upon.'" This speech invested him in public opinion with a character for high independence and honour; and, although he was always on the reactionary side of politics, made him immensely popular in the country.

He spoke with equal independence when Lord Grenville, answering a speech made by the Duke of Clarence against the abolition of the slave trade, said that "between him and his Royal Highness there could be no personal debate, because between them there was no equality." Against this Lord Thurlow loudly protested, saying, "I am one of the lowest in point of rank. I contend not for superiority of talent or for any pretension whatever above any of your Lordships. But, my Lords, I claim to be exactly equal, not only to the illustrious personage who has just spoken, but to the Prince of Wales himself, if he were present in this House as a Peer of Parliament. I know of no difference between Peers of Parliament, considered in their parliamentary character, and I maintain that the lowest in point of precedence, while we are debating here, is equal to the highest. If rank or talent created. an inequality in our right to speak in this House, the illustrious Prince who has lately addressed you would have a far higher right to be heard than I can pretend to; but in speaking my sentiments to your Lordships, I claim for my humble self a perfect equality with every Prince of the blood, and with those of the highest intellectual position in this assembly."

Added to the look of Jove, mentioned by Butler, Thurlow had an appearance of ineffable wisdom,

which made men say of him that he was the converse of Sir Nicholas Bacon-a much greater fool than he looked. Pitt used to say that he looked wiser than any man could possibly be, and that his exaggerated appearance of wisdom proved his dishonesty.

CHAPTER IV.

JUDICATURE.

The Magistrate-Jeffreys, Holt, Bacon, Thurlow, Lord Mansfield -Hanging Judges.

THERE seems to be some distinction between the faculties which go to make a good civil judge and those which produce a good magistrate. At all events, it has been found that judges whose conduct of criminal cases was perverted, if not infamous, were yet just and distinguished in their dealing with matters of civil dispute. In the administration of criminal matters by the English Bench may be found a great deal of misdirected wit and ability, which might have been more usefully employed in civil tribunals. Jeffreys gave the most conspicuous example of this abuse of judicial power. Of all the unscrupulous and corrupt judges who have sat on the English Bench, he was by far the ablest and the wittiest. His judgments, delivered while he was Chancellor, showed that he possessed the true judicial instinct for dealing with matters involving civil jus

tice; and even when he misconducted himself most grossly as a criminal judge, a vein of strong humour ran through his brutal invectives. Posterity is for the most part so shocked by his cruel perversion of justice that it has scarcely patience to give him credit for wit; but a few instances of the racy cleverness of this disgrace to the English Bench may serve to set off the lustre of the high-minded men who have atoned for his pollution of the office of Chief Justice. Referring to the arbitrary tribunals over which Jeffreys and his fellows presided, "Why," said Erskine, in his speech for the Dean of St. Asaph— "why did our ancestors insist on their abolition? Was it that the question of libel should be determined only by the judges at Westminster? In the present time such a reform might be consistent with reason, because the judges are now honourable, independent, and sagacious men, but in those days they were often wretches-libels upon all judicature; and instead of admiring the wisdom of our ancestors, if that had been their policy, I should have held them up as lunatics to the scoff of posterity. Since in the times when those unconstitutional tribunals were supplanted, the courts of Westminster Hall were filled with men who were equally the tools of power with those in the Star Chamber; and the whole policy of the change consisted in the principle which was then never disputed-viz., that the judges at Westminster, in criminal cases, were but a part of the court, and could only administer justice through the medium of a jury." The same advocate, in Frost's case, declaiming

against the spirit of inquisition, said that it "began and ended with the Star Chamber. The venerable law of England never knew it; her noble, dignified, and humane policy soars above the little irregularities of our lives, and disdains to enter our closets without a warrant founded upon complaint. Constructed by man to regulate human infirmities, and not by God to guard the purity of angels, it leaves to us our thoughts, our opinions, and our conversations, and punishes only overt acts of contempt and disobedience to her authority. It did not therefore dog men into taverns and coffee-houses, nor lurk for them at corners, nor watch for them in their domestic enjoyments.

"This is not the specious phrase of an advocate for his client; it is not even my exposition of our constitution, but it is the phrase and letter of the law itself. In the most critical conjunctures of our history, when Government was legislating for its own existence and continuance, it never overstepped this wise moderation. To give stability to establishments, it occasionally bridled opinion concerning them, but its punishments, though sanguinary, laid no snares for thoughtless life, and took no man by surprise."

In Erskine's time it was, as he said, the humane theory of the English law that the judge ought to be counsel for the prisoner. Bacon, who was dethroned for corruption, who contrived the prosecution of Peacham, and who cross-examined him during and between torture, saw with his bright instinct the true demeanour of a just criminal judge. The spirit which he indicated was not seriously cultivated by the

English judges until the nineteenth century, and even now its principle is sometimes in danger of being obscured. "Judges must beware," said he, "of hard constructions and strained inferences; for there is no worse torture than the torture of laws. Specially in cases of laws penal they ought to have care that that which was meant for terror be not turned into rigour. Therefore, let penal laws, if they have been sleepers of long, or if they be grown unfit for the present time, be by wise judges confined in the execution. In cases of life and death, judges ought (as far as the law permitteth) in justice to remember mercy; and to cast a severe eye upon the example, but a merciful eye upon the person."

If Bacon himself was forgetful of these words, Jeffreys made a point of casting a merciful eye upon neither the person nor the example: to be tried by him was to be convicted. When Richard Baxter was arraigned before him for a seditious libel, an application for a postponement was rudely refused. "We have had," said Jeffreys, "to do with other sort of persons, but now we have a saint to deal with; and I know how to deal with saints as well as sinners. Yonder stands Oates, in the pillory (as he actually did at that very time in the New Palace Yard), and he says he suffers for the truth, and so says Baxter; but if Baxter did but stand on the other side of the pillory with him, I would say that two of the greatest rogues and rascals in the kingdom stood there." After this impartial address the trial proceeded, and when Baxter's counsel had been in succession silenced by