon almost any terms. England, however, was very 
 far from being of the same mind. The fall of 
 Sebastopol, and the temporary disabling of Russia, 
 were no compensation to her for the many and costly 
 sacrifices by which they had been effected. She
 
 1856. PEACE NEGOTIATIONS. 461 
 
 required some assurance that the same battle in the 
 interests of civilised Europe would not have to be 
 fought over again. She was stronger now, and more 
 able to continue the war, than she had been at any 
 former time, and from the terms of peace which she 
 had by this time formulated she was not disposed to 
 depart. Neither Austria nor Prussia were to be 
 strongly relied upon for supporting her in pressing for 
 these terms : Austria from her internal difficulties, 
 Prussia from the sympathies of her Sovereign with 
 Russia. It required, therefore, no ordinary firmness 
 in the Emperor of the French to follow the lead of 
 his English Allies, with his own people behind him 
 anxious to be relieved from the pressure of a war 
 in which they had never seen any great advantage 
 to themselves, and under the long strain of which 
 the military resources of France had broken down. 
 Reticence in conversation, even with Lord Lyndhurst, 
 was, therefore, what might be expected on the 
 Emperor's part ; but he presently showed, during the 
 peace conferences at Paris, that he was truly loyal to 
 his engagements to England. 
 
 Lord Lyndhurst came back from Paris greatly 
 invigorated by his stay there. On the i5th of 
 February, 1856, his sister, to whom the stir and bustle 
 of that busy time had been rather exhausting, writes 
 to Mrs. Greene 
 
 " We are comfortably settled in George Street, much to^rny 
 satisfaction, notwithstanding the smoke of London. In winter 
 Paris is only fit for the young and gay. It certainly did 
 my brother a great deal of good ; every one remarks how ex- 
 tremely well he is looking. He made an excellent speech 
 the other day, equal to any of his former ones. I know this 
 will give you great pleasure to hear." 
 
 The subject of the speech here referred to was
 
 462 QUESTION OF LIFE PEERAGES. CHAP. xvm. 
 
 one in every way calculated to call into play Lord 
 Lyndhurst's finest powers. The House of Lords 
 as a Court of ultimate appeal had for some years 
 been extremely weak ; and the Ministry, anxious to 
 infuse additional strength into the tribunal, had decided 
 on creating life peerages in favour of some of the 
 judges. One of these had been granted to Baron 
 Parke. Lord Derby had called attention to the fact 
 on the first night of the session, and intimated very 
 plainly that the right of the grantee to sit in the 
 House would be disputed. The issue raised was one 
 of the highest constitutional importance, affecting as 
 it did the dignity and independence of the House of 
 Peers, inasmuch as the power claimed for the Crown 
 might at some future time be used by the Ministry in 
 power for their own purposes. The more the subject 
 was studied, the more irregular and unconstitutional 
 such an exercise of the Royal prerogative was found 
 to be. The question 'created great interest on both 
 sides of the House, Lord Campbell, among others, 
 taking a decided part in opposition to his party. 
 According to him (Campbell's ' Life,' vol. ii. p. 339), 
 " we all agreed that Lyndhurst should take the lead, 
 and now, in his eighty-fourth year, he was as eager to 
 do so as if, a boy entering on public life, he had rejoiced 
 at an early opportunity of gaining notoriety." How 
 little Campbell was fitted to understand Lyndhurst 
 these last words show. Notoriety was at no time 
 Lyndhurst's aim. But now, rejoicing in his conscious 
 strength, how could he more worthily employ it than 
 in arguing a great public question of this kind, as 
 probably he himself, but certainly all his legal compeers, 
 felt that no other man could ? 
 
 His treatment of it (yth of February, 1856) sur- 
 passed all that had been anticipated. Campbell in 

 
 1856. LORD LYNDHURSTS SPEECH. 463 
 
 his ' Diary ' chronicles that his speech "was the most 
 wonderful ever heard. It would have been admirable 
 for a man of thirty-five, and for a man of eighty-four 
 it was miraculous ! No man of that advanced age 
 ever made such a speech in a deliberative assembly." 
 It required no allowance for the age of the speaker. 
 But indeed in estimating a fine work of art or literature 
 or eloquence, any reference to the years of its author 
 is out of place. The marvel would rather have been 
 for any man of thirty-five to make such a speech. It 
 needed the ripe experience and the practised skill 
 of a great master to say so much, and to say it so well, 
 within so small a compass. 
 
 After disposing of what history and law had to say 
 upon the subject, Lord Lyndhurst dealt with the novel 
 exercise of the prerogative, as a question of state 
 policy. 
 
 " What," he asked, " will be the consequences of the estab- 
 lishment of a system of life peerages ? You will from time 
 to time have appointments of this kind repeated ; you will 
 become accustomed to them, and you will find this House 
 divided into two classes, part hereditary peers and part mere 
 peers for life. One great barrier against the creation of peers 
 for the occasional purposes of the Government is the heredi- 
 tary character of this House. To attempt any such creations 
 at present would be attended with great risk and difficulty. 
 In the reign of Queen Anne, Sunderland and Oxford made 
 the attempt, but we know it has been a matter of denunciation 
 ever since. But if a few members of the legal profession can 
 be created peers for the short remainder of their career, how 
 easy it will be for an unscrupulous Minister we have had 
 many unscrupulous Ministers, and we are likely to have them 
 in future to carry the system out to what extent he thinks 
 proper for his own objects. I may be told that this privilege 
 of prerogative may be sparingly exercised, and that we must 
 not object to a good thing because it may be abused. I do 
 not give way to that delusion, I do not accede to that position
 
 464 LORD LYNDHURSTS SPEECH. CHAP. xvin. 
 
 in what I call constitutional policy. I will give no power that 
 is capable of being abused, unless when I think it necessary 
 for some great object. That is the constitutional doctrine 
 which I have always taught, and to which I am determined 
 to adhere." 
 
 Then, in order to show that this jealousy was 
 shared by statesmen, even under the strongest tempta- 
 tion to resort to the use of the Royal prerogative, 
 he referred to the action of Earl Grey " for whose 
 memory," he said, " he entertained the highest re- 
 spect" when driven to the sorest straits to secure 
 the passing of the Reform Bill. The creation of 
 life peerages was regarded by that noble Earl 
 "as a great innovation, attended with dangerous 
 consequences, and subversive of the character of 
 this House." So, too, at the time of the union 
 with Ireland, when it became necessary to create 
 peers for the purpose of carrying that measure. " Do 
 you suppose," he said, " that if that great statesman, 
 Mr. Pitt, had thought it justifiable to create peerages 
 for life, he would not at once have resorted to that 
 expedient to diminish the inconvenience of a large 
 addition to the Peerage ? " 
 
 Then followed one of those passages, fired with 
 the heat of strong feeling, which gave a peculiar 
 charm to Lord Lyndhurst's speeches 
 
 ' It has been said that this use of the prerogative may be 
 exercised for creating rewards for great and eminent services. 
 My Lords, I have listened to that way of putting the question 
 with the utmost indignation. Would you place men who 
 have served their country in the highest positions men who 
 have bled for their country men who by their exertions have 
 added to the power and character and glory of the nation 
 would you place these men in a class lower than those who 
 reflect only the lustre of persons who before them have been 
 distinguished for great and eminent services ? I do not go the
 
 1856. aV LIFE PEERAGES. 465 
 
 length of the old Roman poet, when he put into the mouth 
 of the Grecian warrior these words : 
 
 ' Nam genus et proavos et quae non fecimus ipsi, 
 Vix ea nostra voco.' 
 
 " I do not go that length, but I say that while I respect the 
 descendants of men who have done great and glorious deeds 
 for their country, I respect still more those by \\hom great 
 and glorious deeds have been accomplished. It is said some- 
 times indeed I have myself heard rumours that these 
 creations are to be confined to members of the legal profes- 
 sion. What, I would ask your Lordships, has the profession of 
 the law done to merit this indignity ? I say with the most 
 perfect confidence and I can appeal to every man acquainted 
 with the history of this country for the truth of what I say 
 that no body of men have been more distinguished, or have 
 been more successful in their exertions, in supporting the 
 liberties and maintaining the Constitution of this country, 
 than those who have belonged to the profession of the law. 
 I hear things sometimes whispered about their descendants. 
 But when I look around this House, I see my noble and 
 gallant friend (the Earl of Hardwicke), distinguished for con- 
 duct and personal bravery, and known as one of the most 
 able officers in Her Majesty's service, and I find him de- 
 scended from a noble and learned Lord who presided in this 
 House with equal dignity and splendour. I further see a 
 noble Earl (the Earl of Ellenborough), of great talent and in- 
 formation on all questions to which he directs his attention, 
 and who is frequently heard to address this House with the 
 most commanding and overpowering eloquence ; and he is 
 the descendant of a Chief Justice who was honoured with a 
 seat in this House. I see another noble Lord (Redesdale), 
 who holds a distinguished office in your Lordships' House 
 intelligent, acute, liberal and independent and who stands 
 deservedly high in the estimation of your Lordships. He 
 also is the descendant of one who distinguished himself in the 
 profession of the law. Therefore, my Lords, if it is said that 
 those who have been connected with the law and have been 
 raised to the honours of the peerage, are not honoured in their 
 descendants, I protest against such an assertion as unjust and 
 unfounded." 
 
 2 H
 
 466 THE QUESTION CHAP, xvnr, 
 
 Not less admirable were the words with which 
 the speech wound up. 
 
 " What is the real secret of this change in" our system ? 
 My Lords, in our intercourse with our friends on the other side 
 of the water, have we become so enamoured of their Senate 
 that we can admire and favourably contrast its efficiency, its 
 vigour, and its independence with that of your Lordships' 
 House ? Have we been led to imitate them in the composi- 
 tion of the Upper House ? It is but a few weeks since I read 
 an official comment in the Moniteur, coming from the highest 
 source, on the inefficiency, the want of patriotism, energy, and 
 the backwardness to fulfil the high destinies to which they 
 were called, that characterised that illustrious body, the Senate 
 of France. I have no disposition myself to cut down our 
 tribunal to that life interest on which the Senate of France is 
 based, as I believe the hereditary character of this House is 
 one from which great and important advantages are derived. 
 If you desire, my Lords, to support the stability and the con- 
 stitutional powers of this House, I think you cannot be pre- 
 pared to approve the course which has been pursued in this 
 case. The hereditary principle is entwined in every part of our 
 Constitution ; we in this House enjoy our hereditary rights in 
 common with the Crown ; we mutually support and assist 
 each other, and we form a barrier and defence to protect both 
 those branches of the Constitution against any by whom they 
 may be assailed. Break in upon that principle destroy that 
 outwork and he must be a bold man indeed who will venture 
 to say he can foresee all the consequences that will arise." 
 
 Lord Lyndhurst concluded with a motion that 
 Lord Wensleydale's patent be referred to the Com- 
 mittee for Privileges, to examine and report upon it 
 to the House. After a very elaborate debate, the 
 motion was carried by a majority of thirty-three. 
 The Committee sat for two days taking evidence, 
 during which the inquiry was practically conducted 
 by Lord Lyndhurst, and on the third day (2ist of 
 February) he moved that they should report it as
 
 1856. OF LIFE PEERAGES. 467 
 
 their opinion, that neither the Letters Patent by them- 
 selves, nor along with the usual writ of summons issued 
 in pursuance of these Letters, could entitle the grantee 
 to sit and vote in Parliament. 
 
 This he did in a speech not less admirable than 
 his former one. A remarkable instance both of his 
 habitual thoroughness in the study of his subjects, 
 and of his marvellous tenacity of memory, occurred 
 in the course of this speech. He had been dealing 
 with the cases of grants of peerages for life, which had 
 been made at various remote periods, all of which, 
 according to his argument, obtained what validity 
 they had from the fact that they were made with 
 the express assent of Parliament. " I need not," he 
 said, " refer to all the cases, for I believe my noble 
 and learned friend (the Lord Chancellor Cranworth) 
 will agree with me that these significant words are 
 to be found in all the patents or charters creating 
 peerages for life." The Chancellor, on being thus 
 appealed to, answered, "About half of them," upon 
 which Lord Lyndhurst rejoined, " I will show that 
 the whole of them are," and, without note of any 
 kind, he went through every case, pointing out the 
 distinctive peculiarities of each with minute accuracy. 
 
 The Government made a resolute struggle to 
 prevent the motion being carried, but after a long 
 and exhaustive debate, conducted with great ability 
 on both sides, it was carried by a majority of thirty- 
 five. Happily no question of the personal merits of 
 the grantee of the patent entered into the discus- 
 sion. In the first debate, Lord Lyndhurst adverted 
 to the circumstance that one of the first acts of his 
 official life, when he was first Chancellor, thirty years 
 before, had been to recommend Baron Parke for a 
 seat on the Bench, adding that " his assiduity, his 
 
 2 H 2
 
 468 APPELLATE JURISDICTION. CHAP. xvni. 
 
 industry, his learning and impartiality, had more than 
 justified the appointment they did honour to the 
 selection." In deference to the decision of the House, 
 the Government soon afterwards cancelled the first 
 patent, and Baron Parke was called to the peerage as 
 Lord Wensleydale by a patent in the usual form, much 
 to the satisfaction of all parties, and of no one more 
 than Lord Lyndhurst. 
 
 In truth no one was more anxious than he 
 that something should be done to give fresh strength 
 to the House of Lords as a Court of Appeal, and he 
 had prepared an excellent scheme with this view. 
 But the subject was unfortunately taken out of his 
 hands by Lord Derby, who obtained (24th of February, 
 1856) the appointment of a Committee of the House 
 of Lords to consider the question. In pursuance of this 
 Committee's report, a Bill was brought in by the Lord 
 Chancellor in the following May, and passed in the 
 House of Lords. Its provisions were, however, found 
 to be so objectionable, as well as inadequate, that it 
 had to be withdrawn even after it had passed the 
 second reading in the House of Commons. In the 
 discussions on this Bill, Lord Lyndhurst took no part. 
 He could not approve it ; but resistance in the House 
 of Lords against Lord Derby would have been fruit- 
 less. When it was withdrawn, he was naturally well 
 pleased. 
 
 During this session Lord Lyndhurst made several 
 important speeches on foreign affairs, and also on 
 questions of legal reform, more particularly on the 
 necessity for an alteration in the law of divorce, 
 a subject in which he took great interest. A Bill 
 which had been introduced with the view of effecting 
 a dissolution of marriage by the decree of a specially 
 constituted tribunal, instead of the established pro-
 
 1856. AMENDMENT OF LAW OF DIVORCE. 469 
 
 cedure by Act of Parliament, which made the remedy 
 available only to the rich, did not go far enough in his 
 opinion, either in respect of the grounds on which 
 divorce should be granted, or in giving to the wife an 
 equal right to relief with the husband. He succeeded 
 in getting the Bill referred to a Committee, where he 
 was able to get many important modifications intro- 
 duced. But the measure was detained so long by 
 the discussions there, that legislation had to stand 
 over till the next session. 1 
 
 1 On the progress of private Bill legislation Lord Lyndhurst kept a watchful 
 eye after he ceased to be Chancellor. There were few things of importance in 
 this direction, in which a principle affecting the public interest was involved, that 
 escaped his notice.
 
 ( 470 ) 
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 Lord Lyndhurst's speeches on Divorce Bill, and Lord Campbell's Bill 
 for suppressing Obscene Publications His rebuke to Lord Campbell 
 Speeches on Oaths Bill, and Bill for Suppression of Street Music 
 Recommends Lord Campbell to Lord Palmerston for Chancellor 
 His speech on National Defences Its great effect throughout the 
 country Correspondence with; Lord Campbell Great speeches on 
 Naval Defences, and on Paper Duties Bill. 
 
 THE session of 1857 found Lord Lyndhurst as full 
 of intellectual energy as ever. He had taken up the 
 question of Divorce with enthusiasm, from a profound 
 conviction of the enormous amount of misery and 
 injustice which resulted from the existing state of the 
 law, under which a divorce was allowable only by a 
 special Act of Parliament. To none but the rich, 
 therefore, was it possible, and to women, however 
 deeply wronged, it was practically unavailable. More- 
 over, as the application to Parliament had to be pre- 
 ceded by an action at law, and a verdict of damages 
 for criminal conversation, and also by a divorce a 
 mensd etthoro in the^Ecclesiastical Court, it was obvious 
 that, apart from the objection of costliness, and the 
 offensive exposures of the action for damages, it left 
 thousands of cases untouched, where a release from 
 the bondage of an unblest union was to be desired 
 on every consideration of private feeling and public 
 expediency. 
 
 When the Bill, which now forms the law upon the 
 subject (2,0 & 21 Viet. c. 85), was introduced by the 
 Lord Chancellor (Cranworth), Lord Lyndhurst deve- 
 loped his views in one of his finest speeches. In the
 
 1 85 7. AMENDMENT OF LAW OF DIVORCE. 471 
 
 previous session the Bishop of Oxford had quoted 
 St. Augustine in answer to his argument for the liberty 
 of divorce, and of the marriage of those whose adul- 
 tery had led to the divorce. With characteristic 
 energy Lord Lyndhurst had taken to the study of the 
 folios of St. Augustine and other fathers of the Church 
 during the recess, and in the course of his speech 
 (3rd of March, 1857) he amused the House by the way 
 in which he turned his studies to account by adducing 
 evidence from them in support of the doctrine that 
 marriage was not an indissoluble tie, but was allowable 
 in the case of adultery ; enforcing his argument by the 
 illustration of a case cited by St. Augustine himself, 
 on which the opinion of that eminent saint did not 
 say much for the nicety of his moral sense. In the 
 course of his speech Lord Lyndhurst showed conclu- 
 sively, that the Romish rule upon the subject was a 
 dogma unknown to the early Christian Church, and 
 neither more nor less than an encroachment of 
 ecclesiastical tyranny. The remedy of divorce, he 
 urged, should be available to the wife not merely for 
 adultery, but also for desertion, cruelty and other 
 causes ; but he did not find sufficient support to carry 
 this view. The Bill underwent great changes in com- 
 mittee at his instigation, and with the amendments 
 then made and those which were introduced two years 
 afterwards by the Act (22, & 23 Viet. c. 61), it has been 
 found to work equitably upon the whole. 
 
 Later in the session (25th of June, 1857), Lord 
 Lyndhurst took an active part in opposition to the 
 second reading of a Bill introduced by Lord Campbell 
 to prohibit the sale of indecent books, prints, &c. As his 
 action on this occasion has often been misrepresented, 
 it is necessary to call attention in some detail to what 
 actually took place. For this misrepresentation Lord
 
 472 LORD CAMPBELL'S BILL CHAP, xix, 
 
 Campbell is chiefly to blame, and yet he of all men, as 
 will presently be seen, was bound to have given no 
 colour to it. " For some unaccountable reason," he 
 says ('Life of Lyndhurst,' p. 201), "Lyndhurst violently 
 opposed this measure ; and on the second reading he 
 delivered a most elaborate, witty, unfair, and I must add 
 profligate speech against the Bill, and moved that it 
 be read a second time that day three months." Lord 
 Campbell omits to state, that Lord Brougham, the 
 Chancellor (Lord Cranworth), and Lord Wensleydale 
 all joined with Lord Lyndhurst in condemning his Bill ; 
 that it was only allowed to proceed in the expectation 
 that it might be so manipulated in committee as to 
 be made workable ; and that but for the amendments 
 made upon it by Lord Lyndhurst, Lord Cranworth 
 and Lord Wensleydale amendments which have 
 made the Act what it now is it never would have 
 been allowed to pass. 
 
 The "unaccountable reason" of Lord Lyndhurst's 
 opposition was expressed by himself in the plainest 
 language ; and it was simply this : that the Bill, as 
 presented by Lord Campbell, utterly failed in defining 
 the class of works against which it was meant to be 
 directed. It was "so wide, so extensive, so loose, so 
 vague, that it would give rise to every kind of abuse 
 no publisher, no printseller, would be safe under the 
 Bill." Lord Cranworth had previously said in effect 
 the same thing, and objected that the interpretation 
 of its vague language, while authorising a most inquisi- 
 torial right of search, was left in one case to the police 
 magistrate, and in another to the superintendent of 
 police. 
 
 Lord Lyndhurst started with giving every credit 
 to Lord Campbell for the feeling which had prompted 
 him to bring in the Bill. He himself thought the
 
 1857. FOR SUPPRESSION OF OBSCENE BOOKS. 473. 
 
 existing law was sufficient to put down the traffic in 
 question. But in any case the remedy now proposed 
 was not a right one. No man would be safe in keep- 
 ing in his house a statue or a picture, which an informer 
 might dsnounce as coming within the scope of the Bill 
 the Jupiter and Antiope of Correggio, for instance, or 
 the Medicean Venus. Nay, his library, if it happened to 
 include Ovid or the dramatists of the Reformation, or 
 the French novelists from Crebillon fils down to Paul 
 de Kock Lord Wensleydale added, Lucian, Juvenal 
 and Lucretius might bring him within the penalties 
 of the'proposed enactments. Lord Lyndhurst, willing 
 to let Lord Campbell down easily, did not in his first 
 speech on the Bill drive his legal argument very closely 
 home, and amused the House by a series of witty 
 illustrations of the vagaries and intolerable interference 
 to which such legislation would give rise. But when 
 the subject came up again (i3th of July), after he had 
 taken every pains in committee to lick the measure 
 into proper shape, he took care that it should not 
 be said that his reasons for opposing the original Bill 
 were "unaccountable." 
 
 " I will," he said, " give you a sample of its provisions. A 
 man makes an affidavit that some one he does not say who 
 has reason to suspect that there are improper publications at 
 such a house. Upon that vague surmise a warrant is issued, 
 the effect of which will be, that at any hour of the day, or any 
 hour of the night, an officer may go into the house, search 
 every room, every bedroom, even the beds in which women 
 are lying, because they may conceal improper publications ; 
 break open, or order to be opened, every drawer and every 
 closet in the house, and after all it may turn out that there is 
 nothing to be found ; but the householder will have no remedy 
 for all this vexation. That was the Bill ; and I was rebuked 
 for opposing it. In the name of common sense, could I do 
 otherwise than oppose a Bill drawn in such a monstrous
 
 474 LORD LYNDHURST CHAP. xix. 
 
 shape ? That was the first clause of the Bill. According 
 to the second, no affidavit was required. The report of a 
 mere superintendent of police, that he believed there were 
 improper publications in a house, would give rise to all 
 the vexation to which I have referred. . . . My noble and 
 learned friend has repeatedly said in a deprecatory tone, 
 ' Oh, I do not mean anything of the kind.' Why, it is not 
 what the Chief Justice means but what is the construction 
 of the Act of Parliament ! " 
 
 So much for Lord Campbell's " unaccountable 
 reason." Now as to his charge that Lord Lyndhurst 
 (then eighty-five) had made a " most profligate " speech. 
 The speech exists in Hansard to disprove the charge. 
 Nevertheless Lord Campbell ventured, in replying to 
 Lord Lyndhurst on the first occasion, to apply to it 
 some words so offensive that they are not reported 
 in Hansard. He uttered them also in a tone so low 
 that, while others heard them, Lord Lyndhurst, being 
 slightly deaf, did not do so. They were so discredit- 
 able, that when Campbell sat down, Lord Wensleydale 
 told him he should inform Lord Lyndhurst what he 
 had said, which he did. Knowing this, Lord Camp- 
 bell called at Lord Lyndhurst' s house to apologise, 
 but Lord Lyndhurst refused to see him. A public 
 apology thus became necessary, and on moving the 
 third reading of the Bill Campbell disclaimed the inten- 
 tion to say anything offensive, " and begged most fully 
 and entirely to retract it, and to express regret that 
 he had said anything which might bear such a con- 
 struction." Seeing that within a year afterwards 
 he penned the description quoted above of Lord 
 Lyndhurst's speech, we read with a feeling difficult to 
 describe the words which followed ; "His noble and 
 learned friend on that occasion had done no more than 
 his d^uty, and he had since then rendered material
 
 1857. REBUKES LORD CAMPBELL. 475 
 
 assistance in amending the Bill, and for that he begged 
 leave to return thanks to his noble and learned friend' 1 
 
 (Hansard, vol. cxlvi. 1356.) 
 
 Placable beyond most men though he was, Lord 
 
 Lyndhurst, while accepting Campbell's apology, could 
 not forbear from administering a rebuke to the man 
 by whom his forbearance had been often severely 
 taxed. 
 
 " I apprehend," he said, " that my noble and learned friend 
 is not always aware of the effect of the expressions which he 
 uses. He has been so accustomed to relate degrading anec- 
 dotes of his predecessors in office, that I am afraid his feelings \ 
 upon these subjects have become somewhat blunted ; and I 
 am the more confirmed in that opinion from a circumstance 
 which occurred not long ago. My noble and learned friend, 
 in a publication which he recently gave to the world [' The Lives 
 of the Chief Justices '], inserted two or three paragraphs of a 
 nature by no means complimentary to myself, and, having 
 done so, he selects the particular volume containing those 
 paragraphs from the whole set, and sends it to me as a present, 
 with the author's compliments. I conclude, therefore, that my 
 noble and learned friend does not, upon all occasions, under- 
 stand the force of the expressions which he uses. Why, 
 immediately after the division had taken place the other 
 evening, my noble and learned friend, after having uttered 
 expressions with regard to myself more degrading to the 
 utterer than to the person against whom they were directed, 
 came over to me with a smiling face, and asked me to amend 
 the Bill." 
 
 This is what Lord Campbell talks of as "a rough 
 passage of arms " between himself and the ex- 
 Chancellor, a fine illustration of that ignorance of the 
 meaning of words which Lord Lyndhurst ascribes 
 to him. A coolness of many months ensued ; but 
 Lyndhurst, at no time a man to cherish animosities, 
 was now at that time of life when such men willingly 
 forget injuries, and find it too painful for endurance to be
 
 476 SPEECH ON OATHS BILL. CHAP. xix. 
 
 wholly estranged from those with whom they have been 
 in intercourse for years, and whom they must still have 
 to meet. In Parliament they never again came into 
 collision, except in the debate in the session of 1858 
 upon a Bill of Lord Campbell's for dispensing with the 
 unanimity of juries in civil trials, against which Lord 
 Lyndhurst successfully led the opposition. Peace was 
 restored between them, and they remained in friendly 
 correspondence down to Campbell's death in 1861. 
 
 Lord Lyndhurst's best speech during this session 
 was upon the second reading of the Oaths Bill, for 
 giving admission to the Jews to Parliament. The 
 Bill had again and again passed the Commons with 
 increasing majorities. Lord Lyndhurst placed the 
 duty of the House of Lords in such a state of things 
 upon its true footing, in words of permanent value. 
 After alluding to these majorities, he said 
 
 " My Lords, I think these facts are not to be disregarded or 
 lightly considered. I have sometimes ventured to state my 
 opinion as to the relative duties of the two Houses of Parlia- 
 ment, the one representing the great mass of the constituencies, 
 the other not representing the people, but rather what may be 
 termed the Conservative influences of the Constitution. My 
 Lords, I have always considered the duty of this House to 
 be to mature all plans of sound legislation to serve as a 
 check against the rash, hasty, and unwise proceedings of the 
 other House, and to give time for consideration, and even for 
 the abandonment of improper measures. I have never thought, 
 however, that this House ought to be a perpetual barrier 
 against sound and progressive legislation. No wise or prudent 
 man can approve such a course. It must lead to a conflict 
 with the other House, and in that conflict, unless we are sup- 
 ported by a great majority of the people, we must succumb. 
 I have been now for more than thirty years a member of this 
 House. I have taken an active part in all those measures 
 which have been brought forward during that time for the 
 purpose of extending the principle of religious freedom. I
 
 1858. BILL AGAINST STREET MUSIC. 477 
 
 have myself been the originator of some of them, and I hope 
 I may be allowed to say, that I feel a just pride in the course 
 I have taken. My Lords, we have now arrived at the last 
 stage in our progress towards full and perfect religious liberty. 
 Let us not halt in our career, Let us not lag behind, on this 
 subject, the other Protestant States of Europe. Let us main- 
 tain our old position in the van of the nations, and let us now 
 make our last and crowning effort in the great cause of civil 
 and religious liberty." 
 
 The appeal was not successful. A majority of 
 thirty-two negatived the second reading ; and it was 
 not until the following session, and after fresh debates 
 in which he played a conspicuous part, that Lord 
 Lyndhurst had the satisfaction of seeing the question 
 settled, although not altogether in the simple and 
 straightforward way in which he considered that a 
 constitutional question of this importance ought alone 
 to be settled. 
 
 Not content with watching all great public 
 measures and movements, Lord Lyndhurst kept a sharp 
 outlook upon Bills which could in any way affect the 
 general interest or convenience. As an instance of 
 this vigilance we may cite his speech (29th of April, 
 1858) against a Bill of the Marquis of Westmeath for 
 the suppression of street music, in which, owing to the 
 ignorance of the draftsman, the remedy provided 
 would have been worse than the nuisance against 
 which it was directed. The speech was in the vein 
 of playful humour with which the speaker's private 
 friends were familiar, and with flashes of which his 
 graver orations were occasionally lightened. 
 
 " I have," he said, " a very musical friend who lives in one 
 of those holes called chambers, in Old Square, Lincoln's Inn. 
 This gentleman worked hard, night and morning, at the 
 study of his profession, and I can conceive of his looking 
 out of the window early some May morning, seeing the sun
 
 478 LORD LYNDHURST ON CHAP. xix. 
 
 shining upon the chimney pots for it never shone upon 
 anything else there and being tempted to take a walk into 
 the country. He might put his flute in his pocket, and walk 
 off perhaps to Hampstead Heath, perhaps to Hornsey Lane, 
 or perhaps to Richmond Hill. He might sit down, and begin 
 to blow upon his flute which he did most beautifully. 
 People would be attracted round him in considerable numbers ; 
 but after he had played for a quarter of an hour or twenty 
 minutes, a man in a blue coat, having a letter A. and a 
 number on the collar, would come up and, presenting a piece 
 of parchment or paper, say, ' Read this ! ' ' What does it 
 mean ? ' ' Oh, the magistrate is sitting at the King's Arms, and 
 requires your attendance.' ' My attendance ? For what ? ' 
 Why, sir, you are an idle and disorderly person ; you are idle 
 yourself, and make other people idle by attracting them by 
 your beautiful playing on the flute.' ' What does this mean ? ' 
 ' It's under the Westmeath Bill.' ' The Westmeath Bill ! Why, 
 that must be an Irish Act.' ' No ! Lord Westmeath's Bill. You 
 must come before the magistrate. He is sitting to hear the 
 case, and will commit you as an idle and disorderly person, and 
 sentence you to one month's imprisonment with hard labour.' " 
 (Hansard, vol. cxlix. 1927.) 
 
 He then pointed out how Punch for whose im- 
 munity from police interference the House of Com- 
 mons had recently declared would by reason of his 
 Pan-pipes come within the sweep of the Bill. There 
 were, he said, some mews behind his house, where about 
 the dinner hour of the inhabitants street music was 
 generally to be heard. "He had no doubt that the 
 players were paid, and, if they were, it could only be 
 because their performances were agreeable to the 
 humble proprietors of homes in that district, and he 
 had as little doubt that it exercised a softening influence 
 on their manners." A personal experience of his own, 
 which he then gave, is characteristic. 
 
 I recollect very many years ago, when I was studying 
 in chambers, having a neighbour who was learning to scrape
 
 1858. GRAND JURIES BILL. 479 
 
 on the violin. I was at first disposed to complain of my 
 neighbour's innocent pastime as an annoyance ; but on a little 
 reflection I said to myself, " Is it wise in me to object ? Let 
 me see whether I cannot stand it without distraction. If I 
 can, what an admirable discipline it will be to me in 
 pursuing my mathematical studies ! " After a time I ceased 
 to hear this "nuisance," as it was called it made no im- 
 pression on me. 
 
 Discipline indeed ! Of the power of abstraction 
 which could make a man forget such torture, it might 
 indeed be said, although it could not be said of the 
 amateur's music, that it " raised a mortal to the 
 skies ! " After Lord Lyndhurst's speech the fate of 
 Lord Westmeath's well-meant attempt at legislation 
 was inevitable. 
 
 While adhering on all general questions of policy 
 to the views of the party to which he had always been 
 attached, Lord Lyndhurst did not hesitate to oppose 
 them whenever he thought them in the wrong. As 
 he had spoken against them upon the Oaths Bill, so 
 he led the attack (8th April, 1858) upon a Bill intro- 
 duced by Lord Chelmsford for getting rid of grand 
 juries within the metropolitan districts. Regarding 
 these as one of the great securities for justice and 
 freedom against the exercise of arbitrary power, he 
 defended their continuance by one of those speeches 
 in which the powers of the great jurist and statesman 
 were not more conspicuous, than that earnest concern 
 for the liberties of the subject in the true sense of the 
 word, which pervaded all his great political speeches. 
 To avoid defeat on division the Bill was withdrawn. 
 
 On this occasion the appeal of Lord Lyndhurst 
 was supported by Lord Campbell, to whom it ought to 
 have been some consolation that, if his own measures 
 for altering the law of juries had been strangled by 
 Lord Lyndhurst a few weeks before, the Nestor of
 
 480 LORD LYND HURST RECOMMENDS CHAP. xix. 
 
 Debate was quite as ready to perform execution upon 
 a Bill of his own political friends in accordance with 
 the same broad constitutional principles. 
 
 Not long afterwards Lord Campbell was to be in- 
 debted to Lord Lyndhurst in a way he could little have 
 anticipated. On the return of the Liberals to office 
 under Lord Palmerston in June of this year (1859), 
 the question who should be Chancellor became a source 
 of difficulty. Sir Richard Beth ell and Sir Charles 
 Romilly had each their supporters in the Cabinet, and 
 their respective claims were so warmly supported 
 that the only way out of the difficulty seems to have 
 been to find some third person suitable for the office. 
 In these circumstances Lord Lyndhurst, on whose 
 fairness and sound judgment all parties placed entire 
 reliance, was applied to by Lord Palmerston, through 
 the medium of a member of his Cabinet, for advice, 
 and he recommended that the office should be given 
 to Lord Campbell. Campbell, he said, had always 
 belonged to the Liberal party, he had claims upon the 
 office by seniority, which made it impossible that either 
 Bethell or Romilly should object to his appointment, he 
 was a sound lawyer, and would do no discredit to the 
 Woolsack. The advice was followed. How painful 
 the disappointment was to one of the competitors, at 
 least, may be seen from Campbell's account of his 
 interview with Sir Richard Bethell, when the ap- 
 pointment was made known (Campbell's ' Life/ vol. 
 ii. p. 369). But there was not a word to be said 
 against the appointment in itself, and Lord Palmerston 
 was delighted at being extricated from a difficulty 
 which had threatened to be very embarrassing, 
 
 Lord Campbell somehow or other became aware 
 that he was indebted to Lord Lyndhurst for the 
 crowning honour of his laborious career. " I owe this
 
 1859. LORD CAMPBELL FOR CHANCELLOR. 481 
 
 to you," he said one day to Lord Lyndhurst in the 
 House of Lords, in the hearing of the peers who were 
 sitting round him. Lyndhurst made no reply but he 
 must have been conscious of a peculiar significance 
 in his words, when he took occasion (ist July, 1859), 
 to congratulate the Chancellor on his honours, while 
 vindicating in very cordial terms Lord Campbell's 
 appointment of Mr. Blackburn to a judgeship, for 
 which he had been unfairly attacked. 
 
 " I hope," he said, " my noble and learned friend will allow 
 me to take the opportunity of congratulating him on his 
 elevation on his having attained everything that he has ever 
 looked forward to. We may say of him, in the words of the 
 
 poet 
 
 ' Thou hast it now, King Cawdor, Glamis, all 
 As the weird women promised.' 
 
 " Without being a countryman of my noble and learned 
 friend, I may take credit to myself for a species of fore- 
 sight, having on a former occasion predicted the advancement 
 of my noble and learned friend." * 
 
 Four nights afterwards (5th July) Lord Lyndhurst 
 made a speech, in calling attention to the state of 
 our national defences, the echoes of which were 
 heard throughout the British Empire. Our relations 
 with France since the close of the Crimean War had 
 been by no means satisfactory. There was powerful 
 influence at work in that country to provoke a rupture 
 of the friendly alliance which the Emperor had 
 hitherto maintained, and was probably still anxious to 
 maintain. But everywhere on the Continent, as well 
 as throughout England, an uneasy feeling prevailed, 
 for it was seen that only by excitement flattering to the 
 national vanity could the Emperor keep the turbulent 
 
 1 Campbell's hankering for the Woolsack had long been a theme for Lord 
 Lyndhurst's banter. "Brougham, here is a riddle for you," he is reported^to 
 have said : " Why does Campbell know so much about the Navigation Laws?/' 
 Answer : "Because he has been so long engaged in the Seal fishery." 
 
 2 I
 
 482 NATIONAL DEFENCES. CHAP. xix. 
 
 spirits of France under control ; and what arena he 
 might choose for gratifying their love of conquest and 
 military glory, it was impossible to divine. His military 
 and naval forces had both been brought up to a most 
 formidable scale of magnitude ; and what they could 
 be made to do had recently been illustrated in the 
 Italian Campaign, which had terminated not many 
 weeks before in the very unsatisfactory and obviously 
 inconclusive Peace of Villafranca. Lord Lyndhurst 
 had watched with something like dismay the enormous 
 increase of the French navy, while England, lapped 
 in blameful security, and yielding to the teaching of 
 economic sentimentalists, was slackening in her efforts 
 to bring up her fleet to the standard necessary, in 
 the altered circumstances of Europe, to maintain that 
 supremacy at sea, which could alone secure the safety 
 either of her own shores, or of her colonies and de- 
 pendencies. The time had come to raise a warning 
 voice, and no voice more powerful, or more calculated 
 to make England take the only safe view of her 
 position, could have been raised than that of the man 
 who could carry his remembrance vividly back to the 
 victories of Camperdown and St. Vincent, of the Nile 
 and Trafalgar, and who had made a close study of 
 France and her people from personal observation since 
 the days of her first great Revolution until now. 
 
 As notice had been given of the motion some days 
 before, the House of Lords was crowded in every 
 part, and a deep hush reigned over it as Lord Lyndhurst 
 raised himself with difficulty from his seat, and 
 with the rich, measured, but in no degree monotonous 
 cadence which had for many years taken the place of 
 the impetuous and rapid utterance that in earlier years 
 had somewhat injured the force of his speaking, 
 proceeded to justify himself for calling the attention
 
 1859. LORD LYNDHURSrS SPEECH. 483 
 
 of their Lordships, and through them of the country, 
 to the necessity of submitting to whatever expendi- 
 ture was required to put the national defences on 
 a proper footing. 
 
 At the outset he disclaimed all feeling but the 
 one of anxiety that England should be in a position to 
 hold her own against aggression. He then passed 
 rapidly in review our attitude in former times towards 
 the navies of Europe, and our attitude now, when 
 the introduction of steam and vessels of an entirely 
 different character had, in a great degree, altered the 
 conditions under which we had been enabled to 
 maintain the dominion of the seas. After showing 
 what France had done and was doing in the way of 
 line-of-battle ships and steam-frigates, and in the drill 
 of her men for working them, he said 
 
 Now, with respect to force, What is required ? First, in 
 the Channel ? We require not only a force for warfare equal 
 to France, but we require something more. We require a 
 powerful reserve. France requires no reserve. The reason 
 is this, and I beg your Lordships to mark it. If in a combat 
 of the two fleets the English fleet should be victorious, we 
 have no power of landing with any effect upon the French 
 coast ; whereas, if we have no reserve and our fleet is de- 
 stroyed in a contest with the French fleet, we are entirely at 
 the mercy of the enemy. We have seen lately what France 
 can effect Suppose the English fleet defeated and driven 
 from the Channel, the events which have passed almost under 
 our eyes within the last few weeks show the great peril to 
 which we should be exposed from the extraordinary facility 
 with which a military force to an immense amount might at 
 once be landed on our shores. But it is not sufficient for us 
 to have a Channel fleet capable of coping with the country 
 directly opposite to us. Our Channel fleet must certainly 
 and necessarily be of an amount sufficient to cope against any 
 two Powers which may be united against us. We know full 
 well that at this moment the Russians have seven or eight 
 
 212
 
 484 LORD LYNDHURSTS SPEECH CHAP. xix. 
 
 line steamers fitted for sea. If by any accident or by any 
 event which might easily occur we should be engaged in a 
 dispute with France and with Russia, we should be in a very 
 unfortunate situation if we had not a naval force sufficient to 
 combat both these Powers. Our naval power is essentially 
 defensive. It is absolutely essential to our security. The 
 naval power of France is not defensive not necessarily so. 
 It is aggressive in its character. Then, I say, with respect to 
 the amount of the Channel fleet, if we wish to be in a state of 
 security, if we wish to maintain our great interests, if we wish 
 to maintain our honour, it is necessary that we should have a 
 power measured by that of any two possible adversaries. 
 
 He then went on to show that the Channel fleet 
 was only one portion of what was necessary ; we 
 wanted one also sufficient to command the Mediter- 
 ranean, otherwise the dream of the first emperor 
 would be realised of making it a French lake. 
 
 \ " If France," he continued, " has the command of the Medi- 
 terranean, what is the inevitable consequence ? She will be 
 able to leave and return to the Mediterranean at her pleasure. 
 She will be able to take our Channel fleet in flank at any 
 moment. She will be able to unite her Mediterranean and 
 Channel fleets. She will be able to cross the ocean, and one 
 by one to take possession of our colonies, and she will be 
 able to sweep the ocean of our ships, and destroy our whole 
 commerce. It is necessary, then, not only to have such 
 a Channel fleet as I have stated, but such a fleet as will 
 enable us completely to command the Mediterranean. . . . 
 There is another point with respect to the Mediterranean. 
 Unless we have the command of the Mediterranean if we 
 are driven out of the Mediterranean what is our situation 
 with respect to India ? We cannot communicate with India 
 except round the Cape of Good Hope, while France will be 
 able to communicate by a direct and easy course, by means 
 of Egypt and the Red Sea. What would be the result of 
 that state of things I leave your Lordships to imagine." * 
 
 1 What additional emphasis is given to these remarks by the very powerful 
 fleet which Italy now possesses ! Where will England stand, in the event of any
 
 1859. ON NATIONAL DEFENCES. 485 
 
 He then dealt with the necessity for an effective 
 reserve of seamen, and the efficiency of the arsenals, 
 urging that the more the question was examined, the 
 more confident he was, his hearers would be impressed 
 with the necessity of incurring the expenditure, 
 whatever it might be, that was requisite for accom- 
 plishing the objects to which he had called their 
 attention. 
 
 " But, my Lords," he then proceeded, " that to which I have 
 been ' alluding constitutes only one portion of this important 
 subject. Hitherto, as I have already observed, you were, 
 notwithstanding the absence of your fleet, comparatively in a 
 state of domestic safety for the reasons which I have mentioned. 
 But what is your position now ? In what state would you be 
 if your Channel fleet were dispersed or absent, or from any 
 cause removed for a short time from its proper station ? The 
 noble Lord, the leader of the other House of Parliament, has 
 told you in very emphatic words that steam has converted 
 the Channel into a river and thrown a bridge across it. These 
 are truly emphatic words, but they hardly exceed the reality. 
 They are scarcely exaggerated. Mark, my Lords, the state 
 of things which has been more than once detailed. We know 
 from recent experience that the materials of war may, without 
 exciting any observation, be placed on board ship on the 
 opposite side of the Channel. We know that in a few hours 
 a large army may by means of railways, and without any 
 notice whatsoever, be brought down to the coast to different 
 points of embarkation. The facility of embarkation is quite 
 extraordinary in consequence of the new provisions made for 
 that purpose by France. We know that such a force as that 
 to which I refer may within a few hours in the course of a 
 single night be landed on any part of our shores. With so 
 much certainty, indeed, can the movements of such a body be 
 regulated that from different quarters its component parts 
 might arrive at the point of disembarkation without any 
 difference in point of time. That is the state of things, my 
 
 future combination between Italy and France, unless her fleet be kept up to a very 
 much higher standard than at present ?
 
 486 LORD LYNDHURST'S SPEECH CHAP. xix. 
 
 Lords, with which we have to deal. ... I do not mean for a 
 moment to say that there is no risk in such an adventure as 
 that against which I would call upon you to be on your guard. 
 No great military enterprise can ever be undertaken without 
 some risk ; but I believe from all I have read and heard, and 
 from all the consideration which I have been able to give to 
 the subject, that the risk in the case to which I am adverting, 
 is much less than it has been in many instances in which the 
 result has been attended with success. What, then, my Lords, 
 does it become our duty to do ? What precautions does it 
 behove us to take ? What force ought we to maintain in 
 order to be prepared for any emergency which may arise ? 
 My answer is, a force of regular troops not volunteers not 
 undisciplined men ; but, I repeat, a force of regular troops, 
 capable of opposing any military force which in all probability 
 can be landed on our shores. It is absolutely imperative 
 upon us to maintain such a force. It is a duty which we owe 
 to ourselves. It is a duty which we owe to the character of 
 our country. . . . 
 
 " Every observation, my Lords, which I have made on this 
 subject applies as well to Ireland as to this country. Perhaps 
 the precautions which I have indicated may be even more 
 necessary in the case of the former than the latter. Ireland 
 may possibly be looked upon on the other side of the Channel 
 as one of the ' oppressed nationalities,' as a country trampled 
 upon by a nation differing from her in customs, in language, 
 and in religion. We cannot tell what misrepresentations may 
 be made. We must, at all events, my Lords, provide equally 
 for the safety of Ireland as for our own. ... If we wish to 
 live in security, to maintain our interests abroad, to uphold 
 the honour of the nation, we must be willing to make every 
 exertion necessary for the accomplishment of an object some- 
 thing like that which I have pointed out. . . . 
 
 " But I may be asked, ' Why do you think such measures 
 requisite ? Are we not in alliance with France ? Are we 
 not on terms of friendship with Russia ? What other Power 
 can molest us ? ' To these questions, my Lords, my answer 
 shall be a short and simple one. I will not consent to live 
 in dependence on the friendship or the forbearance of any 
 country. I rely solely on my own vigour, my own exertion, and
 
 1859. ON NATIONAL DEFENCES. 487 
 
 my own intelligence. If I am asked, ' Will you not rely upon 
 the assurances and the courtesies of the Emperor Napoleon ? ' 
 I reply with confidence that I cannot place reliance in him, 
 because he is in a situation in which he cannot place reliance 
 on himself. He is in a situation in which he must be governed 
 by circumstances, and I will not consent that the safety of 
 this country should depend on such contingency. My Lords, 
 self-reliance is the best road to distinction in private life. It 
 is equally essential to the character and to the grandeur of 
 a nation. It will be necessary for our defence, as I have 
 already stated, that we should have a military force sufficient 
 to cope with any Power or combination of Powers that may 
 be brought against us. I know there will be great opposition 
 to the expense. I feel and observe this. But look at the 
 opposite coast. An army of 600,000 men, admirably dis- 
 ciplined, admirably organised, superior to any other force of 
 the same kind in Europe, lies within a few hours' sail of our 
 own shores. That army is composed of brave troops, skilful, 
 well commanded, eager for conflict, enthusiastic, fond of ad- 
 venture, thirsting for glory, and, above all, for military glory. 
 . . . Are we to sit supine on our own shores, and not to prepare 
 the means necessary in case of war to resist that Power ? I 
 do not wish to say that we should do this for any aggressive 
 purpose. What I insist upon is that we are bound to make 
 every effort necessary for our own shelter and protection. 
 Beside this the question of expense and of money sinks into 
 insignificance. It is the price we must pay for our insurance, 
 and it is but a moderate price for so important an insurance. 
 
 " I know there are persons who will say, ' Let us run the 
 risk.' Be it so. But, my Lords, if the calamity should come, 
 if the conflagration should take place, what words can describe 
 the extent of the calamity, or what imagination can paint the 
 overwhelming ruin that would fall upon us. I shall be told, 
 perhaps, that these are the timid counsels of old age. My 
 Lords, for myself, I should run no risk. Personally, I have 
 nothing to fear. But to point out possible peril and how to 
 guard effectively against it, that is surely to be considered, 
 not as timidity, but as the dictates of wisdom and prudence. 
 I have confined myself to facts that cannot be disputed. I 
 think I have confined myself also to inferences which no man
 
 488 LORD LYNDHURST CHAP. xix. 
 
 can successfully contravene. I hope what I have said has 
 been in accordance with your feelings and opinions. I shall 
 terminate what I have to say in two emphatic words, words 
 of solemn and most significant import F^ metis f " 
 
 As the aged statesman sank into his seat, the 
 House resounded with cheers. All present viewed 
 with admiration the man who, conquering the in- 
 firmities of age, had stepped forward to warn his 
 country of its danger, and to silence by his strong 
 sense and masculine eloquence the men who were 
 preaching peace when there was no peace. The 
 appeal was not in vain. His eloquence went right to 
 the heart of the nation, and the response came in the 
 movement for founding a volunteer force, to which 
 England may now look with some confidence in the 
 hour of need. 
 
 The speech, and the general sympathy which it 
 evoked, excited the indignation of the leaders of that 
 party which, in defiance of all experience, believes that 
 the way to prevent war is to disarm, and it was 
 denounced by one of their leaders in the House of 
 Commons as the dotage of an old man, preaching 
 doctrines " not suited to the present day and the 
 present enlightened state of society." The old man 
 was not to be so put down. A few nights afterwards 
 (25th July) he called attention to what had been said 
 of him, and then added, with the full sympathy of his 
 audience 
 
 I do not believe that any man who has the heart of an 
 Englishman would have dissented from the statement which I 
 made. My Lords, it is very well for Englishmen in private 
 life, when they are smitten upon one cheek, to turn the other 
 cheek to the smiter. But that is not my feeling, and least of 
 all ought it to be the feeling of a great and powerful nation. 
 My Lords, I might cite a passage from an eminent orator
 
 1859. ON NATIONAL DEFENCES.' 489 
 
 an Athenian orator which I think somewhat in point. He 
 says in substance, " Nations build large fortresses and lay out 
 great sums of money for that purpose ; but there is one 
 common bulwark which every prudent man will take care to 
 maintain. It is the great security of all nations, particularly 
 of free states, against foreign despotic power." He goes on to 
 ask, " What is this ? " The answer he gives is, " Distrust, 
 distrust. Be mindful of that, adhere to it, and you will be 
 free from almost every calamity." 
 
 These words, as indeed the whole of the speech, of 
 which large but still imperfect extracts have been given, 
 can at no time be inopportune. We cannot be too 
 often reminded that England will maintain her place 
 at the head of the nations, and preserve her colonies 
 and dependencies, on which so much of her wealth and 
 prosperity depends, on no condition short of being able 
 to hold them by force, if need be, against all comers. 
 The events that followed each other in quick succession 
 in Europe soon after these memorable words were 
 spoken are but the types of what are sure to follow, as 
 long as one nation has what another nation has not, 
 but covets ; and as England owns more of those 
 possessions which other nations covet most than any 
 other country, she must not expect to continue to hold 
 them without paying amply for insurance. 
 
 Lord Lyndhurst was much pleased with the zeal 
 with which people throughout England and Scotland 
 set to work to organise volunteer corps. On the I5th 
 of September he writes from Cowes, where he was 
 making holiday, to Lord Campbell, who was then in 
 Scotland 
 
 Are the people of the North enrolling themselves in 
 rifle corps ? and with activity, or sluggishly ? We may 
 have much on our hands, and much out of our pockets. A 
 Chinese war, uncomfortable condition of India, a Reform 
 Bill pending, the proposed new constituencies on strike, Italy
 
 490 LORD LYNDHURST CHAP. xix. 
 
 unsettled, Lord John Russell Foreign Minister. What can 
 you want more ? But Brougham on the loth of October will 
 settle all. So be confident and easy. 
 
 Lyndhurst had been amused at Campbell's follow- 
 ing the example of Brougham when Chancellor, and 
 carrying off the Great Seal with him to Scotland. 
 " Have you," he wrote to Campbell (5th September, 
 1859), "forgotten the lecture read by King William IV., 
 of glorious memory (I say of glorious memory, because 
 he was the distinguished patron of the Reform Bill 
 of 1830) the lecture he read to Brougham for his 
 irregular conduct ? You appear to have followed 
 the precedent, but without much fear of the lecture 
 being repeated under a wiser rule." He recurs to 
 the subject in the following letter of good-humoured 
 badinage 
 
 St. Leonards-on-Sea, October 13, 1859. 
 
 My dear Lord Chancellor, I congratulate you warmly on 
 the marriage of your daughter. The marriage of a daughter 
 is both an anxious and happy event in a family. I am pleased 
 to find you have returned from that horrid Scotland. Some 
 people said, as you had taken the Great Seal with you, that 
 you intended to persuade the Queen to transfer the seat of 
 government to the modern Athens. I was afraid, as you had 
 accomplished all the usual objects of a lawyer's ambition, that 
 you intended to settle down in the country of your birth, 
 recollecting the lines, I think, of Goldsmith 
 
 "And I had hopes, a length of labour past, 
 There to return, and die at home at last." 
 
 But I took a short measure of your ambition. Witness the 
 Bedford races, and the gallant figure you are said to have 
 there displayed ! Again, why should not the double coronet 
 be merged in an earldom ? You know I am a bit of a prophet. 
 So something is still to be done. Rest not 
 
 " On Moscow's walls till Gothic banners fly, 
 And all be mine beneath the Polar sky."
 
 1859. AND LORD CAMPBELL. 49! 
 
 Your great indefatigable rival is Brougham. He has 
 spoken a world of social and physical philosophy at 
 Bradford old Shaftesbury in the chair ; and this while you 
 were betting odds on a racecourse 1 Yours faithfully. 
 
 Here is Campbell's reply 
 
 Stratheden House, October 17, 1859. 
 
 My dear Lord Lyndhurst, It really does my heart good 
 to find you so full of fun and frolic. I hope to spend many 
 many days with you after I am turned out of office. If you 
 will undertake to deliver as many good speeches at Edin- 
 burgh as you do at Westminster, I will try whether, in justice 
 to Scotland, the seat of government should not be changed to 
 the North of the Tweed. I have never had any taste for an 
 
 earldom since that honour was conferred upon I am in 
 
 no danger of remorsefully saying, 
 
 " Oh, my offence is rank? 
 
 . . . Do you mean to attend the " Brougham banquet " on 
 the 25th ? Unless there be a previous change of Ministry I 
 must officiate the following day in proroguing Parliament So 
 I have an excellent excuse. But it will not do for you to say 
 you cannot trust yourself in " horrid Scotland," in which you 
 must remember that B. was born and bred. Yours truly. 
 
 Lord Lyndhurst was yet to make more than one 
 of those good speeches at Westminster to which Lord 
 Campbell alludes. Two of them which he made the 
 following year (1860) were far more than good. The 
 first was on the question of our naval defences 
 (ist of May), when he recurred to the question of the 
 number of our ships and the deficiencies of our Naval 
 Reserve, as contrasted with those of France. 
 
 " Let me remind you," he said, " that in the event of reverses 
 you are not in the same situation as France would be in on 
 the defeat of her fleet ; for independently of any landing on 
 your shores, if France were to obtain the mastery of the 
 Channel and to blockade your ports, what becomes of the 
 country ? What becomes of your revenue ? What becomes 
 of your trade ? What becomes of your means of feeding your
 
 492 NAVAL DEFENCES. CHAP. xix. 
 
 people ? The whole kingdom would be thrown into a state of 
 permanent confusion. . . . Under the changed circumstances 
 of naval warfare a blow can be struck in a moment. It does 
 not take time to prepare it. The striking of the first blow in 
 a naval war will be almost decisive of the result. My Lords, 
 it is our duty not to deceive ourselves it is our duty to take 
 care that the country is not deceived ; it is our duty to meet 
 the difficulty in a manner corresponding with the emergency." 
 
 With the peace party, who were clamorous for 
 reducing the strength of our naval and military 
 establishments, and trying to persuade the constitu- 
 encies that the intercourse of commerce was to abolish 
 all international feuds and jealousies, and stifle all the 
 passions and desires out of which wars are engendered, 
 he dealt thus towards the end of his speech 
 
 I find that at this moment, and with this state of things 
 existing, there is a party actively employed in the North of 
 England in liberalising and improving, according to their 
 sense of the term, the fiscal system of the country, with the 
 declared object not unsupported, I am afraid, by pretty high 
 authority of putting an end to all taxes on articles of con- 
 sumption, and placing the taxation almost entirely on realised 
 property according to a graduated scale. This is done with 
 the avowed object of introducing here the social equality, or, 
 according to the expression used by a high authority, that 
 species of social equality which exists in France, and which 
 is cherished in that country, regardless of civil liberty. 
 Another object they have in view is to pull down the wealthier 
 and aristocratic classes, who, they say, are the favourites and 
 patrons of the army and navy, and to reduce these establish- 
 ments to a lower status. So that, while the navy of France 
 increases from year to year, while its continuance in its present 
 strength is provided for till 1871, the navy of England is to 
 be reduced and for what purpose, and under what pretence ? 
 In the expectation that the nation will continue to possess the 
 friendship of the Emperor of the French ; in the expectation 
 that, by the further exchange of cotton and pottery for wine 
 and silks, a warm friendship may be established between this
 
 i860. PAPER DUTIES BILL. 493 
 
 country and France. These are the views entertained by the 
 men who are aspiring to the government of the country men 
 who, if they could, would place themselves at the head of the 
 whole power of England. They would reduce us to the state 
 of humiliation I have described, instead of maintaining our 
 establishments as they now exist, and holding high the honour 
 and reputation of England. 
 
 This speech, like the speech of the preceding 5th of 
 July, produced a great effect throughout the country, 
 and was of signal use in strengthening the hands of that 
 section of the Ministry, with Lord Palmerston at their 
 head, who were hampered by the action of theoretical 
 economists in their wish to put the national defences 
 upon a proper footing. A few days afterwards (i2th 
 May) Punch, the journal which in those days, more 
 than any other, reflected the national feeling in such 
 matters, produced an admirable cartoon with the 
 title, " Lyndhurst as Nestor rebukes the Chiefs," in 
 which he is portrayed, in Grecian garb, pointing 
 through the port-hole of a man of war at a number 
 of our war ships lying dismasted and dismantled in 
 harbour, to Lord Palmerston, Lord John Russell, Mr. 
 Bright, and others, who are grouped around him. 1 
 
 The same section of the Ministry were not less 
 grateful to him for the assistance he gave a few weeks 
 afterwards (2ist May) in throwing out the Bill for 
 the Abolition of the Paper Duties. By the time this 
 Bill had reached the House of Lords, it had come to 
 be very widely felt that, with a large deficit in the 
 Revenue, and the necessity for the very great expen- 
 diture upon the national defences which the troubled 
 state of Europe, and the warlike attitude of France, 
 had rendered indispensable, an inopportune season had 
 
 1 The portrait of Lyndhurst in this cartoon is excellent. The same number of 
 Punch contains a parody of a passage in the Iliad,^ in* which Lyndhurst's 
 speech is very cleverly condensed.
 
 494 SPEECH ON PAPER DUTIES BILL. CHAP. xix. 
 
 been chosen for repealing a tax which was yielding 
 about a million and a half of money annually. The 
 whole power of the Press had been naturally exercised 
 in favour of its abolition ; but the large majorities 
 in the House of Commons which had been in favour 
 of the Bill in its earlier stages had diminished on the 
 third reading to nine, and it was well understood that 
 it would meet with no favour in the Upper House. 
 " If they throw it out," Lord Palmerston wrote to the 
 Queen, " I am bound in duty to say they will perform 
 a good public service." T But meanwhile the usual 
 outcry had been raised against the interference of the 
 House of Lords with the decision of the House of 
 Commons, coupled with the strongest asseverations, 
 that, as this was a money Bill, any interference with 
 it would be unconstitutional. 
 
 This was just such an occasion for the display of 
 his peculiar knowledge and power of statement as 
 Lord Lyndhurst delighted in. Feeble and unfit for 
 any great physical exertion as he was, he yielded to 
 the request of his friends, that he should argue the 
 question of the right of the House of Lords to deal 
 with the Bill. Accordingly on the 2ist of May, after 
 the debate had been opened by Lord Granville, Lord 
 Lyndhurst, now so weak upon his limbs that he had, 
 on entering the House, to be assisted to his place by 
 a brother peer grasping the little handrail in front of 
 his seat, raised himself with difficulty to his feet. All 
 eyes were bent upon him, all prepared to listen in- 
 tently to an exposition of precedent and argument 
 upon the great question of privilege given with 
 a weight of authority which no other man in Eng- 
 land could command. Nor were they disappointed. 
 Leaving to Lord Monteagle and others the arguments 
 
 1 ' Life of the Prince Consort,' vol. v. p. 100.
 
 i86r. LORD LYNDHURST^S LAST SPEECH. 495 
 
 against the Bill on the ground that the sacrifice it 
 involved was ill-timed and inexpedient, he addressed 
 himself solely to the point of privilege. With slow 
 and measured utterance, he developed his argument 
 with masterly self-possession, and with no abatement 
 of the luminous and concentrated force of former 
 days. When he sat down prolonged cheers greeted 
 this remarkable display of mind triumphant over the 
 weakness of the body ; and Lord Derby gave voice to 
 the verdict of all present, when later in the evening he 
 spoke of " his noble and learned and venerable friend 
 as having signalised the close that day of his eighty- 
 eighth year of his honoured life, by a speech com- 
 bining the utmost clearness and power of statement 
 with a knowledge the most complete of the details of 
 constitutional law and practice." 
 
 Lord Lyndhurst was to speak once again in the 
 House which he had so often held under the spell of 
 his strong reason and masculine eloquence. This was 
 in the following year (yth May, 1861), on a Bill of 
 Lord Kingsdown's for establishing the validity of Wills 
 of Personal Estate, whether made within or beyond 
 the domicile of the testator, so that they were executed 
 in accordance with the law of the country in which he 
 was living at the time. Here again no symptom of any 
 failure in the vigour of intellect or of speech was to 
 be perceived ; and while treating the existing state of 
 the law and its evils, and pointing out the remedy for 
 them, with all his wonted sagacity, he enlivened a 
 subject, not too attractive to laymen, by the same play 
 of humour and gentle sarcasm by which his speeches 
 in former days were so often relieved. 
 
 After this he still continued to come down upon 
 occasion to the House of Lords ; but his voice was 
 no more heard there in debate.
 
 ( 496 ) 
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 
 Outbreak of Civil War in America Lyndhurst's deep interest in it Visits 
 Mr. Nasmyth, and sees his Lunar Landscapes His literary criticism 
 Opinion of him by Lord Granville Brougham's estimate of Lyndhurst 
 Peel on Lyndhurst Reception at Dinner at Lord Campbell's Sketch 
 of his private life His religious studies and convictions Illness and 
 death Opinions of the Press Letters from the Queen, Lord Brougham, 
 and Lord Derby Campbell's ' Life of Lyndhurst ' Opinions of Baron 
 Pollock and others. 
 
 GREAT as the physical strain of standing to address 
 the House of Lords had now become, Lord Lyndhurst 
 would obviously not have shrunk from it, had he 
 thought that to speak there again was a matter of 
 duty. But no occasion arose during the rest of his 
 life to call for his intervention. He was therefore 
 content to remain a silent spectator of the course of 
 events, and to discuss them in private with many of 
 the leading statesmen of the day, who sought in his 
 society the benefit of his great experience and sagacity. 
 The time was an anxious one for England. The 
 American Civil War, to the approach of which he had 
 looked forward with horror, broke out in the course 
 of this summer (1861). The attitude of neutrality 
 adopted by England pleased neither of the parties to 
 the struggle, and the angry spirit which it roused 
 among the more violent partizans of the Northern 
 States might at -any moment have involved England 
 in war. At home, too, men looked forward with deep 
 anxiety to the widespread misery certain to be caused 
 among the population of our great manufacturing 
 centres by the failure of the supplies of cotton from
 
 i86i. AMERICAN CIVIL WAR. 497 
 
 the Southern States. In a crisis so serious, party 
 strife died away, and men of all opinions were bent on 
 co-operating in whatever policy and measures were 
 best for the public good. 
 
 Having relations in America, to whom he was 
 warmly attached, and loving the country and its people 
 as he had always done, it was natural that the events 
 there should be watched by Lord Lyndhurst with 
 peculiar interest. He resumed his correspondence 
 with Mr. Amory, his niece's husband, and continued 
 it almost to the time of his death. In the earliest of 
 these letters, written in May and June of this year, 
 he tells Mr. Amory that the policy of the English 
 Government will be one of " absolute neutrality and 
 non-interference in this sad contest." He urges the 
 propriety of treating the Southern leaders "not as 
 rebels in the conduct of the war, but as a de facto 
 government, entitled to the ordinary belligerent rights. 
 Any other course," he adds, " will lead to unbearable 
 evils." In a letter on the 6th of June, he says, " The 
 almost universal feeling here is in favour of the 
 Northern States, and that the secession is at variance 
 with the principles of the Constitution, and not justified 
 by any of the alleged grievances." 
 
 It will be remembered how much that feeling 
 was shaken by the conduct of Captain Wilkes in 
 the seizure of Messrs. Mason and Slidell. During the 
 period of intense anxiety which elapsed until the 
 answer came to the English demand for their sur- 
 render, Lord Lyndhurst writes to Mr. Amory (and 
 January, 1862) 
 
 " The conduct of Captain Wilkes being so flagrant a viola- 
 tion of international law, there is but one opinion in Europe 
 upon the subject To do what justice requires cannot, among 
 reasonable men, be construed into an act of degradation. A 
 
 2 K
 
 498 LORD LYNDHURST'S LETTERS CHAP. xx. 
 
 refusal will be immediately followed by war. I hope that 
 event, should it unfortunately occur, will not materially in- 
 terrupt our intercourse, or in any way divide the branches of 
 our family, hitherto so united in regard and friendly feeling." 
 
 As time went on, the increasing bitterness of 
 feeling in the Northern States against this country 
 drew from Lord Lyndhurst the following letter 
 
 "George Street, August 8, 1862. 
 
 " My' dear Mr. Amory, I duly received your somewhat 
 mournful letter. Its contents were deeply interesting. 
 Whether things will improve seems doubtful. If not, they 
 must inevitably become worse. 
 
 "There is one thing which surprises me in all commu- 
 nications from the United States that is, their constant 
 complaint and irritation against this country. The country, 
 as far as foreign Powers are concerned, is represented by the 
 Government ; by the Government only. The newspapers- 
 represent the opinions of individuals, according to their 
 several views, which the Government has no power to direct 
 or to restrain. Now what has been the conduct of our Govern- 
 ment in this terrible conflict ? Perfect and disinterested 
 neutrality! A neutrality far more advantageous to the 
 North than to the South. A neutrality under which our 
 operatives are suffering the severest privations, almost without 
 murmuring, and which, great as the evil is, have not the 
 slightest effect in inducing the Government or Parliament ta 
 change its policy. Of what then do the Northern States 
 complain ? What act has been committed by England 
 affording any reasonable ground of complaint ? 
 
 " For any wrong done, the Government is always ready to 
 afford redress. Every complaint is listened to, where any 
 cause exists, with temper and patience, and with every desire 
 to do justice. 
 
 " In a struggle of this fearful nature, individuals will form 
 their own opinions. They must be permitted to do so. It 
 would be inconsistent with the principles of a free govern- 
 ment, like that of the United States, to wish to put a restraint 
 upon the expression of that opinion. But it is to the acts
 
 1863. TO MR. AMORY. 499 
 
 and language of the Government, and not to the opinions of 
 this or that individual, that the Northerners, as a community, 
 should look, as the just grounds for their favour or enmity. 
 Excuse this loose preaching, and believe me to be, ever 
 yours." 
 
 Another letter of Lord Lyndhurst's to Mr. Amory 
 on the same subject, almost the last letter that he 
 wrote (24th April, 1863), has been preserved. 
 
 "The state of affairs between the two countries," he writes, 
 " is becoming very uncomfortable, not to say alarming. The 
 seizure of our vessels, bound to neutral ports, has produced 
 as its effect great and general irritation, and led to violent 
 speeches in Parliament, and abusive articles in our news- 
 papers, short only of the tone of some declaimers in Congress, 
 in public meetings, and papers, on your side of the Atlantic. 
 I anxiously hope that the moderation of our respective 
 governments may be such as to allay this ferment, and to 
 keep us out of the calamity of war." 
 
 Sir Henry Holland (' Recollections,' p. 202) says, 
 that the last time he saw Lord Lyndhurst was a day 
 or two before embarking for America in 1863. " He 
 was deeply interested in the events of the Civil War 
 there ; and, though born in Massachusetts, a warm 
 partizan of the South." In this Sir Henry was entirely 
 mistaken. Lord Lyndhurst's sympathies were all with 
 the North. "He begged me to come to him im- 
 mediately on my return, to tell what I had witnessed 
 on the scene of warfare, as well as in the country 
 at large. Passing by his house a few days after my 
 return to London, I found a hatchment just placed 
 on the wall. He had died ten days before." 
 
 Sir Henry Holland had for some years been on terms 
 of intimacy with Lord Lyndhurst. They had first 
 come across each other under circumstances which, 
 as Sir Henry Holland himself says, did not "seem a 
 
 2 K 2
 
 500 CRITICISES A PASSAGE IN SHAKESPEARE. CHAP. xx. 
 
 probable foundation for friendship," when it fell to Sir 
 John Copley's lot to cross-examine the future eminent 
 physician at the trial of Queen Caroline ; yet this, he 
 adds, " was my first relation to him, ripening soon into 
 closer intimacy and frequent intercourse." In the 
 latter part of the ex-Chancellor's life, Sir Henry says, 
 he usually passed an hour with him once a week. Here 
 again Sir Henry Holland's memory must have failed 
 him. We are able to state, upon the best authority, 
 that Sir Henry's visits were short and far between. " I 
 never knew," he says, " a case in which the mental 
 faculties, memory included, were so little altered or 
 touched by age." Among the many topics discussed 
 between them literature was sure to occupy a chief 
 place. A memorandum of Lord Lyndhurst's, dated 
 24th October, 1861, is interesting as an evidence of 
 his keen critical faculty. " Sir Henry Holland," it 
 bears, " referred me to two passages in ' Troilus and 
 Cressida' which he said Fox considered as eminently 
 beautiful. One in act i. scene 3, as to the necessity of 
 degrees and subordination, to secure public strength 
 and safety." [This is the speech of Ulysses, begin- 
 ning, " Troy, yet upon his basis, had been down," and 
 ending, " Troy in our weakness stands, not in her 
 strength."] "The other in act iii. scene 3, as to 
 continued action being required to maintain a name 
 with the public. To withdraw is fatal." [This is the 
 speech of Ulysses to Achilles, beginning, " Time hath, 
 my lord, a wallet on his back."] " / think the passages 
 too much beat out? The criticism is characteristic of 
 the man, who, of all the men of his time, was foremost 
 in putting the largest amount of fact and argument 
 into the fewest words. Fine as both the passages are, 
 yet such is their exuberance of imagery and suggestion, 
 that the criticism must be admitted to be just.
 
 1 86 1. VISITS MR. N AS MYTH. 501 
 
 We get another glimpse of the activity and grasp 
 of Lord Lyndhurst's mind in the August of this same 
 year (1861) in the following account by Mr. James 
 Nasmyth of the impression produced upon him, on 
 the occasion of Lord Lyndhurst visiting him at 
 Penshurst, and being shown the large drawings of the 
 moon's surface as revealed by Mr. Nasmyth's powerful 
 telescope. 
 
 " It was to me," Mr. Nasmyth writes, " the highest privilege 
 to present to his wonderfully clear judgment the conclu- 
 sions I had arrived at, by a series of long-continued obser- 
 vations, of the moon's wonderful surface observations 
 rendered all the more perfect by the great advantage the 
 moon's monthly reappearance yields us in revising over 
 and over again our former observations, and thus in a 
 manner cross-questioning her in our observatories as in a 
 witness-box. 
 
 " The cogency of the questions that Lord Lyndhurst put 
 to me, as I laid before him these accurate, detailed, graphic 
 representations of what the telescope had revealed to me, was 
 a treat to me beyond expression. His questions followed 
 each other in so clear and systematic a manner as to show 
 that I had a wonderfully intelligent and apt listener. He 
 appeared to be specially struck with my remarks as to the 
 special and terrible aspect of Lunar Scenery, lit up with 
 sunshine far exceeding in brilliancy that on the earth, and 
 rendered so ' unearthly ' by the contrast with the eternally 
 black lunar heavens, with all the stars shining with enhanced 
 and steady brightness by reason of the total absence of an 
 atmosphere round the moon. I may also add, that when I 
 pointed out to him that the marvellously distinct details of the 
 lunar surface, which a powerful telescope reveals to us, are 
 of an antiquity that infinitely transcends those of the earth's 
 crust's oldest formations, he caught up this special part of 
 the subject as one that to him exceeded all the others in 
 profound interest. 
 
 "What above all I was most impressed with was his 
 wonderful aptitude to grasp at once the details of a
 
 5O2 HIS TENACIOUS MEMORY. CHAP. XX. 
 
 subject that to most others would require a long course of 
 special study." * 
 
 The discoveries of modern science, as well as the 
 best literature of the day, engaged the attention of the 
 old man, as he sat in his favourite room, that which 
 had once been his father's painting-room, surrounded 
 by his father's pictures and sketches, which were to 
 him precious memorials of the past. His library was 
 not large, but it was both well chosen and well used, 
 and he delighted to renew his acquaintance with the 
 volumes of old writers, on which his youth had been 
 nurtured. To talk of them was one of his great 
 pleasures. It was probably after some such conversa- 
 tion with Mr. Gladstone, that he wrote to him " I 
 send you ' Gibbon's Vindication,' which I read with 
 much enjoyment seventy years ago. Some parts may 
 amuse you. With a little curtailment, it would have 
 made a good speech for a literary audience." 
 
 He would sometimes also surprise and delight his 
 friends by reciting long passages from his favourite 
 poets. Thus his niece, Mrs. Amory, records that, one 
 day when some one had quoted a line from Pope's 
 ' Rape of the Lock,' he went on repeating large 
 portions of the poem without the slightest apparent 
 effort, and with admirable expression. It was his 
 habit in the last two or three years of his life to test 
 his memory by repeating long passages from the Latin 
 poets, and especially from Horace, of which he had 
 retained the remembrance since his college days. His 
 reasoning powers he also tested by working out 
 problems in the higher mathematics. 
 
 A good new book was always welcome, and, if 
 of a light texture, it was hailed as a relief from the 
 graver studies, which his interest in all great political 
 
 1 Letter to Lady Lyndhurst, 8th October, 1883.
 
 1863. MR. GLADSTONE'S TRANSLATION CRITICISED. 503 
 
 questions rendered indispensable. One day his niece, 
 on entering his room, found him immersed in a 
 ponderous legal folio. On her remarking that she 
 supposed this was his favourite study, he replied, 
 drawing out at the same time a small volume from 
 under it, "I like this far better : so well, I wish you 
 would read it ; it reminds me of my boyhood." The 
 book was ' Tom Brown's School Days/ 
 
 Mr. Gladstone sent him, in 1860, a volume pub- 
 lished not long before, called 'The Statesmen of 
 America.' In returning it, he says, " The speech 
 in defence of Freeman is refined, philosophical and 
 eloquent, much beyond what I had ascribed to either 
 the statesmen or the lawyers of America. We 
 should find it difficult, if not impossible, to rival it 
 at our Bar." 
 
 When Mr. Gladstone printed his translation of 
 the first book of the Iliad, and sent it to Lord Lynd- 
 hurst, it drew from the old man, then in his ninety-first 
 year, the following letter. The accident to which it 
 alludes was one which had happened some days before 
 to Mr. Gladstone, when riding in Hyde Park. 
 
 " George Street, April 6 [1863]. 
 
 " My dear Gladstone, We are very sorry for your accident, 
 but rejoice that the consequence is not likely to be serious. 
 What should we do with the surplus without you ? 
 
 " I return with thanks the translation. It is a remarkable 
 effort of ingenuity literal almost to a word and in a poetical 
 form. But is the trochee suited to our heroic verse ? Its 
 real character is, in some degree, disguised by your mode of 
 printing the lines. If the usual mode were adopted, the 
 defect would at once appear. 
 
 ' Of Achilles, son of Peleus, 
 
 How the deadly wrath arose, 
 How the hosts of the Achaians 
 Rued it with ten thousand woes,
 
 504 LITERARY CRITICISM. CHAP, xx, 
 
 ' How the wraiths of stalwart heroes 
 
 Hades got before his day, 
 Left themselves, for dogs to feed on, 
 And for every bird of prey,' &c. 
 
 " Written and read in this way, it has a sort of ballad air. 
 If I am wrong, correct me. Perhaps I have been too long 
 accustomed to the Iambic measure with variations as best 
 suited to English heroic poetry, to be able to form a correct 
 judgment. I see everything too calmly not to be open to 
 conviction. As an example of trochaic lines, there are 
 several in Dryden's ' Alexander's Feast.' 
 
 'Bacchus, ever fair and young, 
 Drunken joys did first ordain,' &c. 
 
 'Softly sweet in Lydian measure, 
 Soon he soothed his soul to pleasure,' &c. 
 
 " I shall hope to talk over this subject with you when you 
 are able to get out, and have leisure for such idle matters. 
 
 " We regret losing your company at dinner, and especially 
 for the cause. Yours faithfully." 
 
 Mr. Gladstone thought so highly of this criticism 
 that he wrote back asking permission to print it in a 
 contemplated preface to his translation. " It is not," 
 he said, " from a mere wish to parade you as my 
 correspondent, though this may have its share. Your 
 observation on my metre, which has great force, cuts, 
 I think, deep into the pith of the matter into the 
 principles of Homeric translation. So, pray, let me 
 have your permission." 
 
 Lord Lyndhurst's study was in these later days 
 the resort of leading men of both parties, to whom his 
 advice on critical public questions was of the greatest 
 value, given as it was without party bias of any kind. 
 It is delightful to read such a tribute to his memory 
 as this from Lord Granville in a recent letter to Lady 
 Lyndhurst (8th October, 1883)
 
 1883. LETTER OF LORD GRANVILLE. 505 
 
 " During Lord Lyndhurst's dignified and serene old age, 
 made happy by you, his kindness and friendship to me was 
 without limit. I have often said with truth, that even in my 
 political career I never received more encouragement from 
 any one of my own party than I did from your husband ; and 
 on several occasions, with the knowledge of my chiefs, I 
 consulted him, and always received excellent advice. 
 
 " You are aware how often he admitted me to his house, 
 and I need not remind you how charming was his conver- 
 sation, so natural and cheerful, so pointed, and yet entirely 
 free from personal vanity. It often reminded me of that of 
 Lord Melbourne both apt to hit the nail on the head without 
 any regard for the commonplace and conventional view of 
 a subject." 
 
 Here, too, is an interesting contribution by Mr. 
 Gladstone, also recent (sist August, 1883), to the 
 estimate of Lord Lyndhurst's character. The anec- 
 dote, he says, writing to Lady Lyndhurst, " I think, 
 is well worth recording." 
 
 " It was at the time either of the life peerage given to Lord 
 Wensleydale, or of the Conspiracy Bill, I cannot say which. 
 I called on Lord Lyndhurst, wishing to get legal light upon, 
 the question. Either Brougham was there, or he came in 
 soon. Lord Lyndhurst expounded the matter in the most 
 luminous way from his point of view. Brougham went into 
 raptures, and used these words : ' I tell you what, Lyndhurst, 
 I wish I could make an exchange with you. I would give 
 you some of my walking power, and you should give me some 
 of your brains.' 
 
 " I have often told the story with this brief commentary, 
 that the compliment was the highest I have ever known to 
 be paid by one human being to another." 
 
 Mr. Gladstone in the same letter incidentally gives 
 a striking illustration of what we have had occasion to 
 say before as to the high estimation in which Lord 
 Lyndhurst was held by Sir Robert Peel as a coadjutor 
 in the Cabinet.
 
 506 PEEL ON LYNDHURST. CHAP. XX. 
 
 " I have often compared Lord Lyndhurst in my own mind 
 with other men who since his time have been my colleagues 
 in the Cabinet, much to the disadvantage in certain respects 
 of some of them. Once I remember in the Peel Cabinet the 
 conversation happened to touch some man (there are such !) 
 who was too fond of making difficulties. Peel said to your 
 husband, ' That is not your way, Lyndhurst.' Of all the 
 intellects I have ever known, his, I think, worked with the 
 least friction." 
 
 Turning from what Lord Brougham said, as 
 reported by Mr. Gladstone, to what he wrote of Lord 
 Lyndhurst in his own ' Memoirs/ his expressions are 
 remarkable, especially taken in connection with the 
 uniform testimony borne by all who knew Lord 
 Lyndhurst to his kindliness, his warm appreciation of 
 merit in other men, and the absence in him of anything 
 like self-assertion. He says," After long and certainly 
 very great intimacy with him, my opinion of him is, 
 that he looked up to nobody, or rather, I should say, 
 he held all men very cheap." Sir Henry Holland 
 says something to the same effect (' Recollections,' 
 p. 201) : " Lord Lyndhurst's intellect would have been 
 more fruitful, had he been less subtle and sceptical. He 
 lost something of the real by his too keen perception 
 of what is hollow and fantastic in human affairs. He 
 was more amused than disquieted by the foibles and 
 errors of those around him ; and this during his more 
 active political life." If such were indeed the tendency 
 of his mind, how good a heart must he have had to 
 make all round him love him as he was loved ! How 
 differently would he have been regarded, had his 
 been the spirit of Mephistopheles, which some of his 
 political adversaries attributed to him ! It may, we 
 think, be open to doubt whether Sir Henry Holland, 
 amiable and accomplished as he was, could thoroughly
 
 i860. BROUGHAM ON LYNDHURST. 507 
 
 gauge a character so exceptional, and compounded of 
 such various elements, as that of Lord Lyndhurst, of 
 whose inner life he had no means of judging. But to 
 return to Lord Brougham. 
 
 " In truth," he adds, " Lyndhurst was so immeasurably 
 superior to his contemporaries, and indeed to almost all who 
 had gone before him, that he might well be pardoned for look- 
 ing down rather than praising. Nevertheless, he was tolerably 
 fair in the estimate he formed of character ; and, being per- 
 fectly free from all jealousy or petty spite, he was always 
 ready to admit merit where it existed. Whatever he may 
 have thought or said of his contemporaries, whether in politics 
 or at the Bar, I do not think his manners were ever offensive 
 to anybody, for he was kind and genial. His good nature 
 was perfect, and he had neither nonsense nor cant, any more 
 than he had littleness or spite, in his composition." (' Memoirs,' 
 vol. iii. p. 437.) 
 
 The Bar and Bench were alike proud of him, and 
 with reason. He was no less proud of the profession 
 which he had helped to adorn, nor did he ever fail 
 to uphold its interests or to speak words of kindly 
 encouragement to those who were striving in the same 
 honourable field. Of the honour in which he was held 
 by his brethren of the bench a striking illustration 
 is given in a letter published by the editress of Lord 
 Campbell's ' Life of Lyndhurst.' A dinner had been 
 given (zoth June, 1860) by Lord Campbell to the 
 greatest lawyers of the day, among whom was Lord 
 Lyndhurst. Eight years afterwards Lord Moncreiff, 
 who was one of the guests, wrote of it thus 
 
 " It was a very remarkable party, from the distinction and 
 age of many of those present, and the vivacity and interest of 
 the conversation. I remember well that Lord Lyndhurst was 
 unusually lively and agreeable. That which dwells on my 
 memory is his leave-taking. He rose to leave the room before 
 the rest of the party but all the rest rose too and there was
 
 508 LORD LYNDHURST CHAP. XX. 
 
 something like a cheer from the others as he went out. I 
 thought that the old man was fatigued and was retiring early ; 
 but it turned out he was going on to a party at Apsley 
 House. . . . There was something almost affecting in the 
 deference and respect, as to one entitled to the reverence due 
 to age, paid by men like Lord Campbell, Lord Wensleydale, 
 and Lord Cranworth all of whom were far advanced in life.'* 
 
 Such was Lord Lyndhurst as he appeared to the 
 outside world. What was he in his home, for it is 
 there that the genuine nature of the man is best seen ? 
 A charming sketch of him, as he showed himself there, 
 has been placed at our disposal. It is contained in a 
 letter to Sir Edmund Beckett by Miss Stewart, a lady 
 who lived as governess and companion to Lord 
 Lyndhurst's daughters for many years, and whom he 
 held in high regard for her ability, as well as for an 
 almost encyclopedic range of information, on which he 
 was often glad to draw. 
 
 " It is a pleasure to me to give, as you ask me, some anec- 
 dotes of Lord Lyndhurst's domestic life. 
 
 " I knew him only by reputation, till he had entered upon 
 his last Chancellorship, when he was well striken in years, but 
 when he still retained the glow of mental youth. He was one 
 of those who die without passing through the dimness of age 
 the ready jest and the ringing laugh were his, almost to the 
 very last, prompt on the instant to spring up in answer to the 
 wit or the folly that presented itself. But he was ' wise in 
 council ' in his own familiar circle, as well as when he sat 
 among 'the most wise and potent signers' of the Senate, 
 defeating them, too, as often with the arrows of his wit, as 
 with the heavier weapons of reason and experience. He had 
 the great gift of a sympathetic nature, which, while it was felt 
 without, is the veiy essence of the life at home. 
 
 " This slight contribution to Sir Theodore Martin's ' Memoir 
 of Lord Lyndhurst ' is not, however, meant to be simply a 
 panegyric, but to indicate, as the often quoted straws indicate > 
 the direction of the current of his home life.
 
 IN HIS HOME. 509 
 
 " I daresay he had a great many public enemies, but no 
 man could have more friends in his own private circle. His 
 kindly humour was irresistible, and he delighted in testing its 
 power. I remember his first essay of it on me, when I was 
 rather alarmed at having to be his partner at whist. I pleaded 
 in vain my ignorance. I assured him that 'to follow suit' 
 was the only rule of whist I knew. ' You are to play with 
 me.' I saw his eyes twinkle at some of my blunders, but he 
 did not expose them, while he perceived that I was afraid of 
 his being annoyed by them. When, however, I made a second 
 revoke, there came a hearty peal of laughter, and afterwards, 
 * Your play is more amusing than that of the most famous 
 players.' I was not slow to join in his merriment, and I felt, 
 in that slight incident, how easily he could bring people to 
 like him. 
 
 " Lord Lyndhurst's wonderful memory and pure elocution 
 made his long quotations from Pope and Goldsmith, and other 
 poets of his own generation, a perfect delight to all listeners. 
 The clear musical voice and faultless intonation gave a fresh 
 charm to the passages he declaimed, either a propos to some- 
 thing in the passing conversation, or as they crossed his mind 
 during a pause in it. Once, when driving with him alone from 
 Henley to Turville, he recited nearly the whole of ' The 
 Deserted Village,' to my great enjoyment and astonishment. 
 ' Some people would call me a bore for doing that, but I can 
 see you do not.' It was, of course, a great treat to me. 
 
 " There was a very deep and strong attachment between him 
 and his aged unmarried sister, who lived in his family. She 
 literally worshipped him, and would have put her hand into the 
 fire at his bidding. This affection was the greatest treasure 
 of her quiet unselfish existence. He played backgammon 
 with her almost every evening, before joining in any other 
 game, or in conversation with those present. It was fun to 
 me to watch the barefaced manner in which he cheated her, 
 and the many side glances that revealed his treachery to 
 lookers-on. At last she would find him out, and loud and 
 long was his burst of laughter, sweet music to the dear old 
 lady. There was always a tenderness in his voice when he 
 said ' Auntie,' her name in the household. Once, when she was 
 thought to be dangerously ill, I met him coming out of her
 
 510 LORD LYNDHURST CHAP. xx. 
 
 room. He was in tears. ' My sister and I have been very fond 
 of each other ; we have lived all our lives together/ he said. 1 
 
 " Like many persons whose chief occupation lay in poli- 
 tics and official duties, Lord Lyndhurst was fond of the 
 country, and took great pleasure in his house and farm at 
 Turville. The house was situated on the common of the same 
 name, in a picturesque and well-wooded neighbourhood. He 
 liked farming, but, I believe, did not make it profitable, for 
 he was more curious in experiments than fortunate in bring- 
 ing good crops from his land. I have often been amused by 
 playful contests between him and his lively and devoted wife 
 on the mysteries of manuring and cattle feeding. His argu- 
 ments were always the strongest, but his theories often broke 
 down when put in practice. 
 
 " On a warm summer day he much enjoyed having the 
 dinner-table laid under a fine spreading beech near the house, 
 and would be overflowing in talk and spirits during the repast. 
 One day, when thus al fresco, just as we were sitting down, 
 a thrush, undisturbed by our presence, trilled out from its 
 hidden bough its lovely song, as it seemed to us with unusual 
 clearness and sweetness. ' The thrush says grace for us,' said 
 my lord, and the bird, as if in answer, took up again its joyous 
 carol. I could see that Lord Lyndhurst was quite affected 
 by it. I have often known slight things of this kind bring 
 thoughts, that were close upon tears, into his mind. 
 
 " For some years before his death Lord Lyndhurst was 
 becoming blind in both his eyes from cataract. The threaten- 
 ing of this great calamity he bore with calmness and much 
 patience. He would say, ' If I do not recover my sight by 
 the operation for cataract, the doctors assure me that I shall 
 not have a black blindness^ I shall be conscious of light.' 
 When the blindness came, he had every alleviation that could 
 be devised for his great deprivation. Besides his devoted 
 wife's unremitting attendance on him, his many friends 
 dropped in, at all times, to bring the newest news, and politics 
 national and social. Lord Brougham was exceedingly at- 
 
 1 This lady survived her brother, and died 23rd April, 1869, in her 96th year. 
 Her sister, Mrs. Greene, although two years his senior, also survived Lord Lynd- 
 hurst, and died at Boston, Massachusetts, in February, 1866, in her 97th year. 
 Besides visiting England in 1839, Mrs. Greene came over in 1851, and again in 
 1855, and stayed for some time with her brother.
 
 IN HIS HOME. 5 1 1 
 
 tentive to him in this way, and always found his mind as clear 
 as ever, and his spirits as light. While the blindness was 
 coming on, he employed much time in getting by heart the 
 daily services of our Prayer Book, and the greater part of 
 the Psalms. I believe he nearly knew them all. 
 
 " One morning I went into his room with some message or 
 request, and was witness to a little scene that I shall never 
 forget. He was in his easy-chair, with a grave, almost a 
 solemn expression on his face, so intent on his employment 
 that my presence was unnoticed. Before him, the Church 
 Prayer Book held open by both her small hands, stood his 
 youngest daughter of 7 or 8 years of age, hearing him repeat 
 the prayers, and now and then prompting and correcting him. 
 The old man, the judge and statesman, and the little child, so 
 occupied, made a picture that could not be seen without 
 bringing tears to the eyes. He liked no one to hear him his 
 lesson, he said, but his little girl. 
 
 " You will consider my store of reminiscences very small, 
 and indeed I am ashamed to find how little I have retained 
 of the many sayings and doings which I admired, when 
 I heard and saw them. I am the more to blame as Lord 
 Lyndhurst was always an interesting person to me, and 
 always very kind in talking to me. But there must be many 
 people who were alive to the charm of his daily life at home. 
 I hope they may have laid in a greater store of his wise and 
 witty sayings, and of his many kindly deeds." 
 
 Unfortunately the task of writing his life has been 
 so long delayed, that most of those who might have 
 supplied this information have passed away. 
 
 During the latter years of his life the subject of 
 religion occupied much of Lord Lyndhurst's thoughts, 
 and he made an earnest study of the evidences of 
 Christianity. When approaching ninety, says Sir 
 Henry Holland, he exercised his mental faculties 
 " keenly on the religious questions of the day, and 
 especially those suggested by the volume of ' Essays 
 and Reviews ' just published. Some of these were 
 obviously new to his thoughts, and it interested me
 
 512 LORD LYNDHURST^S LAST DAYS. CHAP. xx. 
 
 much to mark a mind, thus powerful, and largely 
 exercised upon other subjects, grasping for the first 
 time a question of evidence, such as that of Scriptural 
 Inspiration, on which he often conversed with me." 
 The result of these studies was a firm conviction that 
 in the Bible were contained the issues of a Divine 
 Revelation, and a humble belief in the great articles 
 of the Christian faith. 
 
 And so he looked forward calmly and cheerfully 
 to the great change, on the verge of which he had long 
 felt himself to be standing, bearing the infirmities and 
 some of the painful ailments of old age with a patient 
 and reverent spirit, grateful that the brain he had so 
 long " swayed by and the heart he bore " retained 
 their vigour and their glow to the last. The end 
 came gently, and was not too long delayed. He had 
 gone in the autumn of 1863 to Tunbridge Wells, where 
 he had often found benefit to his health. Here he 
 was seized on the 28th of September with an illness 
 which showed some alarming symptoms. He at once 
 determined to return to town, and soon after his 
 arrival there fever set in. 
 
 The dining-room of his house being large and airy 
 was turned into his bedroom, and here the old man lay 
 during the last days of his life surrounded by some 
 of his father's finest pictures links for him in the 
 chain that had bound his days each to each from boy- 
 hood until now " in natural piety." Among them, as 
 already mentioned in our first chapter, was the fine 
 Family Portrait, where the three-years-old boy was 
 looking up from his mother's lap lovingly into her face. 
 " See, my dear," he said one day, calling his daughter 
 to his bedside and pointing to the picture, "the 
 difference between me here and there ! " 
 
 Except for a period of not many hours, when the
 
 1863. HIS DEATH. 513 
 
 fever was at its height, Lord Lyndhurst's mind was 
 perfectly clear and self-possessed. He saw several of 
 his more intimate friends, and received them with all 
 his wonted sweetness and courtesy. As one of them, 
 Mr, Alfred Montgomery, was leaving the room, after 
 looking, as he felt, upon that never-to-be-forgotten 
 face for the last time, he heard him whisper to Lady 
 Lyndhurst in a tone of anxious inquiry, " Was I kind to 
 him ? " This thought for others, a quality which had 
 distinguished him through life, shone out pre-eminently 
 as the earth, and those he loved, were fading away 
 from his eyes. When the supreme moment came, 
 and his mind seemed absorbed in the contemplation 
 of that new world on which he was about to enter, 
 he was asked, if he was happy. " Happy ? Yes, 
 happy ! " he replied, in feeble accents, but loud enough 
 for all to hear ; and then with a stronger effort he 
 added, " Supremely happy ! " Soon afterwards he 
 passed gently and tranquilly away. 
 
 He died on the morning of the I2th of October, 
 1863, in the ninety-second year of his age. 
 
 His illness had been watched by the public with 
 interest, and the next day all the leading journals 
 teemed with tributes to his memory, each vying 
 with the other in acknowledging how great a scholar, 
 lawyer and statesman had been lost in him. Even 
 the rancour was laid aside for the time of party bitter- 
 ness towards the man who had been the sworn enemy 
 of the fallacies of a false Liberalism, and of philoso- 
 phical theories in which the teachings of history and 
 of recent observation as to the instincts and selfish 
 passions which govern mankind are ignored. There 
 was avowedly no man left who could compare with 
 him in the field of parliamentary debate, for accuracy 
 or breadth of statement, for far-seeing sagacity, for 
 
 2 L
 
 514 PUBLIC OPINION. CHAP. xx. 
 
 vigour and daring ; and even those who denied to 
 him; unjustly as it seems to us, depth and earnest- 
 ness of political convictions, were ready to give credit 
 to him for wise and generous and patriotic impulses 
 in his public life. He had never practised the arts 
 which win popularity, he had never affected enthu- 
 siasms against which his reason revolted, he had never 
 flattered the passions or the vanity of the mul- 
 titude, or gone one inch in discussing great questions 
 of public policy beyond what his deliberate thought 
 had satisfied him was just and prudent. So it was, 
 that those who knew him not thought him hard and 
 cold, selfish and unsympathetic. Those who were 
 admitted to intimacy with him fell into no such error. 
 In his public life, no savour of meanness or self- 
 seeking was to be found. The day after his death, 
 the Times quoted as the saying of one with whom 
 he had crossed swords, and who therefore watched 
 him closely, " No man was more free from corrupt 
 motives or acted more independently of sordid 
 influences." He was indeed, as the writer of the 
 same article truly said, " a great, free, and clear 
 spirit." 
 
 On the i yth of October he was buried in the 
 Highgate cemetery quietly, as he had wished, and 
 followed to his grave by only his relatives and most 
 intimate friends. Next day Mr. Howarth, the rector 
 of St. George's, Hanover Square, within a few doors 
 of which Lord Lyndhurst had lived since boyhood, 
 spoke of him in a funeral sermon thus. Mr. Howarth 
 had known him long and intimately. 
 
 " ' There is a great man fallen in Israel ; ' one, who for 
 a lengthened period filled a large space in the public eye, 
 and has set his mark upon his country's annals. But though 
 he held his place to the last in the foremost rank of this 

 
 1863. FUNERAL SERMON. 515 
 
 world's greatness, and felt his utmost earthly aspirations 
 to have been more than realised, his sole ambition, during 
 his latter years, was to be great in the sight of God. 
 
 " The path of life in which his lot was cast is, doubtless, 
 full of peril and temptation ; if from no other cause, from 
 the overwhelming labour of thought, and absorption of time, 
 in the weightiest secular affairs. Although the work be 
 great, and, if well performed, entitles those who are en- 
 gaged in it to rank with the chief benefactors of mankind, 
 yet it leaves little time for direct meditation on an unseen 
 world ; and the most poignant regrets have often saddened 
 the closing years of a life so spent, regrets for the carelessness 
 into which such men found themselves betrayed, as touching 
 the preparation for Death and Judgment. 
 
 " But if such regrets were felt by this distinguished public 
 servant, they were more than equalled by his gratitude to 
 God for the unusual prolongation of those years of retire- 
 ment which placed it in his power to redeem the time. 
 And faithfully and diligently have those years been spent. 
 And as the day closed around him, so did the earnestness of 
 his preparation for the night that cometh increase. When he 
 had brought that wondrous intellect to bear exclusively upon 
 the revelation of God in Jesus Christ, searching out Scriptural 
 truth with that apprehensive quickness with which he had 
 been used to search out all other truth, it was striking, 
 indeed, to see him bow down before the ' wisdom ' of the 
 Supreme mind ; anxious only ' to bring every thought into 
 captivity to the obedience of Christ.' 
 
 " And the moral process was as striking as the mental. 
 The natural dispositions of a kind and loving spirit were 
 exalted into living Christian graces. Wife, children, servants, 
 friends, all had their portion in that overflowing tenderness 
 of heart ; so that, when the inevitable hour drew nigh, he was 
 happy in himself, and in all around him. ' Happy, supremely 
 happy ! ' were among the latest articulate sounds that came 
 from his dying lips. 
 
 " Those who loved him have the inexpressible comfort of 
 reflecting that his repentance was fervent, his humility deep, 
 his faith stedfast, and his hope serene. These are the 
 memories which he leaves behind." 
 
 2 L 2
 
 516 LETTER FROM THE QUEEN CHAP. xx. 
 
 Among the first to express sympathy with Lady 
 Lyndhurst was the Queen, who wrote to her in these 
 terms 
 
 " Balmoral, October 16, 1863. 
 
 " Dear Lady Lyndhurst, You will, I know, believe without 
 my saying so, how sincere and deep my concern is at the loss 
 of your valued, beloved, and highly-gifted husband ; but I 
 cannot refrain from repeating this personally to you. Lord 
 Lyndhurst served the Crown so long and faithfully, and was 
 such an authority in the country, that his Sovereign, so sorely 
 grieved, so terribly bereaved as she is, must deeply deplore 
 his loss and cherish his memory. 
 
 " He reached, however, an age which very few attain, and 
 in possession of his faculties, and you must feel that God 
 spared him to you far longer than you could have hoped, 
 though this is no consolation for a devoted wife. You 
 watched over him with the most tender and affectionate care, 
 and this must be most soothing to you now. My beloved 
 husband had a great admiration for Lord Lyndhurst, and I 
 had hoped to see him once more, and to talk of my beloved 
 one with him. 
 
 " Pray express my sympathy to your daughters, and 
 hoping that your health has not suffered, and that you may 
 be supported in this your terrible affliction, believe me, 
 yours sincerely, 
 
 (Signed) "VICTORIA REG." 
 
 To Lord Brougham the loss of one whose society 
 had been his chief enjoyment for many years was a 
 heavy blow. A few days after his friend's death, he 
 wrote to Lady Lyndhurst 
 
 " Grafton Street, October 25. 
 
 " My dear Lady Lyndhurst, Your kind letter has just 
 reached me. The subject is mournful beyond description. 
 But your account of his end comforts me greatly. I am in 
 much better health than I have any right to expect at my age. 
 But coming to London, and missing him who was my constant 
 friend and companion is a very sad thing. I go out and have 
 nowhere to go to. I hope you will not fail to let me know
 
 1864. AND FROM LORDS BROUGHAM AND DERB Y. 517 
 
 when you are coming to London. We must meet, melancholy 
 though our meeting will be. Yours most truly, 
 
 (Signed) " H. BROUGHAM." 
 
 From a letter to Lady Lyndhurst from Cannes, 
 several months afterwards (i7th March, 1864), it is 
 obvious that Lord Brougham's first feeling was in no 
 way assuaged. 
 
 " When I passed through London," he writes, " I called in 
 George Street to inquire after you, but I was unwilling to give 
 you the pain of seeing me. I assure you, I no longer look 
 forward to London with the least comfort. It is not the same 
 place, and I have not the same satisfaction that I had in 
 constant intercourse with my dear friend. Even when at a 
 distance from England, I can no longer enjoy the pleasure of 
 his correspondence. It is a daily blank to me." 
 
 Surely these are very touching words, and mark a 
 devotion of no ordinary kind. Among the many other 
 private expressions of regard and sympathy which 
 reached Lady Lyndhurst, not the least interesting is 
 the following letter from the late Lord Derby 
 
 "St. James's Square, June 18, 1864. 
 
 " Dear Lady Lyndhurst, I should have hesitated to intrude 
 upon you with a mere letter of condolence in your great 
 bereavement, had not Lord Brougham showed to me a letter 
 to him from yourself on the subject, fully and satisfactorily 
 confirming the account I had previously heard from Dr. 
 Ferguson of the happy termination of your husband's long 
 and useful life. It is much to know that his last hours were 
 free from bodily pain ; it is much more to be assured that, 
 having preserved to the close of a more than ordinarily ex- 
 tended life the powers of his vigorous intellect unclouded and 
 unimpaired, he was permitted to pass away at last in happy 
 and undoubting faith, peace, and hope. 
 
 " While this must be your best consolation under a bereave- 
 ment which, at his advanced age, could not have been long 
 deferred, and could hardly have been more lightly inflicted, it
 
 518 PUBLICATION OF LORD CAMPBELL'S CHAP. xx. 
 
 cannot but be an additional source of comfort to you that in 
 the marriage of your only remaining daughter, and birth of 
 your grandchild, you have at once been spared cause for 
 anxiety as to the future, and have acquired a new object of 
 interest on which to fix your affection. That many years of 
 peace, and even of happiness, may yet be left to you is the 
 wish and hope of all your friends, who loved and honoured 
 your illustrious husband, and of none more truly than of 
 yours sincerely, 
 
 (Signed) "DERBY." 
 
 The years that followed in no way dimmed the 
 lustre of the great name which Lord Lyndhurst had 
 left behind him. He had passed into the roll of 
 England's worthies, and his words were often quoted 
 among those which she does not willingly let die ; 
 when, in an unlucky hour, a volume was in 1869 
 added to Lord Campbell's ' Lives of the Chancellors,' 
 containing biographies of Lord Lyndhurst and Lord 
 Brougham, which he had left in manuscript at his 
 death. 
 
 ""Lord Campbell's intention to include these in his 
 series was; of course, no secret to either of these 
 distinguished men. What treatment Lord Lyndhurst, 
 at least, anticipated at his hands may be seen from 
 what he said to Lord Brougham in 1835, when Lord 
 Campbell's wish to be made Master of the Rolls had 
 been resisted by Lord Brougham. We quote from 
 Lord Brougham's 'Memoirs' (vol. iii. pp. 434-57) 
 
 "When in November I saw Lyndhurst, I told him of 
 Campbell's attempt upon the Rolls, and entered fully into all 
 the circumstances. He said I could not possibly have acted 
 otherwise, but added that for one reason he rather regretted 
 what had happened, because it would to a certainty make 
 Campbell my enemy for life. I could not see the matter in 
 that light, but he insisted. 'Depend upon it,' said he, 
 ' Campbell will never forgive you. In process of time Pepys
 
 1869. 'LIFE OF LORD LYNDHURST: 519 
 
 may be Chancellor and vacate the Rolls ; and then what has 
 just happened will be a reason for passing Campbell over 
 again. He will be furious, and lay the whole blame upon 
 you. And I'll tell you how he will pay you off. You 
 remember Wetherell said, when the ' Lives of the Deceased 
 Chancellors' came out, " Campbell has added a new sting to 
 death." I predict that he will take his revenge on you by 
 describing you with all the gall of his nature. He will write 
 of you, and perhaps of me, too, with envy, hatred, malice, and 
 all uncharitableness, for such is his nature.' " 
 
 Lord Brougham adds, " I always thought Copley 
 was much too hard upon Campbell ; yet the judgment 
 he formed of men was generally as accurate as it was 
 sagacious ; so perhaps he was right, and I was wrong." 
 Could Lord Brougham have seen the pictures 
 presented of himself, and also of his friend Lord 
 Lyndhurst in the biographies which Lord Campbell 
 was then elaborating for publication after his death, the 
 qualifying "perhaps" would have disappeared from 
 this sentence. 
 
 It was well for Lord Campbell that he had 
 passed beyond the reach of criticism before his lives 
 of these two distinguished men appeared. The press 
 was virtually unanimous in its condemnation of them. 
 Men of all shades of opinion were indignant to see 
 the reputation of two of England's foremost sons so 
 grievously traduced. It was hard, in the gross 
 caricature of Lord Lyndhurst in particular, for his 
 friends to recognise the man in whose society they 
 had delighted, before whose commanding abilities they 
 had bowed, and whose character they had held in 
 honour. " I do not recollect any question," wrote 
 the late Lord Chief Baron Pollock to Lady Lyndhurst, 
 "as to which there has been so universal an agree- 
 ment of all parties as this, that Lord Campbell's
 
 520 CHIEF BARON POLLOCK. CHAP. xx. 
 
 posthumous biography (which Matthew Davenport 
 Hill calls ' a romance ') has been dictated by an ill- 
 conditioned hatred, and is very destitute of truth." 
 
 In a subsequent letter, the Chief Baron sent to Mr. 
 Francis Barlow a Memorandum, in which he placed 
 his opinion of the life and its author more formally on 
 record, from which the following is an extract 
 
 " Campbell was undoubtedly a very considerable man, with 
 various and eminent qualifications for success in life, but he 
 was quite as remarkable for being unscrupulous as for any 
 other quality. He once said to me, as we sat together in the 
 front row, talking of our common profession, ' Depend upon 
 it, Pollock, we receive the high wages of an infamous pro- 
 fession ! ' and he acted up to his own views of it. It would be 
 false to say he had no truth or honesty in him. He had, and 
 he had much. He had all that was not inconsistent with his 
 interest and personal ambition ; but I think he had very little 
 more. 
 
 " This ' Life of Lyndhurst ' is, in my opinion, a most dis- 
 graceful production. It is written with the utmost possible 
 malice and ill-will. It rakes together all the scandal and 
 falsehood that was ever invented or written about Lord 
 Lyndhurst, dishonestly publishing as true what is notoriously 
 false, and insinuating by a sneer matter for which he well knew 
 there was no pretence whatever. It is a biography written 
 for the express purpose of degrading and vilifying a great man 
 whom he hated, chiefly because he was aware he was largely 
 the object of that man's contempt." 
 
 Baron Pollock had known Lord Lyndhurst well, 
 had received much kindness from him, and admired 
 him greatly. It was, therefore, natural that he should 
 write in strong terms of reprobation of a book, the 
 whole tone and scope of which betrayed a sinister 
 and unfriendly purpose. To those who knew Lord 
 Lyndhurst's large, generous, and unselfish nature, his 
 fairness and liberality in the dispensation of patronage, 
 and in the treatment of political adversaries, as well
 
 1871. LORD SHAFTESBURY. 521 
 
 as the patriotic spirit by which his public life was 
 animated, it seemed incredible that so false a gloss 
 could have been put upon his character as pervades 
 nearly every page of Lord Campbell's book. One 
 effect of its publication, however, was to bring to 
 Lady Lyndhurst many tributes to the character which 
 had been so ungenerously misrepresented. Of these 
 none is more valuable, or was more prized, than the 
 following from the Earl of Shaftesbury, illustrative, 
 as he says in writing (26th July, 1871) to Lady 
 Lyndhurst, of Lord Lyndhurst's disinterestedness 
 and public spirit. 
 
 "In 1845, having carried the Lunacy Commission Bills 
 through both Houses, myself being in the Commons at the 
 time, I waited on him as Lord Chancellor, to whom the 
 patronage was assigned, in reference to the six appointments 
 to be made : three medical men and three barristers, each 
 with a salary of ^1500 a year. He said to me without any 
 preliminary conversation, ' You have laboured for many 
 years on the Commission, and have had all the task of 
 framing and passing this Act. You must, moreover, have far 
 more knowledge than I can have of the men who are fit for 
 the posts, so that I must request you to undertake the duty 
 of naming all the persons to be intrusted with this duty.' 
 
 "Few men," adds Lord Shaftesbury, " I think, would have 
 surrendered at once and without entreaty the power of 
 bestowing such preferments. I should add as a further proof 
 of his sincerity, that he remarked : ' There is a medical 
 gentleman in whom I take a great interest, and I should be 
 glad to see him on the list, if you think him qualified for the 
 situation.' I replied, that he was not so. ' Quite enough ! ' 
 said Lord Lyndhurst. Would Lord Campbell have done 
 the fiftieth part of this ? I trow not." 
 
 The pain which the publication of Lord Campbell's 
 posthumous volume caused to Lady Lyndhurst, and 
 to the other members of Lord Lyndhurst's family, may
 
 522 CONCLUSION. CHAP. xx. 
 
 be imagined. Circumstances, which it is unnecessary 
 to mention, have hitherto prevented any authentic 
 record of his life from being published. The writer 
 of this volume had not the happiness, nor the honour 
 to know Lord Lyndhurst ; but he had watched his 
 later years with adm iration, and he has done his best 
 to tell the story of his life simply, and as it has pre- 
 sented itself to him in the course of his researches.
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 WE are enabled, by the kindness of Dr. James Macaulay, to 
 publish the following interesting extract from an unpublished 
 portion of the Autobiography of the late William Jerdan. 
 It corroborates the statements in the text as to the very 
 limited means of the Copley family, and the efforts necessary 
 to enable young Copley to pursue his studies at the 
 University. It is also interesting as fixing upon young 
 Copley the authorship of the only purely literary work to 
 which he ever set his hand 
 
 Mr. Copley, the father of Lord Lyndhurst, rising to 
 eminence as a painter, was earnestly pursuing his profession 
 towards the close of the last century ; and, like many an 
 excellent artist, before and since, was sometimes less fully 
 provided with the ready means than the occasion might 
 require. On one such I have perused a letter from him, to an 
 eminent engraver, in which he tells of his son John's honour- 
 able career at the University, and its promise of future success, 
 and, in order that it may not be interrupted, requests his 
 correspondent to oblige him (which he hopes he can do with- 
 out inconvenience) by renewing the bill for 40 which is then 
 falling due. On so slender an accommodation, perhaps, did 
 the fate of the young student depend, and all his legal great- 
 ness and historical eminence might have been blighted in the 
 flowering from two months lack of 40. From the style of 
 expression in the letter, such a conclusion was obvious. 
 
 The next particular I have to notice was the first appearance 
 of the future peer in print. In the grand fracas which 
 occurred in the Royal Academy at the beginning of the
 
 524 APPENDIX. 
 
 present century, Mr. Copley took a prominent part. 1 It was 
 natural he should seek the aid of his accomplished son, and 
 accordingly he wrote and published (without his name) an 
 able pamphlet on the occasion. The pith of the dispute did 
 not languish in his advocacy, but stood out as pretty an artist 
 quarrel as any one could wish to see. 
 
 This being the first appearance of the future Lord Chan- 
 cellor in print, and my copy being probably rare, if not 
 unique, I may be excused for giving a brief account of it. It 
 is entitled, "A Concise Vindication of the Conduct of the 
 Five Suspended Members of the Council of the Royal 
 Academy. By Authority." (The last two words in black 
 letter.) There is a Latin epigraph on the title-page. 
 
 " Vis Consili (?) expers mole ruit sua ; 
 Vim temperatam Di quoque provehunt 
 In majus." 
 
 It is printed for John Stockdale, Piccadilly, and published 
 at the price of one shilling in 1804, the year after that in 
 which Mr. John Copley, the author, was called to the Bar. 
 (A mistake : he was called in June, 1804.) 
 
 The pamphlet professes to be " purely defensive," but 
 nevertheless does not fail to carry the war into the enemy's 
 quarters. The five members, who were a majority of the 
 Council, but suspended by a vote of the General Assembly, 
 were John Singleton Copley, James Wyatt, John Yenn, John 
 Soane, and Sir Francis Bourgeois, the founder of the Dulwich 
 Gallery. The humiliating sentence made a great noise on the 
 continent of Europe ; but the writer more sharply complains 
 of its having crossed the Atlantic to America, the "terra 
 altrix " of the President (his father), and been inserted in the 
 periodical publications of that country. 
 
 1 The cause of this dispute was an attempt by the General Assembly of the 
 Royal Academy to deprive the Council of the right to direct and administer the 
 affairs of the Society. On the 3Oth of May, 1803, the five members of the Council 
 mentioned in the text were suspended pro tern, by a resolution of the General 
 Assembly. The suspended members appealed to the King, who, after taking the 
 advice of a high legal authority, intimated his disapproval of the conduct of 
 the General Assembly in censuring and suspending the five members, and ordered 
 and directed that ' ' all the matters relative to the proceedings should be expunged 
 from the Minutes of the Royal Academy." (See Sandby's ' History of the Royal 
 Academy of Arts,' Vol. I., p. 265.) Copley was answered by an anonymous 
 writer in a brochure entitled ' A Concise Review ' of Copley's Pamphlet.
 
 APPENDIX. 525 
 
 The quarrel resulted in a dispute upon the powers relatively 
 possessed by the Council of Nine, and the General Assembly 
 of the Forty, according to the constitution of the Academy, 
 " framed under the immediate direction of His Majesty, and 
 submitted to one of the highest legal characters of the country 
 previously to the establishment of the Institution." The 
 adversaries of the Council are stated to have been a party, 
 which formed and acquired considerable strength and in- 
 fluence during the Presidency of Sir Joshua Reynolds, and 
 attacked him in so violent and indecent a manner, that he 
 retired from the office, and was only persuaded to return to it 
 by the loud expression of public opinion. On his death the 
 party renewed its operations, and by degrees enlisted a 
 majority in the General Assembly. Led by Mr. Joseph 
 Farington, principally known as the designer of drawings for 
 the Britannia Depicta, strongly supported by Mr. Dance, the 
 architect (both of whom are unsparingly stigmatised), they 
 endeavoured to carry matters with a high hand, and a variety 
 of fierce struggles and passionate proceedings ensued ; till at 
 last an appeal was made to the King, and he re-established the 
 turbulent Academy in its original constitutional position by 
 deciding in favour of the Council. His Majesty directed that 
 all the Minutes, Resolves, and other transactions of the 
 General Body respecting the censure and suspension should 
 be expunged from the recollection of the Royal Academy, and 
 ordered other matters to be obliterated, as it was his desire to 
 restore harmony, and see it continued among the Academicians. 
 
 It is but fair to notice that in the minority of the General 
 Assembly who voted on the side of the Council there appear 
 the celebrated names of P. Sandby, Cosway, De Lowtherbourg, 
 Rigaud, Beechey, Wilton Richards (Secretary), and Tresham. 
 West, the President, is described as acting in concert with the 
 leaders of the party, and severely censured for his conduct. 
 
 I trust it will not be considered out of place if I transcribe 
 one page of the Pamphlet, as an example of the youthful 
 talent of its celebrated author. 
 
 Extract. 
 
 " The attention which the Sovereign, amidst so many 
 other important cares, has condescended to bestow on this
 
 526 APPENDIX. 
 
 subject will be felt and acknowledged with gratitude by the 
 nation. His Majesty, sensible of the importance of this 
 establishment, because he had attentively observed its benefi- 
 cial effects upon the growth and progress of the Arts, has been 
 anxious that no unnecessary and wanton innovation should 
 endanger the further extention of those advantages of which 
 it has already been productive. The foundation of this liberal 
 school was among the first and favourite acts of his patriotic 
 and benevolent reign. Previously to its establishment the 
 imitative arts were scarcely known among us. In literature 
 in the extensive and varied circle of the sciences we had 
 long stood upon a proud and commanding eminence. In the 
 arts alone England was confessedly inferior to the rival 
 nations of Europe. Forty years have not elapsed since the 
 foundation of this Institution, and the British School has 
 already risen to deserved distinction and celebrity. There 
 was nothing, then, averse in the character and genius of the 
 country nothing in the frame and constitution of its govern- 
 ment. Taste, industry, invention all the requisites to 
 excellence were liberally diffused among us. But the direct- 
 ing spirit had slumbered for ages in a state of inertness and 
 torpor. Aroused at length, and invigorated by the influence 
 of a generous and exalted patronage, she now unfolds her 
 latent powers ; and, quickened into active existence, has 
 pointed out a new and liberal source of wealth and distinction." 
 
 " Through the rude chaos thus the morning light 
 Shot the first ray, that pierced the native night." 
 
 I cannot help fancying I perceive a foretaste of the future 
 Lord Chancellor in this early exercise of his talents with the 
 pen and first appearance in print. 
 
 So far Mr. Jerdan. We may add, that no account of 
 the rise, progress, and working of the Royal Academy will 
 anywhere be found, so copious, yet concise, as in the speech 
 delivered on the 4th of March, 1859, by Lord Lyndhurst 
 in the House of Lords, when the proposed removal of the 
 Academy from the National Gallery to Burlington House 
 was under discussion. The case of the Royal Academy 
 had been placed in his hands, and had brought him into close 
 communication with its members. What he heard from
 
 APPENDIX. 527 
 
 them, he said, "recalled to his recollection many circum- 
 stances of his early life, when he attended the lectures of 
 Sir Joshua Reynolds, of Mr. Barry, and other professors, when 
 he was very much associated and very conversant with the 
 proceedings of the Royal Academy, and when he was inti- 
 mately acquainted with many of its members." (' Hansard,' 
 vol. clii. 1242.) This was spoken fifty-five years after the 
 publication of his pamphlet ; but the facts of the early history 
 of the Academy are given in the speech with as much 
 freshness and fluency as if they were of recent occurrence. 
 
 The Academy lost by their own act the honour of having 
 had Copley enrolled upon their Records as their Professor of 
 Ancient Literature. When the office became vacant in 1801, 
 by the death of Mr. Langton, Copley offered himself as a 
 candidate for it in the following letter 
 
 Middle Temple, December 31, 1801. 
 
 Gentlemen, I have ventured to take the liberty of pro- 
 posing myself as a candidate to fill the situation of Professor 
 of Ancient Literature to the Royal Academy, vacant by the 
 death of Mr. Langton. With respect to my qualifications 
 for such an appointment, in every view so truly honourable, it 
 certainly would not be becoming in me to speak ; but I may 
 perhaps without impropriety express a hope that, as a member 
 of one of the Universities of Europe, and as having been 
 always closely connected with the Arts, I shall not be thought 
 to reflect discredit upon an Institution which stands so high in 
 the estimation of the world, if through your favour I should 
 be so happy as to succeed in obtaining this object of my 
 ambition. I am, Gentlemen, with sentiments of the highest 
 respect, your most obedient and devoted servant, 
 
 (Signed) J. COPLEY, JUNR. 
 
 Dr. Charles Burney was also a candidate for the Professor- 
 ship, and was elected on the I5th of January, 1803, having 
 secured fifteen votes as against eight for Copley.
 
 INDEX. 
 
 ABERCROMBIE, General Sir R., sails for 
 
 Egypt in i8oi..79, 81 
 Aberdeen, Lord, on Lord Lynclhurst 
 
 accepting the office of Chief Baron, 
 
 275 
 
 Academical Debating Society, the, 
 
 145, n. 
 
 Academy, Royal, young Copley's pam- 
 phlet in vindication of suspended 
 members of, 524 ; young Copley 
 applies for Professorship of Ancient 
 History to, 527 
 Adolphus, Mr., 177 
 Alexandria on the Potomac, 59 
 Algeciras Bay, naval action at, 84 
 Althorp, Lord, indispensable in forming 
 
 the Melbourne Ministry, 319 
 American Civil War, outbreak of, 496 
 Amory, Mr., letters from Lord Lynd- 
 hurst, 497-499 
 
 BALZAC, Lynclhurst on, 368 
 
 Barlow, Mr. Francis, letters from Lord 
 Lyndhurst, 370, 383, 388-390 
 
 Beacon Hill Estate Case, the, com- 
 promise effected by young Copley, 
 56-67 
 
 Bellward, Dr. Richard, Copley's letters 
 from America to, 56-67 
 
 Bennet, Mr., describes Copley at the 
 Court of Common Pleas, 113 
 
 Bentinck, Lord George, his attack on 
 Lord Lynclhurst, 422 
 
 Bode, Baron de, his case undertaken by 
 Lord Lyndhurst, 448 
 
 Boville v. Moore, trial of, Copley's re- 
 markable speech, 123-125 
 
 Brandreth's trial, 139-143 
 
 Bridgwater Case, the, 453 
 
 Brougham, Lord, his speech at Queen 
 Caroline's trial, 183 ; at the News- 
 paper Press Benevolent Association 
 dinner, 205 ; accepts the Great Seal, 
 273 ; letter to Lord Lyndhurst on his 
 
 being made Chief Baron, 276 ; his 
 attack on Lord Lyndhurst, 327 ; on 
 Lyndhurst's great powers and re- 
 sources, 340 ; on his review of the ses- 
 sion, 386 ; his handwriting described, 
 428 ; on Lord Lyndhurst's character, 
 55. 57 ; grief at his death, 517 
 Burdett, Sir Francis, his resolution on 
 Roman Catholic Disabilities, 248 ; 
 denounces Lord Lyndhurst in the 
 House of Commons, 303 
 
 CAMBRIDGE, Lyndhurst elected Steward 
 of University of, 390 
 
 Campbell, Lord, blunders and misre- 
 presentation about Copley at Tidd's 
 Debating Club, 103 ; and his love 
 of pleasure and his political opinions, 
 104-107 ; on Copley becoming Ser- 
 jeant-at-Law, 118, n. ; charges him 
 with Jacobinism, 128 ; and with 
 "ratting," 144; misquotes his 
 speech on the Alien Bill, 150-152; 
 accuses him of a want of honesty and 
 loyalty o his clients, 201 ; obtains 
 from Lyndhurst his "silk gown," 
 226 ; nv quotes from Hansard, 259 ; 
 on the T .mworth Manifesto, 325, n. ; 
 the Irish Municipal Reform Bill, 377, 
 . ; Sug'len, 406, . ; imagines es- 
 trangement between Lyndhurst and 
 Sir Robert Peel, 418, . ; misquotes 
 Lord G. Bentinck's speech, 426, n. ; 
 his offensive words to Lord Lyndhurst 
 on the Suppression of Obscene Books, 
 474 ; becomes Lord Chancellor, 479 
 
 Canning, on Queen Caroline, 180 ; on 
 Bill of Pains and Penalties, 181 ; on 
 the Roman Catholic Disabilities, 215 ; 
 letter to Copley, 217 ; his Adminis- 
 tration, 223 ; illness and death, 224 ; 
 his friendly relations with Copley, 224 
 
 Caroline, Queen, her trial, 179-195 
 
 Catawba tribe, the, 60
 
 INDEX. 
 
 529 
 
 Cato Street Conspiracy, the, 172-178 
 
 Chatham, Copley's picture of death of, 
 13 and n. 
 
 Chester, Copley becomes Chief Justice 
 of, 154 
 
 Copley, John Singleton, his pictures, 2, 
 15, 16 ; admitted into the Exhibition 
 of Incorporated Artists, 2 ; marriage, 
 4 ; parents, 5 ; comes to England, 6 ; 
 reception in London, 7 ; at Rome, 8 ; 
 studies from the antique, 10 ; his views 
 on the American War, II ; arrives 
 in London, 13; his wife described, 
 13 ; the " Family Picture," 14 ; other 
 pictures, 15-17; death, 118 
 
 Copley, Mrs., 13 ; her death, 367 
 
 Copyright Bill, the, 401-403 
 
 " Criticisms on the Bar," describing 
 Lord Lyndhurst, 158 
 
 DENMAN, Lord, his speech ..t Queen 
 Caroline's trial, 184-187 ; applies to 
 Copley for " silk gown " for him, 227 ; 
 memorial to the King, 228 ; applies 
 to the Duke of Wellington, 229 ; 
 receives his patent of precedence, 
 232 ; on Lord Lyndhurst becoming 
 Chief Baron, 277 ; misrepresents 
 his political opinions, 334 
 
 Derby, Lord, letter to Lady Lynd- 
 hurst on preparing a Conservative 
 Ministry, 444 ; letter of ondolence 
 on Lord Lyndhurst's death, 517 
 
 Disraeli, Mr., his friendsh' i for Lord 
 Lyndhurst, 378 ; his novels, 379 ; 
 speech on Lord George Bentinck's 
 attack on Lord Lyndhurst, 423 
 
 Divorce, the law of, 470 
 
 EDINBURGH REVIEW,' the, on Serjeant 
 Copley's want of preparation for the 
 Watson trial, 134 
 
 Eldon, Lord, Copley on, 209 ; Eldon 
 on Copley becoming Master of rhe 
 Rolls, 211 ; advice to a young 
 barrister, 219 ; on the Test Acts 
 Repeal Bill, 246 
 
 Ellesmere, Earl of, his letter to Lord 
 Lyndhurst on his Canadian speech, 
 436 
 
 Elwin, Rev. Whitwell, on Lord Lynd- 
 hurst's interest in judicial cases, 281, 
 . ; on his power of summing up a 
 
 case, 283 ; on Lord Brougham's mode 
 of preparing his speeches, 307 
 
 " FAMILY PICTURE," the, 14, 512 
 
 GEORGE IV., his resistance to Roman 
 Catholic Emancipation, 253-256 
 
 Gladstone, Mr., on Lord Lyndhurst's 
 criticism of his translation of the 
 Iliad, 504; anecdote of him and 
 Lord Brougham, 505 
 
 Goderich, Lord, as Premier, 233 ; re- 
 signs, 234 
 
 Graham, Sir James, his letter to Lord 
 Lyndhurst about Baron Parke, 449 
 
 Grand Juries Bill, the, 479 
 
 Granville, Lord, his friendship with 
 Lord Lyndhurst, 505 
 
 Greene, Mrs., eldest Miss Copley, her 
 marriage, 70 ; visits England, 381- 
 384 
 
 Greene, Mr. and Mrs., young Copley's 
 correspondence with, 70-98 
 
 Gretton, Rev. F. E., his anecdote of 
 young Copley, 22, n. 
 
 Grey, Lord, on Lord Lyndhurst ac- 
 cepting the office of Chief Baron, 
 276 ; resigns his Premiership, 315 
 
 HAYWARD, Mr. A., pamphlet on the 
 
 foreign system of jurisprudence, 313 
 Holland, Sir Henry, his acquaintance 
 
 with Lord Lyndhurst, 499 
 Holmes, Sir Leonard, 142 
 Home, Dr., describes young Copley, 18 
 Howarth, Rev., his funeral sermon on 
 
 Lord Lyndhurst, 514 
 Hume, Joseph, his attack on Lord 
 
 Lyndhurst, 326, n. 
 
 INDIANS, American, 62-67 
 Ings, James, his trial, 177, 178 
 Irish Municipal Corporations Bill, 345 ; 
 brought forward a second time, 376 
 
 JONES, Mr., his letter congratulating 
 the elder Copley on his son's success 
 at Cambridge, 32 
 
 Juvenile Offenders Bill, Lyndhurst's 
 speech on, 380 
 
 KNATCHBULL, Sir Edward, his family 
 picture by the elder Copley, 72 
 2 M
 
 530 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 LANSDOWNE, Lord, attacks Lord 
 Lyndhurst, 332 
 
 Life Peerages, Lord Lyndhurst's speech 
 on, 463 
 
 Local Courts Bill, the, 309 
 
 Luddites the, origin of name, 115 ; de- 
 fended by Copley, 1 16 
 
 Lyndhurst, Lord, his birth, 4 ; affection 
 for his mother, 14 ; at school at 
 Chiswick, 18 ; genius for archi- 
 tecture, 19 ; letters to his mother, 20, 
 21 ; at Cambridge, 21 ; letters from 
 Cambridge, 23-32 ; criticises his 
 father's picture of " Hagar and Ish- 
 mael," 27 ; second Wrangler, [29 ; 
 Smith's Prizeman, 31 ; Fellow of 
 Trinity College, 33 ; goes to Boston, 
 39 ; the Beacon Hill Estate Case, 44 ; 
 at Philadelphia, 45, 52 ; letters to his 
 family, 45 ; his views on Republican- 
 ism, 48 ; proposes to Miss White, 48 ; 
 at Leesburg, 49 ; Fort Cumberland, 
 50 ; Albany, 51 ; letters as Travelling 
 Bachelor to the Rev. R. Bellward, 
 56-57 ; returns to England, 68 ; his 
 M.A. degree, 69 ; becomes special 
 pleader, 69 ; letters to his sister and 
 Mr. Greene, 70-98 ; in Chambers, 
 71 ; letter to Mr. Greene thanking 
 him for giving him the means of 
 going to the Bar, loo ; called to 
 the Bar, 101 ; on the Midland Cir- 
 cuit, IO2 ; industry, 108 ; struggling 
 into practice, in ; removes to Crown 
 Office Row, 113; defends the Luddites, 
 115 ; made Serjeant-at-Law, 117 ; his 
 father's death, 118 ; pays all his debts, 
 1 19 ; remarkable case of Boville v. 
 Moore, 123 ; Spa Fields Riots, 126- 
 133 ; speech at the trial, 130-132 ; 
 Brandreth's trial, 139-143 ; returned 
 for Yarmouth in the Isle of Wight ; 
 143 ; his first speech in Parliament 
 on the Alien Bill, 148-152 ; returned for 
 Ashburton, 153 ; King's Serjeant and 
 Chief Justice of Chester, 154 ; his 
 marriage, 155 ; appointed Solicitor- 
 General, 157 ; accused of Jacobinism, 
 161 ; speech on the Seditious Meetings 
 Bill, 163-165 ; reply to the Marquis 
 of Tavistock, 166 ; conducts defence 
 in the Macirone v. Murray action, 
 
 167-171 ; Cato Street Conspiracy, 
 172-176; Thistlewood's trial, 175- 
 177; James Ings, 177, 178; speech 
 on Queen Caroline's trial, 187-195 ; 
 becomes Attorney-General, 197 ; his 
 forensic style, 199 ; social qualities, 
 200 ; constancy to friends, 201 ; 
 conduct of cases, 202, 203 ; Press 
 prosecutions, 205, 206 ; returned for 
 Cambridge, 207 ; avoids public de- 
 bates, 208 ; Bill for Chancery Re- 
 form, 208 ; Master of the Rolls, 21 1 ; 
 on Roman Catholic Disabilities, 212- 
 215 ; choice of name for the Peerage, 
 218 ; appointed Lord Chancellor, 
 219 ; the Protestant Dissenters Mar- 
 riage Bill, 222 ; friendship for Can- 
 ning, 225 ; relations with the Duke 
 of Wellington, 235-237, 287 ; with 
 Sir Robert Peel, 237-240, 341 ; 
 elected High Steward of the Cam- 
 bridge University, 239, 390 ; accused 
 of using ecclesiastical patronage for 
 party purposes prosecutes accuser, 
 242 ; exposed to libellous attacks, 
 245-247 ; collision with Lord Eldon, 
 247 ; his speech on Roman Catholic 
 Disabilities, 249, 250 ; reasons for 
 his change of views, 251 ; consults 
 with Wellington and Peel, 252-254 ; 
 the King's Speech, 255 ; justification 
 of his political opinions, 260-266 ; 
 on the Oath of Supremacy, 268 ; 
 reconciliation with Lord Eldon, 270 ; 
 resigns office, 272 ; appointed Chief 
 Baron of Exchequer, 274 ; raises the 
 reputation of his Court, 277 > at 
 Beaumaris, 279 ; his qualities as a 
 judge, 280 ; the case of Small v. Att- 
 wood, 284 ; his muttered comments 
 during the arguments of counsel, 
 286 ; speech on the Reform Bill 
 agitation, 288-300 ; sent for by the 
 King, 301 ; mode of preparing his 
 speeches, 307 ; the Local Courts Bill, 
 309-311 ; death of Lady Lyndhurst, 
 314 ; Lord Chancellor for the second 
 time, 325 ; change of Ministry, 331 ; 
 opposes the Municipal Reform Bill, 
 332 ; attacked for his supposed Radi- 
 cal opinions, 333-339 ', opposes the 
 Irish Municipal Corporations Bill,
 
 INDEX. 
 
 531 
 
 345 ; vindicates his speech on Ire- 
 land, 348-357 ; first review of the 
 session, 361-365 ; death of his 
 mother, 367 ; at Paris, 368 ; replies 
 to Mr. Shell's attack, 377; friend- 
 ship for Mr. Disraeli, 378 ; second 
 marriage, 379 ; the Juvenile Offenders 
 Bill, 380 ; his sister Mrs. Greene's 
 visit to England, 384 ; second review 
 of the session, 386 ; at Baden and 
 Marienbad, 388 ; leases Turville 
 Park, 390 ; Lord Chancellor for the 
 third time, 392 ; prepares rules for 
 hearing of Patent Cases, 395 ; hif 
 high estimate of judicial duty, 395- 
 398 ; the O'Connell Case, 399 ; the 
 Copyright Bill, 401-403 ; defence of 
 the Irish Chancellor, 405 ; longing 
 to retire, 406 ; severe illness, 408 ; 
 remains Chancellor, 410 ; speech on 
 Charitable Trusts Bill, 411; en- 
 deavours to re-unite the Conservative 
 party, 417 ; reply to Lord George 
 Bentinck, 424 ; co-operates with 
 Lord Stanley, 427; life at Turville 
 Park, 429 ; his pleasant humour, 
 431 ; speech on the Canadian Losses 
 Compensation Bill, 433 ; loss and 
 recovery of sight, 437 ; his " wise 
 cheerfulness," 441 ; on the Chancery 
 Reform Bill, 443 ; refuses office, 446 ; 
 Baron de Bode's Case, 448 ; operated 
 on for cataract, 450 ; on the Oaths Bill, 
 451, 476; Legal Reform, 453; de- 
 nounces Russia, 455-458 ; gives up 
 Turville and visits Paris, 459 ; inter- 
 view with Napoleon III., 460; 
 speech on Life Peerages, 463-466 ; on 
 amendment of the Law of Divorce, 
 469-471 ; on Suppression of Obscene 
 Books, 473 ; on Bill against Street 
 Music, 477 ; on the Grand Juries Bill, 
 479 ; recommends Lord Campbell 
 for Chancellor, 480 ; his riddle on 
 Campbell's hankering for the Wool- 
 sack, 480, n. ; speech on National 
 Defences, 483-489 ; on the deficiencies 
 of Naval Reserve, 491 ; Paper Duties 
 Bill, 493 ; his last speech, 495^ 
 letters to Mr. Amory, 497-. 
 visits Mr. Nasmyth, 501 ; his tena- 
 cious memory, 502 ; his criticism on 
 
 Mr. Gladstone's first book of the Iliad, 
 503 ; religious studies and convictions, 
 511 ; illness at Tunbridge Wells, 512 ; 
 returns to London, 512 ; death, 513 ; 
 funeral, 514; his only literary work, 
 524 ; applies for Professorship at the 
 Royal Academy, 527 
 
 MACAULAY, Lord, obtains a Commis- 
 sionership of Bankruptcy from Lord 
 Lyndhurst, 240 
 
 Macirone v. Murray action, the, 167 
 
 Mackintosh, Sir James, speech in reply 
 to Copley, 149 ; his mot about Copley, 
 166 
 
 Manchester Radical meeting in 1819, 159 
 
 Mansfield, Lord, 15, n. 
 
 Marchant, Sir Denis le, on Lord Lynd- 
 hurst's early political opinions, 297 
 
 Melbourne, Lord, his difficulties in 
 forming an Administration, 315-322 ; 
 reply to Lord Lyndhurst's reviews 
 of the session, 365, 386 ; fall of his 
 Ministry, 392 
 
 Moncreiff, Lord, describes Lord Lynd- 
 hurst, 507 
 
 Municipal Reform Bill, the, 331 
 
 Music, Street, Bill against, 477 , 
 
 NASMYTH, Mr. James, on Lord Lynd 
 
 hurst, 501 
 
 Naval Reserve, deficiencies of the, 491 
 Nelson, Lord, 87 
 North, Lord and Lady, 8 
 
 OATHS BILL, the, 451, 476 
 Obscene Books, Bill for Suppression of, 
 Lord Lyndhurst's speeches on, 471- 
 
 475 
 
 O'Connell and Lord Lyndhurst, 351 ; 
 v. the Queen, 399 
 
 PAPER DUTIES, abolition of, 493 
 
 Paris, state of, in 1802, 95 
 
 Parke, Baron, 449 ; created Lord 
 Wensleydale, 468 
 
 Patronage, Lord Lyndhurst's disposal of, 
 242 
 
 Peel, Sir Robert, his relations with 
 Lord Lyndhurst, 238-240, 341 ; on 
 the Roman Catholic Disabilities Bill, 
 256 ; on the attempt to form a Mel- 
 bourne Administration, 316-318; 
 Prime Minister, 325 ; resigns, 329 ;
 
 INDEX. 
 
 forms a Ministry, 392 ; letter on 
 
 Lord Lyndhurst's recovery, 408 ; 
 
 resigns and resumes office, 409 ; close 
 
 of his Administration, 413 
 Peterloo Massacre, the, 159 
 Pierson, Copley's picture of death of, 16 
 Plunkett, Lord, on the Roman Catholic 
 
 Disabilities, 251 
 Pollock, Baron, on Lord Campbell's 
 
 ' Life of Lord Lyndhurst,' 519 
 Potomac River, the, 57 ; Falls of, 61 
 Pry me, Professor, 145, n. 
 
 REFORM BILL AGITATION, 288, 299, 
 
 305 
 
 Repeal Association in Ireland, 403 
 
 Republican sentiments abjured by 
 Copley, 46 
 
 Reynolds, Sir Joshua, 7 
 
 Roman Catholic Disabilities Bill, the, 
 248 
 
 Russell, Lord John, and Lord Lynd- 
 hurst, 352 
 
 Russia, encroachments of, 454 
 
 SCARLETT, Mr., his attack on Sir John 
 Copley, 161 
 
 Seditious Meetings Prevention Bill, 
 Copley's speech on the, 164-165 
 
 Shaftesbury, Earl of, on Lord Lynd- 
 hurst's disinterestedness and public 
 spirit, 521 
 
 Sheil, Mr. Lalor, attacks Lord Lynd- 
 hurst about the Irish Municipal Cor- 
 porations Bill, 376 j 
 
 Six Acts, the, 165 
 
 Small v. Attwood, the case of, 284 
 
 Smith, Sydney, appointed by Lord 
 Lyndhurst Canon of Bristol, 241 ; 
 and to the living of Combe Florey, 
 242 
 
 Spa Fields Riots, the, 126 
 
 Spencean system, the, 128, n. 
 
 Stanley, Lord, reply to Lord Campbell 
 on the Canadian Losses Compensa- 
 tion Bill, 434 
 Stewart, Miss, her reminiscences of 
 
 Lord Lyndhurst, 508-511 
 Sugden, Lord, on Lord Lyndhurst's 
 
 defence of him on the dismissal of the 
 
 Irish magistrates, 405 
 Sutherland, Duke of, his letter to Lord 
 
 Lyndhurst on the Canadian speech, 
 
 436 
 
 TAMWORTH MANIFESTO, the, 325 
 Test Acts Repeal Bill, the, 247 
 Thistlewood's trial, 175-177 
 Tidd Debating Club, the, 102 
 ' Tom Brown's School Days,' 503 
 Turville Park leased by Lyndhurst, 390 
 
 VENETIAN ARTISTS, their medium, or 
 
 vehicle, 92 
 Victoria, Queen, her accession and first 
 
 Council, 378 
 Volney, C. F., accompanies young 
 
 Copley in his travels through the 
 
 States, 55 
 
 WARREN, Mr. S., on Lord Lyndhurst's 
 conduct on the Bench, 278 ; describes 
 him in the debate on the Local Courts 
 Bill, 311 
 
 Washington City, described by young 
 Copley, 56 
 
 Watson and Thistlewood, their trial, 
 127-132 
 
 Wellington, Duke of, on Lord Eldon's 
 character, 236, 237, . ; letter to Mr. 
 Peel on the Roman Catholic question, 
 252 ; speech in the House of Lords, 
 259 ; resigns, 272 ; on Lord Lynd- 
 hurst accepting the office of Chief 
 Baron, 275 ; endeavours to form a 
 Ministry, 304 ; summoned by the 
 King, 323 ; reply to Lord Melbourne, 
 366 ; letter to Lord Lyndhurst at 
 Paris, 368 ; letter to him stating his 
 reasons for declining to form a poli- 
 tical connection with Lord John 
 Russell, 419 
 
 West, Benjamin, I, 4, 7 
 
 Wetherell, Sir Charles, stipulates to 
 have Copley associated with him in 
 the Spa Fields Riots trial, 127 ; his 
 attack on Lord Lyndhurst, 262 
 
 White, Miss, Copley proposes for her, 
 48 
 
 William IV., death of, 378 
 
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