In 1760 George III. ascended the throne, and Mansfield became a member of the Cabinet, of which Bute was at the head. Ten years afterward the Chief Justice prudently withdrew from the intimate connection with the Government, into which he ought never to have entered, and seven years Before his retirement the brief, though magnificent authority of Bute, had been shattered to pieces, and the Minister himself disgraced. But, although Cabinet Councils were henceforward held without the Chief Justice, Lord Mansfield in his place in Parliament stood by the Government, and vigorously defended them against a virulent Opposition. Pitt, "blasting his character," according to Horace Walpole, "for the sake of a paltry annuity and a long-necked peeress," had followed his ancient rival into the House of Lords, and by this suicidal act given Mansfield an immense advantage. Chatham, eager enough to tie his victim to the stake, was doomed to bitter disappointment in an arena utterly unfitted for the exercise of his peculiar powers. The atmosphere of the House of Peers, admirably suited to the calm dignity and sublime moderation of Mansfield, proved too often nipping frost to the burning declamation of the man whose very look could rouse a more popular assembly, and whose words oftener than once had inspired it with the noblest sentiments. It was not in the House of Lords that at this period of his history Lord Mansfield found his most dangerous opponent. A secret enemy had arisen in the outside world amongst the people, one even more unscrupulous than Chatham in his animosity: one who reveled in his questionable privilege of striking in the dark, and who justified abuse that knew no mercy, and acknowledged no law, by reiterated and fervid appeals to God and his country. The moral courage of Murray had once given way in the House of Commons, when Pitt, speaking daggers to him, and suddenly exclaiming, "Judge Festus trembles, he shall hear me another day," quietly sat down. But his sufferings were nothing compared with the torture his weakness underwent beneath the repeated inflictions of the unsparing Junius.
Toward the close of the year 1769 Junius sent forth his celebrated letter to the King, for the publication of which criminal informations were laid against Woodfall, as well as against Almon and Miller, who immediately reprinted the libel. "Rex v. Almon" was the first case brought to trial, and the jury found a general verdict of guilty. The defense set up in the trial against Woodfall was, that the letter was not libellous. The part which Lord Mansfield took is well known. He contended that
"All the jury had to consider was, whether the defendant had published the letter set out in the information, and whether the inuendos, imputing a particular meaning to particular words, as that 'the K–' meant His Majesty King George III., but that they were not to consider whether the publication was 'false and malicious,' these being mere formal words, and that whether the letter was libellous or innocent was a pure question of law, upon which the opinion of the court might be taken by a demurrer, or a motion in arrest of judgment."
The jury retired, and after some hours deliberation returned a verdict of "Guilty of the printing and publishing only." The attempt of Lord Mansfield to withdraw the cognizance of the question of libel from the jury to vest it in the court, contrary, as it unquestionably was, both to liberty and law, had high authorities for its justification, and was supported by the unanimous opinion of the judges who sat at his side. Posterity will acquit the otherwise upright judge of the moral obliquity of which his living enemies, with regard to this proceeding, pronounced him guilty, and for which Junius would have crushed the Chief Justice, had his ability been equal to his will.
It behooves the present generation to approach the lucubrations of the redoubted Junius in a spirit of enlightened discrimination. We must bear in mind that the poisoned arrows of the unseen combatant were discharged at a period peculiarly favorable for the exercise of his destructive skill; when startling invective was in fashion; when the mercenary acts of the foremost public man excused, if they did not justify, wholesale and unreflecting chastisement; when the public press was in its earliest infancy, and public writers had not yet educated the audience whose good sense now holds the libertinism of even the public censor in check, and provides its own best remedy against the crimes or follies of the pen. Junius but imitated the example of his betters when he fastened upon a foe, guilty or innocent, and heaped upon his head every opprobrious term a heated imagination could supply. A statesman's policy had but to be inconvenient to his adversary in order to prove the Minister "hateful," "execrable," "abominable," "wicked," a traitor to his country, and a conspirator against the liberties of the people. Pitt honored Walpole with such vituperation, and when Walpole went out, and Carteret came in without Pitt, the same expressive language was transferred by the illustrious commoner from Minister to Minister, as though no virtue could possibly be found in any Government without his presence. When Junius affected to regard Lord Mansfield as the incarnation of all that is odious in humanity, his praise of Lord Chatham knew no bounds; yet it is well known that under another disguise Junius dealt far severer blows against the patriot than he ever inflicted upon a man born, as he says, to abet despotism in its hateful attempts to trample upon the people's rights. Nothing can be more inconsistent than the accusations brought by Junius against Lord Mansfield. In one and the same breath he charges him with assuming an arbitrary power of doing right; so that if he does wrong it lies only between him and his conscience; and with condescending to evasive, indirect courses, in the temper of a quibbler. Now the Chief Justice is something more than a lawyer, now considerably less. At one moment he is setting common law at defiance, at another he is twisting the law to the purposes of corruption, and taking refuge behind the forms which he is expressly charged with heroically setting at defiance. Had Lord Mansfield been less timorous, Junius might have been less daring. At the close of one of his letters the reckless assailant writes "Beware how you indulge the first emotions of your resentment. This paper is delivered to the world, and cannot be recalled. The prosecution of an innocent printer cannot alter facts nor refute arguments. Do not furnish me with further materials against yourself." Another venomous diatribe ends with a similar threat. Dare "to represent this charge as a contempt of the authority of the House of Peers, and move their Lordships to censure the publisher of this paper, and I affirm that you support injustice by violence; that you are guilty of a heinous aggravation, of your offense; and that you contribute your utmost influence to promote, on the part of the highest court of judicature, a positive denial of justice to the nation!" Junius traded up on the invincible infirmity of a judge, who might have been destroyed by his weakness had he not been upheld by his unsullied purity and fame.
The attacks of Junius were not without effect on Parliament. A motion was made in the House of Commons for "a committee to inquire into the proceedings of the judges in Westminster Hall, particularly in cases relating to the liberty of the press." In the House of Lords Lord Chatham and Lord Camden re-echoed the charges of the House of Commons, and while the latter warned noble lords how they received the opinions in that House of the "most experienced lawyers" upon questions of law, the former, in his accustomed style, threatened to ring again and again "the alarm-bell of liberty," until he "could rouse the people to a proper sense of their injuries." Stung by persecution Lord Mansfield suffered himself to be betrayed into unaccountable error. Intimating one day that he had something of importance to bring to the notice of the House, he moved that their Lordships should be summoned to receive the communication. The appointed day arrived, and the attendance of peers was unusually large. Lord Mansfield rose amidst profound and anxious silence. Lord Chatham and Lord Camden had calumniated the judges, and they were now no doubt to be the objects of a vote of censure. Nothing of the kind. Lord Mansfield simply informed the House that he had left a paper with the clerk assistant containing the judgment of the Court of King's Bench in the case of "the King against Woodfall," and then, to the astonishment of every one, resumed his seat. Lord Camden rose and inquired whether the noble lord intended hereafter to found any motion on his paper? Lord Mansfield answered "No," and the House proceeded to other business. The very next day Lord Camden resumed the subject. He regarded the conduct of the Chief Justice as a challenge against himself, and he at once accepted it. In direct contradiction to Lord Mansfield he maintained that his doctrine was not the law of England. He had considered the noble lord's "paper," and had not found it very intelligible. He begged to propose four questions to the noble and learned lord, to which he required categorical answers, that their lordships might know precisely the points they had to discuss. The questions were submitted, and Lord Mansfield, instead of meeting them, "with most abject soothings," as Horace Walpole gleefully says, "paid the highest compliments to Lord Camden." He had the highest esteem for the noble and learned lord who thus attacked him, and had ever courted his esteem in return. He had not expected this treatment from his candor. It was unfair; he would not answer interrogatories. The reply was a signal for relentless torment. Not a peer interposed on his behalf. Distressed by his misery, Lord Mansfield sat down, remained still, and in sheer pity for their prey the dogs were called off.
In 1778 Lord Chatham died, and from the departure of the great commoner until his own decease Lord Mansfield occupied a more conspicuous place as a judge than as a politician in the public eye. He continued to display upon the bench, as heretofore, the keenest perception, a resolute obedience to the dictates of justice, high incorruptibility, great learning, and thorough self-devotion to his beloved and chosen occupation. He has been largely accused of favoring, in his early manhood, the designs of the Pretender, yet, from the beginning to the close of his public life, his fidelity to the reigning family could not be called in question. He has been charged with gratifying prerogative at the expense of law, yet the liberty of the law was never more perfect, the rights of the subject were never more secure, than during his long tenure of the judicial office. He has been stigmatized by Junius as an oppressor of men's consciences, yet no man of his time regulated his conduct with a stricter regard to the humanizing principle of religious toleration. Had Lord Mansfield been faithless to the people his death would never have been regarded as an irreparable loss by the whole country; had he been a bigot, the world would never have lost the treasures which it is said were consumed in the house burnt to the ground by zealous Protestants eager to take the life as well as to destroy the goods of Lord Mansfield, for no other reason than that he chose to hold the scales of justice fairly and steadily between Protestant and Catholic.
In his 82d year, having been absent scarcely a day from court, Lord Mansfield retired to Tunbridge Wells for the benefit of his health. The year following he resigned his office. For six years longer he lived in dignified retirement, occupying himself in his garden, or refreshing his mind with the works that had charmed and instructed his youth. To the last he retained his memory, and, dying without a pain at the close of the century, the man who had spent his happiest evenings with Pope was destined to listen to all the horrors of the French Revolution, in common with thousands living at the present hour. Lord Mansfield's death was mourned as a national calamity; his remains were deposited in Westminster Abbey, and they lie close to those of the Earl of Chatham. After the stormy conflict of a glorious life, the two schoolboy rivals lie side by side in silent and everlasting repose.
We have freely stated the one great deformity of Lord Mansfield's character; his quailing before Lord Camden is but a solitary instance of the fault that tarnished his otherwise brilliant career. When we have said that the Chief Justice acted unconstitutionally in continuing in the Cabinet whilst he held the Judicial office, and that, admitted to the friendship and confidence of his sovereign, he did not scruple to exercise power without official responsibility, we have confessed to the most serious offenses with which he is chargeable. It is not, however, to dwell upon these blemishes of true greatness, or to indulge in idle panegyric, that we have occupied so large a portion of valuable space, and intermixed with the living doings of today one striking record of the buried past. The life of Lord Mansfield is nothing to us if it yields no profitable instruction and contains no element of usefulness for the generation to whom our labors are addressed. Is it wholly unnecessary to place at this moment before the bar of England so noble a model for imitation so sublime an ideal for serious contemplation as that offered in the person of the Earl of Mansfield? Is it impertinent to warn our lawyers, that, without confirmed habits of industry, temperance, self-subjugation, unsullied honor, vast knowledge, enlightened and lofty views of their difficult yet fascinating profession, and a love of the eternal principles of truth and justice, incompatible with meanness and degrading practice, true eminence is impossible, and imperishable renown not to be obtained? Never, at any other period of our history, has it been so necessary to urge upon the students of the law the example of their worthiest predecessors. The tendency of the age is to lower, not to elevate, the standard set up by our ancestors for the attainment of preeminence. That our giants may not be stunted in their growth—that the legal stock may not hopelessly degenerate—Chief Justice Campbell does well to impress upon his brethren the patient and laborious course—the high and admirable qualities—by which Chief Justice Mansfield secured his greatness and his fame.
[From Blackwood's Magazine.]
SCENE, The Hall in Uncle Roland's Tower. TIME, Night—SEASON, Winter.
Mr. Caxton is seated before a great geographical globe, which he is turning round leisurely, and "for his own recreation," as, according to Sir Thomas Browne, a philosopher should turn round the orb, of which that globe professes to be the representation and effigies. My mother having just adorned a very small frock with a very smart braid, is holding it out at arm's length, the more to admire the effect. Blanche, though leaning both hands on my mother's shoulder, is not regarding the frock, but glances toward Pisistratus, who, seated near the fire leaning back in his chair, and his head bent over his breast, seems in a very bad humor. Uncle Roland, who has become a great novel reader, is deep in the mysteries of some fascinating Third Volume. Mr. Squills has brought The Times in his pocket for his own especial profit and delectation, and is now bending his brows over "the state of the money market," in great doubt whether railway shares can possibly fall lower. For Mr. Squills, happy man! has large savings, and does not know what to do with his money; or, to use his own phrase, "how to buy in at the cheapest, in order to sell out at the dearest."
Mr. Caxton, musingly.—"It must have been a monstrous long journey. It would be somewhere hereabouts I take it, that they would split off."
My Mother, mechanically, and in order to show Austin that she paid, him the compliment of attending to his remarks—"Who split off, my dear?"
"Bless me, Kitty," said my father, in great admiration, "you ask just the question which it is most difficult to answer. An ingenious speculator on races contends that the Danes, whose descendants make the chief part of our northern population, (and indeed if his hypothesis could be correct, we must suppose all the ancient worshipers of Odin,) are of the same origin as the Etrurians. And why, Kitty, I just ask you, why?"
My mother shook her head thoughtfully, and turned the frock to the other side of the light.
"Because, forsooth," cried my father, exploding—"because the Etrurians called their gods 'the Æsar,' and the Scandinavians called theirs 'the Æsir, or Aser! And where do you think he puts their cradle?"
"Cradle!" said my mother, dreamingly—"it must be in the nursery."
Mr. Caxton.—"Exactly—in the nursery of the human race—just here," and my father pointed to the globe; "bounded, you see, by the River Halys, and in that region which, taking its name from Ees or As, (a word designating light or fire) has been immemorially called Asia. Now, Kitty, from Ees or As our ethnological speculator would derive not only Asia, the land, but Æsar or Aser, its primitive inhabitants. Hence he supposes the origin of the Etrurians and the Scandinavians. But, if we give him so much, we must give him more, and deduce from the same origin the Es of the Celt, and the Ized of the Persian, and—what will be of more use to him, I dare say, poor man, than all the rest put together—the Æs of the Romans, that is, the God of Copper-Money—a very powerful household god he is to this day!"
My mother looked musingly at her frock, as if she were taking my father's Proposition into serious consideration.
"So, perhaps," resumed my father, "and not unconformably with sacred records, from one great parent horde came all these various tribes, carrying with them the name of their beloved Asia; and whether they wandered north, south, or west, exalting their own emphatic designation of 'Children of the Land of Light' into the title of gods. And to think, (added Mr. Caxton pathetically, gazing upon that speck in the globe on which his forefinger rested,)—to think how little they changed for the better when they got to the Don, or entangled their rafts amidst the icebergs of the Baltic—so comfortably off as they were here, if they could but have stayed quiet!"
"And why the deuce could not they?" asked Mr. Squills.
"Pressure of population, and not enough to live upon, I suppose," said my father.
Pisistratus, sulkily.—"More probably they did away with the Corn Laws, sir."
"Papæ!" quoth my father, "that throws a new light on the subject."
Pisistratus, full of his grievances, and not caring three straws about the origin of the Scandinavians.—"I know that if we are to lose £500 every year on a farm which we hold rent free, and which the best judges allow to be a perfect model for the whole country, we had better make haste and turn Æsar or Aser, or whatever you call them, and fix a settlement on the property of other nations, otherwise I suspect our probable settlement will be on the parish."
Mr. Squills, who, it must be remembered, is an enthusiastic Free-trader.—"You have only got to put more capital on the land."
Pisistratus.—"Well, Mr. Squills, as you think so well of that investment, put your capital on it. I promise that you shall have every shilling of profit."
Mr. Squills, hastily retreating behind The Times.—"I don't think the Great Western can fall any lower; though it is hazardous—I can but venture a few hundreds—"
Pisistratus.—"On our land, Squills? Thank you."
Mr. Squills.—"No, no—anything but that-on the Great Western."
Pisistratus relapses into gloom. Blanche steals up coaxingly, and gets snubbed for her pains. A pause.
Mr. Caxton—"There are two golden rules of life; one relates to the mind, and the other to the pockets. The first is—If our thoughts get into a low, nervous, aguish condition, we should make them change the air; the second is comprised in the proverb, 'it is good to have two strings to one's bow.' Therefore, Pisistratus, I tell you what you must do—Write a Book!"
Pisistratus.—"Write a Book!—Against the abolition of the Corn Laws? Faith, sir, the mischief's done. It takes a much better pen than mine to write down an Act of Parliament."
Mr. Caxton.—"I only said, 'Write a Book.' All the rest is the addition of your own headlong imagination."
Pisistratus, with the recollection of The Great Book rising before him.—"Indeed, sir I should think that would just finish us!"
Mr. Caxton, not seeming to heed the interruption.—"A book that will sell! A book that will prop up the fall of prices! A book that will distract your mind from its dismal apprehensions, and restore your affection to your species, and your hopes in the ultimate triumph of sound principles—by the sight of a favorable balance at the end of the yearly accounts. It is astonishing what a difference that little circumstance makes in our views of things in general. I remember when the bank in which Squills had incautiously left £1000 broke, one remarkably healthy year, that he became a great alarmist, and said that the country was on the verge of ruin; whereas, you see now, when, thanks to a long succession of sickly seasons, he has a surplus capital to risk in the Great Western—he is firmly persuaded that England was never in so Prosperous a condition."
Mr. Squills, rather sullenly.—"Pooh, pooh."
Mr. Caxton.—"Write a book, my son—write a book. Need I tell you that Money or Moneta, according to Hyginus, was the mother of the Muses? Write a book."
Blanche and my Mother, in full chorus.—"Oh yes, Sisty—a book-a book! you must write a book."
"I am sure," quoth my Uncle Roland, slamming down the volume he had just concluded, "he could write a devilish deal better book than this; and how I come to read such trash, night after night, is more than I could Possibly explain to the satisfaction of any intelligent jury, if I were put into a witness-box, and examined in the mildest manner by my own counsel."
Mr. Caxton.—"You see that Roland tells us exactly what sort of a book it shall be."
Pisistratus.—"Trash, sir?"
Mr. Caxton.—"No—that is not necessarily trash—but a book of that class which, whether trash or not, people can't help reading. Novels have become the necessity of the age. You must write a novel."
Pisistratus, flattered, but dubious.—"A novel! But every subject on which novels can be written is preoccupied. There are novels on low life, novels of high life, military novels, naval novels, novels philosophical, novels religious, novels historical, novels descriptive of India, the Colonies, Ancient Rome, and the Egyptian Pyramids. From what bird, wild eagle, or barn-door fowl, can I
"'Pluck one unwearied plume from Fancy's wing!'"
Mr. Caxton, after a little thought.—"You remember the story which Trevanion (I beg his pardon, Lord Ulswater) told us the other night. That gives you something of the romance of real life for your plot—puts you chiefly among scenes with which you are familiar, and furnishes you with characters which have been sparingly dealt with since the time of Fielding. You can give us the country squire, as you remember him in your youth: it is a specimen of a race worth preserving—the old idiosyncrasies of which are rapidly dying off, as the railways bring Norfolk and Yorkshire within easy reach of the manners of London. You can give us the old-fashioned parson, as in all essentials he may yet be found—but before you had to drag him out of the great Puseyite sectarian bog; and, for the rest, I really think that while, as I am told, many popular writers are doing their best, especially in France, and perhaps a little in England, to set class against class, and pick up every stone in the kennel to shy at a gentleman with a good coat on his back, something useful might be done by a few good-humored sketches of those innocent criminals a little better off than their neighbors, whom, however we dislike them, I take it for granted we shall have to endure, in one shape or another, as long as civilization exists; and they seem, on the whole, as good in their present shape as we are likely to get, shake the dice box of society how we will."
Pisistratus.—"Very well said, sir; but this rural country gentleman life is not so new as you think. There's Washington Irving—"
Mr. Caxton.—"Charming—but rather the manners of the last century than this. You may as well cite Addison and Sir Roger de Coverley."
Pisistratus.—"Tremaine and De Vere."
Mr. Caxton.—"Nothing can be more graceful, nor more unlike what I mean. The Pales and Terminus I wish you to put up in the fields are familiar images, that you may cut out of an oak tree—not beautiful marble statues on porphyry pedestals twenty feet high."
Pisistratus.—"Miss Austin; Mrs. Gore in her masterpiece of Mrs. Armytage; Mrs. Marsh, too; and then (for Scottish manners) Miss Ferrier!"
Mr. Caxton, growing cross.—"Oh, if you cannot treat on bucolics but what you must hear some Virgil or other cry 'Stop thief,' you deserve to be tossed by one of your own 'short-horns.'—(Still more contemptuously)—I am sure I don't know why we spend so much money on sending our sons to school to learn Latin, when that Anchronism of yours, Mrs. Caxton, can't even construe a line and a half of Phædrus. Phædrus, Mrs. Caxton—a book which is in Latin what Goody Two Shoes is in the vernacular!"
Mrs. Caxton, alarmed and indignant.—"Fie, Austin! I am sure you can construe Phædrus, dear!"
Pisistratus prudently preserves silence.
Mr. Caxton.—"I'll try him—
"'Sua cuique quum sit animi cogitatio
Colorque proprius.'
"What does that mean?"
Pisistratus, smiling.—"That every man has some coloring matter within him, to give his own tinge to—"
"His own novel," interrupted my father! "Contentus peragis."
During the latter part of this dialogue, Blanche had sewn together three quires of the best Bath paper, and she now placed them on a little table before me, with her own inkstand and steel pen.
My mother put her finger to her lip, and said, "Hush!" my father returned to the cradle of the Æsar; Captain Roland leant his cheek on his hand, and gazed abstractedly on the fire; Mr. Squills felt into a placid doze; and, after three sighs that would have melted a heart of stone, I rushed into—MY NOVEL.