SKETCHES
REFORMS AND REFORMERS,

OF

GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND.

BY HENRY B. STANTON.

NEW YORK:
PUBLISHED BY BAKER AND SCRIBNER,
145 NASSAU ST. AND 36 PARK ROW,
1850.

Entered according to act of Congress, in the year 1849, by
HENRY B. STANTON,
in the Clerk's office of the District Court of the United States, for the Southern
District of New York.

S. W. BENEDICT,
Stereo. and Print., 16 Spruce St.

PREFACE.

This Book aims to give a summary view of the most important general Reforms, which have been effected or attempted in Great Britain and Ireland, from the period of the French revolution down to the present time. Neither history nor biography has been attempted, but the work aspires to be only what its title indicates—Sketches. Large parts of it have recently appeared, from time to time, in the National Era, of Washington; no expectation being then entertained that it would assume any other form of publication. The present occasion has been embraced to revise and reärrange the whole, and by condensation and pruning off repetitions, to make room for considerable additions to the list of subjects discussed, and individuals noticed. It is even now incomplete, many men and things, which deserve a place here, being left out—some because I may underrate their relative importance—others because the limits of this work will allow only of selections. Still, it is believed that no important subject has been wholly omitted; though, on account of the vast number of those worthy to be called Reformers, it has been found impossible to make special mention of many able and excellent individuals. Though it may contain errors of fact and opinion, yet, as it is confined to those phases of events, and incidents in the lives of persons, which history too seldom dwells upon, it may be found not wholly valueless to those who would examine the most interesting and instructive period in the recent annals of England.

The chronological plan of the work is, generally, to notice prominent popular movements in their order of time, and, in connection with each, to give sketches, more or less full, of persons who bore a leading part in it. But such slight regard has been paid to chronological arrangement, that each subject stands by itself, having only a general connection with what precedes or follows it.

As to my statistics, I have occasionally been compelled to reach conclusions much in the same manner as juries agree upon verdicts—consult a dozen authorities, each one differing with all the others—get the sum total of the whole, divide it by twelve, and adopt the result.

This Book is submitted to the reader as an humble attempt to make some of the Reformers of America better acquainted with some of the Reformers of the Old World—to show that the Anglo-Saxon love of liberty, which inspires so many hearts on both sides of the Atlantic, flows from the same kindred fountain—to prove that, though when measured by her own vaunted standards, Great Britain is one of the most oppressive and despicable Governments on earth, her radical reformers constitute as noble a band of democratic philanthropists as the world has ever seen—to induce candid Americans to make just discriminations in their estimate of "England and the English," and to draw distinctions between the privileged orders of that country and a small, but increasing, and even now powerful body of its people, who admire the free institutions of the United States, and are laboring with heroic constancy, and a zeal tempered with discretion, to secure for themselves and their fellow-subjects the rights and privileges enjoyed by trans-Atlantic republicans,—and, finally, to record my admiration of those rare and true men, who, during the past half century, and while struggling against difficulties and enduring persecutions, of which we have but the faintest conceptions, have achieved so much for the cause of Humanity and Freedom.

H. B. S.

Seneca Falls, N. Y., October, 1849.

CONTENTS.

REFORMS AND REFORMERS.

CHAPTER I.

Introductory—The "Condition of England" Question.

The People of the United States must ever be interested in the history of Great Britain. We have a common origin, and an identity of language; we hold similar religious opinions, and draw the leading principles of our civil institutions from the same sources. Reading the same historic pages, and while recounting the words and deeds of orators and statesmen who have dignified human nature, or the achievements of warriors who have filled the world with their fame, we say, "these were our forefathers." The sages and scholars of both nations teach the youth to cherish the wisdom of Alfred, the deductions of Bacon, the discoveries of Newton, the philosophy of Locke, the drama of Shakspeare, and the song of Milton, as the heir-looms of the whole Anglo-Saxon family. The ties of blood and lineage are strengthened by those of monetary interest and reciprocal trade; while the channels of social intercourse are kept open by the tides of emigration which flow unceasingly between us. And such are the resources of each in arts, in arms, in literature, in commerce, in manufactures, in the productions of the soil, and such their advanced position in the science of government, and such the ability and genius of their great men, that they must, for an indefinite period, exert a controlling influence on the destiny of mankind.

Nor when viewed in less attractive aspects, can America be indifferent to the condition and policy of her trans-Atlantic rival. She is enterprising, ambitious, intriguing. Whitening the ocean with the sails of her commerce, she sends her tradesmen wherever the marts of men teem with traffic. Belting the earth with her colonies, dotting its surface with her forts, anchoring her navies in all its harbors, she rules one hundred and sixty millions of men, giving law, not only to cultivated and refined States, but to dwarfed and hardy clans that shrivel and freeze among the ices of the polar regions, and to swarthy and languid myriads that repose in the orange groves or pant on the shrubless sands of the tropics. With retained spies in half the courts and cabinets of Christendom, she has for a century and a half caused or participated in nearly all the wars of Europe, Asia, and Africa, while by her arrogance, diplomacy, or gold, she has shaped the policy of the combatants to the promotion of her own ends. Ancient Rome, whose name is the synonym of resistless power and boundless conquest, could not, in the palmy days of her Cæsars, vie with Great Britain in the extent of her possessions and the strength of her resources. Half a century ago, her great statesman, sketching the resources of her territory, said, "The King of England, on whose dominions the sun never sets." An American orator, of kindred genius, unfolded the same idea in language which sparkles with the very effervescence of poetic beauty, when he spoke of her as "that Power, whose morning drum-beat, following the sun, and keeping company with the hours, encircles the earth daily with one continuous and unbroken strain of the martial airs of England." In a word, she embodies, in her history and policy, in large measure, all the virtues and vices of that alternate blessing and scourge of mankind, the Anglo-Saxon race.

Britain, once a land of savage pagans, was, long after the Norman Conquest, the abode of ignorance, superstition, and despotism. And though for centuries past she has witnessed a steady advance in knowledge, and civil and religious liberty—though her men of letters have sent down to their posterity works that shall live till science, philosophy and poetry are known no more—though her lawyers have gradually worn off the rugged features of the feudal system, till the common law of England has been adopted as the basis of our republican code—though her spiritual Bastile, the State Church, long since yielded to the attacks of non-conformity, and opened its gates to a qualified toleration—though all that was vital and dangerous in the maxim, "the King can do no wrong," fell with the head of Charles I, in 1649—yet it is only within the last fifty years that she has discovered at work on her institutions a class of innovators, designated as "Reformers."

Humanity will find ample materials for despair, when contemplating the condition of the depressed classes in Great Britain and Ireland. But philanthropy will find abundant sources of hope in studying the character and deeds of their radical reformers. The past half century has seen an uprising, not of "the middle class" only, but of the very substratum of society, in a peaceful struggle for inherent rights. No force has been employed, except the force of circumstances; and the result has been eminently successful. This "middle class" (and the term has great significance in England) discovered its strength during the revolution under Hampden and Cromwell, and received an impulse then which it has never lost. The nobility and gentry have too often silenced the popular clamor by admitting its leaders to the rank and privileges of "the higher orders." Still, concessions were made to the mass of middle men, which stimulated them to demand, and strengthened them to obtain more. But a truth, destined to be all-potent in the nineteenth century, remained to be discovered, viz: the identity in interest of the middle and lower classes. The lines which custom and prejudice had drawn between them grew fainter and fainter as the day approached for the full discovery of this truth. The earthquake shock of the French Revolution overthrew a throne rooted to the soil by the growth of a thousand years. Britain felt the crash. Scales fell from all eyes, and the people of the realm discovered that subjects were clothed with Divine rights as well as kings. Englishmen said so, in public addresses and resolutions, not always expressed in courtly phrase, nor rounded off in the style of rhetorical adulation so grateful to regal ears. The king, not having duly profited by the lesson the American rebels had taught him, indicted Hardy, Thelwall, Tooke, and their compatriots, for sedition and treason. These men were the representatives of both the middle and lower classes. Their constituents—the People of England—combined for their mutual safety against the common oppressor. The wall of partition was partially broken down, and, from that hour to this, the struggle between Right and Privilege, between the Subject and the Crown, has gone on, distinguished by alternate defeat and victory, by heroic constancy and dastardly treachery—noble martyrs dying, valiant combatants living to continue the good fight.

"The Condition of England" question (as the Parliamentary phrase runs) was, a century ago, a matter of indifference to the masses. Lord Castlereagh but uttered the adage of a hundred years when he said, "the people have nothing to do with the laws, except to obey them." Parliament was opened with a dull King's speech, to be followed by the opening of the annual budget of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, proposing to raise a loan for foreign wars, or a fund to sink the interest of the public debt. An oracular response was given by the Minister now and then to some query touching the relations of the kingdom to continental Powers, or the resources of some newly-acquired colony. An occasional bill was introduced to pamper the landlord aristocracy, or to increase the resources of the clergy, and enforce the collection of tithes in the manufacturing districts. Untitled manhood was held "dog cheap;" and all legislation (excepting the throwing of a bone now and then to the Cerberus of "vulgar clamor") looked to the conservation of the privileged classes, the dignity of the nobility, the wealth of the church, and the prerogatives of the Crown. How different now! The representatives of the People have broken into the sacred inclosure of "the Government," and new men, with new opinions, have usurped the places of an ancient aristocracy, and its antiquated principles. Now, "the Condition of England" question takes cognizance of the rights and the wrongs of all, and involves searching examinations, and hot and irreverent discussions, in and out of Parliament, of poor laws, pension laws, game laws, corn laws, free trade, universal education, unrestricted religious toleration, standing armies, floating navies, Irish repeal, East and West India emancipation, colonial independence, complete suffrage, the ballot, annual Parliaments, law reform, land reform, entails, primogeniture, the life-tenure of judges, an hereditary peerage, the House of Lords, the Bench of Bishops, the Monarchy itself, with other matters of like import, about which the trader and the farmer of Queen Anne's time knew but little, and never dared to question above his breath, but which, in the days of Victoria, are the common talk of the artisan and yeoman. Ay, more than this: reforms not dreamed of in 1805, by Fox, the liberal, are proposed and carried in 1845 by Peel, the conservative. "Oh, for the golden days of good Queen Bess," when the common people paid their tithes and ate what bread they could get, and left law-making to the Knights of the Shire and the Peers of the Realm!

But he must superficially read history who supposes that the fruitful Reforms, which now strike their roots so deep into British soil, and throw their branches so high and wide over the land, were planted by this century. Their seeds were sown long since, and watered with the tears and fertilized by the blood of men as pure and brave as God ever sent to bless and elevate our race. From the conquest of William the Norman, down to the coronation of Victoria the Saxon, one fact stands prominently on the page of English history, viz: that there has been a gradual circumscribing of the powers of the nobles and the prerogatives of the Crown, accompanied with a corresponding enlargement of the liberties of the people. Omitting many, I will glance at some of the more conspicuous landmarks in this highway of reform.

The mitigation of the rigors of the feudal system by William Rufus, the son of the Conqueror, who established it.—The general institution of trial by jury, in the succeeding reign of Henry II, and the granting of freedom to the towns of the realm by royal charters.—Old King John, at Runnymede, affixing his sign manual to Magna Charta, with trembling hand, at the dictation of his haughty barons and their retainers. The establishment of the House of Commons, about the middle of the thirteenth century, thus giving the commercial men of the middle class a voice in the Government.—Edward I, "the English Justinian," encouraging the courts in those decisions which tended to restrain the feudal lords and protect their vassals; and approving a statute which declared that no tax or impost should be laid without the consent of the Lords and Commons.—The introduction into England, in the latter part of the fifteenth century, of the art of printing, and the consequent cheapness of the price of books, and the diffusion of that knowledge which is power.—The discovery of America, giving an impulse to British commerce, and increasing the importance of the trading classes, by placing in their hands those sinews of war which kings must have, or cease to make conquests. The Reformation, introduced into England in 1534, unfettering the conscience, and giving to the laity the Heaven-descended charter of human rights—the Bible.—The Petition of Right—the British Declaration of Independence—signed by Charles I, in 1628, by command of his Parliament, which materially curbed the royal prerogative.—His headless trunk on the scaffold at Whitehall, in 1649, when the aspiring blood of a Stuart sank into the ground, to appease the republican wrath of Deacon Praise-God Barebones and Captain Smite-them-hip-and-thigh Clapp, and their brother Roundheads—teaching anointed tyrants that, though kings can do no wrong, they can die like common felons.—The succeeding Commonwealth, when a Huntingdonshire farmer swayed with more than regal majesty the scepter which had so often dropped from the feebler hands of the Plantagenets and Tudors. The passage of the Habeas Corpus act, in 1678, in the reign of Charles II, who saved his head by surrendering his veto. The Revolution of 1688, which deposed one line of kings and chose another, prescribing to the elected monarch his coronation oath, and exacting his ratification of the new Declaration of Rights.—The American Revolution, with its Declaration of Independence, teaching the House of Hanover the salutary truth, not only that "resistance to tyrants is obedience to God," but it can be successful. These, and cognate epochs in English history, which preceded those Modern Reforms of which I am more particularly to speak, are links in that long chain of events which gradually circumscribed the power of the princes and nobles. Each was a concession to that old Anglo-Saxon spirit of liberty, which demanded independence for the American Colonies, and is now working out the freedom of the subjects of the Queen of Great Britain and Ireland.

The object of the following chapters will be, to briefly sketch some of these Modern Reforms, interspersed with notices of some of the prominent actors in each.

CHAPTER II.

British Cabinets from 1770 to 1830—Summary of the Efforts of the Reformers, from the War of 1793 to the Formation of the Grey Ministry in 1830.

Before specially considering any one prominent Reform in English history, a general summary of events may be profitable. It will be but a summary, preliminary to a more general discussion, and will be mainly confined to the period between the French Revolution and the formation of the Grey Ministry in 1830.

From 1770 to 1830, the Government of Great Britain was, with the exception of a few months, swayed by the enemies of Reform. In the former year, Lord North, a name odious to Americans, who had previously led the Tories in the House of Commons, assumed the premiership. He retained his place, his principles, and his power, twelve years. In 1782, a quasi liberal ministry supplanted him, headed by Rockingham, Fox, and Burke, which was dissolved in three months, by the death of the former, when Fox, Burke, and their friends, refused to unite under Shelburne, the succeeding Tory Premier, who sought new supporters, giving young Pitt the seals of the Exchequer and the lead in the Commons. Stung by mortification at their exclusion from office, Fox and Burke united with North in forming the famous "Coalition," and in April, 1783, prostrated Shelburne. Thereupon, a new ministry was made up of those disaffected Whig and Tory chiefs, Fox, Burke, the Duke of Portland and Lord North being its leading spirits. This Coalition, which for years damaged the fame of Fox, struggled for its unnatural existence till the following December, when, failing to carry Mr. Fox's India bill, it expired, dishonored and unregretted. Pitt, "the pilot that weathered the storm," then took the helm of State, which he held eighteen tempestuous years, and was succeeded, not supplanted, in 1801, by the weak but amiable Mr. Addington. Lord Hawkesbury (the subsequent Lord Liverpool) took the pen of Foreign Secretary; Eldon (Sir John Scott) clutched the great seal of Chancery; and Perceval put on the gown of Solicitor General. This ministry leaned on Pitt for support, and was his puppet, having taken office to do what he was too proud to perform—make peace with France. The war demon smoothed his wrinkled front only for a short period, when his visage suddenly became grim, and the ship of State was, in 1803, again plunged in the waves of a European contest. The helm soon slipped from the feeble hands of Addington, and "the pilot" was recalled to his old station, where he remained till 1806, when his lofty spirit sinking under the shock of the overthrow at Austerlitz of the Continental Coalition against Napoleon, of which he was the animating soul, he hid his mortified heart in a premature grave.

A liberal ministry, clustering around Lord Grenville and Mr. Fox, took up the reins of power which had dropped from the relaxed hands of Pitt, abolished the slave trade, attempted to ameliorate the condition of the Catholics, encountered the bigotry of George III, failed, resigned, and were succeeded by an ultra Tory administration, of which Perceval, Liverpool, Eldon, Castlereagh, and Canning were the chief members. For six years they followed in the footsteps of Pitt, fighting Napoleon abroad and Reformers at home, propping up the thrones of continental despots, and fortifying the prerogatives of the English crown, till, in 1812, Perceval, who was then Premier, fell before the pistol of a madman in the lobby of the House of Commons. Simultaneously with putting the crazy assassin to death, almost without the forms of a trial, Liverpool, as Premier, and Castlereagh, as Foreign Secretary, came into power, and, pursuing the policy of Pitt and Perceval, the same ministry, with occasional modifications, retained its place until the death of Liverpool, in 1827. Castlereagh, its life and soul, and the evil genius of England, and the truckling tool of the Holy Alliance, perished by his own hand in 1823, and was succeeded in the Foreign Department by Canning, who infused a more liberal spirit into the Cabinet, especially in the attitude of England towards the Alliance.

Such had been the advance of free principles amongst the body of the people during the fifteen years of Liverpool's administration, that George IV had great difficulty in forming a new ministry. Wellington and Peel refused to become members if the friends of Catholic Emancipation were admitted, and Canning refused to join if they were excluded. After a long train of negotiations, the anger of the King exploded at the stubbornness of the Iron Duke, and he gave Canning his royal hand to kiss, with a carte blanche for the enrolment of a ministry. He formed a mixed Government, whose average quality was mollified Toryism. He brought into the compound Robinson and Huskisson, his recent associates in the Liverpool cabinet, whose liberal course on trade and finance, during the last four years, foreshadowed the repeal of the corn laws and the dawning of better days. Wellington and Peel spurned the amalgamation, whilst Eldon, with the shedding of many tears and the tearing of much hair, surrendered the great seal, which his strong hand had grasped for twenty-six years, to the great detriment of suitors with short purses, and the great profit of barristers with long wind. The country expected much from the new administration. But whether well or ill founded, its anticipations were extinguished in a few brief months by the death of the brilliant genius who had inspired its hopes. When the grave closed over Canning, Lord Gooderich (Mr. Robinson) organized a piebald ministry, of such incongruous materials that it broke in pieces almost in the very act of being set up. Wellington was then summoned to the King's closet, and in January, 1828, became Premier, giving the lead of the Commons to his favorite, Peel, he himself undertaking to control the House of Peers, much according to the tactics of the field of Waterloo. The Iron Duke, who was always adroit at a retreat, and the supple commoner, both of whom had refused to join Canning because he favored Catholic amelioration, now reluctantly granted, because they dared not withhold, the repeal of the Corporation and Test Acts, and the emancipation of the Catholics! The Wellington-Peel Government struggled bravely till late in 1830, when the tide of Parliamentary Reform, rising to a resistless hight, overwhelmed them, and the first liberal ministry (excepting a few distracted months) which England had witnessed for sixty-five years, was organized by Earl Grey. Fortunate man! He now saw the seeds of that reform, which, forty years before, in the fervor of youth, he sowed in Parliament, and had steadily cultivated under contumely and reproach from that day till this, about to yield an abundance which his matured and ennobled hand was to garner in, whilst the people "shouted the Harvest Home."

Begging the reader's pardon for introducing this dry detail of names and dates, it may be further noted, that in glancing over the dreary wastes which stretch between the elevation of North and the downfall of Wellington, but few verdant spots rise to relieve the reformer's eye. From the commencement of the French war, in 1793, till the repeal of the Corporation and Test Acts, in 1828, not a solitary important reform was carried, except the abolition of the slave trade, and the British empire exhibited a broad sea of rank Conservatism. But, though nothing was perfected in these thirty-five years, no period of British history teems with events more gratifying to a hopeful and progressive humanity. Foul and fetid as were the waters of the Dead Sea, they were constantly lashed by a healthful and purifying agitation. These fruitless years were the seed-time of a harvest to be reaped in better days; and all the reforms which from 1828 till now have blessed and are blessing England were never forgotten, but continually pressed upon the attention of Parliament and the country, by a resolute band of men illustrious for their talents and their services. In proof of this, a few rude landmarks, before entering upon a more minute survey of this period, may be worth the erecting.

The trials, at the Old Bailey, in 1794, of Tooke, Hardy, and their associates, prosecuted for high treason for their words and acts as members of a Society for Parliamentary Reform, were the first outbreak of the wide-spread alarm at the prevalence of the political opinions introduced into the kingdom by the French Revolution. The Government was foiled; the prisoners were acquitted; Erskine, their advocate, won unfading laurels; and the doctrine of "constructive treason" was forever exploded in England.

The foreign policy of Pitt and his successors, which sent England on a twenty-five years' crusade to fight the battles of Absolutism on the continent, encountered the fiery logic of Fox, the dazzling declamation of Sheridan, the analytical reasoning of Tierney, the dignified rebukes of Grey, the sturdy sense of Whitbread, the scholastic arguments of Horner, and the bold assaults of Burdett. And at a later period, when Castlereagh humbled the power of England at the footstool of the Holy Alliance, Brougham made the land echo with appeals to the Anglo-Saxon love of liberty, till Canning, in 1823, protested against the acts of the Allied Sovereigns, and in the following year declared in the House of Commons, while the old chamber rung with plaudits, that ministers had refused to become a party to a new Congress of the Allies.

In 1806-7, the slave trade fell under the united attacks of Wilberforce, Fox, and Pitt; Clarkson, Sharpe, and other worthies, supplying the ammunition for the assault. And the West India slave, long forgotten, was remembered when Canning, in 1823, introduced resolutions that immediate measures ought to be adopted by the planters to secure such a gradual improvement in the slave's condition as might render safe his ultimate admission to participation in the civil rights and privileges of other classes of His Majesty's subjects; and addressed a corresponding ministerial circular to the colonies.

In 1809, Romilly brought his eminent legal knowledge and graceful eloquence to bear against the sanguinary criminal code which a dark age had obtruded on the noonday of civilization. He subsequently exposed the abuses of the Court of Chancery, which, under the tardy administration of "that everlasting doubter," Lord Eldon, pressed heavily on the country. He laid bare the absurd technicalities and verbosities which blocked the avenues to the common law courts. Having removed some of this rubbish, and softened a few of the asperities of the criminal code, his benevolent heart sunk in the grave, when the philosophic and classical Mackintosh resumed the work, and carrying a radical motion for inquiry over the heads of ministers in 1819, pressed it nearer that tolerable consummation which Brougham, Williams, and Denman reached at a later day. The cause of law reform was powerfully aided by the closet labors of that singular person, Jeremy Bentham, whose world-wide researches and world-filling books, written in a style as consecutive and tedious as the story of The House that Jack Built, discussed everything pertaining to government, from the constitution of a kingdom to the construction of a work-house.

The condition of Ireland and the relief of the Catholics occupied much of the public attention during the period under review. The rebellion of 1798 turned all eyes towards that devoted island. The next year, Pitt proposed the Legislative Union. It encountered the fierce epigrams of Sheridan; and though it passed both Houses, it met with such vehement opposition from the Irish Parliament, that it was abandoned till the next year, when Pitt renewed the proposal. Grattan, the very soul of Irish chivalry, rained down upon it a shower of invective from the West side of the channel, and was seconded by the glittering oratory of Sheridan and the calmer reasoning of Grey and Lord Holland on the East. But Britain extended to Ireland the right hand of a Judas fellowship, whilst with the left she bribed her to accept the proffered alliance. In 1807, Lord Grenville, who was ever a firm friend of religious liberty and of Ireland, and Grey, in behalf of the Cabinet, proposed an amelioration of the bigoted code which made the worship of God by the Catholic a crime. They failed, and ministers resigned. The question of Catholic relief was pressed to a division, in various forms, fourteen times, without success, from 1805 to 1819. In the latter year, Grattan moved that the House take into consideration the matter of Catholic Emancipation, and failed by only two majority. In 1821, Plunkett, distinguished for his attainments and virtues, and a model of eloquence, whether standing at the Irish bar or in the British Senate, carried the motion which Grattan lost, Peel strenuously resisting, by a majority of six. He followed up his victory by pushing the Consolidation Bill (a measure of amelioration only) through the Commons; but it was thrown out by the Lords. Sparing further details for the present, suffice it to say, that at intervals during this period, Sydney Smith, with his Peter Plymley Letters, laughed to scorn the fears of high churchmen; a host of pamphleteers of all sizes sifted the question to its very chaff, and O'Connell and his "Associations" and "Unions," in spite of the suspension of the habeas corpus and the enactment of coercion bills, agitated from the Giant's Causeway to Cape Clear, and ultimately wrung from the fears of the oppressor what his sense of justice would not give.

The Protestant dissenters, with a less rude hand, knocked at the doors of Parliament, demanding the purification of the Established Church, and the opening of its gates to Toleration. The rich clergy were compelled by law to pay higher salaries to their poor curates—Hume's clumsy abuse fell on the heads of the lazy prelates who made godliness gain—and the "pickings and stealings," which the Establishment tolerated in a long train of sanctimonious supernumeraries, were exposed to the gaze of the uninitiated when Brougham carried his bill against ministers, in 1819, for a board of commissioners to investigate the abuses of public charities. The Corporation and Test Acts, which enslaved the consciences of dissenters, were denounced by Fox and Burdett, preparatory to their ultimate repeal (of which more anon) by Lord John Russell's bill in 1828.

Nor was the importance of educating the masses forgotten. Not content with aiding Romilly, Smith, Horner, Mackintosh, and Jeffrey, in instructing the higher circles by frequent contributions to the Edinburgh Review on domestic and European politics, Brougham wrote rudimental tracts for the lower orders—lectured to Mechanics' Institutes—contributed to Penny Magazines—and in 1820, after a speech which exhibited perfect familiarity with the educational condition of the unlettered masses, launched in Parliament his comprehensive scheme for the instruction of the poor in England and Wales; thus proving that he was entitled to the eulogy he bestowed on another, as "the patron of all the arts that humanize and elevate mankind."

Having seen this favorite scheme fairly afloat, this wonderful man turned to far different employments. The misguided but injured Queen Caroline landed in England in 1820, amidst the shoutings of the populace. Ministers immediately brought in their bill of pains and penalties; i. e., a bill to degrade and divorce the Queen, without giving her the benefit of those ordinary forms of law which protect even the confessed adulteress. She appointed Brougham her Attorney General. In the midst of such a popular ferment as England has rarely seen, he promptly seized the royal libertine in his harem, and while giving one hand to the regulation of his new educational machine, with the other dragged him into the open field of shame, and concentrated upon him the scorn of Virtue and Humanity.

The corn laws were the subject of frequent debates and divisions. Waiving till another occasion their more particular consideration, it may here be stated, that the frequent recurrence of extreme agricultural and commercial distress always brought with it into Parliament the subject of the corn trade, provoking a discussion of the antagonistic theories of protection and free trade, and challenging to the arena the learning and experience of Burdett, Horner, Ricardo, Baring, Hume, Huskisson, and Brougham. It was on these occasions that the latter used to exhibit that close familiarity with the statistics of political economy and of domestic and foreign trade, and of the laws of demand and supply, which surprised even those acquainted with his exhaustless versatility. His only match in this department was Huskisson, to whose enlightened and steady advocacy of unrestricted commerce its friends are greatly indebted. As early as 1823, this generally conservative gentleman moved a set of resolutions providing for an annual and rapid reduction of the duties on foreign corn, till the point of free trade was attained.

Closely allied to this subject was that of budgets, sinking funds, loans, civil lists, and army and navy expenditures, all summed up in the word taxes. The means of paying the interest on the £600,000,000 debt Pitt had run up in reënthroning the pauper Bourbons (not to speak of the 240 000,000 pounds before existing) was to be provided for. The current, expenses of the Government clamored for large sums. Under this annual load of taxation, a nation of Astors might have staggered. The liberal party plead for economy and retrenchment in the army and the navy, in the church and the state. Brougham, Ricardo, and other smaller cipherers, applied the pruning knife to the prolific tree of taxation and expenditure. But the chief annoyance of Ministers was Mr. Hume. After he entered Parliament, all schemes for raising or appropriating money encountered his scrutinizing eye and merciless figurings. With no more eloquence than the multiplication table, he as rarely made mistakes in his calculations. And whenever Mr. Vansittart, the foggy-headed Chancellor of the Exchequer, appeared on the floor with his money bills, his tormentor was sure to pin him to the wall by his skillful use of the nine digits, which he followed up by crushing that unfortunate gentleman between huge columns of statistics.

Parliamentary Reform, the enginery by which the people of England must work out a bloodless revolution, was repeatedly agitated, and with various results. Stormy debates, followed by divisions and defeats, did not discourage Grey, Mackintosh, Brougham, Lambton, and Russell, within doors, nor Tooke, Cartwright, Cobbett, Hunt, and a host of other good, bad, and indifferent men without, from seeking enlarged suffrage and equal representation. Nor did laws enacted to stop the circulation amongst the working classes of cheap publications, by laying a tax on them; and to put down reformatory societies, under the pretext of prohibiting seditious meetings; and to seize arms found in the hands of the lower orders, so that their assemblies might be dispersed at the bayonet's point without fear of retaliation; nor the occasional searching of a library and demolishing a press, and sending a writer or lecturer to Botany Bay, deter the masses from demanding that "the People's House should be open to the People's Representatives." Passing by many noteworthy occurrences, we find Birmingham, in 1819, without a representative for its teeming thousands, while rotten Grampound, with scarce an inhabitant, had two, adopting the bold measure of electing "a Legislatorial Attorney" to represent it in the House of Commons! The next year, a large and peaceable meeting of reformers at Manchester is dispersed by cavalry, with loss of much precious blood. The common people throughout the kingdom are deeply moved at this spectacle—riots follow—troops shed more blood—Ministers denounce the agitators—Burdett defends them—Brougham defies Ministers, and Lord John Russell numbers the days of Grampound. The next session he moves to disfranchise that rotten borough, which had been convicted of bribery, and transfer its members to Leeds. He fails. The next session, Lambton (Earl Durham) brings in a bill for a radical reform, and is defeated by a scurvy trick of Ministers. Lord John renews the conflict with another bill—the People's petitions press the tables of the House—Ministers begin to give way—Grampound is disfranchised, and its members transferred to York county, and the first nail is driven! In 1823, Lord John leads on the attack by explaining a well-digested scheme of reform in a luminous speech. Canning makes a conciliatory reply, and, in his brilliant peroration, tells Russell he will yet succeed, but on his head be the responsibility. Russell is beaten, but the minority is swelled by the accession for the first time of several young members of the ancient nobility. The same year, Castlereagh cuts his throat, and falls into a grave which Englishmen will execrate till the crack of doom. The "radicals" (a name which the reformers received when Birmingham elected her attorney) take courage—Lord John beats ministers on an incidental question—Old Sarum trembles for her ancient privileges—the French monarchy is temporarily overthrown, and Earl Grey rises to power.

In this summary, which sets chronological order and historical symmetry at defiance, I have only aimed to show that, from 1793 to 1830, the fires on Freedom's Altar were kept burning by a band of worshipers, many of whose names find few parallels in English history, whether we consider the vigor of their understandings, the extent of their knowledge, the splendor of their genius, the luster of their services, and the fidelity and courage with which they followed the fortunes of the liberal cause through thirty-seven years of opposition to Court favor and Ministerial patronage.

A more particular notice of these events and persons will be pursued in future chapters.

CHAPTER III

Treason Trials of 1794—Societies for Reform—Constructive Treason—Horne Tooke—Mr. Erskine.

The first conflict between Englishmen and their rulers, to which I will now more particularly refer, is the sedition and treason trials, near the close of the last century; more especially alluding to the trials of John Horne Tooke, Hardy, Thelwall, and their associates, in 1794, for high treason. The victories then achieved heralded those subsequent reforms in Church and State which have so blessed the common people of England. It was the crisis of British freedom. Though failure then would not have uprooted the goodly tree, it would have blasted much of its sweet fruit, and retarded its luxuriant growth. Maj. Cartwright, ("that old heart of sedition," as Canning called him,) one of England's early reformers, in a letter written at the time, said: "Had these trials ended otherwise than they have, the system of proscription and terror, which has for some time been growing in this country, would have been completed and written in blood." The verdicts of "not guilty" not only pronounced the acquittal of the prisoners, but proclaimed the right of individuals and associations to examine and reprobate the acts of their King and Parliament; to discuss the foundations of government, and declare the rights of man and the wrongs of princes; and to arouse public opinion to demand such changes in the laws as would secure the liberties of the people. The crime charged against Tooke and his associates was, endeavoring to excite a rebellion, overthrow the monarchy, wage war on the king, and compass his death. Their real offense was, belonging to "the London Corresponding Society" and "the Society for Constitutional Information," better known as societies for Parliamentary reform, in which they canvassed the nature of government, the rights of the people, and the acts of their rulers, and specially advocated a reform in the Parliamentary representation and the electoral suffrage.

This was no new movement. Similar associations had existed for twenty years. The Society of "the Friends of the People" numbered among its members the imposing names of the Duke of Richmond, Pitt, Sheridan, Whitbread, Grey, and other men of rank. They had held meetings, published pamphlets, and petitioned Parliament. Discussions had taken place in both Houses. In 1770, the great Chatham advocated a moderate reform in the representation in the lower House. In 1776, Wilkes, the favorite of the London populace, made an able speech on moving for leave to bring in a radical bill to the same end. In 1783, Pitt, yielding to the generous impulses of his youth, moved for a committee to inquire into the same subject, and supported his motion in two eloquent speeches. In 1790, Flood, the celebrated Irishman, spoke with fervor on moving for a more equal representation in the Commons, and was replied to by Wyndham and Pitt, (who had become frightened by the French revolution,) and powerfully supported by Fox, then in the zenith of his fame, and by Grey, just giving earnest of those talents which, forty years after, carried the reform bill through the Lords. The discussion of kindred topics in Parliament during the same periods stimulated the popular party. The expulsion of Wilkes, the idol of the London mob, from the Commons; the seizure of his papers and the imprisonment of his person in the Tower for a seditious libel against the Tory Government; his repeated reëlection by his Middlesex constituency, and the votes of the House declaring his seat still vacant; the consequent debates in both Houses during the years 1768-'70 excited the populace to the verge of rebellion, and challenged inquiry into the relative rights of the people and their Parliament. The debates on the stamp act, the taxation of the colonies, and the American war, covering fifteen years, enlisted the best powers of Chatham, Burke, Fox, and Barre, and elicited from those high sources radical declarations of the rights of man. The denunciations of the test acts and of the Catholic penal code by Fox and his followers, from 1786 to 1790, as subversive of the rights of conscience, added fuel to the popular flame. All these agitations within the walls of Parliament were but the remoter pulsations of the great heart beating without—the faint shadows of that genius of reform, which, till recently, has numbered its representatives by units and its constituency by hundreds of thousands.

The political sea, ruffled by these winds, was soon to be tossed by violent storms. The French revolution produced a profound sensation in all classes of Englishmen. The fulminations of its third estate against monarchy, and the democratic doctrines of Paine's Rights of Man, (republished in England from the Parisian edition, and scattered far and wide,) found a response in thousands of British hearts. The people felt their grievances to be more intolerable than ever, and the example of France emboldened them to demand redress in firmer tones. The London Society for Constitutional Information, which had grown languid, suddenly felt a revival of more than its original spirit, and kindred associations sprang into existence all over the kingdom. Their orators declaimed upon the rights of man, painted his wrongs, extolled the merits of the people, and denounced the vices of bishops and nobles. The oppressions of the middle and lower classes, (of both which the societies were mainly composed,) by the privileged orders, afforded ample materials for these appeals to the best and worst passions of human nature.

The Government was alarmed. The events of France in 1792 had determined the English Ministry to crush in the bud the revolution they pretended they saw springing up at home. Their real object was to prostrate the reformatory associations. Louis was deposed, and the Republic had decreed fraternity and aid to the people of all nations in recovering their liberties. Riots occurred in a few English manufacturing towns. The King suddenly convened Parliament, and declared in his speech, that conspiracies existed for overthrowing the Government, and that the kingdom was on the eve of a revolution. In the debate on the King's speech, the Minister said that seditious societies had been instituted, under the plausible pretext of discussing constitutional questions, but really to promote an insurrection of the people. Mr. Fox met the assertions of King and Minister with a denial, whose language borders on temerity. He declared, "there was not one fact stated in His Majesty's speech which was not false—not one assertion or insinuation which was not unfounded. The prominent feature in it was, that it was an intolerable calumny on the people of Great Britain; an insinuation of so gross and black a nature that it demanded the most rigorous inquiry and the most severe punishment!" Bold words, these; not unlike those of Cromwell, who declared "he would as soon put his sword through the heart of the King as that of any other man."

But the Government was not to be arrested in its course by the bold words of the Opposition leader. It continued to prosecute printers and lecturers for seditious libels and speeches, fining, imprisoning, cropping, branding, and transporting, at will. The progress of events in France was precipitating the crisis. In 1793, Louis and his Queen were guillotined, and the next year saw the Princess Elizabeth's head fall, while the bloody star of Robespierre loomed in the ascendant. At these scenes, the cheek of monarchical Europe turned pale. Pitt was alarmed. Prosecutions for sedition did not reach the seat of the disease. Royal proclamations did not silence the reformers. The constitutional societies still met and debated. Early in the session of 1794, he brought in bills to clothe the Government with extraordinary powers to detect suspicious persons, (i. e. reformers,) and to suspend the habeas corpus act. After a furious contest, in which Fox, Grey, and Sheridan, stood by the popular cause, the bills passed. The habeas corpus was suspended in May, 1794. The safeguard of English liberty being prostrated, a fell blow was aimed at the societies, through the persons of some of their leading members. Informations for high treason were filed in May by the Attorney General (Sir John Scott—Lord Eldon) against Tooke, Hardy, Thelwall, and nine others, and they were sent to the Tower to await their trials. Both parties now prepared for a death-struggle. The Ministers trusted for success to the power of the Crown, the subserviency of the judges, and the wide-spread panic among the higher classes. The common people, though alarmed at the strength of this combination, relied upon the innocence of the accused persons; but, at all events, (though the more timid erased their names from the roll of the societies,) the mass resolved to make a stand for the freedom of speech and the press, and the right of associating for a redress of grievances, worthy of the exigency. From the papers of the London Society, which had been seized, it appeared that the members contemplated holding a National Convention to promote Parliamentary reform; and this was regarded as a conspiracy to subvert the monarchy and establish a republic!

I have stated the crime with which these men were charged. Indicted for conspiring to subvert the monarchy, depose the King, and compass his death, it was only pretended that they had uttered and published seditious words with the intent to alter his Government; when, in fact, they had only advocated radical reforms in the two Houses of Parliament. The existence of the constitutional societies and their doings were clearly legal. No doubt, many unguarded and some unwarranted expressions about the King and Parliament had been used. But nothing had been said or done which, on a fair construction, exposed the parties to a just conviction of any crime. Most assuredly they were not guilty of high treason; and as surely their words and deeds were tame and puerile, compared with what the English press and people have since said and done in the ear of Ministers and under the eye of Majesty. In short, they were to be immolated on the judicial guillotine of "CONSTRUCTIVE TREASON."

The character and station of the prisoners excited the interest of different ranks of society. They had been shut up in the Tower six months, closely confined, and all access to them by their friends denied. Hardy was a shoemaker, and, with two or three others, was from the upper strata of the lower orders. Kyd was a barrister; Holcroft, a dramatic writer; Joyce, a minister; and Thelwall, a political lecturer. These belonged to the middle class. John Horne Tooke, the most considerable person among them, held a debatable position in the higher circles. He was a gentleman of limited aristocratic connections, and a scholar of rare and varied learning. He had taken holy orders in his youth, but had long ago left the altars of the church for the closet of the student and the forum of the politician. He was the author of the profound philosophical treatise on the English language, called "The Diversions of Purley." Many then supposed him to be the author of Junius. He had had a violent newspaper controversy, feigned or real, with that writer, and had worsted him. He was the ablest pamphleteer and debater among the ultra-liberals, and was ever ready, with his keen pen and bold tongue, to contend with the scribes of the Government through the press, or its orators on the rostrum, and he never gave cause to either to congratulate themselves on the results of the encounter. Nearly twenty years ago he had stood before the same tribunal, and defended himself with consummate skill, and a courage bordering on audacity, against a prosecution for publishing a defense of "the American rebels" at the battle of Lexington. He and his associates were now to make a stand for their lives.

The trials took place at the Old Bailey, in October and November, 1794, and extended through several weeks. The prisoners were defended by Erskine, whose name was a tower of strength, and Gibbs, the very embodiment of legal knowledge, (Tooke aiding in his own case,) whilst Scott, long-headed, learned, and unscrupulous, assisted by the Solicitor General, prosecuted for the Crown. The hall and the passages leading to it were densely thronged with persons of all ranks and conditions, eager spectators of or participants in, the most memorable struggle which the courts of the common law have witnessed. No overt acts of any moment could be proved against either of the accused, and the prosecution had to rely mainly on ambiguous words and writings of doubtful import. The whole power of the Court of the King, and the Judges of the King's Court, was brought to bear upon the doomed prisoners, aided by the multifarious lore and subtle reasoning of the Attorney General. Every doubtful word was distorted, every ambiguous look transformed into lurking treason. The rules of evidence were put to the rack, to admit bits of letters and conversations, written and uttered by others than the accused, and to hold them responsible for all that had been said and done by every man who, at any time and anywhere, had belonged to the societies, or taken part in their discussions. The friends of the prisoners spoke with bated breath, as the trials proceeded; for they knew, if the prosecution succeeded, a reign of terror had begun, in which the King was to enact the Robespierre, and they were to be his victims. But neither the ravings of the Court at Windsor, nor the partialities of the Court at London, could suffice against the learning, the logic, the skill, the vigilance, the eloquence, the courage, the soul, which Erskine threw into his cause. He battled as if his own life had been at hazard. He knew that twelve "good and true men" stood between the lion and his prey. The Court ruled that if the jury believed the discussions and writings of the prisoners, or of the societies to which they belonged, tended to subvert the monarchy and depose the King, or change the Constitution, they must find them guilty. But Erskine maintained, with a power of argument which, for the moment, shook the faith of the Court, that for British subjects to utter their sentiments, in ANY FORM, concerning the Government of their country, was not TREASON. So thought the jurors, (though the Court leaned heavily to the side of the Crown,) and one after another these hunted plebeians passed the terrible ordeal. The King lost; the People won. They shouted their triumph so loud, that he heard it within his palace, and the crowned lion growled, gnashed his royal teeth, and beat the bars of his constitutional cage, till his anointed head throbbed with anguish.

Hardy, whose case was extremely perilous, was first set to the bar. His trial lasted nine days. Tooke's came next, and Thelwall's next; when the prosecutors, frantic with rage and mortification at their signal overthrow, abandoned the contest. When Tooke was acquitted, the joy of the people knew no bounds. He was an old reformer, had ever been the steady advocate of popular rights, and was the idol of the Radicals. He had suffered much before in the common cause. His library had been repeatedly ransacked for treasonable papers, his family insulted, and his person again and again thrust into prison. And now they had seen him stand for six days, battling with the Court which lowered upon him, and bearing unruffled the taunts with which the Government witnesses had poorly withstood his searching cross-examination, contending for a life whose every pulsation had been given to the service of the people. When the foreman pronounced the words, "Not Guilty," the arches of Old Bailey rang with plaudits. After addressing a few words to the Court, he turned to Scott, and said: "I hope, Mr. Attorney General, that this verdict will be a warning to you not to attempt again to shed men's blood on lame suspicions and doubtful inferences." He then thanked the jury with much emotion for the life they had spared to him. The entire panel shed tears—the very men who had been so obviously packed to convict him, that at the opening of the trial Erskine said, "Mr. Tooke, they are murdering you!" The populace bore the old patriot through the passages to the street, where they sent up shout upon shout. It was a great day for Reformers, and its anniversary is still celebrated by the Radicals of England.

Erskine's speech for Hardy (whose case was very critical, and the first one tried,) is one of the most splendid specimens of popular juridical eloquence on record. Owing to the running contests on points of law and evidence, constantly kept up while the trial went on, he lost his voice the night before he was to address the jury. It returned to him in the morning, and he was able to crowd seven hours full of such oratory as is rarely heard in our day. He regarded Hardy's acquittal or conviction not only as the turning point in the fate of his eleven associates, but as settling the question whether constructive treason should for long years track blood through the land, or its murderous steps be now brought to a final stand. He made a superhuman effort for victory, and achieved it. Profound as was his legal learning, eminent as were his reasoning faculties, classical as was his taste, transcendent as were his oratorical powers, all conspiring to place him not only at the head of the English bar, but to rank him as the first advocate of modern times; yet all were overshadowed by the inflexible courage and hearty zeal with which he met this crisis of British freedom. With the combined power of the King, his ministers, and his judges, arrayed against his clients and against him as their representative, seeking their blood and his degradation, he cowered not, but maintained the home-born rights of his proscribed fellow-subjects with arguments so matchless, with eloquence so glowing, with courage so heroic, with constancy so generous, that his name will ever find a place in the hearts of all who prefer the rights of man to the prerogatives of power. But more than all; he exploded the doctrines of constructive treason, and established the law on the true foundation, that there must be some overt act to constitute guilt; and he reïnscribed upon the Constitution of England the obliterated principle, that Englishmen may freely speak and publish their opinions concerning the Government of their country without being guilty of treason—a principle, under whose protecting shield they now utter their complaints, their denunciations even, in the very ear of Majesty itself.[1]

CHAPTER IV

Constructive Treason—The Law of Libel and Sedition—The Dean of St. Asaph—The Rights of Juries—Erskine—Fox—Pitt.

I took occasion in the last chapter to speak at some length of the trials of Tooke, Hardy, and others, for high treason, in 1794, and of the successful attack then made by Mr. Erskine on the doctrine of constructive treason. Down to the period of these trials, the English law of treason was infamous. Among other things, treason was defined to be waging war against the King, or compassing and imagining his death, or the overthrow of his Government. The law evidently contemplated the doing of some act, designed and adapted to accomplish these ends. But the construction of the courts had subverted this principle, and declared the mere utterance of words high treason. In the reign of Edward IV, a citizen was executed for saying "he would make his son heir of the crown;" meaning, as was supposed, that he would make him the heir of his inn, called "the Crown." Another, whose favorite buck the King had wantonly killed, was executed for saying, "he wished the buck, horns and all, in the bowels of the man who counseled the King to kill it." The court gravely held, that as the King had killed it of his own accord, and so was his own counselor, this declaration was imagining the King's death, and therefore treason! So it had been held, that using words tending to overawe Parliament, and procure the repeal of a law, was levying war on the King, and therefore treasonable. At length the courts yielded to the doctrine that there must be some overt act to constitute the crime. But they also held that, reducing words to writing was an overt act, even though they were never read or printed! Peachum, a clergyman, was convicted of high treason for passages found in a sermon which had never been preached. The immortal Algernon Sidney was executed, and his blood attainted, for some unpublished papers found in his closet, containing merely speculative opinions in favor of a republican form of government. It was in allusion to this judicial murder by the infamous Jeffries, and to the fact that the record of the conviction had been destroyed, that Erskine, on the trial of Hardy, uttered the splendid anathema against "those who took from the files the sentence against Sidney, which should have been left on record to all ages, that it might arise and blacken in the sight, like the handwriting on the wall before the Eastern tyrant, to deter from outrages upon justice." It has already been said that this peerless lawyer exploded these dangerous doctrines, and made it safe for Englishmen to speak and write freely against the King and Government, without exposure to a conviction for treason.

But this is not the only salutary legal reform for which England is indebted to his exertions. Pernicious as is the existing law of CRIMINAL PROSECUTIONS FOR LIBELS AND SEDITIOUS WRITINGS in that country, it was vastly worse till his strong arguments and scathing appeals had shaken it to its foundations. A glance at the law. Any publication imputing bad motives to King or Minister; or charging any branch of Government with corruption, or a wish to infringe the liberties of the People; or which cast ridicule upon the Established Church; and any writing, printing, or speaking, which tended to excite the People to hatred or contempt of the Government, or to change the laws in an improper manner, &c., were seditious libels, for which fine, imprisonment, the pillory, &c., might be imposed. Nor was the truth of the libel any defense. Admirable snares, these, to entangle unwary reformers, and catch game for the royal household! And these bad laws were worse administered. The juries had no power in their administration—the only check in the hands of the People. The court withheld from the jury the question whether a writing was libelous or seditious, and permitted them only to decide whether the prisoner had published it. In a word, if the jury found that he published, they must convict; and then the judge growled out the sentence. These trials were ready weapons for State prosecution in the hands of a tyrannical King and Ministry, with pliant judges at their beck; and in the latter half of the last century they were used without stint or mercy. They struck down Wilkes, Tooke, Woodfall, Muir, Palmer, Holt, Cartwright, and other liberals, for publications and speeches in vindication of the People, which, at this day, would be held harmless even in England. Some were heavily fined, others imprisoned or transported, others set on the pillory, or cropped and branded, their houses broken open and searched, their wives and daughters insulted, their private papers rifled, their printing presses seized, their goods confiscated, their names cast out as evil, and they might regard their lot as fortunate if their prospects for life were not utterly ruined. The treatment of Muir and Palmer, in 1793, was barbarous. Muir was a respectable barrister, and Palmer a clergyman of eminent literary attainments. They had merely addressed meetings and associations for Parliamentary reform in Glasgow and Edinburgh, and reports of one or two of their speeches had been printed. Muir was sentenced to transportation for fourteen years, and Palmer for seven. They were shipped off to Botany Bay with a cargo of common felons! Several other persons, for attending a Reform Convention in Edinburgh the same year, shared a like fate. These are trials which sunshine politicians of the liberal school never contemplate, except to draw from them materials for rounding off fine periods about freedom and the rights of man. But they endear the sufferers to the struggling masses of their own time; and, in after years, when the sons of the persecutors garnish their tombs, those who then endure like trials swear by their memories and conjure with their names.

The times of which I write were prolific of these State prosecutions. Mr. Erskine was the ready counsel of the proscribed reformers then, as Mr. Brougham was at a later period. His great effort on these trials was to convince the court that the juries had the right to decide upon the character of the publication in making up their verdicts; or, in legal phrase, that they were "judges both of law and fact." In this effort, he had many a fierce conflict with the judges, when, with his usual courage, he braved their rebukes and challenged the execution of their hinted threats to commit him for contempt. He always argued this point fully to the court, in the presence of the jury; and such was his mastery over the reason and the feelings, that he sometimes prevented a conviction when he could not obtain an acquittal. It was in an affair of this sort that he had a quarrel with Mr. Justice Buller, a judge who coupled double the imperiousness of Mansfield with half his talents, and whose frown, glowering out from under his huge wig, has silenced many a barrister of more than common nerve. The respectable Dean of St. Asaph, who breathed the mountain air of Wales, published a clever political tract, under the guise of a dialogue between King George and a farmer. Erskine went down to defend him. Buller presided at the trial. Erskine argued his favorite topic with more than his accustomed ability. The jury listened with absorbing attention; the judge with impatient interruptions. He charged furiously against the Dean, and told the jury, if they believed he published the tract, they must render a general verdict of guilty. The words of reason and power of the great barrister, and his piercing eyes, which riveted everything within their gaze, went with them to their room. They returned a verdict in these words: "Guilty of publishing only." The astonished judge ordered them out again, with directions to render a general verdict of guilty. Erskine interposed, and insisted upon their right to render such a verdict as they had. The judge replied tartly, and the jury retired. Again they came in with the same verdict. The judge reprimanded them, while Erskine insisted that their verdict should be recorded. Buller retorted, explained his law to the refractory panel, and sent them out. The third time they appeared with the same verdict. The judge grew furious, and said, unless they rendered a general verdict, he should order the clerk to enter it "guilty." Erskine protested in strong terms. Buller ordered him to sit down. Erskine said he would not sit down, nor would he allow the court to record a verdict of guilty against his client, when the jury had rendered no such verdict. Buller hinted at commitment. Erskine defied him. The jury were frightened, and, in their panic, assented to a general verdict of guilty.[2] Erskine excepted, and carried the case to the full bench. But the day of triumph was at hand. So clearly had he in his great arguments exposed the iniquity of the rule, (if, indeed, it was law at all,) and so pertinaciously had he contested it on the trial of the Dean, that Parliament passed a declaratory act soon after, (thus admitting that Erskine was right,) giving jurors, in these prosecutions, the power to render a verdict upon the whole offense charged, i. e., making them "judges of the law as well as the fact."[3] I need not say that, after this, prosecutions for seditious libels became less potent and frequent weapons in the hands of royal and ministerial persecutors, and reformers breathed freer.

It does the heart good to contemplate talents like Erskine's devoted to such purposes. To see the foremost lawyer of his time, in the midst of wide-spread aristocratic clamor, and despite the fulminations of kings and ministers and judges, take the side of humble men, who are denounced as incendiaries, agrarians, levelers, French Jacobins, traitors, and infidels, plotting to murder their sovereign, upheave his throne, and prostrate the altars of the church, (and these are but a tithe of the catalogue,) and for years perform prodigies of labor for poor clients and poorer pay, thus blocking up the avenues to preferment in his cherished profession, and all for the love he bears the common cause! Such a spectacle should go somewhat to blunt the edge of those taunts so constantly aimed at a profession which he adored and adorned, and which, in every struggle for human rights, has furnished leaders to the popular party among the bravest of the brave. The law, like every other profession, has its scum and its vermin, and yields its share of dishonest men. But they are dishonest not because they are lawyers, but because they are scoundrels, and would have been so had they chosen to be merchants, physicians, or horse-jockies. When reproaching the whole legal fraternity as a "pack of licensed swindlers," it might be well to remember that the most conspicuous rebels and martyrs of English freedom, in the olden times, were lawyers—that Erskine, Emmet, Romilly, Mackintosh, O'Connell, and Brougham, of later and milder days, were lawyers; and that Jefferson, Adams, Otis, Sherman, Henry, and Hamilton, with many other bold spirits who thundered and lightened during the storm of the American revolution, were lawyers.

But we must leave Mr. Erskine by saying, that he possessed ability and learning to maintain the boldest positions; eloquence for the most thrilling appeals; imagination to sustain the loftiest flights. He was graceful in action, melodious in elocution, and had an eye of whose fascinating power jurors were often heard to speak. He was a wit and a logician—a lawyer and a reformer—a man, cast in the noblest mold of his species.

Mr. Erskine was powerfully sustained in his efforts for law reform by the great liberal leader in the House of Commons. Charles James Fox deserves a conspicuous place among the early Reformers of England. Entering Parliament in 1768, when just turned twenty-one, he rallied under the banner of Mr. Burke, then the chief debater on the Whig side, whose lead he followed through the doubtful contest on American questions; and when victory, and peace, and independence, crowned their efforts, the chief resigned the standard of opposition to the hands of his younger and more robust lieutenant. Fox is called "the disciple of Burke," and, after their unnatural estrangement, he gratefully said, "I have learnt more from Burke alone than from all other men and authors." He remained in the Commons till his death, in 1806; and though hampered by aristocratic connections and the leadership of his party, his generous nature and warm heart, through nearly forty years of Parliamentary life carried his great talents to the liberal side. He headed the forlorn hope of English freedom during the panic immediately following the French revolution, and in the darkest and stormiest nights of that gloomy period, his voice sounded clear and firm above the tempest, hurling defiance at his foes, and bidding the few friends of man and constitutional liberty who stood around him to be of good cheer, for the day of their redemption was drawing on. His speech against the stamp act, the taxation of the colonies, the American war, the test act, the suspension of the habeas corpus, the treason and sedition bills, the slave trade; and in favor of Parliamentary reform, religious toleration, Catholic emancipation, the rights of juries, and of peace, contain volumes of liberal principles which endear his name to the friends of humanity in both hemispheres. As Erskine was the first advocate that ever stood at the English bar, so Fox was the first debater that ever appeared in its Commons. Burke wrote of him, after their separation: "I knew him when he was nineteen; since which, he has risen to be the most brilliant and accomplished debater the world ever saw." His argumentative powers were of the highest order, and his wit, his invective, and his appeals to the judgment and feelings unrivaled. In the partisan warfare of extemporaneous debate, he bore down on his antagonists with an energy which, when fully roused, bordered on ferocity. But it was the ferocity of impassioned logic and intense reasoning. Not content with once going over the ground in controversy, he traveled it again and again, unfolding new arguments and adding additional facts, till his searching and vigorous eloquence had discovered and demolished every objection that lay in his track. The very embodiment of the reasoning element in man, he saw through his subject with rapid glances, grappled sturdily with all its strong points, despised mere ornaments, rejected all bewildering flights of the imagination, and shunned excursions into collateral fields which skirted his line of argument. In these latter respects he was totally unlike his great master. As his reasoning powers were cast in the most colossal mold, so his heart was of the finest and noblest quality. Mackintosh has justly said, that "he united in a most remarkable degree the seemingly repugnant characters of the mildest of men and the most vehement of orators." His appeals to magnanimity, to generosity, to integrity, to justice, to mercy, thrilled the soul of Freedom, while the tide of consuming lava which he poured on hypocrisy, meanness, dissimulation, cruelty, and oppression, made the grovelers at the footstool of power hide with fear and shame. He was a statesman of the broadest and most liberal views. His capacious mind was stored with political knowledge; he had deeply studied the institutions of ancient and modern States; and no man better understood the general and constitutional history of his own country, nor the delicate machinery which regulated its complicated foreign and domestic affairs. As bold as a lion, he never cowered before the King, his ministers, or his minions; but gloried in being the mouthpiece of out-door Reformers, whose radical principles and humble connections prevented their admission within the Parliamentary walls. He repeated the coarse opinions of Cartwright and his companions, in a place whose doors they were forbidden to darken, but in language worthy of the classic scion of Holland House. He was of invaluable service to the radical party, in gaining them favor with the aristocratic and learned Whigs, because he could throw over their principles the shield of argument, adorn them with the grace of scholarship, and dignify them with the luster of birth and station. In this regard his conduct might be profitably studied by his professed admirers on this side of the Atlantic.

Mr. Fox was totally unlike his great rival. Pitt was stately, taciturn, and of an austere temper. Fox was easy, social, and of a kindly disposition. Pitt was tall and grave, and, entering the House carefully dressed, walked proudly to the head of the Treasury bench, and took his seat as dignified and dumb as a statue. Fox was burly and jovial, entered the House in a slouched hat and with a careless air, and, as he approached the Opposition benches, had a nod for this learned city member, and a joke for that wealthy knight of the shire, and sat down, as much at ease as if he were lounging in the back parlor of a country inn. Pitt, as the adage runs, could "speak a King's speech off-hand," so consecutive were his sentences; and his round, smooth periods delighted the aristocracy of all parties. Fox made the Lords of the Treasury quail as he declaimed in piercing tones against ministerial corruption, while his friends shouted "hear! hear!" and applauded till the House shook. Pitt's sentences were pompous and sonorous, and often "their sound revealed their own hollowness." Fox uttered sturdy Anglo-Saxon sense; every word pregnant with meaning. Pitt was a thorough business man, and relied for success in debate upon careful preparation. Fox despised the drudgery of the office, and relied upon his intuitive perceptions and his robust strength. Pitt was the greater Secretary—Fox the greater Commoner. Pitt's oratory was like the frozen stalactites and pyramids which glitter around Niagara in mid-winter, stately, clear, and cold. Fox's like the vehement waters which sweep over its brink, and roar and boil in the abyss below. Pitt, in his great efforts, only erected himself the more proudly, and uttered more full Johnsonian sentences, sprinkling his dignified but monotonous "state-paper style" with pungent sarcasms, speaking as one having authority, and commanding that it might stand fast. Fox on such occasions reasoned from first principles, denouncing where he could not persuade, and reeling under his great thoughts, until his excited feelings rocked him, like the ocean in a storm. Pitt displayed the most rhetoric, and his mellow voice charmed, like the notes of an organ. Fox displayed the most argument, and his shrill tones pierced like arrows. Pitt had an icy taste; Fox a fiery logic. Pitt had art; Fox nature. Pitt was dignified, cool, cautious; Fox manly, generous, brave. Pitt had a mind; Fox a soul. Pitt was a majestic automaton; Fox a living man. Pitt was the Minister of the King; Fox the Champion of the People. Both were the early advocates of Parliamentary reform; but Pitt retreated, while Fox advanced; and both joined in denouncing and abolishing the horrors of the middle passage. Both died the same year, and they sleep side by side in Westminster Abbey, their dust mingling with that of their mutual friend Wilberforce; while over their tombs watches with eagle eye and extended arm the molded form of Chatham.

CHAPTER V.

The French Revolution—The Continental Policy of Mr. Pitt—The Policy of Mr. Fox and his Followers—The Continental Wars—Mr. Sheridan—Mr. Burke—Mr. Perceval.

In determining whether the policy which Pitt and his successors pursued towards France, from 1792 to 1815, was wise for England and beneficial to Europe, an American republican will remember that it was sustained by the party which ever resisted all social and political improvement among the people—that the enemies of change warred on the Directory, the Consulate, the Empire—that the patrons of existing abuses restored the Bourbons. Nor will he forget that this policy was steadily opposed by the friends of enlightened progress and useful reform—the champions of civil and religious freedom. The specious reasoning and showy declamations of a score of Alisons will never destroy these facts.

France, equally with Great Britain, had the right to enjoy the Government of its choice. But the latter, early in 1793, declined to negotiate or correspond with the former, because it was a republic; and refusing to receive the credentials of its minister, ordered him to quit the kingdom. France, sustained by the law of nations, declared war against the Power which had insulted her. Pitt asserted that the French revolution had no sufficient cause in the nature of the Government or the condition of the people, and was the offspring of a reckless spirit of innovation. He avowed his determination to put down the republic, restore the monarchy, and maintain the cause of legitimacy in Europe. This avowal was met by the declaration of the liberal party, that the true cause of the revolution was the undue restriction and limitation of the rights and privileges of the people; and that, however it might be perverted, its real object was to wrest from the Government what had been unjustly withheld from its subjects. They demanded, therefore, that the diplomatic representative of France should be received by the ministry; and they resisted all interference with its internal affairs, all attempts to suppress liberal movements in Europe, all efforts to uphold its crumbling thrones. They plead for peace and an armed neutrality. And, after Napoleon's schemes of conquest were disclosed, they contended that England ought not to unite in a coalition for his overthrow, so long as it was a battle among kings, but should wait till the people of the continent requested assistance; and even then, that it ought not to be given till the rulers of the endangered States were pledged to grant reasonable privileges to their subjects. On this elevated ground did the liberal party take its stand. But Pitt, representing only the monarchical and privileged orders, at the outset of the conflict pledged the power and resources of England to the accomplishment of his ends; and his policy was steadily followed, with ruinous and mortifying results, until the European combination of 1814-15 finally crushed Napoleon at Waterloo, and restored the Bourbon to his throne.

And what did England gain by her armies and fleets, her intrigues in foreign cabinets and subsidies of men and money? True, Napoleon was prostrated, But she had spent £600 000,000 in doing it. At the commencement of the war, her debt was less than £240,000,000. At its close, it had swelled to more than £840,000,000! Centuries of taxation to restore the Bourbons to a throne which they cannot retain, and to postpone for fifty years the general overthrow of monarchy in Europe! The seventh descending son of the youngest Englishman alive will curse the day that Pitt entered on this crusade against Destiny. When the unnatural fever of the contest abated, the reaction, the retribution, came. Peace had returned, but she was not accompanied by her twin-sister, Plenty. English trade, commerce, manufactures, agriculture, languished—laborers wandered through the provinces in search of employment—the country sunk exhausted into the arms of bankruptcy. The smoke of battle no longer blinding the eye, the people began to look about and inquire, "What have we gained by all this outgush of blood and treasure?" The wealthy saw before them ages of remorseless taxation—the poor clamored in the streets for bread—all but the extreme privileged classes regarded the result of the war as a triumph over themselves. At peace with all the world, (almost the first time for three-fourths of a century), the nation was the scene of internal discords more threatening than foreign levy. Nothing but general lassitude, and the pressure of misfortunes common to all, prevented a revolution.

This contest was injurious to England in another way. It so possessed the public mind that there was little room left for domestic improvement. Meanwhile, the cause of reform was turned out of doors. The French Revolution was a God-send to Pitt and the Tories. Seizing upon its early excesses, they conjured with them thirty years, frightening the middling men from their propriety, and terrifying even the giant soul of Burke. The "horrors of the French revolution" were thrown in the face of every man who demanded reform. The clamors of the tired and fleeced suitors in Lord Eldon's court were silenced by "the horrors of the French revolution." Old Sarum and Grampound lengthened out their "rotten" existence by supping on "the horrors of the French revolution." Point to the festering corruption of the Church Establishment, and it lifted up its holy hands at "the horrors of the French revolution." The Catholics were persecuted, the Irish gibbeted, and printers transported, to atone for "the horrors of the French revolution." The poor starved in damp cellars, whilst the landlord fattened his protected soil with "the horrors of the French revolution." In a word, these "horrors" constituted the chief staple of Tory argument and declamation, and were a conclusive answer to all who asked for cheap bread, religious toleration, law reform, reduced taxes, and an enlarged suffrage.

The lessons of wisdom, so dearly purchased by this scheme of Continental interference, have not been thrown away on a nation which spent so much to gain so little. The second French revolution was followed by England granting Parliamentary Reform, to prevent a revolution at home. The third revolution, which prostrated a monarchy, and reared a republic in a day, was promptly recognized and respected by England, whose Premier declared that she heartily accorded to the people of France the right to ordain for themselves such a system of Government as they might choose! Men may prate eternally about the virtues of Louis XVI, the grasping ambition of Napoleon, the far-seeing sagacity of Burke, and the wisdom and firmness of Pitt, and it will still remain true, that the principles thrown up with the fire and blood of the great French eruption will yet work out the regeneration of Europe.

Mr. Sheridan was as steady a supporter of freedom, and as inflexible an opponent of Pitt, as a man of so volatile a temperament could well be. This gentleman is best known on our side of the Atlantic as the author of the comedy the "School for Scandal," and of a speech on the trial of Warren Hastings. The comedy still holds a deservedly high place on the stage. The speech, which once claimed a position at the head of English forensic oratory, is no doubt much overrated. The intense interest pervading the public mind in respect to the impeachment of the conqueror and ruler of a hundred millions of the people of India—the august character of the tribunal, the peers and judges of the realm—the imposing talents of the committee by whom the Commons sent up the articles of impeachment, consisting of Burke, Fox, North, Grey, Wyndham, Sheridan, with other lights worthy to shine in such a constellation—the romantic branch of Hastings's administration, the opening of which was assigned to Sheridan—the gorgeous colors which he spread upon the oriental canvas—the theatrical style in which he pronounced his oration before a learned, fashionable, and sympathizing audience, all conspired to give to his effort a temporary fame alike extraordinary and undeserved. Nor was the immediate effect of his two days' coruscation diminished by the tragical manner in which he contrived, at its close, to sink backward into the arms of Burke, who, transported beyond measure, hugged him as unaffectedly as if his generous and unsuspecting nature had not been duped by a mere stage trick.

But though he occasionally used the clap-traps of the theater, Sheridan was a debater to be shunned rather than encountered. Pitt dreaded him. Lying in wait till the Minister had addressed the House, the Drury Lane manager used to let fly at him such a cloud of stinging arrows, pointed with sarcasm and poisoned with invective, that the stately Premier could not conceal his mortification, nor hardly retain his seat till the storm had passed away. No Parliamentarian ever inspired so much dread in his opponents, and won so much applause from his friends, with so scanty a stock of statesmanlike acquirements. His political knowledge was gathered from the columns of the current newspapers and the discussions in the club-rooms, and his literary stores were made up from the modern poetry and drama of England. True, he was educated at Harrow, but he threw aside Demosthenes and Cicero for Congreve and Vanburgh, and wrote comedies when he should have studied mathematics. He never claimed to be a statesman, and only aspired to be an orator. To shine as a dazzling declaimer, he bent all the powers of his intense and elastic mind. He attended debating clubs, and caught up the best sayings—practiced attitudes and tones in the green-room—set down every keen thought which occurred to him in a note-book—conned his lesson—then entered the House, and rushing into the arena of debate with the bound and air of a gladiator, won the reputation of being the readiest wit, the most skillful off-hand disputant, and the most gorgeous orator of the day. And it was the day of Burke, Pitt, Fox, Erskine, Grattan, and Wyndham! Lord Chesterfield was not so very wrong when he told his son that, even in Parliament, more depended upon the manner of saying a thing, than upon the matter of which it was composed. Though his taste was formed on the flashy model of the modern drama, and in the composition of his numerous tropes and metaphors he did not always distinguish between tinsel and gold, between painted glass and pure diamonds, yet he generally succeeded in doing what he intended—producing a tremendous sensation. His rockets set the hemisphere in a blaze; nor was he always careful on whose head the sticks fell; for he spared neither friends nor foes, if he must thereby lose a good hit.

Though Sheridan regarded the color of the husk more than the character of the kernel, he uttered much that will perish only with the English tongue. In an attack on Ministers, who were attempting to carry a bill against the freedom of the press, he exclaimed, "Give them a corrupt House of Lords; give them a venal House of Commons; give them a tyrannical Prince; give them a truckling Court—and let me but have an unfettered press, and I will defy them to encroach a hair's breadth upon the liberties of England"—a passage worthy of Chatham. During the treason trials, in 1794, he poured a torrent of ridicule upon the proceedings, which did not a little toward restoring a panic-stricken public to its senses. An extract will give an idea of his sarcasm. In replying to Pitt, he said, "I own there was something in the case; quite enough to disturb the virtuous sensibilities and loyal terrors of the right honorable gentleman. But, so hardened is this side of the House, that our fears did not much disturb us. On the first trial, one pike was produced. This was, however, withdrawn. Then a terrific instrument was talked of, for the annihilation of his Majesty's cavalry, which, upon evidence, appeared to be a te-totum in a window at Sheffield. But I had forgot—there was also a camp in a back shop; an arsenal provided with nine muskets; and an exchequer, containing exactly the same number of pounds—no, let me be accurate, it was nine pounds and one bad shilling. * * * * The alarm had been brought in with great pomp and circumstance on a Saturday morning. At night, the Duke of Richmond stationed himself, among other curiosities, at the Tower, and a great municipal officer, the Lord Mayor, made an appalling discovery in the East. He found out that there was in Cornhill a debating society, where people went to buy treason at sixpence a head; where it was retailed to them by inch of candle; and five minutes, measured by the glass, were allowed to each traitor, to perform his part in overturning the State. In Edinburgh an insurrection was planned; the soldiers were to be corrupted: and this turned out to be—by giving each man sixpence for porter. Now, what the scarcity of money and rations may be in that part of the country, I cannot tell; but it does strike me that the system of corruption has not been carried to any great extent. Then, too, numbers were kept in pay; they were drilled in a dark room, by a sergeant in a brown coat; and on a given signal they were to sally from a back kitchen, and overturn the Constitution."

Though this celebrated orator was wayward in his pursuits, and habitually intemperate, yet, from the time he entered Parliament in 1780 till his sun began to decline, he ever sustained the liberal cause, and his rare talents bore with striking effect against the Continental policy of Pitt, and in favor of Irish Regeneration, Parliamentary Reform, the freedom of the press, and the rights of the people.

I have spoken of Edmund Burke, than whom, no man could afford a stronger contrast to Sheridan. He had an original, daring genius, but it was sustained by a broad and comprehensive judgment. His imagination was as gorgeous as ever plumed the wing of eloquence, but it was enriched and invigorated by learning vast and varied. Until his mind became engrossed, not to say possessed with the subject which occupied the latter years of his great life, (the French revolution,) he was the advocate and ornament of progressive freedom. He first led and then followed Fox in all the lines of policy which the liberal party pursued from 1765 to 1790, when they separated, and Burke became not so much the advocate of Pitt and his Tories, as the opponent of France and its Republicans; choosing thereafter, as he expressed it, to be a Whig, "without coining to himself Whig principles from a French die, unknown to the impress of our fathers in the Constitution." He left Parliament in 1794, and died in 1797. During the last six years of his life he seemed almost diseased by the excesses of the French revolution; and whatever subject he surveyed, on whatever ground he looked, he appeared to see naught but the convulsions of that tragedy. The vivid impressions which he received he transferred to publications which glowed with his fervid soul, and produced a prodigious sensation amongst the higher orders of his countrymen. But take him all in all, his was the most magnificent mind of modern England. If called to designate the most remarkable name which adorns its later annals, to whose would we so unhesitatingly point as to his? Is he not entitled to a place among the five most extraordinary men which that kingdom has produced—Bacon, Shakspeare, Newton, Milton, Burke? He possessed the multifarious learning of our Adams, the intellectual grasp of our Marshall, the metaphysical subtlety of our Edwards, the logical energy of our Webster, the soaring imagination of our Wirt, the fervid glow of our Clay; and he was the equal of each in his most cultivated field. As a Parliamentary leader, he was inferior to Fox and Pitt. His essay-like style was not adapted to so popular a body as the House of Commons. His speeches wore the air of the academy rather than the forum; and much of his discourse was too elaborate, too learned, too philosophical, too ornate, to be appreciated by the general run of commonplace sort of men that drift into the halls of legislation. During the thirty years he participated in affairs, there fell from his lips and pen an amount of political sagacity, far-seeing statesmanship, philosophical disquisition, and oratorical display, all set off and adorned by an amplitude of learning, a majesty of diction, and a brilliancy of imagery, the fourth of which would have carried their author's name to posterity as one of the remarkable men of his time. He who thinks this eulogium extravagant has only to find its confirmation in the mines of intellectual wealth which lie embedded in the sixteen volumes of the works he has given to his country and the world, to his cotemporaries and to posterity. True, there will be found, mingled with these strata of pure gold, veins of impracticability, sophistry, prejudice, extravagance, and violence. His later writings, and in many respects his most grand and beautiful, are disfigured by a morbid dread of change, and obscured by a gloomy distrust of the capacities of man for self-government; proving, that though gifted with genius beyond most mortals, he was not endowed with the Divine spirit of prophecy. But it is equally true, that while the English language is read, the speeches and writings of Edmund Burke will be classed with the richest treasures of the statesman, the philosopher, and the scholar.

Next to the curse of a military chieftain attempting to adapt the tactics of the camp to the regulations of the cabinet, is the nuisance of a narrow-minded lawyer carrying the prim rules of the bar into the councils of the State, and aiming to be a statesman when he is only capable of being a pettifogger. On the downfall of the Grenville-Fox ministry, Mr. Perceval took the leading place in his Majesty's Government. He was a lawyer with a keen intellect, and a soul shriveled by the most limited views and bigoted prejudices. When ruling England, he looked upon her position in reference to Continental affairs, and the part she was to perform in the drama of nations, much as he was wont to regard the ten-pound case of a plaintiff whose brief and retainer he held. He argued the great questions which nightly agitated the House of Commons, and whose decisions were to affect not only his own time, but coming ages, like a mere lawyer struggling for a verdict. His weapon was sharp, and he applied its edge in the same way, whether analyzing the title of James Jackson to a ten-acre lot in Kent, or of Louis XVIII to the throne of France. He discussed a financial scheme in Parliament to raise twenty millions sterling to carry on the war, just as he argued the consideration of a twenty-pound note before a jury of Yorkshire plowmen. Yet he was a good tactician; saw a point readily and clearly, though he saw nothing but a point; knew how to touch the prejudices of bigots; was great at beating his opponents on small divisions; rarely lost his temper under the severest provocations; was quick at a turn and keen at a retort; and spoke in a lively, colloquial, straight-forward style, which pleased the fat country gentlemen much better than the classical allusions and ornate periods of Mr. Canning. He kept on the even tenor of his way till assassinated by a madman in the lobby of the House, in 1812.

And this is the man who shaped the financial policy of England during six of the most eventful years of her existence, and whom she permitted to plunge her into debt to the amount of £150,000,000! "How could this be?" The answer is plain. Mr. Perceval stood firmly by the King and the Bishops, flattering the prejudices of the one and the bigotry of the other; and never flinched from eulogizing royalty, when the rude hand of popular clamor drew the vail from the immoralities of the Prince Regent and his brother of York. Then he was a thorough business man; never alarmed "Church and State" by wandering, like Canning and Peel, out of the beaten Tory track; and, so far from giving up a bad cause in the worst of times, he raised his voice the more sternly as the storm of public discontent whistled louder, and cheered his flagging comrades to their daily round of degrading toil. Such a minister was fit to be beloved by a bigoted king and his profligate heir.

CHAPTER VI.

Pitt's Continental Policy—Mr. Tierney—Mr. Whitbread—Lord Castlereagh—Lord Liverpool—Mr. Canning.

In examining a little further among the statesmen who opposed the continental policy of Mr. Pitt and his successors—though by no means intending to notice all who thus distinguished themselves—a less notorious person than Mr. Sheridan attracts the eye; but one who, when we regard the solid, every-day qualities of the mind, greatly surpassed the showy blandishments of that celebrated orator. I allude to Mr. Tierney. Like Mr. Perceval, he was bred to the bar; but unlike him, he was not a mere lawyer, nor was his comprehension hemmed in by narrow prejudices, nor his soul shriveled by bigotry. Though his reputation in this country is dim when compared with other luminaries that shone in that Whig constellation in the dawn of the present century, yet it would be difficult to name one who shed a more steady and useful light along the path of the liberal party, during the first ten years of that century—always excepting Mr. Fox. Mr. Tierney was foremost among the reformers in the perilous times of the treason trials, in 1794—was a prominent member of the society of "Friends of the People"—penned the admirable petition to Parliament, in which that association demonstrated the necessity and safety of an enlarged suffrage, and an equal representation—and, having attained a highly respectable standing at the bar, entered Parliament in 1796, the year before Fox and the heads of the Opposition unwisely abandoned their attendance upon the House, because they despaired of arresting the course of Pitt. Mr. T. was at once brought into a prominent position. He took up the gauntlet, and during two or three sessions was the main leader of the remnant of the Whigs, who stood to their posts; and he showed himself competent to fill the occasion thus opened to him. Night after night he headed the diminished band, arraying the rigid reasoning powers and tireless business habits which he brought from the bar, against the haughty eloquence of Pitt and the dry arguments of Dundas, blunting the cold sarcasms of the former with his inimitable humor, and thrusting his keen analytical weapon between the loose joints of the latter's logical harness. He was solicitor general of Mr. Addington's mixed administration; but the dissolution of that compound soon relieved him from a cramped position, whence he gladly escaped to the broader field of untrammeled opposition. Here he did manful service in the popular cause, effectually blocking up all avenues to advancement, both in the comparatively secluded walks of the profession which he ornamented, and the more rugged and conspicuous paths of politics, which he delighted to tread. During a part of the dark night of the Continental Coalition, he guided the helm of his party with a skill and vigilance which its more renowned chiefs might have profitably imitated. His ability to master the details, as well as trace the outlines, of a complicated subject, (so essential to success at the bar,) induced his colleagues to devolve upon him the labor of exposing those exhausting schemes of finance by which Pitt and his successors drained the life-blood of England's prosperity, and swelled a debt which the sale of its every rood of soil could hardly discharge. Thus he acquired a knowledge of trade and finance, second only to that of the later Mr. Huskisson. It is meet that the unassuming talents and services of such a man, "faithful among the faithless," should not be overlooked when naming the modern reformers of England.

I have spoken of Mr. Whitbread. Some who have not looked into the Parliamentary history of the times we are now glancing over, suppose him to have been merely a great brewer, purchasing an obscure seat in the House of Commons by his ill-gotten wealth, who held his tongue during the session, and sold beer in vacation. But he possessed an intellect of the most vigorous frame, which had been garnished by a complete education, and liberalized by extensive foreign travel. He was the companion and counselor of Fox, Erskine, Sheridan, Grey, Mackintosh, Romilly, and Brougham—a frequent visitor at Holland House—a ready and strong debater, always foremost in the conflicts of those violent times—for a short period the trusted leader of his party in the House—and in 1814, when the quarrel between the imprudent Caroline and her lewd husband came to an open rupture, he was selected, with Brougham, to be her confidential adviser and friend. Generous in the diffusion of his vast wealth—gentle and kindly in his affections—the warm friend of human freedom, and the sworn foe of oppression in all its forms—he gave his entire powers to the cause of progress and reform, and resisted, in all places, at all seasons, and when others quailed, the foreign policy of Pitt, Perceval, and Castlereagh. The return of Napoleon from Elba alarmed all classes of Englishmen, and for the moment swept all parties from their moorings. An Address to the Throne for an enlargement of the forces was immediately moved by Grenville in the Lords, and Grattan in the Commons, (both Whigs,) and supported by a large majority of the panic-struck Opposition. Whitbread stood firm; and, though denounced as a traitor and a French Jacobin, made an able speech in favor of his motion that England ought not to interfere for the restoration of the Bourbons. Such a fact illustrates the inflexible metal of the man, more than a column of panegyric. His political principles approached the standard of democracy; and this, with his plebeian extraction and rather blunt manners, gave him less favor with some of the full-blooded patricians of his party than with their common constituency. He died in 1815, and like Romilly and Castlereagh, fell by his own hand.

Many worthy and not a few illustrious names might find a place here. Grey, the dignified and uncompromising—Romilly, the sagacious and humane—Mackintosh, the classical and ornate—Grattan, the chivalrous and daring—Burdett, the manly and bold—Horner, the learned and modest—Holland, the polished and generous—Brougham, the versatile and strong—all of whom, with others scarcely less notable, sustained the drooping cause of freedom against the policy of Pitt and his followers, and kept alive the sacred fires, to break out brightly in happier times. But, each may be noticed in other connections. We will now speak of three statesmen of a different school.

Lord Castlereagh was the life and soul of Pitt's continental policy during the six years before Napoleon fell. Like Sheridan, he was an Irishman. But, unlike him, he resisted every measure which promised to bless his native country, with the skill of a magician and the venom of a fiend. Ever ready to bribe, bully, or butcher, he plunged England deeper and deeper into debt and into blood, and seemed to regret when there was no more money to be squandered, and no more fighting to be done. As the best atonement he could make for permitting her to come out of the conflict with a free Government, and without being utterly ruined, he went to the Congress of Vienna, and humbly begged leave to lay her constitution and her honor at the feet of the allied despots whom she had impoverished herself in sustaining against the arms of France. It has been contended that Perceval was an honest bigot; at least as honest as any man could be who performed so many bad deeds. But, beyond all question, Castlereagh is one of the most atrocious and despicable Englishmen of the nineteenth century. The name of no other modern statesman is so cordially and so justly detested by the mass of the people. With no more eloquence than a last year's almanac—utterly incapable of cutting even a second-rate figure as a Parliamentary debater—yet, because of his intimate acquaintance with the affairs of that vast kingdom, his blunt sense, promptness in council, unflinching courage, and his unfaltering attachment to the Throne, and his unscrupulous execution of its decrees, he led the Tory party in the Commons, and controlled the counsels of the King through eleven of the most turbulent years in England's recent history. Though not the nominal Premier, he was the real head of its ministry during the war with this country, and in the times which preceded and followed the overthrow of Bonaparte, and bore a leading share in the subsequent despotic transactions which assumed the soft name of "the pacification of Europe." At the Congress of Vienna he represented the Power which had staked all, and nearly lost all, in restoring the Bourbons. This gave him the right to demand, in her name, that the victories she had bought or won should redound to the advancement of constitutional liberty. But this cringing tool of anointed tyranny, so far from bearing himself in a manner worthy of his great constituency, succumbed to the dictation of Russia and Austria—aided them in forming the diabolical Holy Alliance, that politico-military Inquisition for "the settlement of Europe"—and, decked out in his blazing star and azure ribbon, seemed to take as vulgar a satisfaction in being permitted to sit at the council-board of these monarchs, as did Mr. Tittlebat Titmouse, when admitted to the table of the Earl of Dreddlington. His subsequent course in endorsing the military surveillance which this Holy Inquisition exercised over the people of Europe, encountered the tireless hostility of the liberal party of England, whose leaders made the island ring with their protests. At length, this bold, bad man, this "ice-hearted dog," as Ebenezer Elliott called him, having opposed the abolition of the slave trade, the amelioration of the criminal code, the modification of the corn laws, Catholic emancipation, Parliamentary reform, and every other social and political improvement, during twenty-five years, suddenly finished a career which had been marked at every step by infamous deeds. Immediately thereupon, Mr. Canning, who succeeded to his place as Foreign Secretary, filed his protest against certain proceedings of the Holy Alliance, and England withdrew from that conspiracy of royal rogues.

Throughout the period just mentioned, Lord Liverpool was the nominal head of the Ministry. He was a very respectable nobleman, with a large purse and few talents; an easy, good-for-nothing, James-Monroe sort of a body, whom every Whig and Tory made a low bow to, but whom nobody feared or cared for; a pilot that could steer the ship of state tolerably well in quiet waters, but who quit the helm for the cabin the instant the sky was overcast, or the waves raged. He was in office so long that he became a sort of ministerial fixture—a kind of nucleus around which more ambitious, showy, and potent materials gathered. People had become so accustomed to see him at the head of affairs, where he did so little as to offend no one, that they looked upon him as almost as necessary to the working of the governmental machine as the King himself. This commonplace man, under the successive names of Mr. Jenkinson, Lord Hawkesbury, and Lord Liverpool, held important stations in the Cabinet more than thirty years, nearly half of which he was Premier.

As has been remarked, Mr. Canning succeeded Lord Castlereagh as Foreign Secretary in 1823, and Lord Liverpool as Premier in 1827. Like Castlereagh, Canning was of Irish descent; but, unlike him, he had some Irish blood in his veins. Like him, he sustained the continental policy of Pitt; but, unlike him, he did not desire to degrade England, after she had destroyed Napoleon. Like him, he exercised great sway in the councils of the country; but, unlike him, it was not so much the influence of mere official station, as the voluntary tribute paid to a splendid and captivating genius. For thirty-five years, this remarkable man participated in public affairs; and whatever opinion may be formed of his statesmenship, he was undoubtedly the most brilliant orator (I use the term in its best and in its restricted sense) which has appeared in the House of Commons the present century.

Canning's father was a broken-down Irish barrister, who, having little knowledge of law, and less practice, quit Ireland for London, where he eked out a scanty existence by writing bad rhymes for the magazines, and tolerable pamphlets for the politicians. He died the day George was a year old—April 11, 1771. The mother, left penniless, listened to the flatteries of Garrick, went upon the stage, tried to sustain first-rate characters, failed, sunk silently into a secondary position, married a drunken actor, who then had two or three wives, and who, after strolling about the provinces a few years, died in a mad-house, when she married a stage-smitten silk mercer, who had a little more money than her late husband, and a rather better character. Failing in business soon after, he tried the stage in company with his wife, where he speedily broke down, and she continued for some years to figure in third-rate characters at the minor theaters. In such company as would naturally surround such guardians, the future Prime Minister of England spent the first nine or ten years of his life. He had a respectable paternal uncle in London—a merchant of some wealth. An old actor, by the name of Moody, detected the glittering gem of genius in the unpromising lad, went to this uncle, and urged him to take his nephew (whom he had never seen) under his care. He complied, sent him to a grammar school, then to Eton, and, dying, left the means of educating his ward at Oxford. Young Canning shone conspicuously at the University, as a wit, an elocutionist, and a poet, and contracted some aristocratic friendships which served his turn in subsequent life, especially that with Mr. Jenkinson, afterwards Lord Liverpool.

After he left the University, he became intimate with Sheridan, who knew something of his mother and his own history, and by him was introduced to Fox and other leading Whigs. Though impregnated with liberal principles, his ambitious eye saw that Whigism was an obscured luminary, and so he turned and worshiped the ascendant star of Pitt. Entering Parliament in 1793, just at the bursting of the continental storm, he at once took his seat on the Treasury benches, and soon became a polished shaft in the quiver of the great anti-Gallican archer. In or out of office, he followed the fortunes of Pitt and his successors, till he quarreled and fought a duel with Castlereagh, in 1809, when they both left the Cabinet, and Canning remained under a cloud till 1814, when he was banished as minister to the Court of Lisbon. From this time, he never had the full confidence of the old school Tories, though he was their most brilliant advocate in Parliament, and generally shared office with them, and sustained their measures. After Castlereagh died, Mr. Canning drew closely around him the more liberal Tories—such as Lords Melbourne, Palmerston, Glenelg—and made up, in conjunction with Mr. Huskisson, a "third party," called "Canningites," who, through the auspices of Brougham, in 1827, formed a quasi coalition with the Whigs. After the death of their chief, many of his followers went completely over to the Whigs, aided Earl Grey in carrying the reform bill, took office under him, and subsequently, in an evil hour, became the leaders of that party.

With the exception of giving a hearty support to the abolition of the slave trade, and advocating the cause of Catholic emancipation, Mr. Canning sustained the worst Tory measures from his entrance into Parliament to the death of Castlereagh—a period of thirty years—bringing to bear against the People's cause all the resources of his classical learning, vivid wit, vigorous reasoning, captivating manners, and unrivaled oratory. Undoubtedly, he despised the truckling course of Castlereagh towards the Holy Alliance; and, either because he wished to escape from "a false position," or because his colleagues desired to cripple his influence, he was just about to go out to India as Governor General, when the suicide of Castlereagh altered his destination, and he exchanged a subordinate foreign station for the chief control of that department of affairs. Immediately, England took a nobler position toward the continental alliance in which she had been entangled by his wily predecessor. The new Secretary protested against the interference of the Allied Sovereigns with the popular movements in Spain, and early the next year (1824) stated in his place that Ministers had refused to become parties to another Congress. This was the longest stride toward progress for thirty years, and well might the House of Commons ring with enthusiastic plaudits. This was promptly followed by the virtual recognition of the independence of the new South American Republics—another blow at the Holy Military Inquisition. Calling Mr. Robinson to his aid as Chancellor of the Exchequer, and Mr. Huskisson as President of the Board of Trade, the reörganized ministry (good, easy Lord Liverpool being its nominal head) adopted a more liberal policy in commerce and finance, which, coupled with its course in foreign affairs, drew to it a large share of confidence in the middle classes, and softened the asperities of the Opposition. During the four years that Canning controlled Liverpool's ministry, taxes were reduced, several restrictions removed from trade, the endless delays in chancery inquired into, the death penalty curtailed, resolutions passed looking toward slave emancipation, the corn laws slightly modified, and a bill for the relief of the Catholics was carried in the Commons, but thrown out by the Lords. Liverpool died early in 1827. After a quarrel with Wellington and Peel, Canning, in May of that year, reached the culminating point of his ambition, the Premiership of England. But, at the end of four months of vexed and troublesome rule, he died, much lamented by the people, who were expecting good things from his administration.

Viewed from one point of observation, Mr. Canning's later policy was favorable to the cause of reform; but, in another aspect, it may be doubted whether his half-way measures were not, in the long run, detrimental to that cause. He was raised up to save the Tory party, if they would have consented to be saved by him; for, had he lived, he would have continued gradually to yield to the advancing spirit of the age, and kept them in power many years. But their distrust of him after the peace of 1815 crippled his genius, mortified his pride, and determined him in due time to rend the party which would not permit him to rule. Through the aid of his personal adherents, his "third party," he did for the Tories in 1826-7, what Peel did for them twenty years later—yielded to liberal opinions—split the party in twain—and formed a quasi coalition with his ancient opponents. Though by this means some measures, such as Catholic emancipation and Parliamentary reform, were sooner carried (though only to a partial extent) than they otherwise might have been, yet it is hardly to be doubted that the liberal cause is now more depressed than it would have been, had no such coalition been formed and no such resulting concessions made. Though the secession of the Canningites weakened the Tories, the accession diluted the Whigs. It ultimately gave them such leaders as Melbourne and Palmerston—men who, down to 1828, had been among the most strenuous opponents of reform—men who have made Whigism popular at Court, by arraying it in purple and fine linen, and other soft clothing—who have stripped it of its rugged aspect, and decked it in the high-bred airs which it wore in the days of the elder Georges and the Walpoles, when a few noble families controlled its affairs. But, on the other hand, Mr. Canning broke the power of old-fashioned John Bull Toryism—the remorseless, insolent, statu-quo Toryism of French revolutionary times—and introduced the more complying, civil, progressive Toryism, which emancipates Catholics and repeals corn laws.

Mr. Canning was like Mr. Fox in one respect. Each introduced a new era in his party. The aristocratic Whigism of the last century, to which I have alluded, is graphically hit off by Brougham, when he says the heads of the few great families who controlled the party "never could be made to understand how a feeble motion, prefaced by a feeble speech, if made by an elderly lord and seconded by a younger one, could fail to satisfy the country and shake the Ministry!" Fox, the Jefferson of English liberalism, opened the door for men without ancestry or wealth to enter the party, and find the place to which their talents assigned them, whether at its head or its foot. He introduced the Whigism of the type of Grey, Brougham, Romilly, Russell, and the Edinburgh Review. It has served its day and generation, and has become so like modified, Canningized Toryism, that the chief distinction between them is in the different modes of spelling their names. Within the last twenty years, the people of England have advanced a century, while the Whig leaders have not kept pace even with the calendar. English liberalism looks with longing eye for "the coming man;" and when he appears, he will be as far in advance of the Palmerstons and Russells of to-day, as they are before the Pitts and the Percevals of past times.

To return to Mr. Canning. During the last five years of his life, he occupied a sort of middle-ground between the ancient and the modern regime; or, rather, was the connecting-link between the old and the new order of things. Having served under Pitt in his youth, he formed an alliance with the disciples of Fox in his maturity. Having advocated the complete destruction of the Irish Parliament in 1799 and 1800, he proposed a qualified emancipation of its Catholics in 1823 and 1827. Having sustained the European coalition for the overthrow of Napoleon, he repudiated its legitimate offspring, the Holy Alliance. Having drained England of her wealth to nourish and maintain absolutism on the continent, he shrunk from permitting her to pluck the fruit of her own culture. In these latter years, he might have been properly called either a liberal Tory or a Conservative Whig. He was the friend of Catholic emancipation; but though public sentiment was not ripe enough during his administration to accomplish this reform, his efforts tended to bring it to that maturity which, soon after his death, enabled this proscribed sect to gather the fruit from that tree of religious toleration which his hand had aided to plant in the breast of English Protestantism. But, on the vital subject of Parliamentary reform, he would yield nothing. It was in reference to this that he had his famous quarrel with Brougham, who, by the bye, was for many years the pitted antagonist of Canning. The point in controversy was the disfranchisement of a rotten borough, which had been convicted of bribery. Both girded themselves for the contest. Never was the rugged intensity of the one, nor the polished strength of the other, more conspicuous than on that occasion. Brougham's attack was compared to the concave speculum, in which every ray was concentrated with focal intensity, and poured in a burning stream upon his shrinking victim. Canning's, to the convex mirror, which scattered the rays, and showered them down upon his foe with blinding fervor.

Turning from the statesman to the orator, we find him occupying a place equaled by few of his cotemporaries; surpassed by none. He was the Cicero of the British Senate; and, using the term oratory in its precise sense, he shines unrivaled among the English statesmen of our day. He is an admirable refutation of the somewhat popular error, that a reasoner must necessarily be as dull and uninteresting as the Rev. Dr. Dryasdust—that wit, raillery, vivid illustration, and suggestive allusions, are incompatible with sound argument—that to be convincing, one must be stupid—that logic consists in a lifeless skeleton of consecutive syllogisms, divested of the flesh, blood, and marrow of eloquence—and that the profundity of a speech is to be measured by the depth of the slumbers into which it precipitates the auditory. It is thus that many a man has gained the reputation of being a great reasoner, when he was only a great bore; or been accounted wiser than his more vivacious associates, because he wore a stolid visage and held his tongue—completely putting to rout the venerable maxim of "nothing venture, nothing have."

Though few public speakers of his time dealt more with the lighter graces of oratory—wit, fancy, epigram, anecdote, historical illustration, and classical allusion—so, few excelled him in the clearness of his statements, the solidity of his arguments, and the skill with which he brought all his resources to bear upon the point to be reached, and the power with which he pressed it home to the conviction of his hearers. A burst of laughter from all sides, excited by his infectious wit, or a round of applause from his friends when some galling sarcasm pierced the mailed harness of the Opposition, relieved the tedium of a currency debate, intolerably dull in most hands, but which he, by mingling figures of speech with the figures of the budget, always made interesting, and thus kept his party in good humor while he drove these wearisome topics through the thick skulls of knights of the shire and country squires, of which material the Tories were largely made up. Throwing around the path where he led his auditors a profusion of flowers, gathered in all climes and refreshing to all tastes, he was ever carrying forward the heavy chain of argument, delighting while he convinced, and amusing that he might convert.

But these rare qualities produced their drawbacks. So skillful a master of so bewitching an art could not be sparing in the exhibition of his peculiar powers. His pleasantry and by-play, when handling momentous questions, offended graver men, who could not believe that so much levity was consistent with sincerity. He excited the jealousy of plainer understandings, who saw things as clearly as he, but could not set them in so transparent a light. His coruscations were not only glittering, but they often dazzled and confounded less ornate minds. His sarcasms stung his enemies to madness; and, not content merely to drive his opponents to the wall, he hurled them there with such force, that they rebounded into the arena, to become in turn the assailants; and his friends found that a brilliant attack led on by him often resulted in a counter assault, which summoned to the rescue all the forces of his party. And more than this, his port and bearing left the impression upon most minds that a consummate artist was acting a part, and not a sincere man speaking from the heart. His obscure origin, (obscure for one who aspired to be a Tory Premier,) and his early coquetry with the Whigs, affixed to him the epithet of "an adventurer;" and he never shook off the epithet, nor effaced the impression that it was fitly bestowed. The people of England, whether he was Treasurer of the Navy, Foreign Secretary, Prime Minister, or Parliamentary orator, never wholly escaped from the suspicion that the son was following the profession of the mother, but had chosen the chapel of St. Stephen's rather than the theater of Drury Lane, for the display of his genius.

Turning from the orator to the man, we find much to delight the eye. George Canning never forgot the humble mother that bore him. So soon as his resources would permit, he made ample provision for her support; and for years after he entered Parliament, and even when a foreign ambassador, he wrote her a weekly epistle, breathing the kindliest affection. Though he could never elevate her tastes and associations above the connections of her youth, he used to throw aside the cares of office, that he might visit her, and the humble cousins with whom she dwelt, at Bath; and there, when in the zenith of his fame, would walk out with his plebeian relatives, and receive the homage of the lordly visitants at that fashionable resort, in their company. This marks him a noble man. He delighted in literary pursuits—would drop the pen when preparing a diplomatic dispatch, to talk over the classics with his university acquaintances—was a brilliant essayist, and wrote Latin and English verses with grace and beauty.

CHAPTER VII.

Abolition of the African Slave Trade—Granville Sharpe—Wilberforce—Pitt—Stephen—Macaulay—Brougham.

In tracing the foreign policy of Pitt, we have been led beyond the period of the great philanthropic achievement of 1806-7—the Abolition of the African Slave Trade. I shall not trace the origin and growth of this traffic, nor describe its horrors, nor detail the measures, in and out of Parliament, which led to its legal prohibition. They are familiar to those who will be likely to read this chapter.

Thomas Clarkson was the father of the movement for the abolition of the slave trade, and, consequently, for the destruction of negro slavery itself, of which it is but an incident. The circumstances which turned his attention to it are novel. In 1785, he was a senior bachelor of arts of St. John's College, Cambridge. The vice chancellor, impressed with the iniquity of the slave trade, announced to the seniors as a subject for a Latin dissertation, (I translate it,) "Is it right to make slaves of others against their will?" He little thought of the far-reaching consequences of this proposal. Young Clarkson, having secured the Latin prize the previous year, was anxious to obtain it again. He went to London, and procured all the books relating to the subject he could find. His sensitive mind was shocked beyond measure at the horrors of "the middle passage," which they disclosed. Sleep often left his pillow, while digesting the materials for his essay; and during its preparation he resolved to devote his life to the destruction of so appalling an evil. Noble resolution! Little did the young philanthropist then imagine that he should live, not only to see this trade abolished by Great Britain, and declared piracy by all Christian Powers, but to witness the abolition of slavery itself in those islands of the West, around which his warm sympathies clustered; that he should see the humanity of the world roused in arms to put down the crime of chattelizing mankind; and should himself, after a lapse of fifty-five years, preside, "the observed of all observers," in the metropolis of England, at a large Convention assembled from the four quarters of the globe, to devise means to achieve a final victory in this war upon the "wild and guilty phantasy, that man can hold property in man." But, I anticipate. Clarkson finished his essay, won the prize, and, true to his vow, commenced, friendless and without resources, the work of abolition. He translated and enlarged his essay, and committing it to press, started on a pilgrimage through the kingdom, in search of facts to illustrate the character of the traffic, and friends to aid him in its destruction. A singular instance of his patient zeal may be stated. He was anxious to ascertain whether slaves were kidnapped by the traders in the interior of Africa. He was told by a gentleman, that about a year before, he had conversed with a common sailor, who had made several excursions up the African rivers, in pursuit of slaves, and presumed he could inform him on this subject. He knew not the sailor's name, nor his residence, nor where he sailed from, and could only say, that when he saw him he belonged on board some man-of-war in ordinary. Clarkson started on the forlorn hope of finding this sailor. He successively visited Deptford, Woolwich, Chatham, Sheerness, Portsmouth, and Plymouth—boarding, during the tour, which occupied several weeks, 317 ships, and examining several thousand persons. I give the result in his own words: "At length, I arrived at the place of my last hope, (Plymouth.) On my first day's expedition I boarded forty vessels, but found no one who had been on the coast of Africa in the slave trade. One or two had been there in King's ships, but they had never been on shore. Things wore now drawing to a close; and my heart began to beat. I was restless and uneasy during the night. The next morning I felt agitated between the alternate pressure of hope and fear; and in this state I entered my boat. The fifty-seventh vessel I boarded was the Melampus frigate. One person belonging to it, on examining him in the captain's cabin, said he had been two voyages to Africa; and I had not long conversed with him before I found, to my inexpressible joy, that he was the man." This long-sought witness confirmed his suspicions in regard to kidnapping. In 1786, Clarkson published a tract, embodying a summary of the various information he had obtained, and in June 1787, organized, in London, the first committee for the abolition of the slave trade, and was appointed its secretary and agent. When visiting this patriarch of humanity, at Playford Hall, in 1840, he showed me the records of this committee. There were the original entries, in his own handwriting, made more than fifty-three years before; and he was alive to read them to me, accompanied by many lively anecdotes of the early friends whose names and deeds were there recorded. In 1787, he had his first interview with Mr. Wilberforce, and found a ready access to the heart of that great and good man. In 1788, he published his important work, "The Impolicy of the Slave Trade." The next year he visited France, to enlist the friends of liberty in that country in favor of his scheme. He had interviews with Mirabeau, Neckar, and others. He was denounced as a spy, and came near being seized. Owing to the revolutionary storm then rising over the kingdom, he accomplished little by this tour, except to present copies of his printed works to the King, and obtain promises from Mirabeau and Neckar to call public attention to the subject when the agitations of the period had subsided. These promises were soon engulfed in the earthquake which shook, not only France, but Europe to its center.

Previous to 1788, such progress had been made in public sentiment and feeling in England, through the indefatigable labors of Clarkson and the committee he had founded, that it was determined to bring the subject of Abolition before Parliament. Mr. Wilberforce was selected to open the question; but, owing to his ill health, Mr. Pitt, on the 9th of May, 1788, moved that the House do resolve to take into consideration the state of the slave trade early in the next session. In 1790, Wilberforce introduced a proposition for the total abolition of the traffic, and sustained it with eminent ability, Pitt, Fox, and Burke giving him their support. The West India interest took fire, insisting that the trade was sanctioned by the Bible, and its abolition would ruin the commerce of London, Bristol, Liverpool, and other large marts. The session of 1792 saw the tables of both Houses loaded with influential petitions. Wilberforce led off, as usual, followed closely by Fox and Pitt. Dundas, "the right hand of Pitt," opposed the measure, and was scathed by Fox in reply. In the Lords, the Duke of Clarence denounced Wilberforce as a "meddling fanatic," who ought to be expelled from Parliament. But the object of his censure lived to see his royal traducer, as King William IV, sign a bill appropriating £20,000,000 for the abolition of slavery in the West India islands! Omitting details, suffice it to say, that the friends of Abolition pressed its consideration upon the public attention from year to year, with increasing fervor, Clarkson being the out-door manager, and Wilberforce the Parliamentary, (always sustained by Pitt and Fox,) till, on the downfall of Pitt, and the coming in of a liberal administration, with Fox for its leader, in 1806, a condemnatory vote was obtained, which, in the next year, was followed by the total abolition of the trade.

I will not stop to state why this measure, since adopted from time to time by all Christian nations, has not fulfilled the expectations of its friends; nor why the number of victims of the slave trade in our day is double that of the time when Clarkson commenced his labors. In a word, so long as the existence of slavery makes a demand for fresh "cargoes of human agony," so long wretches will be found to brave heaven, earth, and hell, to furnish the supply. But the failure to attain complete success should not lessen our admiration of those early toils, which, like an oasis in the wide desert of human selfishness, refresh the eye of all who recognize the common brotherhood of man.

Mr. Clarkson was greatly aided in his labors by Granville Sharpe. This singular person had already become known for his advocacy of the rights of negro slaves when Clarkson commenced his work. He was born of humble parents, in 1735. He had a mind peculiarly fond of probing everything to the bottom. While an apprentice, a controversy with a Socinian led him to study Greek, that he might read the New Testament in the original. A dispute with a Jew induced him to obtain a knowledge of Hebrew. In 1767, his interference in behalf of a West India slave, whose master, then in London, had whipped him nearly to death, cost him a lawsuit. He must be beaten, if the master could hold his slave in England. Eminent counsel told him he must fail, for the right of the master was not invalidated by bringing his slave to England. Repudiating this advice, Sharpe, with his usual diligence and bent of mind, devoted himself to the study of the law, preparatory to his own defense. The "law's delay" gave him ample time to explore the subject to its foundations. He published a tract "On the injustice and dangerous tendency of tolerating slavery, or even of admitting the least claim to property in the persons of men, in England." His rare authorities and profound reasoning converted to his views many leading members of the bar. After a delay of two years, the plaintiff abandoned the case, paying Sharpe heavy costs. While further prosecuting his legal researches, he had another affair of a similar kind, in which he was partially successful. By this time, though comparatively an obscure man, he was better read in the law of slavery, and the restrictions upon the system in England, than any barrister or jurist in Westminster Hall. In 1772 came on the hearing, before Lord Mansfield, in the matter of the negro Somersett, a West India slave, who claimed his freedom on the ground that his master had brought him into England. The ablest counsel were employed on both sides; the case was argued twice or thrice, and was under consideration several months. Sharpe took deep interest in the issue, frequently conferred with Somersett's counsel, and wrote in his behalf for the newspapers. At length, on the 22d of June, 1772, Mansfield, with great reluctance, (for he leaned to the side of the slaveholder,) pronounced the celebrated judgment, that slavery, being contrary to natural law, was of so odious a nature that nothing but positive law could support it, and that every slave, on touching English soil, became free, and "therefore the man must be discharged!" This rule has ever since been recognized as law in all climes where England bears sway, and is so regarded in America and most of the civilized States of the world. For three-fourths of a century it has pursued the Evil Spirit of slavery with uplifted weapon, ready to cleave it to the earth the moment it passed the boundaries of its own odious and unnatural law; and in our day it stands like the flaming sword of Paradise, turning every way, to guard the tree of Liberty. For the early announcement of this far-reaching and deep-sounding principle, the world is indebted to the labors of one who commenced his career as a humble London apprentice. Having fought the good fight of Abolition with Clarkson and Wilberforce, and gained considerable distinction by his philanthropic deeds and writings, numbering Sir William Jones among his intimate friends, he died in 1813. A monument, with suitable devices and inscriptions, was erected to his memory in the Poet's Corner of Westminster Abbey, to mark the public sense of his merits.

Mr. Wilberforce has not been over-estimated, but, in my judgment, he has been mis-estimated. Entitled to less relative praise for his Abolition services than is generally bestowed, he is worthy of a higher position as a statesman and orator than is usually assigned to him. This common error is readily accounted for. The commanding place he so long occupied, as the Parliamentary leader in this Reform, rendered him more conspicuous at home, and especially abroad, than any of his coadjutors, though no man was more ready than he to acknowledge that his services were meager, compared with those of some of his less noted colaborers. So, on the other hand, such is the luster of Mr. Wilberforce's undoubted achievements in the Abolition cause, that to the public eye they have thrown into the shade his very superior talents in other and more general aspects. He would have stood in the front rank of Parliamentary orators, (and those were the days of Burke, Fox, Pitt, Erskine, Wyndham, and Sheridan,) had he never thrown a halo round his name by consecrating his powers to humanity. Thoroughly educated, and furnished with general information, his eloquence was of a high order—fervid, instructive, persuasive; his diction classical and elegant; his voice musical and bland; and though his figure was diminutive, and not graceful, his countenance was remarkably expressive. He possessed a lively imagination, a keen sense of the ludicrous, a ready wit, and powers of sarcasm which Pitt might envy. These latter, however, he kept in subjection, mainly from his strong religious susceptibilities and kindly spirit, which impelled him to avoid giving pain, choosing to disarm personal assailants by winning appeals to their calmer judgments. On one occasion, after being repeatedly and coarsely alluded to, as "the honorable and very religious member," he turned upon his antagonist, and poured upon him a torrent of contempt, sarcasm, and rebuke, which astonished the House, not more for the ability it displayed, than that so great a master of indignant declamation should so rarely resort to its use. These intellectual elements combined with the spotless purity and winning beauty of his character, to give him great weight in the House, and contributed not a little to sustain the general policy of Mr. Pitt, whose supporter he usually was, though he ever maintained a position of comparative political independence. He had much personal influence over that minister, whose repeated offers to take office under his Administration he steadily declined. He retired from Parliament in 1824. His last public appearance was in 1830, when, on motion of his old friend Clarkson, he took the chair at a large meeting of delegates, in London, assembled to promote the abolition of slavery in the West Indies.

Mr. Pitt's advocacy of Abolition is now believed to have been hollow-hearted—a mere trick to gain popular applause in unwonted quarters, and retain his hold upon Wilberforce. During the twenty years which this question agitated Parliament and the country, Pitt, with the exception of two or three, reigned supreme, and never failed to carry any scheme he set his heart upon. At the wave of his hand, he could have driven from the House half the members, who steadily voted against Abolition, whilst with a dash of his pen he could have swept from the offices of the kingdom every occupant who dared oppose his will on this measure. By his personal advocacy of it, he lost nothing, and gained much.

We turn with more pleasure to contemplate for a moment the services of two very different coadjutors of Wilberforce and Clarkson—James Stephen and Zachary Macaulay. It has already been said that the more imposing character of Mr. Wilberforce's services threw into the shade those of many not less worthy colaborers. Of these, Messrs. Stephen and Macaulay were among the most eminent.

Mr. Stephen was a barrister. On being called to the bar, he emigrated to St. Kitts, and attained such distinction in the colonial courts as to be called "the Erskine of the West Indies." Impaired health induced his return to England in 1794, where he urged his way to a respectable standing in Westminster Hall. Soon after his return, he procured an introduction to Wilberforce, and immediately entered, with characteristic zeal, into the great work to which the former had devoted his powers. He was prepared for this from the fact, that such was his abhorrence of slavery, that he never owned a slave during his protracted residence in the West Indies. He subsequently married the sister of Mr. Wilberforce. He consecrated his vigorous pen to the cause of Abolition, and contributed much to create that public sentiment which demanded the abrogation of the traffic. At the solicitation of Mr. Perceval, he entered Parliament in 1808, where he remained seven or eight years. Always conscientious in the discharge of his political duties, he refused to support the administration which followed that of Perceval, in consequence of their neglect to promote a measure, which he had anxiously pressed upon them, for the registration of slaves in the West Indies. He soon after resigned his seat, and devoted himself more exclusively to the duties of a master in chancery, to which office he had been appointed in 1811, and which he held twenty years. He was the means of introducing several reforms in the practice of the court of chancery, though by so doing he essentially lessened his own emoluments. As an instance of his disinterestedness, it may be mentioned that he forbade his clerk to take the ordinary gratuities, and remunerated him for his loss out of his own pocket to the amount of about £800 a year. What time he could spare from his official duties was devoted to the abolition of the slave trade by foreign States, and of slavery in the West Indies. Besides numerous pamphlets, occasional speeches, and an extensive correspondence on these subjects, he published an admirable legal work, entitled, "Slavery of the British West India Colonies Delineated," the plan of which has apparently been followed by Judge Stroud, of Philadelphia, in a work of equal ability, on American slavery. Mr. Stephen descended to his honored grave in 1832, at the advanced age of 75.

Mr. Macaulay is the father of the brilliant essayist and historian whose writings are so well known in this country. And it is high praise to say that, as a writer, he is the worthy progenitor of such a descendant; for, though his publications fall short in beauty and splendor of those of his celebrated son, they are equal to his in logical acumen and argumentative power. Though younger in years than Stephen, Macaulay's services in the abolition of the slave trade were equal to his, while those in the cause of West India emancipation far transcended his.

The Life of Wilberforce, published by his sons, in 1838, was thought to have done injustice to the early labors of Clarkson in the abolition of the slave trade. An unpleasant controversy at once arose, as to the relative merits of these philanthropists, and especially in reference to their agency in promoting the abolition. An anecdote was told to me in London respecting the matter, which illustrates one of the idiosyncrasies in the mental constitution of another early and steadfast Abolitionist—Henry Brougham—who, though young at the period of the abolition, had, while traveling on the continent, assisted Wilberforce by pursuing various inquiries in Holland, Germany, Poland, and other countries, in regard to the traffic. Some of the particulars of the story are forgotten, but enough are remembered for the present purpose. Soon after the appearance of the Life, the friends of Clarkson caused a book to be prepared, vindicating his services and claims, to which Brougham agreed to furnish an introduction. The body of the work was in press before the ex-chancellor, pressed with multifarious labors, had prepared his paper. The committee having the matter in charge waited upon him, and stated that the publication was delayed for want of his introduction; that country booksellers and anti-slavery societies were impatient to have their orders filled, &c. Brougham told them he had not written a line of it, but would have it completed by a given day of the same week. At the appointed time the committee called, and he read the paper. What was their mortification to find incorporated into the middle of it a ferocious attack on Daniel O'Connell, the very man upon whom they were relying to help carry through the Commons the bill then pending for the abolition of the apprenticeship in the West Indies, and with whom they had had an interview on the subject that very morning. Here was a dilemma! They expostulated with Brougham; explained the ruinous consequences to the cause, of their sanctioning such an attack on O'Connell; and while they did not wish to interfere with the controversy between him and O'Connell, assured him that for them to issue such a publication at that crisis might seal the fate of the apprenticeship bill—nor could they send out the work without his introduction, without disappointing the public. After rather an exciting interview, Brougham dismissed them by peremptorily declaring, "they must take it as it was, or not at all." They left in despair. The next day, one of the committee called, to see if something could not be done to get over the difficulty, when lo, his lordship handed him the paper with the offensive passage omitted. The secret of the alteration was this: The night after the first interview, Brougham went down to the House of Peers, and "pitching into" the debate, castigated some half dozen of the lords spiritual and temporal to his heart's content, and, having thus worked off "the slough of his passion," returned home in a calmer mood, and blotted the obnoxious paragraph from his Introduction.

CHAPTER VIII.

Law Reform—Jeremy Bentham—His Opinion of the Common Law—His "Felicity" Principle—His Universal Code—His Works—The Fruits of his Labors—His Talents and Character.

The father of Modern Law Reform was Jeremy Bentham. This singular person has been often sneered at by Americans, who knew nothing of him or his writings, except that he lived somewhere in Europe, and was called "a visionary foreign philosopher" by the North American Review. He was the constant theme of ridicule for a large class of Englishmen, who only cared to know that he was said to be an eccentric old man, who shunned the world, admitted his guests to dine one at a time, wore an uncouth garb, was an abominable sloven, turned wooden bowls on a lathe and run in his garden for exercise, relieved the tedium of study by playing now on a fiddle and then on an organ, heated his house by steam, slept in a sack, looked very much like Ben. Franklin, did not believe in rotten boroughs or rotten creeds, did believe in free trade in corn and money, thought the common law the perfection of absurdity, Lord Eldon's court a libel on equity, and wrote codes for all creation to use in the twenty-ninth century.

Mr. Bentham was one of the most remarkable men that has appeared in our age. He was born in 1747, and was descended from a race of attorneys. At the age of five, the family called him "the philosopher;" at eight he played well on the violin, on which he afterwards became a proficient; and at thirteen went to Oxford, where he excited admiration and wonder by his acute observations, logical skill, and precision of language. When he took his degree, he was esteemed the first reasoner and philosophical critic in the University. He was at Oxford when Wesley and the "Methodists" were expelled, and his generous soul took up arms against this tyranny. This induced him to examine the thirty-nine articles of the Church, one by one; and when it became necessary for him to subscribe them, long was the struggle before Bentham could bring his hand to do it. He has left on record a rebuke of this test, which ought to consign it to universal condemnation. At Oxford, he attended the law lectures of Blackstone, (being the substance of his Commentaries,) and his clear mind detected the fallacies in his reasoning, and his humane and honest spirit revolted at many of his eulogiums on the Common Law of England.

The Bar, to which he was admitted in 1772, opened a brilliant prospect before him. His precise and acute method of drafting equity and law pleadings was much extolled, and his refusal to receive the usual fees excited no less attention. A sharp solicitor swelled a swindling bill of costs in a case in which Bentham had succeeded—he protested—"Quirk" told him it was made up according to the rules, and he would lose caste if he altered it. Bentham was disgusted, resolved to quit the profession, and spend his life in "endeavoring," as he expressed it, "to put an end to the system, rather than profit by it." To the grasping pertinacity of this solicitor, the world is indebted for the sixty years' labor of Jeremy Bentham in the cause of law reform. Soon after this, he published his first work, "A Fragment on Government; being an examination of what is delivered on that subject in Blackstone's Commentaries." He then visited Paris, where he became intimate with Brissot, through whose agency, and without his knowledge, he was subsequently made a citizen of the French Republic, and elected a member of the second National Assembly.

His father died in 1792, leaving him a moderate fortune, which enabled him entirely to abandon his profession, and devote himself to the preparation of those works on Law and Government which have celebrated his name in the Four Quarters of the Globe. During the truce of Amiens, he again visited Paris, accompanied by Sir Samuel Romilly, where he found himself famous. M. Dumont was then publishing his works in French. Of his "Traites de Legislation Civile et Penale," in 3 vols., about 4,000 copies were sold in Paris. At this time, there happened to be three vacancies in the French Institute, one of which was reserved for Bonaparte. Bentham was chosen to fill one of the vacancies. From elective affinity, no less than through the agency of Romilly, he soon after became intimate with the young men, known as "the Edinburgh Reviewers," Brougham, Jeffrey, Smith, Horner, Mackintosh, and their associates, and from that time was the Mentor of that galaxy of talent on the subject of Law Reform.

When Bentham was admitted to the bar, he found the English law, its principles and its practice, entrenched behind the interests of powerful classes, and embedded in the prejudices of all. Though called the perfection of reason, to his penetrating eye it was the offspring of a barbarous age, and, though a noble production for the times that gave it birth, had obtruded into the light of an infinitely milder and more liberal civilization the harsh features which stamped its origin. To him it was the patchwork of fifteen centuries—a chaos of good and evil—an edifice exhibiting the architecture of the ancient Briton, the Gaul, the Goth, the Dane, the Saxon, and the Norman, all jumbled together, and to which, in order to render it tenantable, modern hands had made numerous additions and improvements, till the whole had become a huge, shapeless, and bewildering pile. He saw that it contained masses of material to aid in the erection of a new edifice, adapted to the enlarged wants and cultivated tastes of the present age. And he entered upon the elucidation of his plans for a judicial structure worthy of the noon of the nineteenth century. He was the first man who sat down to the task of exposing the defects of the English law. Heretofore, its students and ministers had been content to sift its principles from a chaotic mass of statutes and decisions, and collect and arrange the perplexing details of its form of procedure. Commencing at the bottom, he worked up through all its ramifications, bringing everything to the test of expediency, and inquiring whether the parts were homogeneous with the whole, and whether the whole was suited to the wants of existing society, and the promotion of human well-being. Probably not intending, when he started, to do more than improve the system by amending it, he soon aimed at its complete reconstruction, branching out into an exhausting discussion of the principles on which all human laws should be based, nor stopping till he had surveyed the nature of Government in its widest relations.

The test-principle of his system may be explained briefly thus: The only proper end of the social union is, the attainment of the maximum of the aggregate of happiness; and the attainment of this maximum of the aggregate of happiness is by the attainment of the maximum of individual happiness. The standard for determining whether a law is right or wrong, is its conduciveness to the maximum of the aggregate of happiness, by conducing to the maximum of individual happiness. This was known in his day, and in ours, as "the greatest-happiness principle," or "the principle of felicity"—which latter term he much preferred to that by which it is more commonly known, "the doctrine of utility." This was the keystone of Bentham's system. With this principle in his hand, he traversed the entire field of legislation, dividing it into two great parts—internal law, and international law. Internal law included the legislation which concerns a single State or community; international, that which regulates the intercourse of different States with each other. His chief attention was devoted to preparing a code of internal law under the Greek name of Pannomion, (the whole law.) This he divided into four parts—the constitutional, the civil, the penal, and the administrative. The constitutional defined the supreme authority, and the mode of executing its will. The civil defined the rights of persons and of property, and was termed the "right-conferring code." The penal defined offenses and their punishments, and was termed "the wrong-repressing code." The administrative defined the mode of executing the whole body of the laws, and was termed "the code of procedure." Some of these codes he run out into details. Others he left unfinished. They all bore the stamp of great research, learning, and symmetry, and were supported by vigorous reasoning, and elucidated by a comprehensive genius. Many a codifier of our day has been indebted, directly or indirectly, to these labors of Jeremy Bentham, to an extent of which he was perhaps not aware.

His system struck at the very root of the English law. Of course, such a "wild enthusiast," such a "reckless innovator," was laughed at, misrepresented, and abused. Not a single tile or crumbling pillar of "the perfection of reason" must be touched. The rubbish that blocked up the avenues leading to it, the dust which choked its passages, must not be removed. Venerable for its age, hallowed as the legacy of our ancestors, the work of wise men and dead men, it must be worshiped at a distance and let alone. All classes deified it, and denounced such as would sneeze at its consecrated dust. The king as he placed the golden round on his anointed head, and the noble as he gazed on his stars and ribbons—the fat bishop as he pocketed his tithes, and the lean dissenter as he paid them—the judge in his scarlet robes, and the barrister in his wig of horsehair—the merchant as he paid his onerous duties to the government, and the yeoman as he liquidated the ruinous rents of his landlord—the clodhopper as he took his shilling for twelve hours of exhausting toil, and the culprit as he hung on a cross-tree for killing the hare which poached on his beans—all, high-born and low-born, patrician and plebeian, rich and poor, wise and foolish, were ready to make oath that the common law of England was the perfection of reason, and to swear at Jeremy Bentham for doubting it. If Bentham had done nothing more than dispel this delusion, he would deserve the thanks of the millions in both hemispheres who submit to the sway of the common law; and this he did most effectually.

Bentham brought to his work reasoning faculties which did not so much probe subjects to the bottom as begin there, and work upwards to their surface—a patience which no amount of drudgery could weary—a taste whose light reading was Bacon and Beccaria—a memory retentive as tablets of brass—a boldness which shrunk from looking no institution in the face, and questioning its pretensions to utility and its claims to homage—an honesty which never averted the eye from conclusions legitimately born of sound premises—a conscience which followed truth wherever it led. Lord Brougham, who knew him intimately, has happily said: "In him were blended, to a degree perhaps unequaled in any other philosopher, the love and appreciation of general principles, with the avidity for minute details; the power of embracing and following out general views, with the capacity for pursuing each one of numberless particular facts." He was an adept in numerous modern languages, as French, Italian, Spanish, and German, and he extended his linguistical knowledge into the Swedish, Russian, and other northern tongues. These acquisitions facilitated his study of the history of all countries and times, with whose philosophy, legislation and jurisprudence he was acquainted beyond most men.

His numerous writings all bore some relation to his "Felicity" principle, and the topics discussed were almost as multifarious as human exigency and action. Including his larger pamphlets, they must number some fifty volumes. They chiefly relate to Government, law, and jurisprudence; but he also wrote extensively on morals, politics, and ecclesiastical establishments. Nor did science wholly escape his searching pen, for he treated of chemistry and anatomy. He wrote against Blackstone's Commentaries, and attacked Burke's plan for economical reform. He wrote on prison discipline and penal colonies, and illustrated the anti-Christian tendency of oaths. He advocated free schools, and denounced church establishments. He attacked rotten boroughs, and drafted plans for work-houses. He vindicated free trade, and showed the impolicy of the usury laws. He prepared a constitutional code to be used by any State, and drew up a reform bill for the House of Commons. He wrote separate volumes or pamphlets on bankruptcy, poor laws, primogeniture, escheats, taxation, jails, Scotch reform, the French judiciary, the criminal code of Spain, juries, evidence, rewards and punishments, oaths, parliamentary law, English reform, education, Church-of-Englandism, &c., &c., &c. He wrote for or offered codes to France, Spain, Greece, Russia, and the South American States—sent a letter to each Governor of the United States, proposing to prepare for them an entire code of laws—was intimate personally or by correspondence with Howard, Lafayette, Wilberforce, the Emperor Alexander, Napoleon, Brissot, Mirabeau, Neckar, Benezet, Franklin, Jefferson, Bolivar, Jean Baptiste Say, Toussaint L'Ouverture, and in fact with most of the men of his times, who were celebrated in any part of the world for their services in the cause of liberty, humanity and reform.

Of course no man, unless endowed with all the wisdom of the ancients and the moderns, could write so much on such a variety of subjects, without committing to paper a good deal of nonsense. Yet he wrote no page but contains some profound thoughts, whilst many of his volumes are replete with wisdom. And if any one mortal man could have written codes for all the nations on earth, that man was Jeremy Bentham.

His defects were partly the result of his peculiar mind, and partly of those idiosyncrasies which germinate in all speculators who mingle little with men and things. Bold and original to a fault, he rather suspected that an old thing was necessarily a bad thing. His exhaustless patience, and fondness for abstractions and theorizing, which grew by what they fed on, led him to carry everything out, out, out, till he sometimes trenched on absurdity or sunk in obscurity. In vulgar phrase, he was prone to "run a thing into the ground." He mixed so little with the world, and had such limited experience in the every-day business of life, that he often forgot that his codes must be executed by and upon mortal men. He lived fifty years in the house immortalized as the dwelling-place of Milton, in the very heart of London; and yet nine-tenths of the inhabitants, about whom he was thinking, and writing, and printing for half a century, never knew that he lived at all. Habits induced by this recluse life, were not improved by his being the head and oracle of a school, whose immoderate puffings, which he must hear, were not counterbalanced by denunciations from without, to which he never listened. He tried to reduce everything to a system, and wrote as if the human mind were a curious little wheel, to be put into a vast engine, which, when regulated according to his system, would run without jarring or friction. He made too little allowance for the individualities, eccentricities, crooked-stickednesses of mankind. But in this he did not differ from many other philosophers—men wiser and better than their generation—men so far beyond and above their times, that they look like dwarfs to their cotemporaries.

Then, he undertook so much that he left a great deal incomplete; so that, in many of his works, while he has finished one side of a subject, he seems not to have touched or seen the other side. His style, especially in his latter years, was rough, involved, uncongenial; often obscure from its very verbosity; and, when clear, fatiguing the reader by so thoroughly exhausting the subject as to leave nothing for him to do but read. He called his style of reasoning "the exhaustive mode," and he crowded it full of crabbed words of his own invention. He wrote many of his works in French, and they were given to the world by Dumont, a Genevan. Hazlitt has wittily said: "His works have been translated into French; they ought to be translated into English." Sydney Smith, when reviewing his "Book of Fallacies," remarks, in his quaint way, "Whether it is necessary there should be a middleman between the cultivator and the possessor, learned economists have doubted; but neither gods, men, nor booksellers, can doubt the necessity of a middleman between Mr. Bentham and the public.* * The mass of readers will choose to become acquainted with him through the medium of Reviews, after that eminent philosopher has been washed, trimmed, shaved, and forced into clean linen."

Bentham invented the words Codify and Codification, now in such general use. But let it not be supposed that he was guilty of the absurdity of imagining that the entire laws of a Commonwealth could be compressed into a single volume; nor of that other absurdity, that the laws can be written so plain that the meanest capacity can understand them fully, and apply them, without mistakes, to all the varieties of human rights and wrongs, and the ever-shifting vagaries and exigencies of society. He never had wit enough to see how it was, that what never could be true in regard to any other science or species of writing, must be true in regard to jurisprudence and legislation. He left that discovery for penny-a-liners, who believe all the law the world needs can be printed between the yellow covers of a twenty-page pamphlet.

Bentham labored without any apparent success at home for years. He was famous in France, and appreciated in Russia, before he was known in England. At length, his reiterated blows made an impression. He won converts in high places, and they became his "middlemen" with the public. Brougham and Smith spread out his great ideas in attractive colors on the pages of the Edinburgh, and they sparkled in brilliant speeches from Romilly and Mackintosh on the floor of Parliament. One after another, the champions for the inviolability of the ancient system were prostrated, till reasonable men admitted that, whether or not Jeremy Bentham was right, the common law was certainly wrong, and must be materially altered. Though he took no part in actual legislation, his was the master mind that set other minds in motion; his genius, the secret spring that operated a vast reformatory machine. He did not live to see his whole system adopted, (and would not, had he lived till the millennium,) but he saw parts of it incorporated into the jurisprudence of his country, whilst other parts were postponed rather than rejected. He saw the fruits of his labors in the amelioration of a sanguinary criminal code, and especially in the abridgment of the death penalty—in the improvement of the poor laws and penitentiaries, and the kindlier treatment of prisoners—in the softening of the harsher features of imprisonment for debt, of the bankrupt laws, and the general law of debtor and creditor—in lopping off some excrescences in chancery, and cutting down costs and simplifying the modes of procedure in other courts—in the abolition of tests, and the emancipation of the Catholics—in the greater freedom of trade, the enlargement of the suffrage, and the partial equalization of representation in Parliament—in the appointment of commissioners to revise the whole mass of statute law, and reduce it to a uniform code—and, more than all, in the conviction, penetrating a multitude of intelligent minds, that a large portion of the English law, as administered, so far from being the perfection of reason, was a disgrace to the human understanding, and the homage paid to it a degrading idolatry.

Nor did he see these fruits in England alone. As he labored for the world, so he saw the products of his toil in both hemispheres. France and Russia published his writings, and they were read in Germany and Switzerland. His works were circulated at Calcutta and the Cape of Good Hope; at New York, and New South Wales; in the Canadas, and the Republics of South America. This country profits by his culture in the simplification of its laws, and their revision and codification in many of its States—in the comparative humanity of its criminal codes and prison discipline—and especially in the recent sweeping reforms in the practice of its courts in three or four States, and the abolition of the monopoly of the legal profession—a monopoly worthless to those whom it protected, and galling to those whom it excluded. By no means do I intend to say, that to him we are solely indebted for these reforms. But his hand planted the tree whose fruit is now being gathered. His chief glory is the emancipation of the Anglo-Saxon mind from a blind idolatry of the English common law; and for this he deserves unmeasured praise.

Mr. Bentham was kind, cheerful, simple-hearted, witty, and greatly beloved by his friends. Frank, so frank that he was bluff, he refused a costly present from the Emperor of Russia, lest he should be tempted to praise when he ought to blame. A great husbander of moments, he took air and exercise while entertaining ordinary visitors; and, when conversing on his favorite themes with such as Romilly and Brougham, kept his secretaries busy in noting down their remarks. The ridicule and abuse of which he was the subject rarely reached its aim, for he avoided personal controversies, discussing principles, and not men. He died in 1832, in the 85th year of his age; and gave a singular evidence of his attachment to his principles, by bequeathing his body to the surgeon's knife, for the advancement of medical science.

CHAPTER IX.

Law Reform—The Penal Code of England—Its Barbarity—The Death-Penalty —Sir Samuel Romilly—His Efforts to Abolish Capital Punishment—His Talents and Character.

The earliest mouth piece of Jeremy Bentham in Parliament, and his "middleman" with the public, was Sir Samuel Romilly. This accomplished lawyer, from the period he entered Parliament, in 1806, till his death, in 1818, directed his main efforts to Law Reform; especially the amelioration of the Penal Code, and the diminution of the number of capital offenses.

The present criminal code of England is a disgrace to civilization. When Romilly commenced his labors, it would have disgraced barbarism. Blackstone had said in his Commentaries, (and it was substantially true in 1806,) "Among the variety of actions which men are liable daily to commit, no less than one hundred and sixty are declared by act of Parliament to be felonies, without benefit of clergy; or, in other words, to be worthy of instant death." I will specify a few items in this bloody catalogue. Treason, murder, arson, and rape, were of course capital crimes. So was counterfeiting coin; refusing to take the oath of allegiance under various circumstances; falsifying judicial records; taking a reward for restoring stolen goods, when accessory with the thief; obstructing the service of legal process; hunting in the night disguised; writing threatening letters, to extort money; pulling down turnpike gates; assembling to produce riots, and not dispersing at the order of a magistrate; transporting wool or sheep twice out of the kingdom; smuggling; fraudulent bankruptcies; marrying a couple except in "a church," without the license of the Archbishop of Canterbury, and making false entries in relation thereto in a marriage register; wandering as gipsies thirty days; burglary, in the night; stealing, from the person, property above the value of twelve pence, or, from a dwelling-house, above five shillings, or a vessel above forty shillings; stealing fish, hares, and conies; robbing on the highway to the value of a farthing; forgery in all its multiplied forms; sundry mere trespasses to personal property, such as tearing down fences, opening fish-ponds, destroying trees in parks and gardens, maiming cattle—and the list might be swelled through a chapter.

The legal mode of inflicting punishment, in many of these cases, was equally barbarous with the penalties. Not content with killing the wretch, he might be dragged to the place of execution at the heels of horses; or emboweled while alive; or burnt to death; or beheaded, quartered, and the parts nailed up in conspicuous places; or his skeleton left to rot on the gallows; or his hands and ears cut off, and his nostrils slit; or be branded on the cheek or hand, before execution. And down to the reign of William III, counsel were not allowed to prisoners, even in cases of high treason, when the whole power of the Government was brought to crush them; and it was not till the recent reign of William IV, that, in other capital cases, counsel for the accused were allowed to do more than state points of law to the court.

Such a Penal Code would disgrace the Fejee Islands. Yet, it was, in its main features, the law of England in 1806; and, notwithstanding the lucubrations of Bentham, the dashing essays of Brougham, and the lucid speeches of Romilly and Mackintosh, sustained by the protests and the petitions of churchmen and dissenters, Catholics and Quakers, it remained the law, with slight modifications, till the reign of George IV; and much of it is law to this day! And this code could be eulogized by the classical Blackstone; whilst Paley, the archdeacon, could congratulate the readers of his Moral Philosophy on the fact, that torture to extort confessions had been excluded "from the mild and cautious system of penal jurisprudence established in this country!" Such mildness is a "caution!" The same author, alluding to those who might happen to be convicted and hung through mistake, counsels their surviving friends not to repine, but "rather to reflect that he who falls by a mistaken sentence, may be considered as falling for his country."

No one will suppose that such laws, the offspring of the dark ages, could be enforced against all offenders after the sunrise of the nineteenth century. Still, capital convictions under them were frightfully numerous. The statistics of English criminal jurisprudence afford abundant illustrations of the doctrines, that the severity of the law does not diminish crime, and that the certainty rather than the severity of punishment is the surest preventive. These doctrines had been maintained with great power by Lord Bacon, by Stiernhook, the Swedish Blackstone, by Blackstone himself, by the Marquis of Beccaria, by Voltaire, by Montesquieu, by Bentham; and even Paley had admitted their truth. Romilly enforced them in Parliament; and it may be safely affirmed, that the history of crime proves nothing if it does not establish their truth. Larcenies, burglaries, robberies, and forgeries, had increased in England during the eighteenth century, much beyond the advance of population and commerce, notwithstanding the severity of the law and its frequent execution. But these obvious facts were assigned to other causes than defects in the penal code, and these doctrines were scouted as the dogmas of visionary enthusiasts, by nearly the whole of the bench, the bar, and the leading influences in Church and State, at the dawn of the present century. They admitted that the unvarying execution of the law would be barbarous; but insisted that its frightful penalties ought to be suspended over the heads of offenders, to deter from crime; whilst they trusted to indirect modes of softening its rigors. So, judges undertook to bend the law to suit the merits of particular cases; and the humanity of juries, outrunning the injunctions of their oaths, opened the door of escape in cases of peculiar severity. The latter would frequently find that the value of the property stolen did not reach the capital point; as, that a shilling piece was worth but eleven pence farthing; or a crown, but four shillings and sixpence; or goods for which the thief had asked £8, and refused £6, were worth but thirty-nine shillings; thus stultifying their senses to save a life which the law clamored to sacrifice.

Another evil resulting from the severity of the English code, was felt, not only in that country, but has reached us and our times, and will afflict us so long as we are governed by the common law. Merciful judges, during the trial of offenders for minor crimes punishable with death, would lend a greedy ear to the ingenious cavils and absurd quirks of counsel, and quash the indictment—or refine away the plain words of a statute, so as to exclude the offense from its operation—anything to save the life of a fellow-creature whose crime deserved a ten days' commitment to the House of Correction. And we are now reaping the fruits of this; for, be it known to the uninitiated, that all these cavils, refinings, quibbles, quirks, and quiddities, are recorded in books, and have come down to us as authoritative parts of "the perfection of human reason," making convenient holes for sturdy rogues, with the help of sharp-pointed lawyers, to creep through the meshes of our comparatively mild criminal code.

Sir Samuel Romilly found the penal law of England thus sanguinary on the statute book; thus abused in its administration by the courts; thus entrenched behind the authority of judges, lawyers, statesmen, and divines, when he commenced the humane but apparently hopeless task of softening its penalties to the milder civilization of the present age. He brought to this work professional eminence the most exalted, talents of the rarest order, learning varied and accurate, eloquence captivating and powerful, and a zeal and courage surpassed only by the benevolent warmth of his heart. Having previously secured some reforms in the civil law, he carried a bill, in 1808, repealing the capital part of the act against stealing property of above twelve-pence value. This horrid law had existed more than a thousand years, and probably in a thousand cases in which it had been executed, the hangman's rope cost more than the stolen property for which a life was forfeited. Even then Romilly could induce the legislature to fix the death-limit no higher than £15. This and another repealing act had slipped through Parliament in a very quiet way, without exciting the attention of the country. In 1809, Romilly proposed two bills, repealing the laws making it capital to steal to the value of above five shillings from a shop, or forty from a dwelling-house. He sustained them by a speech, which exhibited great research into the statistics of crime, comprehensive views of the philosophy of rewards and punishments, lofty appeals to humanity, and a just appreciation of the benevolent and liberal tendencies of the times. Both bills failed. But the friends of the halter had become alarmed at these reiterated attempts to restrict the death-penalty. The gallows-toad, touched by the spear of Ithuriel, started up a devil. It was the first time the mask had been torn from the penal code of England, and its visage, grim and bloody, exposed to the public eye. The excitement caused by this attempt to narrow the scaffold is at this day incredible. The chancellor in his robes, and the bishop in his lawn; the barrister in his silk gown, and the attorney in his threadbare coat; the reviewer in the aristocratic quarterly, and the obscure pamphleteer in Grub street; all entered the lists to crush the disciple of Jeremy Bentham, and demolish his dangerous heresies. If Romilly had attacked the monarchy itself, or declared that the horse-hair wig of the Archbishop of Canterbury was not a part of the British Constitution, he could hardly have produced more indignation among judges and hangmen; more consternation among the old women of both sexes. Jack Ketch was no longer to hang men for stealing a cast-off coat or petticoat worth five shillings and six pence, and what would become of England! Sir Samuel published a pamphlet containing the substance of his great speech, with additional statistics, which Brougham made the basis of an able essay in the Edinburgh. The pamphlet and the essay produced a profound impression upon liberal and humane minds throughout the country.

But, for two years, he was able to accomplish nothing in Parliament. In 1811, he took advantage of some favoring circumstances to carry a law abolishing capital punishment in the cases of soldiers and sailors found begging, without having testimonials of their discharge from the service. Grateful country; to consent not to hang a sailor, who lost his arm at Trafalgar, or a wooden-legged soldier who stormed Badajos, for begging a loaf of bread! Through the seven following years, though Romilly and his coadjutors thundered on the floor of the Commons, and lightened from the pages of the Edinburgh, and rained down pamphlets upon the country, charged with appalling facts, unanswerable arguments, and glowing appeals to the heart of the nation, they fell on the iron-mail of the Tory party only to rebound in their own faces; and this great man having bequeathed the prosecution of the work to Mackintosh, sunk into his grave, in 1818, without seeing one lineament of relenting in the grim visage of the Penal Code.

But, not alone to reforms in the criminal code did this excellent man give his hand. He probed the Court of Chancery, and hove up to the sun some of the abuses which festered under the stagnant administration of Eldon—exposed the huge masses of rubbish which so blocked up the common law courts, that the difficulty of suitors to get in was only surpassed by the impossibility of their getting out; and though the reforms which he proposed were very moderate, and aimed only at glaring defects, they encountered the same bigoted attachment to ancient abuses which assailed him in the other field of his exertions. Lord Eldon especially construed every insinuation that the system of Equity was not perfect, into a personal attack on its head. He regarded a peep into his court as Jack Ketch did a side-glance at the gallows, and repelled every insinuation that he was not competent to do for men's property what Jack did for their lives—suspend animation by stopping the circulation.

Nor was it law reform alone which enlisted the sympathies of Romilly. As Solicitor General he brought in the bill for the abolition of the slave trade, in 1806-7; and in 1814, when the European treaty of Peace, negotiated by Castlereagh on the part of England, and which provided for the revival of the traffic by France, came before Parliament, he led the friends of humanity to the attack upon that article of it in a speech of the loftiest rebuke, breathing the purest philanthropy and attired in the richest garb of eloquence. His eulogium on Wilberforce and Clarkson was beautiful, and his appeal to the former, as he turned and addressed him personally, thrilling.

Romilly's mind was cast in the rarest mold, and his heart was attuned to the liveliest emotions. He could master the understanding with his reason, and sway the will by his persuasion. He frowned down meanness with the dignity of a judge sentencing a culprit, and his sarcasm was too keen to be often provoked. Standing at the head of the Equity bar, his professional attainments covered the widest field, and were only equaled by the extensive practice to which they were applied. His character was beautifully pure, and he was the delight, almost the idol, of his intimate friends. Yet, his modesty always held him back from assuming in the courts and the Commons the place that was assigned to him by the universal homage of his party, and the all but unanimous verdict of his opponents.

Romilly was the grandson of a French mechanic, who, with his wife, fled to England, on the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. His father married the daughter of a refugee, and Samuel was, therefore, of pure French blood. He was born in 1757. His father, who was a watchmaker, articled him to a commercial house, the death of whose head soon threw him back into his father's shop, where he kept the books for two or three years. During this time, he marked out for himself, and pursued with avidity and success, a course of classical study. Leaving the shop, he entered as an apprentice the office of one of the clerks in chancery, and for several years devoted all the leisure hours he could snatch from the drudgery of business, to the cultivation of general literature. Arriving at his majority, he studied law, and was called to the bar at the age of twenty-five—an admirable specimen of "a self-made man"—the only sort of MAN, by the bye, that is made. The following anecdote shows how his sensitive mind was, in mere childhood, bent toward the work which engrossed his mature years. He says: "A dreadful impression was made on me by relations of murders and acts of cruelty. The prints which I found in the Lives of the Martyrs, and the Newgate Calendar, have cost me many sleepless nights. My dreams, too, were disturbed by the hideous images which haunted my imagination by day. I thought myself present at executions, murders, and scenes of blood; and I have often lain in bed, agitated by my terrors, equally afraid of remaining awake in the dark, and of falling asleep to encounter the horrors of my dreams. Often have I, in my evening prayers to God, besought him, with the utmost fervor, to suffer me to pass the night undisturbed by horrid dreams." And it may be that these childish terrors had something to do with his painfully tragic fall. The death of a wife to whom he was fondly attached, and over whose bed he had watched with agonizing solicitude, threw him into a paroxysm of insanity, and he terminated with his own hand a life which England could not afford to lose. He was proud to acknowledge himself the disciple, in law reform, of Jeremy Bentham, and the friendship between him and Henry Brougham was as strong as the cords of a brotherly affection.

CHAPTER X.

Law Reform—The Penal Code—Restriction of the Penalty of Death in 1823-4—Appointment of Commissioners to reform the Civil Law in 1828-9—Sir James Mackintosh—Brougham—Robert Hall.

On the death of Romilly, the leadership in the reformation of the criminal code devolved on Sir James Mackintosh. At the election just before his decease, the liberal party largely increased its members of Parliament. Early in the session of 1819, Sir James carried a motion against Ministers for a committee to revise the penal code. He was appointed its chairman; and in 1820-1, in pursuance of its doings, introduced six bills for the abrogation of capital punishment in certain cases of forgery, larceny, and robbery, and amending the law in other important particulars. The bills were defeated. A partial effort at reform was made the next session, and one or two feeble triumphs achieved. But the day was dawning. In 1823, Sir James proposed nine resolutions, providing for radical reforms in the penal code. Mr. Peel, the Home Secretary, caused these propositions to be rejected, only that Ministers might introduce bills of their own, which largely restricted the death-penalty, and prepared the way for other repealing acts, till capital punishment was abrogated in some fifty cases. Thus the dark and sanguinary system which had so long reared its front over the jurisprudence of England, received a fell blow.

In 1828, Mr. Brougham made his celebrated speech in favor of remodeling the whole civil branch of the common law. Near the close he said: "It was the boast of Augustus—it formed part of the glare in which the perfidies of his earlier years were lost—that he found Rome of brick, and left it of marble—a praise not unworthy a great prince. But how much nobler will be the sovereign's boast, when he shall have it to say, that he found law dear, and left it cheap—found it a sealed book, left it a living letter—found it the patrimony of the rich, left it the inheritance of the poor—found it the two-edged sword of craft and oppression, left it the staff of honesty and the shield of innocence!" This speech, one of the greatest Mr. Brougham ever delivered, was followed by an address to the throne for the appointment of commissioners to inquire into the origin, progress, and termination of actions in the courts, and into the state of the law regarding real property. Two commissions were immediately instituted; one of general common law inquiry; the other, of inquiry into the law of real estate. Afterwards, the subjects of codification, consolidation of the statutes, and reform of the criminal law, were referred to other commissions. The commission to inquire into abuses in courts of equity had previously been appointed. Some twenty or thirty of the ablest lawyers in the kingdom were placed on these commissions, several of whom have since been elevated to the bench. Their elaborate reports, presented during the past twenty years, have displayed vast research and learning, and the numerous reforms recommended by them, exhibiting a cautious but steady advance in the path of improvement, have generally been adopted by the legislature. Though the prevailing law of England still continues a chaos of absurdities and excellences, the reforms introduced by these commissioners will be appreciated by all who have occasion to explore the intricate windings and gloomy chambers of the huge structure. The reports alluded to have been the textbooks of revisers and codifiers in other countries where the common law prevails, and were frequently cited, and their recommendations often adopted, by the able revisers of the New York Statutes—which last have served as the model for revisers in other States of the American Union.

I am now to speak more particularly of Sir James Mackintosh, one of the brightest ornaments of the liberal party of Great Britain. This eminent Scotsman was born of humble parentage, in 1765. At the University of Aberdeen he met Robert Hall, the celebrated Baptist divine, to whom he became warmly attached, "because," as Sir James says, "I could not help it." He adds, that he "was fascinated by his brilliancy and acumen, in love with his cordiality and ardor, and awe-struck by the transparency of his conduct and the purity of his principles." Their class-mates called them Plato and Herodotus. They traveled the whole field of ancient and modern metaphysics and philosophy hand in hand, debating every point as they went, till in Plato and Edwards, in Aristotle and Berkley, in Cicero and Butler, in Socrates and Bacon, there was scarcely a principle they had not examined, and about which they had not enjoyed a keen encounter of their wits. The heat engendered by these friendly controversies fused more completely into one their congenial natures. Such an attachment, formed in the springtime of youth, was sure to endure; and though, in subsequent life, they moved in widely different spheres, their intimacy continued throughout their long career.

Being destined for the medical profession, Mackintosh took his degree at Edinburgh, and went up to London to practice. George III, then exhibiting symptoms of insanity, the subject of his illness and of making his son Regent was agitating Parliament when Mackintosh arrived in the metropolis. Doctor Mackintosh, instead of prescribing for the diseases of the king, wrote a pamphlet in favor of the claims of the prince; leaving the constitution of the monarch to take care of itself, while he attended to the constitution of the monarchy. The king suddenly recovered, when, it being no longer necessary to administer medicine either to the Crown or the Constitution, the Prince of Wales returned to his mistresses, and Mackintosh went to Leyden to complete his studies, where he lounged away a few months, reading Homer and Herodotus, to the great neglect of Galen and Hippocrates. Returning to England, he plunged into matrimony before he had sufficient practice to buy an anatomical skeleton for his office. Happily, his wife sympathized in his literary tastes, and, at once detecting the defects of his character, "urged him to overcome his almost constitutional indolence."

The French revolution, which ruined so many fortunes, made his. In 1791, he published a volume entitled "Vindiciæ Gallicæ, or, a Defense of the French Revolution and its English Admirers against the Accusations of the Rt. Hon. Edmund Burke." The very title-page immediately carried off the first edition, and the acute reasoning, brilliant declamation, and classic style of this vigorous but immature production gave currency to three editions at the end of four months. There was a great deal of heady strength in both these essays. Mackintosh's was like a river sweeping to the ocean, covered with sparkling foam. Burke's like the long, heavy swells of that ocean, whose crests are pelted by the winds and dance in the sun. Both authors set up for prophets; and, like other inspired and less famous men, they mistook the illusions of their fancy and the suggestions of their imagination for the visions of the seer and the teachings of the divine inflatus. Burke was nearer right as to the result of the then pending revolution; but Europe would now account Mackintosh the best prophet. This volume gave Mackintosh an introduction to Fox and the other Whig chiefs, and he became their warm friend. Soon after, falling into the captivating society of Burke, his teachings combined with the sanguinary turn of French affairs to considerably modify the views put forth in his Vindiciæ.

Throwing physic to the dogs, Mackintosh entered Lincoln's Inn, and was called to the bar in 1795. But, though the study of the law was more congenial to his tastes than medicine, his practice in his new profession was scarcely more extensive than in the old. In truth, he was too indolent, too desultory in his efforts, too fond of literature and abstract speculation, to excel in any pursuit requiring close application and orderly habits, rendering his whole life a series of brilliant but mere inchoate performances. In 1798, he proposed to deliver a series of lectures in Lincoln's Inn, on the Law of Nature and of Nations. The doors were closed against him, because of his supposed Jacobinical principles—the Benchers of that conservative corporation not wishing to have the doctrines of the Vindiciæ Gallicæ promulgated in their halls. Mackintosh published his introductory lecture to refute the charge of Jacobinism, and it was so tinctured with Burkeism, and so philosophical and eloquent, that it captivated Pitt, who persuaded the Chancellor to recommend the opening of the Inn. It was done, and Mackintosh entranced a learned audience throughout his gorgeous course.

His next attractive performance was the defense of Peltier, a French refugee, the editor of the Ambigu, for an alleged libel on Napoleon, the First Consul. His oration (for it partook little of the character of a speech at the bar) in vindication of the liberty of the press was pronounced by Lord Ellenborough, the chief justice, to be the most eloquent address ever delivered in Westminster Hall. Madame de Stael sent it through Europe in a French translation, and it secured for its author a continental reputation. And in our day and country it is read by thousands who have hardly heard of any other production of his tongue or pen. His lectures and his oration not only gave him celebrity, but, what he needed quite as much, a little money; and they brought him an offer of a judicial station at Bombay. Still pressed by pecuniary embarrassments, after much reluctance, he consented to be banished, with his wife and children, from his native land, to an inhospitable clime amongst a strange people. For nearly eight years he discharged his judicial duties with fidelity, but through every month of those years he sighed for his country and its healthy breezes, his associates and their brilliant society. He relieved the tedium of his expatriation by making some researches into Oriental institutions, by founding a literary club at Bombay, and by indulging, in his desultory way, in classical and philosophical pursuits. His study and administration of the criminal laws of India turned his attention to the subject which occupied so large a share of his subsequent Parliamentary life—the penal code of England.

The generous and philanthropic mind which had prompted the extension of the right-hand of fellowship to the emancipated masses of France, in 1791, and which, forty years later, was stretched forth to break the chains from the limbs of the West India bondmen, was not slow to see that the criminal code of his own country was the legitimate offspring of a black and bloody age. Returning to England in 1811, he entered Parliament in 1813, where he remained until his death, in 1832. He promptly took his seat by the side of his friends, Brougham and Romilly, and threw his great soul into the contest of the People with the Crown. The important questions growing out of the European and American wars, in regard to the rights of neutrals, were then pending, and he joined Brougham in advocating liberal measures. And, to the end of his legislative career, on all questions of foreign policy and continental combinations, on the alien bill and the liberty of the press, on Catholic emancipation and the abolition of slavery, on the recognition of South American independence and the settlement of Greece, on the education of the poor and the freedom of trade, on the relief of the Dissenters and Parliamentary reform, he was ever found on the side of justice and humanity. For a short period he was the leader of the liberal party in the Commons, but he soon relinquished the post to the more daring and robust Brougham. Indeed, Sir James had not the capacity for leading a popular body like the House of Commons. He was too indolent in mastering dry details, too little of a business man, and his style of oratory was too philosophical, classical, and refined, to produce the best effect on such an assembly. He spoke over the heads of country squires and men of the 'change, who could not translate his Greek and Latin quotations, nor catch the point of his learned allusions, nor see precisely what these had to do with the traffic in corn or negroes, or the overthrow of the Holy Alliance abroad, or the uprooting of rotten boroughs at home. When Hume figured before the House, with his bales of statistics, these plain men could arrive at the sum total of what he was at. When Canning's arrows whirled about the heads of the Opposition, they could see them quivering in the flesh of his antagonists. When Romilly's eloquence wafted gently over them, they were refreshed and delighted. And even when Brougham shook the walls like an earthquake, they understood why they held so fast to their seats. But Mackintosh's Plato and Priam, his Homer and his Helicon, were "Greek" to them. His speeches were better adapted to be read in the library of the scholar than to be heard in the Commons House of Parliament. It was these defects in his oratory, and his utter want of all taste for business, and his indolent and immethodical habits, which kept him behind men of inferior talents and acquirements while his party was in opposition, and gave him no prominent place in its counsels when it assumed the reins of Government. Sydney Smith, in a characteristic letter to Sir James's son, writes thus: "Curran, the Master of the Rolls, said to Grattan, 'You would be the greatest man of your age, Grattan, if you would buy a few yards of red tape, and tie up your bills and papers.' This was the fault or misfortune of your excellent father. He never knew the use of red tape, and was utterly unfit for the common business of life."

Mackintosh was a man of the purest benevolence and the liveliest philanthropy. He held all his vast literary and philosophical attainments cheap in comparison with his labors in the cause of humanity. The friendless criminal, shuddering in the dock under the frown of some heartless judge—the imbruted slave, writhing under the lash of a task-master in the islands of the West—the yeoman at his plow, deprived of the electoral rights which the very sods he tilled could enjoy—the educated Dissenter and Catholic, shut out from stations of honor and trust for refusing a test which stained their consciences, were all advanced to a higher civilization and a broader field of civil and religious freedom, by his aid. He was the zealous co-worker of Wilberforce and Clarkson, of Brougham and Buxton, of Sturge and Lushington, in the work of negro emancipation. His last, greatest, speech in Parliament was on the Reform Bill. Bulwer says of it: "I shall never forget the extensive range of ideas, the energetic grasp of thought, the sublime and soaring strain of legislative philosophy, with which he charmed and transported me." Before such services as he rendered to the cause of man, how all the acquisitions and displays of the scholar and the metaphysician grow pale!

I have spoken of his intimacy with Robert Hall. There was a striking similarity in the structure of their minds and in their literary tastes. The politician was a classical, philosophical lawyer and Parliamentarian. The divine was a classical, philosophical theologian and preacher. Each was fond of abstract speculation—each was a profound and original reasoner and thinker—each reveled in the literature of the ancients—each was a writer of whom any nation or age might be proud. Hall much excelled his friend in the high walks of oratory, and the power of riveting, of transfixing an auditory, and holding them spell-bound while he played with their passions and emotions with masterly skill. The first pulpit orator of his day, in the zenith of his fame he could attract a greater crowd of rare men than any other preacher in the metropolis or the country. The same cannot be affirmed of Mackintosh in the theater where he displayed his forensic powers. The speech which so transported Bulwer in the House of Commons, because of defects in the delivery transported half the members out of it. Each shone no less in the social circle than in the forum. While Mackintosh was the more ornate and classical talker, Hall surpassed him in keen sarcasm and solid argument. The conversational talents of Hall were more appreciable by ordinary capacities, his style being racy, off-hand, bold. Mackintosh was fitted to be the companion of polite scholars and learned critics, and his conversation was more showy, dazzling, and prepared. The wit of Hall, when in full play, approached to drollery, and his sarcasm cut to the bone. The wit of Mackintosh was Attic, and his sarcasm refined and delicate. Hall crushed a pedantic fool with a single blow of his truncheon. Mackintosh tossed him on the end of his lance. Hall made no effort to shine in society, and all his good things seemed to bubble up naturally from a full fountain, whilst his strength was reserved for public exhibitions, where he shone in splendor. Mackintosh elaborated his social effusions, (and it was his weakness,) and his best things gushed like jet d'eaus from prepared reservoirs; and if he failed to win applause at St. Stephen's, he was sure to be the center of attraction at Holland House. Hall put down upstartism like a judge at nisi prius rebuking a shallow barrister for contempt of court. Mackintosh pricked the gas-bag with the delicate instrument of his irony. Hall was loved by his friends. Mackintosh was admired by his associates. Each was a philanthropist and reformer, and each in his sphere was in advance of his times in catholicity of spirit, boldness of speculation, and freedom from the cant of party and sect.

The works of Mackintosh are numerous—though some of his best writings hardly deserve to be called works, in the incomplete state in which he left them. Besides those already mentioned, there may be noted many rich contributions to the Edinburgh Review and other periodicals—some Parliamentary and anniversary speeches—a beautiful life of Sir Thomas More—an acute and eloquent dissertation in the Encyclopedia Britannica on the General View of the Progress of Ethical Philosophy—and a Fragment of English History concerning the Revolution of 1688.

During his lifetime, Sir James was abused by the Tories; nor did the tirade cease at his death. Somewhat covetous of fame, and utterly reckless of gold, he left little to his children, except a brilliant reputation and principles that can never die.

CHAPTER XI.

Religious Toleration—Eminent Nonconformists—The Puritans—Oliver Cromwell—The Pilgrims—The Corporation and Test Acts—Their Origin—Their Effects upon Dissenters and others—Their virtual Abandonment and final Repeal—The first Triumph of the Reformers.

For centuries it was a settled maxim in England, that the only sure way to convert a heretic was to put him to death. All dominant sects have been persecutors in their turn. The Papists burnt the Episcopalians, the Episcopalians decapitated the Puritans, and the Puritans hung the Quakers. With the advancing light of civilization, the dungeon and the pillory were substituted for the scaffold and the stake. Then, as each sect had the power, it imprisoned, scourged, and cropped the others. At length, bigotry was satisfied with imposing pecuniary fines and civil disabilities on schismatics. Though it is long since the nostrils of a dominant sect in England have been regaled with the incense of a roasting heretic, it is only twenty years since the Established Church of that country erased from the statute book the grosser penalties against the exercise of the rights of conscience, leaving a sufficient number unrepealed to operate as a terror to evil doers, and a praise and a profit to them that do not "dissent."

The struggle between Right and Prerogative, which has agitated the kingdom for the past half century, has not been confined to civil institutions. The miter of the archbishop has not been deemed more sacred from scrutiny than the crown of the monarch. The Church as well as the State has been shaken by the earthquake tread of Reform. Prominent among the divines of our time, who have materially contributed to these results, stand Robert Hall, John Angell James, Ralph Wardlaw, Thomas Chalmers, and Baptist W. Noel. But the tree of Toleration, whose fruits the people of England are now gathering, was planted long ago by hallowed hands. Distinguished among those who, in the expressive phrase of Burke, early preached and practiced "the dissidence of Dissent, and the protestantism of the Protestant religion," are Baxter, Owen, Calamy, Howe, Flavel, Henry, Bunyan, Bates, Doddridge, Law, Watts, and Fuller; names illustrious in the annals of Nonconformity, whose writings exerted a wide influence among their cotemporaries, and in our day are the text books of the profoundest theologians, and the solace and guide of the most humble and devout of the unlearned classes.

In tracing the origin of recent reforms in the ecclesiastical institutions of England, due credit should be given to the Puritans of the times of Cromwell. In the convulsions of 1642-9, the English Church establishment, the power which had held the national conscience in awe for more than a century, was overthrown, and Puritanism became the prevailing religion of the Commonwealth. The professors of the new faith were distinguished for a strange mixture of austere piety and wild fanaticism—the natural product of the times in which they lived. No wonder they were guilty of excesses. The tightest band breaks with the wildest power. Their extravagances were the spontaneous out-gush of the soul, when freedom of opinion, suddenly let loose from the thraldom of ages, found itself in a large place. Our Puritan fathers of the seventeenth century, by the recoil of the revolutionary wave, found themselves standing on the terra firma of the rights of conscience, high above the reach of the returning surge. They must have been more than mortal, had they not roamed far and wide over the fair country which spread its tempting landscape around them. No wonder they indulged in wild speculations, and made extravagant investments, in those then unexplored regions. They were like captives suddenly released from the galling chains and stifling atmosphere of the slave ship, who tread Elysian fields and inhale the intoxicating air of God's unfettered winds. It is an evidence of their sincerity that they carried their religion into everything, even their fighting and their politics. Bodies of their troops, often dispensing with what they denominated the carnal drum and fife, marched to the harmony of David's Psalms, sung to the tunes of Mear and Old Hundred. Sermons, extending in length to six and eight mortal hours, were preached to the regiments, by chaplains mounted on artillery carriages. The camp of the revolutionists was not more the scene of rigid military drilling, than of warm discussions on the five cardinal points of their faith. The Roundheads in Parliament engaged in debates on original sin, and the scriptural mode of baptism, as well as upon laws concerning the civil and military affairs of the State. The very names which figure in the transactions of those times indicate the spirit of the age. There was Praise-God Barebones, Kill-sin Pimple, Smite-them-hip-and-thigh Smith, Through-much-tribulation-we-enter-into-the-kingdom-of-heaven Jones—names as familiar as those of John Hampden and Harry Vane. What happier illustration of Cromwell's intuitive knowledge of the men he commanded, than his brief bulletin, pronounced at the head of his army, on the eve of one of the decisive battles of the revolution, fought under a drizzling rain, "Soldiers trust in God; and keep your powder dry!" Faith and works.

Oliver Cromwell, the man of his age, and whose impartial biography is yet unwritten, was the soul of old Puritanism, and the warrior-apostle of religious toleration. He maintained this priceless principle in stormy debate, on the floor of Parliament, against the passive obedience of the Churchman, and the uniformity of the Presbyterian, and defended it amid the blaze and roar of battle against the brilliant gallantry of Rupert and the fiery assaults of Lesley. The "Ironsides" of the revolutionary forces, composed of the Independents of Huntingdonshire, constituting the "Imperial guard" of the republican army, were raised and disciplined by Cromwell. Through long training, in the camp and the conventicle, he had fired them with a hatred of kingly and priestly tyranny, which, in after years, on many a field, under his leadership, swept to ruin the legions of an arrogant court and hierarchy. The historic pen of England has done injustice to him and to them. The reason is obvious. That pen has not been held by their friends, but their enemies. For a hundred years succeeding Cromwell's time, the English scholar and historian was dependent on the rich and noble, in Church and State, for patronage and bread. He must have been a rare man who coveted opprobrium and penury, by writing against civil and ecclesiastical institutions, hoary with age and venerated by the great mass of his countrymen. And these very institutions Cromwell and his followers had temporarily overthrown. He assisted at the death of the monarch—they aided to prostrate the church—bringing kings and subjects, bishops and curates, to a common level. Can we expect the leveled to do justice to the leveler? English historians have written of him and them as the beaten always write of the beaters—as the scattered of the scatterers—the vanquished of the victors. Admitting their extravagances and their austere sectarianism, the impartial pen will record of the Puritans of 1645, that they exhibited many of the fruits of a sincere piety, and fostered the germ of that toleration which blends the dignity of free thought with the humility of Christian charity. Their descendants have exhibited all the heroic virtues of their fathers, tempered with the liberalizing influences of succeeding generations. Eminent for learning and piety, they have been the patrons of all the arts which adorn and purify mankind, and, in the darkest hours of the party of progress and reform, have been true to the good cause. The scion from the parent stock, planted by the Pilgrims at Plymouth, in 1620, struck its roots deep into our American soil, and myriads of master minds in all the States of the Confederacy now repose under its overshadowing foliage, and pluck the fruits of civil and religious freedom from its spreading branches.

The power of the Established Church received a blow in the civil wars, from which it never fully recovered. At the Restoration, under Charles II, it took advantage of a real or fancied dread of the increase of Popery in the kingdom, to seduce Dissenters into an acquiescence in the adoption of laws favoring Episcopal supremacy, and which were subsequently employed to oppress Protestant Nonconformists. The chief of these were the Corporation and Test Acts, to the enactment, operation, and final repeal of which, the reader's attention is invited.

Says the complacent Blackstone, "In order the better to secure the Established Church against perils from Nonconformists of all denominations, Infidels, Turks, Jews, Heretics, Papists, and Sectaries—there are two bulwarks erected, called the Corporation and Tests Acts. By the former, (enacted in 1661,) no person can be legally elected to any office relating to the government of any city or corporation, unless, within a twelvemonth before he has received the sacrament of the Lord's Supper according to the rites of the Church of England; and he is also enjoined to take the oaths of allegiance and supremacy at the same time that he takes the oath of office; or, in default of either of these requisites, such election shall be void. The other, called the Test Act, (enacted in 1683,) directs all officers, civil and military, to take the oaths and make the declaration against transubstantiation, in any of the King's courts at Westminster, or at the quarter sessions, within six months after their admission; and, also, within three months to receive the sacrament of the Lord's Supper, according to the usage of the Church of England, in some public church, immediately after divine service and sermon, and to deliver into court a certificate thereof, signed by the minister and churchwardens, and also to prove the same by two credible witnesses, upon forfeiture of £500, and disability to hold the same office." The disabilities operated still further. By subsequent enactments, if any person held office without submitting to the tests, he was not only fined £500, but was forever incapacitated from prosecuting any action in the courts of law or equity, from being the guardian of a child, or the executor or administrator of a deceased person, or receiving a legacy. By subsequent legislation, the same tests, except the sacrament, were exacted of various classes of persons not holding civil or military offices, such as dissenting ministers, practitioners of the law, teachers of schools or pupils, members of colleges who had attained the age of eighteen, &c.

As has been stated, the Corporation and Test Acts were passed when England was alarmed at a threatened invasion of Popery, and their penalties were intended to be aimed chiefly at Papists, though their sweeping provisions included all classes of Nonconformists. The Protestant dissenters, through fear or hatred of the Catholics, consented to be placed under the general anathema, with a sort of understanding that, when the danger was over, they should be relieved from its pressure. They lived long enough to repent of their folly.

These acts were not only a gross violation of the rights of conscience, but were injurious to the public weal in many respects, and beneficial in none. Whilst they never made one Christian, they deprived the State of the services of many of its best and bravest citizens, drove much of learning and piety from the pulpit, and genius and promise from the university. By making the profession of a particular creed a necessary qualification for office, and the reception of the Lord's Supper according to a prescribed ritual the passport to civil and ecclesiastical advancement, they degraded the holiest rites of religion, brought annually to the communion-table of the Establishment thousands of hypocrites, and placed constantly at its altars hundreds of horse-racing and fox-hunting clergymen. They were a perpetual source of annoyance to dissenters who would not barter their faith for place and pelf, by subjecting them to prosecutions for refusing to qualify themselves for offices to which they had been maliciously elected, to be followed by ruinous fines or long imprisonments. In a single year (1736) £20,700 were raised from fines imposed on dissenters, who conscientiously refused to serve in the office of sheriff; and for a long time it was the custom of municipal corporations to elect dissenters to office, and then enrich their coffers from fines levied upon them for refusing to receive the qualifying tests. At length, the common oppression drove Protestant and Catholic dissenters into a formidable union for the restoration of their common rights, and engendered a hatred of the Established Church, its clergy, its creed, and its ordinances, which twenty years of qualified toleration have not been able to abate or scarcely to mitigate.

Repeated efforts were made for the repeal of these acts. Protestant dissenters, having suffered their penalties for nearly a century, grew numerous and influential, when Parliament, instead of boldly meeting the question of repeal, began to exercise that temporizing cunning so characteristic of British legislation, and grudgingly ameliorated a grievance which it had not the grace to wholly abrogate. It commenced the practice of passing, at the close of each session, amnesty bills, exempting dissenters, who had violated the acts, from the operation of their penalties; and so framing the bills as to cover not only past offenses, but all which might be committed before the close of the next session, when another bill would be enacted. This relieved dissenters from practical oppression under these acts, for some eighty years previous to their final repeal.

But, so intelligent and high-minded a portion of the State were not content to receive rights inherent and immutable, as an annual boon from the legislature. The struggle for unqualified repeal never ceased till the disgraceful acts were blotted from the statute book. On the 26th of February, 1828, was struck the first successful blow against the supremacy of the Church of England since the Restoration. Lord John Russell moved that the House resolve itself into a Committee to take into consideration the regulations of the Corporation and Test Acts. A stormy debate followed, in which Bigotry and Power made a desperate stand for victory. A division showed 237 for the motion, and 193 against it. In committee, Ministers entreated earnestly for delay, but a resolution was adopted for the instant repeal of the acts. A bill, based on this resolution, was introduced, and passed its second reading. The Bishop of Oxford rent his robes, and Lord Eldon shed many tears—but all in vain. After witnessing the temper of the House, Mr. Peel declared that he was prepared to dismiss from his mind every idea of adhering to the existing laws, and only asked for some slight modifications in the pending bill. His request being complied with, Ministers withdrew from the contest, and speedily the Corporation and Test Acts, the offspring of a grim and bigoted age, ceased to be the law of the realm.

This was the first cardinal measure which the modern reformers had carried through Parliament (the abolition of the slave trade and the melioration of the criminal code were advocated by the chiefs of both parties) during a conflict of nearly half a century. It was hailed as an era in the contests of the People with the Crown; the harbinger of better days to come; and was the first in a series of still more glorious achievements.

CHAPTER XII.

Ireland—The Causes of its Debasement—Dublin—Mementoes of the Captivity of the Country—Movements toward Catholic Emancipation—Its Early Champions—Mr. Grattan—Mr. Plunkett—Reverend Sydney Smith.

Before specially considering Catholic Emancipation, I will notice two or three persons who participated in the long struggle which prepared the way for this great measure of religious toleration. The act of Emancipation extended to Catholics alike in all parts of the United Kingdom. But, as the large majority of the professors of that faith dwelt in Ireland, and as they composed nearly seven-eighths of its people, and as it was there that the long and fierce conflict was waged which ultimately compelled English Protestants to yield to their Catholic fellow-subjects the rights of toleration which they themselves enjoyed, this was regarded as emphatically an Irish reform.

Ireland! What a throng of associated ideas start to life at the mention of that name! How varied their aspect—how contradictory their character—how antagonistic the emotions they kindle, the sentiments they inspire. Ireland, the land of genius and degradation, of vast resources and pinching poverty, of noble deeds and revolting crimes, of valiant resistance to tyranny and obsequious submission to usurpation. Ireland, the land of splendid orators, charming poets, and brave soldiers; the land of ignorance, abjectness, and beggary; measureless in its capacities, stinted in its products, a strange anomaly, a complication of contradictions.

Though this portraiture, sketched by no unfriendly hand, be but a rude outline, does it not shadow forth the original? Why are its darker colors no less faithful delineations of the prominent features than the brighter? The very problem which a whole century has not been able to solve! The British Tory will point to what he calls "the malign character of the Irish," as the prime cause of the debasement and wretchedness which exist among them. The British Whig, whose zeal for Protestantism, as a mere ism, has clouded his judgment, will assign the general prevalence of the Catholic religion in the island, as the source of most of the evils which afflict it. The genuine Irishman, who regards his native isle as the greenest and fairest the sun ever smiled to shine upon, will tell you that, giving due weight to many obvious but secondary influences, the degradation and misery which debase and crush such masses of his countrymen must be ascribed to the fact that Ireland, which could once boast of national independence, a regal sovereign, and a royal Parliament, is now a mere appendage to the English Crown, without a name, a flag, or a Senate; an oppressed colony crouching under a hated yoke of vassalage; a captive province paying tribute to a conqueror, who, having robbed it of nationality, appoints its rulers, dictates its laws, prescribes its ritual, plunders its wealth, tarnishes its reputation, and scoffs at its complainings.

Waiving till another occasion the question whether the prime cause of Ireland's miseries does not lie deeper than her compulsory and unnatural union with Great Britain, let us enter a little further into the feelings of the struggling Irishman. Go with him to Dublin. A beautiful city—one of the fairest in the United Kingdom. But, its beauty is that of the fading flower nipped by the untimely frost—the beauty of the chiseled marble, rather than of the living, acting, speaking man. Consumptive, pale, listless, it lacks the bloom, the freshness, the vivacity of conscious health. Its manufactures, its domestic trade, its foreign commerce, since the union with England, have dwindled under the shadow of its towering rival beyond the channel, until its market days are as somber as a London Sabbath. Its dull streets and slumbering wharves, yea, the very gait and air of its populace, give token that its prosperity is arrested by the hand of decay, whilst its magnificent public edifices seem to stand only as tame and melancholy monuments of its departed greatness and glory. From the proud capital of an independent nation, Dublin has degenerated to the chief mart of a dependent province, whose owners are "absentee proprietors," whose husbandmen pay their rents to foreign landlords, whose merchants are the mere agents of distant capitalists, and whose nobles are proud to hide their Irish stars under English ribbons.

Everything in Dublin reminds the Irishman of the captivity of his country. He feels a blighting shame when he conducts a stranger through the stately halls of the Bank of Ireland; for there the Lords and Commons of the Emerald Isle once legislated. He is pained when you extol the grandeur of this noble building; for, to his eye, its glory has faded and fled. Walk with him through that broad and beautiful avenue, Sackville street, and your praise of its elegant mansions only reminds him that the Irish nobility that once resided there have gone to swell the brilliant pageant of the conqueror at Hyde Park and St. James's Palace. Wander with him amidst the filth and squalor of the lanes of the city, and he points to wretchedness and want as the fruits of English legislation. Go with him to the Castle, and, as the soldiery file through its turreted gate, clad in the uniform of the Saxon, he regards them not as the troops of a legitimate ruler, but as the trained assassins of an alien despot.

With such mementoes of the departed power and present captivity of Ireland, meeting his eye at every turn, was it not natural that the genuine Irishman, who submitted to the rule of England for the same reason that the slave wears the chain of his master, should, with the free blood which his Creator gave him boiling in his veins, twenty years ago present to his oppressor the alternative of civil war or unqualified toleration in the exercise of his hereditary religious faith—that nine years ago he should rush to Conciliation Hall, and agitate for his civil rights under the motto, "No People, strong enough to be a Nation, should consent to be a Province"—and that in the past year, when the last hope of civil emancipation by peaceful means had died out, and all Europe was in arms, casting away the chains of ages, he should light the fires of revolution on the hights of Tipperary, resolved to strike one despairing blow for the deliverance of a long-oppressed country? He who would brand Washington a traitor, may sink the iron into the foreheads of Mitchel, O'Brien, and Meagher.

Prominent among the early champions of Catholic Emancipation, stood Mr. Grattan. To prove that, for nearly a century past, Ireland has constantly exhibited on the floor of the British Commons some of the most eloquent men who have swayed the councils of the United Kingdom, I only need mention the names of Burke, Flood, Sheridan, Grattan, Plunkett, O'Connell, and Shiel. Perhaps Canning may be included in the list. Both his parents were pure Irish, and he was, as it were, accidentally born in England. In this galaxy, Grattan shone unrivaled, except by Burke and Canning. He was the equal of the latter in many respects—his superior in some. As a practical Parliamentarian, he ranks scarcely below the former. And he stands at the head of all of his countrymen who have been strictly Irish members, representing Irish constituencies.

Graduating at Dublin, and entering the Middle Temple, London, in 1767, when just turned 21, Grattan was an eager observer, from the galleries of the Lords and Commons, of the fierce struggles of North, Grenville, Chatham, and Burke, then in the zenith of their fame. Throwing Coke and Plowden on the dusty shelf, he employed his leisure hours in writing sketches of these "Battles of the Giants," for the perusal of his Irish friends. He became enamored of politics, and resolved to shine in the Parliament of his native island. Some of his sketches found their way into the Dublin newspapers, and their point and power gave plausibility to the charge at one time made, that he was the author of Junius. In answer to a direct application to him, in 1805, to know if he were the famous author, he laconically replied:

"Sir: I am not 'Junius,' but your good wisher and obedient
servant,

Henry Grattan."

On his permanent return to Ireland, he immediately connected himself with the opposition to the Vice-Regal Government, opening the attack by a series of newspaper articles in vindication of Irish rights, which attracted much attention, and came near subjecting him to a royal prosecution. From that moment, he gave his whole mind and soul to public affairs, and, during the subsequent fifty years, every page of Irish history records his name, associated with some measure for the amelioration of Irish wrongs. He is the author of what is miscalled "Irish Independence." On the accession of George III to the throne, the government of Ireland was then, as it is now, the chief difficulty of Ministers. During the American Revolutionary war, intestine commotions, from the incendiary proceedings of the "Whiteboys," (a rabble band which fired the houses of the landlords, and now and then put to death a non-complying tenant,) and the danger of invasion from France, impelled the middle classes to petition Government for succor and protection. They were frankly told that no aid could be afforded them, and they must take care of themselves. Acting on this license, a volunteer militia was enrolled in all parts of the island, the Government furnishing arms, which swelled till it numbered 100,000 men, of the bone and sinew of Ireland. The "Whiteboys" shrunk into the caves, the threatened invasion was abandoned, and the popular leaders, who had been active in mustering the volunteers, took advantage of their strong position to demand the removal of onerous restrictions on Irish commerce, and the amelioration of the Catholic penal code. The British Government essentially modified the commercial regulations between the two countries, and though some of the darker features of the code were relaxed, it still remained a disgrace to civilization. The greatest burden yet existed—the supremacy of the British Parliament over Irish affairs. Emboldened by success, an attempt was made to procure its repeal. Flood, the rival of Grattan, demanded a distinct disavowal, by the British Parliament, of the right to govern Ireland. Grattan, who had the hearts of his countrymen in his hand, avowed that he would be satisfied if Britain would repeal all existing laws interfering with Irish rights. The measure was adopted, and the Irish Parliament became the supreme legislature of Ireland, subject to the supervision of the King in Council. Hibernia was intoxicated with joy, and, in the fervor of their gratitude, the countrymen of Grattan voted him £50,000. Thus, in 1782, was quasi legislative independence granted to Ireland. But British gold and intrigue were ever able to seduce the integrity and distract the counsels of its legislators, till, eighteen years afterward, all was obliterated in the Act of Union. It was in allusion to the rise and fall of legislative independence that Grattan, years subsequently, so beautifully said, "I watched its cradle; I followed its bier." During these eighteen years, he did all that great talents and vigilant patriotism could to secure the prosperity and save the honor of his native land. The leader of the liberals in the Irish Parliament, he resisted the oppressions of the Saxon, and spurned his bribes, and appealed to Hibernia to be true to herself, and to maintain her national identity. Exasperated beyond endurance, Irish patriotism fomented the rebellion of 1798-9, which precipitated upon the heads of the "United Irishmen" the whole weight of British hatred and revenge. The scaffold ran blood, and the cheek of Ireland turned pale. In 1799, Pitt proposed the Union. Undaunted by the defection around him, Grattan, in the Irish Commons, resisted it with such vehement eloquence, that it was postponed till the next year. In the mean time, British gold proved more potent than its bayonets. Half the Irish Parliament was bribed into compliance with England's base proposals, and in 1800, after a last effort to rally the drooping spirits of his countrymen, Grattan followed the bier of Hibernian Independence to its resting place in St. Stephen's Chapel. Said his compatriot, young Emmet, the martyr, about to perish upon the scaffold, "When Ireland becomes a nation, let my epitaph be written!" Forty years afterward, in the midst of an excited throng, in the Dublin Corn Exchange, I heard O'Connell say, "Men of Ireland! I swear by your wrongs that Ireland shall yet become a nation!" Those wrongs are yet unavenged, the vow is yet unredeemed, the epitaph unwritten. But they will be!

Grattan entered the British Parliament in 1805, where he remained till his death, in 1820. Ever in the front rank of Reformers, he was the special champion of Catholic emancipation, divided the House almost every year, and frequently two or three times in a session, on various propositions looking to ultimate emancipation, but without success; and in his last effort was defeated by only two majority—an earnest that the "good time" was coming. He met with the common misfortune of displeasing the ultras of both parties. He asked too little to please the extreme Catholics—too much to win the favor of the extreme Protestants. He asked for a part, and got nothing. At a later day, O'Connell demanded the whole, and got the greater part. History is philosophy teaching by examples.

Grattan was a model orator. His style had the genius, the enthusiasm, the brilliancy, the pathos, which mark Hibernian eloquence, and was divested of many of those peculiarities which often mar the forensic displays of a country where, as an accomplished Irishman says, "you may kick an orator out of every bush." If he was fertile in illustrations, he was redundant in principles—if his speech was replete with epigram, it abounded in terse reasoning—if it sparkled with wit, it was luminous in its calmer statements—if it blighted with its sarcasm, it mellowed with its pathos—if it was charged with the lightning of invective, it was freighted with the most ponderous argument—if it could wither a groveling enemy with its scorn, it could persuade a manly opponent with its logic. Nor did he overlay the solid parts of his oratory with the lighter graces of declamation, nor smother them under a redundancy of poetical illustration. He was a master of the compressed, nervous, rapid, racy style of argumentation—the very perfection of the art.

On the death of this great man, the cause of Catholic emancipation fell under the guidance of Mr. Plunkett, who, next to him, was the ablest Irish representative in the Commons. Sir James Mackintosh sketches him, in one of his dashing conversational profiles, thus: "If Plunkett had come earlier into Parliament, so as to have learned the trade, he would probably have excelled all our orators. He and Counselor Phillips (or O'Garish, as he is nicknamed here) are at the opposite points of the scale. O'Garish's style is pitiful to the last degree. He ought, by common consent, to be driven from the bar." Plunkett brought to his work a true Irish heart, talents of the first class, eloquence cast in a rare mold, and a reputation unsurpassed at the Dublin bar. He bore a conspicuous part in all those violent throes, in and out of Parliament, in regard to Catholic emancipation, which convulsed the country from 1820 to 1829, and drove Ireland to the borders of rebellion. He won several partial triumphs over Ministers, preliminary to the granting of the great boon in the latter year, when the kingdom held its breath while O'Connell, the dreaded "Agitator," appeared at the bar of the Commons, to demand his seat for the county of Clare. When the Whigs rose to power, in 1830, Mr. Plunkett was made Lord Chancellor of Ireland.

Even this meager notice of the early friends of Catholic emancipation would be incomplete without the name of Sydney Smith, the founder of the Edinburgh Review. Of all English Protestants, out of Parliament, he rendered the most effective aid to that cause. In six or eight articles in that influential periodical, in an equal number of speeches and sermons, and as many pamphlets, he pressed the Catholic claims upon public attention during twenty-five years, in a style which no mortal man but Sydney Smith could do. He did not so much argue the claims of the Catholics as ridicule the fears of their opponents. And never were wit, drollery, humor, irony, and sarcasm, rained down upon a bad cause in greater variety or rarer quality. He fairly drowned the High Church party in their own absurdities. His ten letters, signed Peter Plymley, addressed to "My Brother Abraham, who lives in the country," are the very effervescence of ridicule. They will be read when test acts are remembered only to be execrated. They will preserve them from the rottenness of oblivion. They are inimitable—capable of driving the blues from the cloister of an Archbishop. In the preface to his works, Mr. Smith says: "I have printed in this collection the letters of Peter Plymley. The Government of that day took great pains to find out the author. All that they could find was, that they were brought to Mr. Budd, the publisher, by the Earl of Lauderdale. Somehow or other it came to be conjectured that I was that author. I have always denied it. But finding that I deny it in vain, I have thought it might be as well to include the letters in this collection. They had an immense circulation at the time, and I think above 20,000 copies were sold." This is cool. But the letters were cooler. They gibbeted the absurd opposition which his Episcopal brethren made to emancipation, "without benefit of clergy." The services of Mersrs O'Connell and Shiel will be noticed in the next chapter.

CHAPTER XIII.

Catholic Emancipation—Antiquity and Power of the Papal Church—Treaty of Limerick—Catholic Penal Code of Ireland—Opinions of Penn, Montesquieu, Burke, and Blackstone, concerning it—Its Amelioration—Catholic Association of 1823—The Hour and the Man—Daniel O'Connell elected for Clare—Alarm in Downing Street—Duke of Wellington's Decision—Passage of the Emancipation Bill—Services of O'Connell and Shiel—The latter as an Orator.

The subject-matter of this chapter will be, the Catholic Penal Code, and its repeal by act of Parliament, in 1829.

The antiquity and power of the Roman Hierarchy, and the sway it now holds over 150,000,000 of people, diffused through all quarters of the globe, is one of the most extraordinary facts in the history of the Christian era. Whether the combined efforts of Protestanism to overthrow it, during the next three centuries, will be more successful than during the three since the Reformation, time only can show. In his review of Ranke's History of the Popes, speaking of the Catholic Church, Macaulay says: "She saw the commencement of all the governments, and of all the ecclesiastical establishments, that now exist in the world; and we feel no assurance that she is not destined to see the end of them all. She was great and respected before the Saxon had set foot on Britain—before the Frank had passed the Rhine—when Grecian eloquence still flourished at Antioch—when idols were still worshiped in the temple of Mecca. And she may still exist in undiminished vigor when some traveler from New England shall, in the midst of a vast solitude, take his stand on a broken arch of London Bridge, to sketch the ruins of St. Paul's."

Amongst the adherents to the Papal faith, none have shown a steadier attachment to it, through all vicissitudes, than the Catholics of Ireland. For centuries it has been the dominant, and at times almost exclusive, religion of that country. Persecutions the most bigoted and bloody have not abated the zeal and tenacity with which the Irish have practiced and clung to their hereditary creed. The battle of the Boyne, in 1690, was followed by the Treaty of Limerick, by which William of Orange guaranteed in the most solemn terms religious toleration to his Irish Catholic subjects. The treaty was to be binding upon him, his heirs, and successors. But, a fear of the return of the banished Catholic princes of the house of Stuart, mingled with a propagandist zeal to convert Ireland to the doctrines of the Reformation, induced England to disregard the stipulations of the Treaty of Limerick. Partly by the direct legislation of the British Parliament, and partly through the medium of the Pale, a quasi Legislature of Ireland, the Catholic Penal Code was introduced into that country. Like other branches of British law, it was a piece of patchwork, the contribution of many reigns. It received its worst features within twenty years after the Treaty of Limerick. I will give a summary of its main provisions.

First, as to persons professing the Catholic religion. No Papist could take the real estate of his ancestor, either by descent or purchase; nor purchase any real estate, nor take a lease for more than thirty-one years; and if the profits of such lease exceeded a certain rate, the land went to any Protestant informer. The conveyance of real estate in trust for a Papist was void; nor could he inherit any, nor be in a line of entail, but the estate descended to the next Protestant heir, as if the Papist were dead. A Papist who turned Protestant succeeded to the family estate; and an increase of jointure was allowed to Papist wives on their turning Protestant; whilst, on the other hand, a Protestant who turned Papist, or procured another to turn, was guilty of high treason. Papist fathers were debarred, on a penalty of £500, from being guardians of their children; and a Papist minor, who avowed himself a Protestant, was immediately delivered to a Protestant guardian. No Papist could marry a Protestant, and the priest celebrating the marriage was to be hanged. Papists could not be barristers; and being Protestants, if they married Papists they were to be treated as Papists. It was a felony for a Papist to teach a school; to say or hear mass subjected him to fine and a year's imprisonment; to aid in sending another abroad, to be educated in the Popish religion, subjected the parties to a fine, and disabled them to sue in law or equity, to be executors and administrators, to take any legacy or gift, to hold any office, and to a forfeiture of all their chattels, and all real estate for life. No Papist could hold office, civil or military, sit in Parliament, or vote at elections. Protestants, robbed by privateers in a war with a Popish prince were to be indemnified by levies on the property of Catholics alone.

Second, as to Popish recusants, i. e., persons not attending the Established Church. Such Papists could hold no office, nor keep arms, nor come within ten miles of London, on pain of £100, nor travel above five miles from home without license, on pain of forfeiting all goods, nor come to court on pain of £100, nor bring any action at law or equity; and to marry, baptize, or bury such an one subjected the offending priest to heavy penalties. A recusant married woman forfeited two-thirds of her dower or jointure, nor could she be the executrix of her deceased husband, nor have any part of his goods; and during coverture she might be imprisoned, unless her husband redeemed her at the rate of £10 per month. All other recusant females must renounce Popery or quit the realm; and if they did not leave in a reasonable time, or afterwards returned, they could be put to death.

Third as to Popish priests. Severe penalties were inflicted on them for discharging their ecclesiastical functions anywhere, and if done in England they were liable to perpetual imprisonment. Any such priest who was born in England, and, having left, should come in from abroad, was guilty of treason, and all who harbored him might be punished with death. Rewards were given for discovering Popish clergy, and any person refusing to disclose what he knew of their saying mass, or teaching pupils, might be imprisoned a year. A Popish priest who turned Protestant was entitled to £30 per annum. Besides this, they were subject to all the penalties and disabilities of lay Papists.

Fourth. Papists were excluded from grand juries; in all trials growing out of the Penal Code, the juries were to be Protestants; and in any trial on statutes for strengthening the Protestant interest, a Papist might be peremptorily challenged.

In surveying the lineaments of such a Code, the blood of a statue might glow with indignation, or chill with horror. It was inflicted on Catholic Ireland by Protestant England, in the name of that Church which claims to be the pillar and ground of the Christian faith. Well might the mild William Penn be aroused to denounce it as inhuman, when pleading before the House of Commons for toleration to the Quakers. Well might the sagacious Montesquieu characterize it as cold-blooded tyranny. Well might the philosophic Burke describe it "as a machine of wise and elaborate contrivance, noted for its vicious perfection; and as admirably fitted for the oppression, impoverishment, and degradation of a people, and the debasement in them of human nature itself, as ever proceeded from the perverted ingenuity of man." Even Blackstone, who usually selected his choicest eulogies for the darkest features of the English law, was forced to say of this Code: "These laws are seldom exerted to their utmost rigor; and, indeed, if they were, it would be very difficult to excuse them." Yes, though in the times when the "No-Popery" cry was at its hight, these laws were rigorously enforced, yet, as the mellowing light of civilization increased, the more cruel lay a dead letter on the statute book. But the whole hung over the head of the Catholic, like the sword of Damocles, ready to drop at the breath of any persecuting zealot or malicious informer.

This Code was essentially ameliorated in 1779, and again in 1793. Among other concessions, the elective franchise was extended to Catholics, though they were still excluded from Parliament. But, he who would bring himself within the pale of these ameliorations, must submit to many degrading and annoying requisitions, in the form of registrations, oaths, subscriptions, declarations, &c. In a word, down to 1829, when it was finally repealed, many of the worst features of the Code remained, making it an offense for seven-eighths of the people of Ireland to worship God according to the dictates of their consciences; subjecting them to degrading tests or heavy penalties for exercising precious civil and social rights; goading them with a thousand petty and provoking annoyances, till they had come to be regarded as heathens while bowing at Christian altars, and aliens to a Government under which they were born, and to whose support they were compelled to contribute their blood in war, and their money in peace. To all this, one may enter his protest, while holding at arm's length the Catholic ritual. To worship God according to the dictates of his own conscience, without human molestation or earthly fear, is the divine right of every man, whether he be Irish Catholic or English Protestant, Massachusetts freeman or Louisiana slave.

Notwithstanding the important amendments made in the Catholic Code, in 1779 and 1793, its remaining disabilities and penalties hung over Ireland like a dark cloud, shutting out the sun of civil and religious freedom. In the latter year, an association was organized in Dublin, to agitate and petition for Repeal. Though ultimately rent in pieces by internal commotions, it was the germ of all subsequent organizations for the same objects. During the succeeding thirty years, this question frequently convulsed Parliament and the country. The remedies which the British Government usually prescribed for the political and religious diseases of Ireland were insurrection acts, coercion acts, suspensions of the habeas corpus, capital trials, hangings, and transportation, administered by the batons of the police and the bayonets of the soldiery.

The year 1823 saw a bright star of promise arise on the dark and troubled horizon of Hibernia. The exigencies of the times had healed the feuds of hostile factions among the Emancipationists, and they closed hands in defense of their common liberties. In May, of that year, Daniel O'Connell and Richard Lalor Shiel, who had long been estranged from each other, accidentally met among the mountains of Wicklow, at the house of a friend. A reconciliation took place, and they resolved to form a league for the deliverance of their enslaved Catholic countrymen. The same month they organized the "Catholic Association," in Dublin, on the plan of admitting all persons, of whatever sect or party, who approved its objects. It early enrolled some of the first minds in the island, who commenced an agitation which was soon felt in the fartherest corner of the kingdom, nor stopped till it brought back responses from France, Germany, the United States, Canada, the East Indies, and other distant countries. It made the realm vocal with its orators, crowded Parliament with its petitions, and scattered its tracts over the Continent. O'Connell and Shiel were the life and soul of the Association; the former being its chief manager, the latter its most brilliant advocate.

Undoubtedly some of the transactions of this almost omnipotent body were of an inflammatory character. But it gave concentration and rational aim to the efforts of the oppressed Irish, and, by exciting the hope of relief, withdrew from them the temptation to illegal acts of violence. The justice of its object, and the contempt which its petitions received from Parliament, ultimately rallied to its standard the whole of the Catholics and an influential portion of the dissenting Protestants of Ireland. Alarmed at its power, the session of March, 1825, after a stormy debate, passed an act terminating its existence. Immediately after the adjournment of Parliament, the Association was reörganized, with a constitution which did not come within the law. At the session of 1826, finding that the agitation could not be silenced, various efforts were made to ameliorate the condition of Ireland. After spending five months in vehement discussion, Parliament abandoned the country to the rage of party spirit, and it was left for the well-directed labors of the Association to prevent it from plunging into anarchy and revolution.

At the general election in the summer of 1826, the friends of Emancipation took the field and achieved some signal triumphs in returning members to Parliament. The Irish tenantry, the "forty-shilling freeholders," who had generally been supple instruments in the hands of the Protestant landlord, to perpetuate his domination and their chains, had, by the labors of the Association, been converted into an engine to overthrow the oppressors. They now voted with the Emancipators.

Canning rose to power in 1827. His professed regard for Catholic relief induced Ireland to wait and see what would come from his ministry. His early death quenched all hope of succor from his administration. After the repeal of the Corporation and Test Acts the next year, a struggle for partial relief to the Catholics, which resulted successfully in the Commons, but was defeated in the Lords, only stimulated the friends of Emancipation to take a bolder step. The hour to strike the decisive blow had come, and it brought with it the man.

In 1828, Mr. Fitzgerald, the member for Clare, received a place in the cabinet, thus vacating his seat in the Commons. He was a candidate for reëlection. The Catholic Association requested Mr. O'Connell to become a candidate for the vacancy, and in his own person seek to establish the right of Catholics to sit in Parliament. He immediately issued an address to the electors of Clare, in which, among other things, he said: "Fellow-countrymen, your county wants a representative. I respectfully solicit your suffrages, to raise me to that station. * * * * You will be told I am not qualified to be elected. The assertion is untrue. I am qualified to be elected, and to be your representative. It is true that, as a Catholic, I cannot, and of course never will, take the oaths at present prescribed to members of Parliament. But the authority which created those oaths can abrogate them. And I entertain a confident hope that, if you elect me, the most bigoted of our enemies will see the necessity of removing from the chosen representative of the people an obstacle which would prevent him from doing his duty to his king and to his country."

The address fell like a thunderbolt upon the enemies of Emancipation. The friends of Fitzgerald would not believe it was the intention of O'Connell to seriously contest the canvass. The speedy arrival of two of his agents in Clare dispelled their doubts. The county was in a boil of excitement. The day of election approaches. Shiel addresses a concourse of electors. His eloquence inspires a wild enthusiasm in their hearts. The time for the arrival of the great agitator himself is fixed. An immense throng hails him, with banners, music, and shoutings. The trial day comes, and the candidates appear before assembled thousands of the electors. Fitzgerald delivers an able speech. O'Connell rises and pronounces a magnificent harangue, which sways the passions of the peasantry as forests wave when swept by the wing of the tempest. A violent contest ensues, and at its close the high-sheriff declares that "Daniel O'Connell, Esq., is duly elected a member of the Commons House of Parliament for the county of Clare."

This unexpected result carried dismay into the councils of Downing street; for they knew that O'Connell was soon to appear in London and demand his seat in Parliament. His fame was no stranger to the place where his person was unknown. His reputation had long ago penetrated every mansion and cabin in the realm. The agitation of the past five years, whose tread had shaken Ireland from Cape Clear to the Giant's Causeway, had ever and anon caused the walls of St. Stephen's to tremble. And now, what seemed so terrible in the distance, was to be brought to its very doors. Parliament was not in session; but it had been announced that ministers would oppose Mr. O'Connell's entrance into the Commons. The declaration drove Ireland to the brink of civil war. The commander of the forces conveyed to the ministry the alarming intelligence, that the troops were fraternizing with the people, and their loyalty could not be relied on in the event of an outbreak. All minds not besotted with bigotry felt that the great right for which the Association had contended must be conceded. The Duke of Wellington, then at the head of the government, saw that the hour had come when either his prejudices or his place must be surrendered. He decided that the former must yield. Parliament was convened on the 5th of March, 1829. On the first day of the session, Mr. Peel moved that the House go into committee, "to take into consideration the civil disabilities of his Majesty's Roman Catholic subjects." After two days' debate, it prevailed. A bill of Emancipation was introduced. Ancient hatred was aroused, and in five days sent in a thousand petitions against its passage. The bill passed, after a severe struggle, and Mr. Peel carried it to the Lords. A fierce contest ensued, but it was forced through by the Iron Duke. On the 13th of April it received the royal assent, and was hailed with joy by the friends of religious freedom, whilst bigotry went growling to its den.

Mr. O'Connell appeared in the House to claim his seat. Having been elected before the act of Emancipation, the ancient oaths were tendered to him. He declined to take them. After tedious hearings before the Committee of Elections, extending through several weeks, and a powerful address at the bar of the House in support of his own right, his seat was declared vacant. He returned to Ireland, and was everywhere hailed as "the Liberator of his country." After walking over the course of Clare, he repaired to Westminster, and "the member for all Ireland" took his seat in the British House of Commons.

For this great concession to the Genius of Toleration, the age is indebted to the Catholic Association, organized and sustained by O'Connell and Shiel, the Castor and Pollux of Emancipation. No two men were more perfect antagonisms in the prime elements of their characters, and no two more harmoniously blended in the accomplishment of a common object. Each supplied what was wanting in the other. O'Connell was unsurpassed in planning, organizing, and executing, and his unique and vigorous eloquence could stir to its bottom the ground tier of Irish society. Shiel was rich in the highest gifts of oratory, ornate, classical, impassioned, and could rouse the enthusiasm and intoxicate the imaginations of the refined classes of his countrymen. The one contributed to the work, the learning and skill of an acute lawyer, the knowledge of a well-read historian of his country, an intimate acquaintance with all the details of the great question at issue, and business capacities of the first order. The other gave to it a transcendent intellect, adorned with the genius of a poet, the graces of a rhetorician, and the embellishments of a polite scholar. Both consecrated to it intense nationality of feeling, quenchless perseverance, and indomitable courage. Each yielded to the other the exclusive occupancy of the peculiar field of labor to which his talents were best adapted.

Mr. Shiel was born in 1791. In his youth, he won a high literary reputation as the author of two tragedies, Evadne and The Apostate, and some beautiful essays in the periodicals. He early acquired an enviable reputation at the Dublin bar as an advocate. But "the guage and measure of the man" were known to a comparatively small circle till his splendid oratorical displays in defense of the principles and objects of the Catholic Association made his fame coëxtensive with the empire. The result of his services has been recorded. To apply to himself what he so graphically said of Grattan, "The people of Ireland saw the pinnacles of the Establishment shattered by the lightning of his eloquence." The Emancipation bill opened to him the doors of Parliament. He entered its hall in 1831, heralded by a reputation surpassing that with which most orators have been content to leave that field of their triumphs. It is the highest proof of the solidity of his reputation, that in this new arena he increased the brilliancy of his fame, being a marked exception to the rule, that orators who have become famous at the bar, or the hustings, or on the platform, have failed to meet the public expectation on encountering the severer tests of the House of Commons.

Several years ago I heard Mr. Shiel deliver a speech in Parliament, and I retain a vivid impression of his powers. He seemed the very embodiment of all that was gorgeous and beautiful in the arts of rhetoric and oratory. His sentences rushed forth with the velocity of a mountain torrent, while for an hour and a half he poured down upon the House a ceaseless shower of metaphor, simile, declamation, and appeal, lighted with the brilliant flashes of wit, and mingled with the glittering hail of sarcasm. He belongs not to the best school of oratory, but is master of that in which he was trained. There is no rant or fustian in his speeches, for they are eminently intellectual. Though polished in the extreme, they are pure ore, and sparkle with real gems. His ornaments are lavishly put on, but are never selected from the tinsel and mock diamond mine. His defect is, that he too much discards logic, and revels in rhetoric. In discussing even an appropriation bill, his figures are drawn less from the annual budget of the Chancellor of the Exchequer than from the perennial springs of Helicon. He aims to reach the heart, not through the reason, but the reason and the heart through the imagination. While his oratory lacks the logical power and majestic strength which bear aloft the poetic imagery and affluent illustration of Choate, it partakes largely of those embellishments that give brilliancy and grace to the eloquence of our distinguished countryman. He is no more like Brougham or Webster, than a dashing charge of Murat at the head of his cavalry is like a steady fire from a park of artillery.

As a specimen of his oratory, I subjoin an extract from one of his speeches. In 1837, Lord Lyndhurst declared, in the Upper House, that the Irish were "aliens in blood and religion." Shortly after, Mr. Shiel thus repelled the charge in the Commons. Lord L. was a listener.

"Where was Arthur, Duke of Wellington, when those words were uttered? Methinks he should have started up to disclaim them.

"'The battles, sieges, fortunes that he passed'

ought to have come back upon him. He ought to have remembered that, from the earliest achievement in which he displayed that military genius which has placed him foremost in the annals of modern warfare, down to that last and surpassing combat which has made his name imperishable—from Assaye to Waterloo—the Irish soldiers, with whom your armies were filled, were the inseparable auxiliaries to the glory with which his unparalleled successes have been crowned. Whose were the athletic arms that drove your bayonets at Vimiera through the phalanxes that never reeled in the shock of war before? What desperate valor climbed the steeps and filled the moats of Badajos? All, all his victories should have rushed and crowded back upon his memory: Vimiera, Badajos, Salamanca, Abuera, Toulouse—and, last of all, the greatest. Tell me, for you were there—I appeal to the gallant soldier before me, (pointing to Sir Henry Hardinge,) who bears, I know, a generous heart in an intrepid breast—tell me, for you must needs remember, on that day when the destinies of mankind were trembling in the balance; while death fell in showers upon them; when the artillery of France, leveled with the precision of the most deadly science, played upon them; when her legions, incited by the voice, inspired by the example of their mighty leader, rushed again and again to the contest; tell me if for an instant, when to hesitate for an instant was to be lost, the 'aliens' blanched? And when, at length, the moment for the last decisive movement had arrived; when the valor, so long wisely checked, was at last let loose; when, with words familiar but immortal, the great captain exclaimed, 'Up, lads, and at them!'—tell me if Catholic Ireland with less heroic valor than the natives of your own glorious isle precipitated herself upon the foe! The blood of England, Scotland, Ireland, flowed in the same stream, on the same field. When the chill morning dawned, their dead lay cold and stark together. In the same deep pit their bodies were deposited. The green spring is now breaking on their commingled dust. The dew falls from heaven upon their union in the grave. Partakers in every peril, in the glory shall we not participate? And shall we be told, as a requital, that we are estranged from the noble country for whose salvation our life-blood was poured out?"

Though approaching the verge of good taste, conceive of the present effect of such an outburst gushing from the lips of Shiel, the perspiration standing in drops on his knotted locks, his eye kindled with Milesian fire, every feature of his expressive countenance instinct with passion, every limb of his small but symmetrical frame trembling with emotion, his shrill but musical voice barbing every emphatic word!

Since he entered Parliament, Mr. Shiel has acted with the liberal Whigs, has held office under Lord John Russell, and generally declined the lead of Mr. O'Connell. He stood aloof from the Repeal agitation, though he defended O'Connell, when on trial for Conspiracy some four years ago, with the ability and eloquence of his brightest days.

CHAPTER XIV.

Movements toward Parliamentary Reform—John Cartwright—The Father of Parliamentary Reform—His Account of the Trials of Hardy and Tooke—Lord Byron's Eulogium of him—His Opinions of the Slave Trade—The First English Advocate of the Ballot—His Conviction for Conspiracy—His Labors for Grecian and Mexican Independence—William Cobbett—His Character, Opinions, and Services—His Style of Writing—His Great Influence with the Middling and Lower Orders of England—Sir Francis Burdett—His Labors for Reform—His Recantation.

Grant to the people of England universal suffrage and equal Parliamentary representation, and all other reforms will ultimately follow. The present century has taught the masses and the statesmen of that country, that, to wield influence over its Government, it is not necessary to occupy official stations. I am about to note some occurrences in the life of one who taught and illustrated the truth, that power and place are not synonymous terms—one who exerted much sway over public affairs for fifty years, one whose services were wholly of a popular character, he never having held office. I allude to John Cartwright. His name is appropriately introduced previous to noticing the passage of the Reform Bill, for, no man did more than he to create a public opinion which demanded that great measure. By universal consent he was called "The Father of Parliamentary Reform."

Mr. Cartwright was born in 1740. He entered the navy as a midshipman, saw a great deal of hard fighting, reached the post of first lieutenant, became distinguished for his science and skill in the service, and at the age of thirty-four abandoned the seas, and turned his mind to politics. In 1774, he published Letters on American Independence, addressed to the House of Commons, in which he took radical ground in favor of the rights of the Colonies. "It is a capital error," says he, "in the reasonings of most writers on this subject, (the rights of man,) that they consider the liberty of mankind in the same light as an estate or chattel, and go about to prove or disapprove the right to it, by grants, usage, or municipal statutes. It is not among moldy parchments that we are to look for it; it is the immediate gift of God; it is not derived from any one, but it is original in every one." Here we have the pioneer idea of our own Declaration of Independence, uttered by an unknown Englishman two years before that immortal paper saw the light. In 1776, an event occurred which put Major Cartwright's principles (he had been appointed major in the Nottinghamshire militia) to a severe test. He was always proud of the navy, and ambitious of promotion in the service. Lord Howe, who had witnessed his courage and skill, having taken command of the fleet to act against the American Colonies, urged Cartwright to take a captaincy of a line-of-battle ship. He was then paying his addresses to a lady of high family, whose friends would consent to her accepting his hand if he would accede to the proposal of Lord Howe. He declined, thereby losing the favor both of Mars and Hymen. This led to an acquaintance with the gallant Lord Effingham, an officer of the army, who proved himself a genuine nobleman by resigning his commission rather than act against "the rebels."

Cartwright now (1776) commenced the work to which he devoted the remaining years of his laborious and useful life—Parliamentary Reform. At the outset, he took the ground now occupied by the Chartists. In his first two pamphlets—and they were the earliest English productions on reform in the House of Commons—he maintained that equal representation, universal suffrage, and annual elections, were rights inherent in the body of the people. His system closely resembled that engrafted upon the United States Constitution twelve years later. This shows him a man of rare sagacity for the times, far in advance of his cotemporaries, and not a whit behind the most radical American patriots. The next year he presented an address to the King, urging peace with his Colonies, and a union with them on the basis of independent States. He organized, the same year, England's first association for promoting Parliamentary reform, called the "Society for Political Inquiry." Soon after, Cartwright stood twice for Parliament, but was unsuccessful, partly on account of his radical principles, and partly because he would not stoop to any form of bribery, not even "treating," declaring that "he would not spend a single shilling to influence the electors."

He continued to agitate for reform, by pamphlets, speeches, and correspondence, till, in 1781, he organized the celebrated "Society for Constitutional Information," which enrolled many of the first names in the kingdom, and to which Tooke belonged when tried for treason in 1794. Cartwright wrote the first address of the Society. It received the high encomiums of Sir William Jones, who said it ought to be engraven upon gold. The ship of Parliamentary Reform now glided smoothly, Cartwright being the chief pilot, when the French revolution burst upon the world. He hailed it as the dawn of a political millennium, and, filled with joy, he addressed a congratulatory and advisory letter to the French National Assembly. But, the skies of France, so bright at the rising of the revolutionary sun, soon became darkened, and the clouds poured down blood and fire upon the land, covering the friends of liberty in England with sorrow and dismay. The Reign of Terror in France was followed by a Reign of Terror in England. In the former, the victims were royalists. In the latter, radicals. In the former, Robespierre and the guillotine executed vengeance. In the latter, George III and the Court of King's Bench. Large numbers erased their names from the proscribed roll of the Society. Cartwright, Tooke, and a resolute band, resolved to stand by their principles and pledges, and brave the royal anger, come life, come death. The particulars of the treason trials which followed, I have already given.

Some of Cartwright's friends besought him to stand aloof from Tooke and his "brother traitors." He was too brave and true a man to desert his associates in the ordeal hour. He addressed a letter to the Secretary of State, asking permission to visit Tooke in the Tower, avowing that it had been the greatest pleasure of his life to coöperate with him for Parliamentary reform; and if his friend was a felon, and worthy of death, so was he. He has left interesting memoranda of the trials at the Old Bailey. He says, "Gibbs spoke like an angel" in Hardy's case, and that Erskine became so exhausted, toward the close of the trial, that, in arguing incidental points to the court, an intermediate person had to repeat what he said to the judges. He conveyed intelligence of the result of Hardy's case to his family in the country, in terms as terse as Cæsar's celebrated military dispatch: "Hardy is acquitted.—J. C." He was a witness in Tooke's case. On the cross-examination of the Attorney General, though cautioned by the court not to criminate himself, he scorned all concealment, avowing that the objects of the Constitutional Society were to obtain equal representation, universal suffrage, and annual Parliaments, and replying to the caution of the judges, that "he came there not to state what was prudent, but what was true." When questioned about some expressions of his, as to "strangling the vipers aristocracy and monarchy," he said he had no recollection of using the terms, but, if he had, and they were applied to aristocracies and monarchies hostile to liberty, he thought them well deserved. He says Tooke grappled with the prosecuting counsel with the strength and courage of a lion. When a paper was produced, and Tooke was asked to admit his handwriting, the Chief Justice cautioned him not to do so hastily. Turning to his Lordship, he said, "I protest, before God, that I have never done an action, never written a sentence, in public or private, never entertained a thought on any political subject, which, taken fairly, with all the circumstances of time, occasion, and place, I have the smallest hesitation to admit." How the stout-hearted integrity of such men, in such a trying hour, puts to eternal shame the servile tricks and fawning arts of the common scum of office-hunting politicians.

The treason trials of 1794 being over, Cartwright resumed his work, and for some eight years seems to have been the only active man of character and standing in the enterprise—the others having cowered before the persecuting spirit of the times. In 1802, a ludicrous occurrence showed the suspicious state of the Governmental mind. The Major had a brother, Dr. George Cartwright, who was celebrated as a mechanician, being the inventor of the power-loom, and other valuable machines. He had taken out patents for them—these had been extensively infringed—and he had commenced suits against the violators. The Major was assisting him in procuring evidence; and for that purpose he had dispatched an agent to Yorkshire, with a letter of instructions, which had a good deal to say about levers, cranks, rollers, and screws. The messenger was arrested as a joint conspirator with the Major for the overthrow of his Majesty's Government, by means of some "infernal machine"—the phrases in the letter being interpreted to cover a dark design to "put the screws" on the King. Ascertaining that his agent was in limbo, Cartwright wrote to the Attorney General, offering to explain the matter. The Crown officer was not to be caught so. Indict and hang the conspirator he would, in spite of power-looms and militia majors. At length the facts became known, and the astute Attorney was glad to back out of the ridiculous scrape by an apologetic letter to the parties.

It would require a volume to record all that our patriot did for Parliamentary reform from 1804, when it had a limited revival, till 1824, when he died. Though he was sixty-four years old at the commencement of this period, and eighty-four at its close, he did more during these twenty years to procure for Englishmen their electoral rights, than any other ten persons in the kingdom. He published scores of pamphlets, written in a style, bold, lucid, and going to the roots of the controversy; convened hundreds of meetings in all parts of the country, to which he addressed able speeches; sent thousands of petitions to Parliament; formed numerous societies; and conducted a never flagging correspondence with the leading friends of liberty and reform. In 1810, he sold his farm and removed to London, that "he might be near his work." Brave old heart of oak, of threescore years and ten! The next year, thirty-eight persons were seized at Manchester while attending a reform meeting, and sent fifty miles to prison, on a charge of sedition. Cartwright went down to aid in preparing their defense and attend the examination. Having procured their release, he took a circuitous route home, getting up meetings and petitions on the tour. He was arrested, taken before a magistrate, his papers and person searched, when, finding nothing worthy of death or bonds upon him, he was discharged. Vainly endeavoring to obtain a copy of the warrant on which he was arrested, he subsequently presented the case by petition to the House of Peers. Lord Byron, the poet, in supporting the petition, said of him: "He is a man, my lords, whose long life has been spent in one unceasing struggle for the liberty of the subject, against that undue influence of the Crown which has increased, is increasing, and ought to be diminished; and, whatever difference of opinion may exist as to his political tenets, few will be found to question the integrity of his intentions. Even now, oppressed with years, and not exempt from the infirmities attendant on age, but unimpaired in talent, and unshaken in spirit, frangas, non flectes, he has received many a wound in the combat against corruption; and the new grievance, the fresh insult, of which he now complains, may inflict another scar, but no dishonor."

In 1814, he addressed a series of letters to Clarkson on the slave trade—he having taken an active part in the contest for its abolition—in which he argued that it should be punished as piracy, a doctrine which he was the first to broach. He also wrote against bribery at elections, and in favor of voting by ballot, being the first English advocate of that measure. A year or two after this, a mercenary widow of one of his old Scotch correspondents wrote to him that the Government had offered her a large sum if she would give up his letters—adding, significantly, that the circumstances of her family were such, that she thought she should comply with the offer. He extinguished her hopes of extorting money from him by informing her, that "it gave him great satisfaction to find that any of his letters were esteemed so valuable, and begged her to make the best bargain she could of their contents." In 1816, the great number and imposing character of the demonstrations in favor of Parliamentary reform alarmed the Government. Canning, in the House of Commons, denounced Cartwright as "that old heart in London, from which the veins of sedition in the country are supplied." The kingdom was in a flame—the habeas corpus act was suspended—and the "Six Acts," aimed at the Irish Catholic associations, and the English reform meetings, were adopted. Cobbett, the editor of the Register, fled to America. Others left their ears on the pillory at home, or carried them at the request of the Government to Botany Bay. Cartwright, who never flinched from friend or foe, stood his ground, and contrived new modes to keep up the agitation, evading the recent law against "tumultuous petitioning," by getting up petitions of twenties, and in various ways avoiding the prohibitions of the "Six Acts."

So far, he had kept out of the fangs of the law, excepting in the affair of searching his person. But, the Attorney General had his eye upon him. In 1819, he participated in the famous Birmingham proceedings, which resulted in the appointment, on his suggestion, of a "Legislatorial Attorney" for the town, who was to present a letter to the Speaker of the Commons, as its representative. This measure of "sending a petition in the form of a living man, instead of one on parchment," as he called it, precipitated the long-expected crisis. He was indicted for conspiracy and sedition, in Warwickshire. So soon as he heard of it, he set off by post to meet the charge, traveling one hundred miles in a single day, though then bowed down with the weight of fourscore years. Putting in bail, he returned to London, and resumed his work. Soon after, he presided at a reform meeting, drew up a petition, couched in the most energetic terms, signed it, sent it to the Commons, and then set about exposing the attempts of the Crown officers to pack the jury which was to try him. The trial took place in August, 1820. He called no witnesses; addressed the jury mainly in defense of his principles; was convicted; was not called up for sentence till the next May; when the judge, after eulogizing his general character, condemned him to pay a fine of £100, and stand committed till it was paid. He immediately pulled out a canvass bag, counted down the money in gold, slily remarking to the sheriff, that they were all "good sovereigns."

When the heroic struggles of Greece, South America, and Mexico, resounded through Europe, they had no more attentive listener than Major Cartwright. Seizing his never-idle pen, he wrote "Hints to the Greeks"—a letter to the President of the Greek Congress—and another to the Greek Deputies. About the same time, he opened his doors to two of the liberal leaders in the Spanish Revolution, who had sought refuge in England. His sun was now declining. He had attended his last reform meeting in 1823; he wrote his last political pamphlet in 1824. In July of this year, he received a letter from Mr. Jefferson, who said, "Your age of eighty-four and mine of eighty-one years, insure us a speedy meeting; we may then commune at leisure on the good and evil which, in the course of our long lives, we have both witnessed." He had taken a deep interest in the Mexican struggles for liberty, and frequently conferred with General Michelena, its envoy then in London, upon its affairs. On the 21st of September, 1824, the General sent to inform him that the scheme of Iturbide had failed, and that the liberty of Mexico might be considered as established. Two days afterward, "the father of Parliamentary reform" died, retaining his faculties and his fervent love of freedom to the last. He cheerfully resigned himself into the hands of his Maker, exclaiming, "God's will be done!"

Among the remarkable men who, like Cartwright, helped to prepare the public mind for the Reform Bill, and like him illustrated the truth, that power and place are not necessarily synonymous terms, is William Cobbett, whom the "Corn-law Rhymer" calls England's

"Mightiest peasant-born."

His name is familiar on both sides of the Atlantic, and is much mixed up with good and evil report. He was no negation or neutral, but a man of mark, that left his impress on the age. He was not only one of the most voluminous, but one of the boldest and most powerful writers of the present century. Ever in the thickest of the strife, his "peasant arm" dealt goodly blows in the contests of the People with the Crown, during the last thirty years of his turbulent life. Cobbett was born in 1762. His father was a poor yeoman, who brought his son up to hard work and Tory principles. He never went to school, but was literally self-taught, learning even the alphabet without a teacher. He says: "I learned grammar when I was a private soldier on the pay of sixpence per day." Having committed Lowth's Grammar to heart, he used to make it a rule to recite it through from memory every time he stood sentry. He enlisted in the army when he was twenty-one, and served eight years in the British American colonies. He was discharged, returned to England, married, made a short tour in France, whence he embarked for the United States, arriving in New York in 1792. He was a violent Tory—joined the anti-French party—commenced publishing—attacked with ferocity Priestley, Franklin, Rush, Jefferson, Dallas, Monroe, Gallatin, Fox, Sheridan, Bonaparte, Talleyrand, and a score of other great men—was arrested, and compelled to give bail in a heavy sum for his good behavior—was sued for a libel by Dr. Rush, who recovered five thousand dollars damages—fled from Philadelphia to New York, where the execution overtook him—was thrown into prison—the judgment was paid by his admirers—he left the country, and arrived in England in 1801. While in America, he wrote under the name of "Peter Porcupine," and on his return to England published his writings in twelve volumes. They had a large circulation among the Anti-Jacobins, who received him with open arms. He had previously sent an account of his trans-Atlantic "persecutions" to the "Loyal Society" of London, "to be used as a panacea for the reformists, and the whole gang of liberty-men in England."

He started a paper in London in 1801, called "The Porcupine," which supported Pitt and the Tories, and attacked Fox and the Whigs, much after the style of his Philadelphia writings. He suspended the publication of "The Porcupine," and commenced his celebrated "Weekly Political Register" in 1802, which he continued till his death, a period of thirty-three years. This journal has given him an enduring name among the political writers of his times. For two or three years, it advocated High Toryism. Wyndham was enamored of it, and stated in the House of Commons, that its editor deserved a statue of gold. Wyndham promised to introduce Cobbett to Pitt. The latter declined to see him. The editor was deeply mortified at this rebuff of the aristocratic minister. Immediately thereafter, and probably therefore, Cobbett changed his politics, and from a high Church and King man, turned to be a radical reformer and champion of the people. The first public demonstration of the somerset was a violent philippic against the Irish Tory administration. He was prosecuted for libels, both at London and Dublin, on the Lord Lieutenant, Chancellor, Chief Justice, and Under Secretary for Ireland, and was fined a thousand pounds. This prosecution only stimulated his new-born zeal for liberalism. He sharpened his weapons, and plunged them into the bowels of his old friends as vigorously as he had before done into those of their enemies, sparing neither Church nor State, Ministry nor King. The Register soon became the terror of evil-doers. Its denunciations of profligate statesmen and rotten institutions were so bold and hearty, and its columns breathed such an air of defiant independence, that it was sought for with avidity by the radicals of the middling and lower orders, and the income as well as the fame of its editor became largely increased.

But Cobbett never could sail long in smooth water. Like the petrel, he loved the storm. In 1810, he was prosecuted for a libel on the Government, contained in an article reflecting in indignant terms on the brutal flogging of a company of the local militia, under the surveillance of a regiment of German mercenaries. He defended himself, was convicted, and sentenced to pay a fine of one thousand pounds, be imprisoned two years, and give sureties for his good behavior for seven years in five thousand pounds. He never forgot or forgave this injury. Two other prosecutions of editors grew out of the same transaction. They were defended by Brougham in two splendid speeches, which introduced the rising barrister to a first place among the forensic orators of the kingdom. The circulation of the Register had increased steadily from year to year; and soon after this trial, Cobbett continuing to edit it while in prison, it reached an unprecedented sale, some weeks numbering one hundred thousand copies. Its vigorous assaults on the Government conspired with the other reform movements of the times to cause the repeal of the habeas corpus, and the passage of the infamous "six acts," by which the ministry hoped to crush the agitators. To avoid the blow aimed at him, Cobbett fled to America early in 1817, where he remained nearly three years. He regularly remitted "copy" across the Atlantic for the Register, which continued a pungent thorn in the side of Castlereagh and his friends, though the hand which wielded it was three thousand miles away.

Returning to England in 1820, he established a daily paper, which failed—tried to introduce the cultivation of Indian corn into the country, which failed—stood a candidate for Parliament for Coventry, and failed—defended himself against two prosecutions for libel, and failed, paying fines to the amount of nearly two thousand pounds—plunged into the Queen Caroline controversy with his brother liberals, and did not fail—advocated Catholic emancipation, and saw it succeed—made an attempt to enter Parliament for Preston, and was defeated—took an active part in all the agitations for Parliamentary reform—defended himself in a speech of six hours against a prosecution for sedition, growing out of an article in the Register in favor of the Reform Bill, the jury being discharged because they could not agree—and finally was reprimanded by the Speaker, for giving three cheers in the gallery of the Commons, when the bill passed the House. In 1832, he reached the acme of his ambition, by being returned to the first reformed Parliament for the borough of Oldham. But it is a rare tree that will bear transplanting in the sere and yellow leaf of advanced age. Cobbett was threescore years and ten when he took his seat in the House of Commons. Though he made a few vigorous speeches, he did not fulfill the expectations of his friends, nor exhibit the power and originality in debate which the public anticipated from the editor of the Political Register. He closed his stormy life in 1835.

Cobbett has been called "a bold, bad man." Bold he was; but, he was not as bad as the times in which he lived, nor the institutions he assailed. He was a man to be feared rather than loved—to be admired rather than trusted. But he was a MAN, "for a' that." He never croaked or canted—never whined or repined—was proud, self-willed, self-reliant—knew his strength, and asked no favors and showed no quarter. His idiosyncrasies, his egotism, his self-dependence, rendered it next to impossible for anybody to work with him even to attain a common end. He was the victim of prejudice, conceit, passion, and seemed not to advocate a cause so much from love of it, as from hatred of its opposite. He bent his great energies to tear down existing institutions, whilst he lent but feeble aid in building up others in their place. He hated all that was above him in birth and station, and his appeals usually being to the prejudices and passions of the class from which he sprang, he wielded a vast influence over the common people of England. They were proud of his attainments, because they regarded him as one of themselves, who had risen, by his own strength, to a commanding position among the leaders of public opinion, and they witnessed with pride his ability to grapple with and hurl to the earth, the titled champions of the privileged orders. Thus, more than any other writer, he was, for thirty years, looked up to as the representative, the oracle, of the "base born" of his countrymen. It contributed not a little to his influence with the ground tier of British society, that he was a practical farmer, in a moderate way—the great sale of his writings affording him the means of gratifying his cultivated tastes for agricultural pursuits. Taking it for granted that established systems, opinions, and institutions, were necessarily wrong, he attacked everything that was old, and everybody that was popular. He avowed that he attacked Dr. Rush's system of medical practice, because it originated with a republican—he called Washington "a notorious rebel and traitor"—nicknamed Franklin "Old Lightning-rod"—denounced Lafayette as "a citizen-miscreant"—and abused Jefferson because he was a popular democrat. But this was in the days of his toryism. However, when a radical, he showered ridicule on Shakspeare, Milton, and Scott, because all the literati praised them, and eulogized O'Connell, because all Englishmen anathematized him.

But, the objects of his assaults were not always so undeserving of it, nor so ill assorted. He exposed the land monopoly of England, and vindicated the rights and dignity of labor—he laid bare the rapacity of the Established Church, and maintained the rights of Catholics and dissenters—he denounced the game laws, the corn laws, and the penal code—he advocated the abolition of the House of Lords, and the bestowment of universal suffrage upon the people. It was impossible for a man of such giant powers and rooted prejudices, who had received the iron of persecution so often in his own person, and who was always in the thickest of the fray, to speak calmly or with measured words. Consequently, his writings abound in malevolent epithets, unmitigated vituperation, and coarse ridicule of men and measures. So do they abound in right good sense, cogent reasonings, elevated appeals to justice and humanity, interspersed with racy humor, graphic descriptions, happy illustrations, and lively anecdotes. The basis of his style was the old Saxon tongue, and it was as idiomatic and lucid as that of Franklin or Paley. He wrote on numerous subjects besides politics; and, in addition to the eighty-eight volumes of the Register, and the twelve of his Peter Porcupine, he put to press nearly fifty volumes. He was kind to his family, hospitable to the poor, and had a great deal of sunshine in his soul. He will be gratefully remembered by enfranchised Englishmen, when milder and meaner men, who affected to look down upon him with contempt, are forgotten, or are recollected only to be despised.

I close this notice of the great English peasant, by quoting the closing stanza of a beautiful tribute to his memory, by Ebenezer Elliott, the author of "Corn Law Rhymes."

"Dead Oak, thou liv'st. Thy smitten hands.
The thunder of thy brow,
Speak with strange tongues in many lands,
And tyrants hear thee now!"

Sir Francis Burdett has been mentioned as a friend of Parliamentary Reform. Few Englishmen did more for the cause than this bold advocate of liberal principles. Few titled Reformers have suffered more for opinion's sake than he. It was his good or bad fortune to be frequently caught in the net of legal prosecution. In 1809, Sir Francis then being a member of Parliament, a Mr. John Gale Jones, whose name would never have got beyond his shop had it not become associated with that of Burdett, published a handbill animadverting, in terms of clumsy abuse, upon some proceedings of the House of Commons; whereupon, that body of honorables committed him to Newgate. Sir Francis brought forward a motion for his liberation, based on the ground that the House had no right to imprison him for such an offense. Being defeated, he published an address to his constituents, in which he applied some contemptuous epithets to this contemptible proceeding. A furious debate sprang up, which terminated in a resolution to commit Burdett to the Tower. The Sergeant-at-Arms went to his house with the warrant of committal, but Sir Francis refused to accompany him to his new abode. The next day he repeated his visit; but by this time the populace had assembled in great numbers around the dwelling of the Baronet, and drove away the officer. Early the following morning, he broke into his apartments, seized Burdett, put him into a carriage, and bore him to the Tower, accompanied by several regiments of dragoons, where he remained in close confinement till the end of the session. The day of his release, all London was out of doors, and he was welcomed home with shoutings, flags, and salutes of cannon. In 1819, Sir Francis having continued to fight the good fight during the intervening ten years, a great reform meeting was held at Manchester, in the open air. All was orderly till a regiment of cavalry rode in upon the multitude, and, with drawn swords, cut down men, women, and children, leaving many dead and wounded on the field. Sir Francis published a manly letter to the electors of Westminster, (he being the representative of that great constituency,) commenting in eloquent terms on this infamous transaction. He was indicted for a seditious libel; and after contesting the prosecution, inch by inch, through all the courts—not so much for his own sake as for that of the great cause with which he was identified—he was fined £2,000 and imprisoned three months. To read the case, as reported in the English law books, will make the cheek of a republican lawyer tingle with indignation. These, and some other like occurrences in his life, have led candid observers to regard Sir Francis Burdett as something of a demagogue. He had a spice of that element in his composition. He was a bold, straight-forward man, who told plain truths in a plain way, whether addressing letters to his constituents, or speeches to the Commons House of Parliament. He often stood alone among his colleagues, cheered by the conviction that, though no member voted with him, he was supported by the voices of hundreds of thousands of the people. He was a great reader, a sound thinker, an able debater, and always exerted a controlling influence over the more radical portions of the House. His frequent letters to his constituents were dignified and pungent, cost him a good deal of persecution and money, and were worth all they cost. In 1818, he was chosen, with his friend Romilly, to represent the important borough of Westminster, after one of the bitterest contests modern England has known. He retained the seat through many years. In all the onsets upon corruption and prerogative, down to the era of the Reform bill, he was with the head of the liberal column, and stood where the blows fell thickest and heaviest, the idol of the people, the target of the crown. He was a Wilkes, without so large a measure of cowardice, meanness, turbulence, or rottenness of character and principle.

One regrets to be compelled to record of such a man, that in his old age he grew timid and conservative. After the passage of the Reform bill, he ceased to act with the radicals, and on the occasion of the attempt to deprive the Irish Church of a portion of its temporalities, he went wholly over to the Tories, since which he has sunk into comparative obscurity. Some years ago, in reply to a speech of Lord John Russell, he spoke of "the cant of reform!" Lord John electrified the House when he retorted with cutting emphasis, that "there was such a thing as the re-cant of reform!"

CHAPTER XV.

Parliamentary Reform—Old House of Commons—Rotten Boroughs—Old Sarum—French Revolution of 1830—Rally for Reform—Wellington Resigns—Grey in Power—Ministerial Bill Defeated—New Parliament Summoned—Commons Pass the Bill—Brougham's Speech in Lords—Peers Throw out the Bill—Mrs. Partington—Riots—Again Bill Passed by Commons, and again Defeated by Peers—Ministers Resign—Are Recalled—The Bill becomes a Law.

The House of Commons was instituted in the thirteenth century, when Henry III summoned the counties of the realm to send knights, and the principal cities and boroughs to send citizens and burgesses, to Parliament. This was done rather to afford him a check upon his arrogant barons, and to procure the sanction of "the Commons," (as the untitled property-holders were called,) to certain subsidies, than to vest in them any independent functions. But, this "third estate" continuing to be summoned in subsequent reigns, its influence increased with the wealth and intelligence of the middle classes, whom it represented, till what was long regarded by them as a burden came to be cherished as a right and a privilege; and a supple instrument, originally used by the monarch to strengthen his prerogative, gradually became the weapon of the democracy, to cripple its powers and limit its boundaries.

At first, all the counties, and the largest cities and boroughs, were summoned. Subsequently, as other towns rose to importance, they were added to the list. In process of time, as trade fluctuated, drying up old channels and opening new, many of the ancient cities and burghs fell into decay. Still, they sent representatives to Parliament. In 1509, the House consisted of 298 members, many of them even then representing very small constituencies. From that period, down to the passage of the Reform bill, no place was disfranchised, (except two or three for bribery,) while 255 members were added (including Scotland and excluding Ireland,) by the creation of new and the revival of old burghs. During the six centuries which the House had existed, what changes had passed over the kingdom, sweeping away the foundations of once populous marts, and causing others to rise on barren wastes!

Here we have the origin of "rotten boroughs;" i. e., towns which, centuries ago, had a flourishing existence, continuing to send representatives to Parliament long after any human being had made his local habitation therein, and whose very names would have perished from the land, but that they were annually recorded on the Parliamentary rolls. One of these has been immortalized by the discussions on the Reform bill—Old Sarum. Not a soul had dwelt there since the Tudors ascended the English throne—not a tenement had been seen there since Columbus discovered America—nor could the vestiges of its ruins be traced by the antiquarian eye of a Champollion or a Stephens. This sand-hill, in 1832, sent as many members to Parliament as Lancashire, with a population of a million and a half. Other represented boroughs were nearly in like condition; others could display their half score or more of decayed hovels. In the case of these rotten boroughs, the owner of the land, or of the old franchises, who was generally a wealthy Peer, sometimes an aspiring London attorney, occasionally an avaricious stock-jobbing Jew, by virtue of his single vote designated the representatives. Subject to the mutations of other real estate and franchises, they were transferable by private bargain, or auction, or sheriff's sale, or will, or assignment of a bankrupt's effects, or as security for a gambling debt. Not only were they instruments of corruption, but ludicrous libels on the claim of the House of Commons to represent the people, and striking illustrations of extreme inequality in the distribution of political power.

An East India Prince, the Nabob of Arcot, once owned burghs entitled to twenty members of Parliament; and through his English agent, who held the parchment titles, he sent that number to the Commons. A waiter at a celebrated gaming-house sat for years in Parliament in this wise. He loaned money to a "noble" gambler, who gave him security for the loan on a rotten borough, which sent a member. The waiter elected himself to the seat. In the debates on the Reform bill, it was stated that certain places, with an aggregate population of less than 5,000, returned one hundred members. Old Sarum, Gatton, Newtown, and other decayed boroughs, exerted a controlling influence on British legislation, long after some of them had ceased to be the abodes of humanity; whilst Manchester, Birmingham, Leeds, and other important towns, swarming with life, and rich in arts and manufactures, had not a single representative. The elective franchise was very restricted, and generally based on absurd qualifications. Scores of members were chosen by close corporations, while others were designated by single individuals. The essence of the system is concentrated in the general fact, that, in 1832, less than two hundred persons, mostly of the "privileged orders," actually returned a majority of the House of Commons.

So enormous an evil was not without an occasional mite of good. Though these coroneted traffickers in Parliamentary seats usually bestowed them on favorites of their own class, there were some notable exceptions to this rule. John Horne Tooke, the most radical of all reformers, sat for Old Sarum, the rottenest of all rotten boroughs. Brougham entered the Commons through the narrow door of a "nomination borough," though he left it with the plaudits of the largest constituency in the kingdom. Burke, Romilly, Mackintosh, and other illustrious and liberal names, were indebted to close corporations for their introduction to Senatorial fame.

This system, the slow growth of centuries, was in full play at the ascension of William IV. It was destined to a speedy overthrow. Early in 1830, a simultaneous movement towards the long-deferred reform was made throughout Great Britain and Ireland. George IV died, and William IV ascended the throne, on the 26th of June, 1830. In the following month, the people of France rose and drove the Bourbons from their kingdom. The news descended upon the already excited mind of England like an animating spirit. The mass heaved with the throes of new life. The reformers held meetings in every important town, to congratulate their brethren of France on the expulsion of the elder Bourbons. Drawn together by the bonds of a common sympathy, they realized how numerous and powerful a body they were. The election for a new Parliament occurred in September. Liberal candidates sailed with the popular current. The result showed a great diminution of the supporters of Wellington and Peel. Parliament met in November. The cry of "Reform!" was ringing from the "unions" and "associations," which the last four months had seen established in every considerable town and village in the country. The king's speech made no allusion to the subject that absorbed all minds. In the exciting debate on the address to the throne, Earl Grey came out boldly for a radical reform in Parliament. Wellington, in reply, assumed the most hostile ground, declaring that, "so long as he held any station in the Government, he should resist to the utmost any such measure." The announcement that ministers were determined to cling to a system whose rotting props had been for years falling away, astonished and inflamed the Opposition. Fifteen days afterwards, ministers were brought to their senses, by being placed in a minority in the lower House, on a financial question. The next day, the Iron Duke in the Peers, and the supple Peel in the Commons, announced that they had relinquished the helm of affairs!

The Duke of Wellington resigned on the 16th of November, 1830. The King immediately authorized Lord Grey to form an administration, upon the basis of Parliamentary reform—the first liberal ministry, with the exception of a few turbulent months, for sixty-five years! Lords Grey, Durham, John Russell, Althorp, Lansdowne, Holland, and Mr. Brougham, were its leading spirits; its subordinates being made up of the Melbournes, the Palmerstons, and other converted Canningites. Parliament adjourned till February, to afford the new Cabinet time to perfect its plan. While Downing Street was anxiously cogitating the details of the great measure, its friends stimulated public sentiment in every part of the empire. On the 1st of March, 1831, Lord John Russell brought forward, in the House of Commons, the ministerial plan for a reform in Parliament. A summary of its leading provisions, as finally adopted, is subjoined.

It was a compromise between representation and prescription, on the three principles of disfranchisement, enfranchisement, and extension of the suffrage. The number of members, 658, was not altered, but their distribution was changed. The ultra rotten borough system was exploded. In England, 56 burghs were wholly disfranchised, 31 others partially, whilst 41 new towns were enfranchised, part receiving two members, others one. The large cities and counties received an increase of members. The same principles were less extensively applied to Scotland and Ireland.

The qualifications of electors were essentially modified, and the aggregate more than doubled. Property, in most cases, still continued to be the basis of the right of suffrage. The greatest change was in the cities and burghs. In those, throughout the United Kingdom, the occupier of a building of the yearly value of £10, whether he owned or rented it, could vote for the local members. The ancient rights of voters, in burghs not disfranchised, were partially preserved, but provision was made for their gradual extinction. It was supposed that the bill added more than half a million to the number of Parliamentary electors. In 1838, the number of electors registered was 978,816. It has since exceeded a million.

The sweeping character of the bill surpassed public expectation, and produced an electric effect upon the country; the reformers hailing it with enthusiasm, whilst the champions of old abuses were stricken with horror. Mr. Hume, the leader of the radicals, declared that "it far exceeded his highest hopes." Sir Charles Wetherell, the oracle of the legal formalists, denounced it as "a corporation robbery." Mr. Macaulay, the organ of the philosophic reformers, pronounced it "a great, noble, and comprehensive plan." Sir R. H. Inglis, the representative of the bigotry of Oxford University, said, "the plan of ministers meant revolution, not reformation."

All parties girded themselves for such a conflict as England had not witnessed for a century. After an inveterate contest of three weeks, the English bill (one for each kingdom was introduced) passed its second reading in the House by a majority of only one. A day or two afterwards, an amendment was carried against ministers, by a majority of eight. Immediately thereupon ministers announced that they should dissolve Parliament, and appeal to the people. At this suggestion, the Opposition broke through all restraint, and denounced them as revolutionists and traitors. They dreaded the appeal, for they knew the country was with the ministry. The Tory Peers resolved on the desperate measure of preventing the dissolution, by arresting the reading of the king's speech. The day came, and brought with it a scene of uproar in both Houses, which baffles description. A cotemporary writer says:

"A hope had remained, that the project of stopping the king's speech, and interposing an address, might succeed. That hope rested entirely upon the speech being read by the Chancellor, (Brougham,) and not by the king in person. Suddenly the thunder of the guns was heard to roar, breaking the silence of the anxious crowds without, and drowning even the noise that filled the walls of Parliament. In the fullness of his royal state, and attended by all his magnificent Court, the monarch approached the House of Lords. Preceded by the great officers of state and of the household, he moved through the vast halls, which were filled with troops in iron mail, as the outside courts were with horse, while the guns boomed, and martial music filled the air. Having stopped in the robing chamber in order to put on his crown, he entered the House and ascended the throne, while his officers and ministers crowded around him. As soon as he was seated, he ordered the usher of the black rod to summon the Commons; and his Majesty, after passing some bills, addressed them. By those who were present, the effect will not soon be forgotten, of the first words he pronounced, or the firmness with which they were uttered, when he said that 'he had come to meet his Parliament in order to prorogue it, with a view to its immediate dissolution, for the purpose of ascertaining the sense of his people in regard to such changes in the representation as circumstances might appear to require.' He then, with an audible voice, commanded the Lord Chancellor to prorogue; which being done, the Houses dispersed, and the royal procession returned amidst the hearty and enthusiastic shouts of thousands of the people."

Great praise is due to the "Sailor King" for the firmness with which he stood by his reform ministers in this crisis, despite the clamors of alarmists in Church and State.

At the elections, the friends of the bill swept the country. They carried nearly all the counties, and all the cities and large towns. Its opponents obtained their recruits chiefly from close corporations and rotten boroughs. The English bill was proposed in the New House on the 24th of June, and, after a running fight of three months, passed the Commons by 109 majority, and was sent to the Lords. The greatest anxiety was felt for its fate in that refuge of ancient conservatism. The debate on the second reading continued four nights. On the last evening, October 7th, Lord Brougham spoke five hours in its support, making the great effort of his remarkable life. His speech was an era in the history of that House.

He replied seriatim to the opponents of the measure, dissecting this lord with keen logic, scathing that marquis with impassioned rebuke, holding this duke's ignorance up to ridicule, putting down the effrontery of that viscount, basting this earl with the oil of flattery while he roasted him with intense reasoning, and bringing to the defense and elucidation of the bill those rich stores of learning, argument, eloquence, wit, sarcasm, denunciation, and appeal, which have given him an undying name. The radical boldness of his doctrines, and the abandon with which he demolished "illustrious dukes," or tore the drapery from "noble lords," were no less remarkable features of this speech, than its transcendent ability. Lord Dudley, probably the first scholar and the most polished orator in the House, had sneered at "the statesmen of Birmingham, and the philosophers of Manchester." Brougham repelled the sneer, and, in a passage of keen severity, contrasted Lord Dudley's accomplishments with the practical sense of the men he had traduced, closing it by saying, "To affirm that I could ever dream of putting the noble earl's opinions, aye, or his knowledge, in any comparison with the bold, rational, judicious, reflecting, natural, and, because natural, the trustworthy opinions of those honest men, who always give their strong sense fair play, having no affectations to warp their judgment—to dream of any such comparison as this, would be, on my part, a flattery far too gross for any courtesy, or a blindness which no habits of friendship could excuse."

He brought his great speech to a close, by uttering this solemn warning:

"My lords, I do not disguise the intense solicitude I feel for the event of this debate, because I know full well that the peace of the country is involved in the issue. I cannot look without dismay at the rejection of this measure. But, grievous as may be the consequences of a temporary defeat—temporary it can only be—for its ultimate, and even speedy success, is certain. Nothing can now stop it. Do not suffer yourselves to be persuaded that, even if the present ministers were driven from the helm, any one could steer you through the troubles which surround you, without reform. But our successors would take up the task in circumstances far less auspicious. Under them, you would be fain to grant a bill, compared with which, the one we now proffer you is moderate indeed. Hear the parable of the Sybil; for it conveys a wise and wholesome moral. She now appears at your gate, and offers you mildly the volumes, the precious volumes of wisdom and peace. The price she asks is reasonable; to restore the franchise which, without any bargain, you ought voluntarily to give. You refuse her terms, her moderate terms. She darkens the porch no longer. But soon, for you cannot do without her wares, you call her back. Again she comes, but with diminished treasures. The leaves of the book are in part torn away by lawless hands; in part defaced with characters of blood. But the prophetic maid has risen in her demands—it is Parliaments by the Year—it is Vote by the Ballot—it is Suffrage by the Million! From this, you turn away indignant, and for a second time she departs. Beware of her third coming; for the treasure you must have; and what price she may next demand, who shall tell? It may be even the mace which rests upon that woolsack. What may follow your course of obstinacy, if persisted in, I cannot take upon me to predict, nor do I wish to conjecture. But this I well know—that, as sure as man is mortal, and to err is human, justice deferred enhances the price at which you must purchase safety and peace; nor can you expect to gather in another crop than they did who went before you, if you persevere in their utterly abominable husbandry, of sowing injustice and reaping rebellion.... You are the highest judicature in the realm. It is a judge's first duty never to pronounce sentence, in the most trifling case, without hearing. Will you make this the exception? Are you really prepared to determine, but not to hear, the mighty cause upon which a nation's hopes and fears hang? You are! Then beware of your decision! Rouse not a peace-loving but resolute people. Alienate not from your body the affections of a whole empire. I counsel you to assist with your uttermost efforts in preserving the peace, and upholding and perpetuating the Constitution. Therefore I pray and exhort you not to reject this measure. By all you hold dear—by all the ties that bind every one of us to our common order and our common country, I solemnly adjure you, I warn you, I implore you, yea, on my bended knees, I supplicate you, reject not this bill!"

The warning and the appeal were in vain. The bill was thrown out on the second reading by 41 majority. The struggle for the mastery between the people and the nobility had now come. The Commons adopted a strong vote of confidence in ministers, and ministers resolved to stand by the bill. Parliament was prorogued till December. In the vacation, reform meetings assembled in unprecedented numbers. On one of these occasions, at Taunton, Sydney Smith first brought to notice a venerable matron whose name is likely to be immortal in both hemispheres. In the course of his speech, the witty divine said: