From the Edinburgh Review. THE SPEECHES OF MANY are the claims of Lord Broughham upon the respect and gratitude of his countrymen; and many are the titles by which he will be known to posterity. As a philanthropist his name is imperishably associated with those of Clarkson and Wilberforce in their efforts for the suppression of the slave-trade, and he has given the chief impulse to the great cause of the Education of the people. As a statesman, he has taken a leading part in counseling and carrying some of the most important political measures of the nineteenth century. As an advocate whose zeal for his client scorned consideration of personal advancement, he will be known, if for nothing else, yet for his immortal defense of Queen Caroline. As a lawyer, his name is inscribed in the list of Lord High Chancellors of England-and he bounded to that lofty dignity from the ranks of the Bar, without having previously filled one of the subordinate law offices of the Crown. As a legislator, the country owes to his perseverance some of the most important improvements in her civil laws, and we allude more especially to the radical changes that have been effected in the law of Evidence. He is not only a great speaker, but an able writer, as our own century of volumes will testify; not only a politician, who has fought like a gladiator for fifty years in the arena of party strife, but a man of letters, and a mathematician of no mean attainments. We remember when it was the fashion for those who can not conceive the possibility of excellence in more than one department of knowledge, to sneer at Lord Brougham as "no lawyer." But this is best answered by the fact, that in hardly a single instance were his judgments in the Court of Chancery reversed on appeal by the House of Lords; and we will venture to say, that although there LORD BROUGHA M. * have been lawyers like Buller, and Holroyd, and Bayley and Littledale, more versed in the technicalities of their craft and the mysteries of special pleadingan abomination now well-nigh swept away-few have been more profoundly imbued with the principles of the Common Law. Rare, indeed, have been the examples of an intellect so vigorous and active. His energy throughout life has been astounding; and even now, at a period which in other men would be called old age, it shows little sign of diminution or decay. Mentally, his eye is not dim, nor his natural strength abated; for he still prosecutes the cause of Law Reform with an ardor which might put to shame the efforts of younger men; and year after year he presses upon the Legislature measures of which the object is to simplify the machinery, and lessen to the suitor the costs of our courts of justice. We do not intend to go over the wide field which a life so spent presents; but we propose in the present article to confine our attention to Lord Brougham as an Orator. It is by his speeches that his influence was most felt in the generation now fading from amongst us, and by them, more than any thing else, his colossal reputation has been built. Although there is, unhappily, something evanescent in those great efforts of the human tongue which have so often roused and ruled the passions and the intellect of the senate and the nation, their results belong to history, and Lord Brougham will leave no monument behind him more worthy to be held in lasting remembrance than these Orations. For he has labored to become a master in his art, and we see in the arrangement of his topics, the structure of his periods, and the choice of his language, the skill, and in its proper sense, the artifice, of the consummate rhetorician. Upon the subject of Oratory a lamentable misapprehension seems to prevail, and we are not sorry to have an opportunity of saying a few words about it. No one 17 can deny that eloquence at the Bar and in Parliament is just now at a low ebb. It is often positively painful to enter a court of justice and hear the addresses to which juries are condemned to listen, from men who occupy the place where once stood an Erskine and a Brougham. No doubt there have been of late years brilliant exceptions, but we do not hesitate to say, that the general character of forensic oratory at the present day is far below what might be expected from the education, the opportunities, and the intellectual vigor of the age. Nor is the state of things much better in the House of Commons. We do not of course expect that a country gentleman should be a good speaker because he has carried the county; nor that merchants or railway directors should study Demosthenes in their counting-houses, and come forth as orators as soon as they have been returned for a borough; but how few of the practiced debaters of the House ever rise to any thing which approaches to the name of oratory, how few are able to realize the idea of one whom Cicero describes: qui jure non solum disertus sed etiam eloquens dici possit! It has indeed been the custom of late to decry oratorical powers, as tending rather to dazzle and mislead than instruct and edify; and to praise the dull dry harangue of the plodding man of business, who crams down the throat of his audience a heap of statistical facts, and then wonders to find them gaping or asleep, rather than the brilliant speech of the accomplished orator, who enlivens his subject with the sallies of wit, and adorns it with the graces of imagery. But this kind of language proceeds more from mortified incapacity than approving judgment. Hobbes defined a republic to be an aristocracy of orators, interrupted at times by the monarchy of a single orator; and in a country like this, where the very highest rewards and the proudest position are the prizes open to successful eloquence, it may well be matter of wonder that the number of competitors is so small in the race where "that immortal garland is to be won, not without dust and heat." And what is the reason of this? It arises, we believe, chiefly from the fact that men will not believe that Oratory is an art, and that excellence in this, as in every other art, can only be attained by labor and by the study of the best models. To such an extent is this heresy carried, that it is actually considered a disparagement-a thing almost to be ashamed ofto be suspected of preparing a speech beforehand; and it is thought a recommendation of himself by an honorable member when, on rising to address the House, he declares that on entering it he had not the slightest intention of doing so. As if a man ever will or can speak well who takes no pains to make himself a proficient in the art, and who fancies that, like Dogberry's reading and writing, oratory comes by nature! The speaker must learn his craft as much as a painter or sculptor, or musician; although, like them also, he must have from nature some special aptitude for his vocation. If common-sense did not tell us this, the great examples of antiquity would prove it. Every school-boy knows the enormous pains that Demosthenes and Cicero took to qualify themselves for the task of addressing their fellow-citizens; and that some of the most celebrated orations that have come down to us from Athens and Rome were written for delivery, but actually never spoken at all. Very dif ferent from the common practice has been, if we mistake not, Lord Brougham's conception of the work of the future orator. He has furnished abundant evidence of his familiarity with the classic models. He has shown his veneration for Demosthenes by translating the Chersonese Oration and the great Oration on the Crown; and on more than one occasion he is said to have committed to writing beforehand the finest parts of his own speeches. If this be true, we honor him the more for the homage he has paid to the eternal rule, that without such "improbus labor," excellence in any art is denied to man. And he has had his reward. He stands confessedly in the front rank of English orators, and he won his spurs at a time when the conflict was with giants. At the present moment it will hardly be contested that the standard of oratory is far higher in the House of Lords than in the other House of Parliament; and if *This subject has been illustrated by Lord Brougham himself, with his usual felicity, in some of his former contributions to this Journal, especially in the Essays on the Greek, Roman, English, and French Orators, now republished in the seventh volume of the Glasgow edition of his works, and in his "Dissertation on the Eloquence of the Ancients." any one were asked to point out the best speakers in that august body, he would name without hesitation, Lord Brougham, Lord Lyndhurst, the Earl of Derby, and the Earl of Ellenborough. We hope that before long Lord Macaulay will be added to the list, but he has not yet made a display of his great oratorical powers in the assembly to which he has been elevated, and which by his presence he adorns. Of Lord Lyndhurst's power as a debater it is impossible to speak too highly. But although at times, and in some passages, his speeches may be called eloquent, they want the rushing force-the declamatory vehemence-which is an essential element of oratory. Admirable in logic, compréhensive in statement, and faultless in diction, Lord Lyndhurst commands the attention of all who listen to him. But he appeals more to the reason than the feelings or the passions of his audience, and seeks to convince rather than to persuade. His discourse flows on like the waters of some calm majestic river unruffled by the wind; but we hear nothing of the dash of the torrent or the roar of the cataract; there are no startling apostrophes, nor soul-stirring appeals, which, in the proud consciousness of his argumentative power, he seems almost to disdain. Lord Brougham's voice is not musical; Certainly this can not be said of Lord at times, in its higher tones, it is harsh Derby, who, with a command of language and hoarse, and sounds like the scream of as perfect as Lord Lyndhurst's, has a fire the northern eagle swooping down upon its and a brilliancy peculiarly his own; but prey; but he possesses the art of moduwe should be disposed to place Lord lating it with admirable effect, and his Ellenborough at least on an equality with elocution is not less cultivated than his either of these eminent speakers, since he diction. His power over the English lancombines the exquisite precision of language is wonderful. It was said of him guage of the one, with the force and animation of the other. With an athletic frame Lord Brougham possesses a mental organization singularly robust; and his style of speaking is cast in a corresponding mould. It is the furthest possible removed from the exerci tatio domestica et umbratilis, and is rather that which rushes medium in agmen, in pulverem, in clamorem, in castra, atque in aciem forensem. The following passage breathes not only the force of the orator, but the character of the man. It is from his speech in the House of Lords in 1838, on the emancipation of Negro apprentices : "I have read with astonishment, and I repel with scorn, the insinuation that I had acted the part of an advocate, and that some of my statements were colored to serve a cause. How dares any man so to accuse me? How dares any one, skulking under a fictitious name, to launch his slanderous imputations from his covert? I come forward in my own person. I make the charge in the face of day. I drag the criminal to trial. I openly call down justice on his head. I defy his attacks. I defy his defenders. I cealed adversary to charge me as an advocate challenge investigation. How dares any conspeaking from a brief, and misrepresenting the facts to serve a purpose? But the absurdity of this charge even outstrips its malice." on one occasion that he made it bend under him. We do not assert that the But great as these men are in debate, word chosen is not sometimes too strong. none of them can be said to rank as ora- We will not affirm that he does not sometors with Lord Brougham. If we were times sin against a fastidious taste. We obliged to characterize his oratory by a can not deny that in ransacking his me-single word, it would be Energy-the mory for epithets and synonyms-or perAevórns of the Greeks. Cicero tells us that haps we should see polyonyms-he brings often when he rose to speak he trembled up some that are too vehement, and that in every limb. We doubt whether this in his description of persons and measures ever happened to Lord Brougham. But there is too much tendency to exaggerate.. the Roman orator had by nature a weak But his vocabulary is inexhaustible, and and nervous constitution, and this may his faults are those of amplitude of power. account for the timidity of a character He runs riot in the exuberance of which, although on a memorable occa- strength. His periods are often declamasion he could thunder forth-Contempsi Catilina gladios, non pertimescam tuos -caused him, in the strife of contending factions, painfully to oscillate between his regard for Pompey and his fear of Cæsar. tory, but there are no platitudes; and without declamation, in its proper sense, there is no oratory. It would be easy to point out in Demosthenes-still easier in Cicero-passages which, to the colder Russia to be more monstrous, more insolent, and more prodigiously beyond endurance than the rest." So also speaking of the conduct of the Whigs on the Bedchamber question in 1839 "This is the novel, the uncouth, the porten tous, the monstrous description of our free and popular constitution, which the Whig Government of 1839 has given to the Reformed Parliament of England." feelings of our western clime, seem overstrained and hyperbolical. But the criterion is this: How did they act upon the crowds that listened? Did they, or did they not, stir up from its innermost depths the soul of the auditory? For it must never be forgotten that the great end of oratory is to persuade, and by carrying captive the passions, to attack through them the citadel of reason. It will be found, on a careful study of Lord Brougham's speeches, that the declamation almost always assists the argument; it advances, so to speak, the action of the drama, and never, as is the case when it becomes mere tinsel or bombast in the hands of inferior men, impedes and encumbers it. He is fond of iterating an idea, and clothing it in every imaginable form of words-piling Ossa on Pelion-livered by him on the instant without a and making each sentence rise in the scale of impressiveness. Some of his periods may be too long, and there is a danger lest the attention of the hearer-or perhaps we ought now to say the readershould flag while pausing for the climax of the sentence; but there is no false grammar-no anacoluthon-no confusion of metaphor, and out of the longest sentence or succession of sentences, he winds himself with unerring accuracy. He himself said in one of his speeches -that on the administration of justice in Ireland in 1839, when defending himself from the charge of violence and undue severity made against him by Lord Melbourne-"No man is a judge of the exact force and weight of his own expressions." Probably Lord Brougham has at times been hardly conscious of the force of the projectile he has launched from his lips in the ardor of debate. He reminds us of Polyphemus hurling rocks as if he were a boy flinging pebbles. Thus, speaking in 1823 of the Notes of Russia, Prussia, and Austria, with reference to the state of Spain in 1822-3, he said "I will venture to say that to produce any thing more preposterous, more absurd, more extravagant, better calculated to excite a mingled feeling of disgust and derision, would baffle any chancery or state paper office in Europe." And again "Monstrous and insolent and utterly unbearable as all of them are, I consider that of That careful preparation of an elaborate speech does not unfit an orator for unpremeditated and effective reply, has been shown by Lord Brougham in some of his finest displays. We will mention one remarkable example. It is the speech de moment's notice, in answer to the charges brought by the late Sir Robert (then Mr.) Peel, in 1819, against the Education Committee, of which Mr. Brougham had been chairman. It is a masterly effort, full of the keenest sarcasm and most cutting point-and from a note at the end we learn that its preservation is owing to the accident of a barrister who took an interest in the subject, happening to be in the gallery of the House of Commons; for "the newspapers, for some days before this debate took place, had refrained from reporting Mr. Brougham's speeches in consequence, as it is said, of some offense given by him to a reporter in the form of words used in referring to him." The following passage from this reply is a good illustration of the speaker's peculiar style heaping sentence upon sentence, and stretching his topic until the tension becomes almost too great to be borne. "But if I do not now satisfy all who hear me that the Committee were right, that this House was right, and the Right Honorable Gentleman wrong-if I do not succeed in proving to the heart's content of every one man of that the Right Honorable Gentleman is utterly common candor and ordinary understanding, wrong in all his charges-wrong from the beginning to the end of his labored oration—if I do not in a few minutes and by referring to a few plain matters, strip that performance of all claim to credit-if I do not show him to be mistaken in his facts, out in his dates, at fault in his law, ignorant of all parliamentary precedent and practice, grossly uninformed, perhaps misinformed, upon the whole question which in an evil hour he has undertaken to handle, with no better help than the practical knowledge and discretion of those who have urged him on to the assault, while they showed only a vicarious prodigality of their own persons-then I will consent to suffer-what shall I say?-to en- | dure whatever punishment the Right Honorable Gentleman may think fit to inflict upon me and my colleagues-even the weight of his censure which will assuredly in his estimation be fully equal to our demerits, how great soever they may be. But I venture to hope that the House, mercifully regarding my situation while such a judgment is suspending, will allow me, ere the awful decree goes forth, to avert, if it be possible, from our devoted heads a fate so overwhelming." Sarcastic irony, of which only a light touch appears in the latter part of the above extract, is a favorite weapon of Lord Brougham. Sometimes he has indulged in it even to the verge of indiscretion; as, for instance, in the following passage, from his speech in defense of Queen Caroline, addressed, be it remembered, to the House of Lords, who were sitting in judgment upon her fate. But he doubtless knew how far he might venture to go in upbraiding while he affected to praise. "This was when he was examined on the Tuesday. On the Friday, with the interval of two days-and your Lordships, for reasons best known to yourselves, but which must have been bottomed on justice guided by wisdom-wisdom never more seen or better evidenced than in varying the course of conduct and adapting to new circumstances the actions we performwisdom which will not, if it be perfect in its kind and absolute in its degree, ever sustain any loss by the deviation-for this reason alone, in order that injustice might not be done (for what in one case may be injurious to a defendant, may be expected mainly to assist a defendant in another,)—your Lordships, not with a view to injure the Queen-your Lordships, with a view to farther, not to frustrate the ends of justice allowed the evidence to be printed, which afforded to the witnesses, if they wished it, means of mending and improving upon their testimony." And this reminds us of another passage in the same speech, where, flinging irony aside, he with unparalleled boldness charged the Peers of England, before whom he stood as the advocate of the Queen, with having themselves, by their own conduct, forced her to associate abroad with persons beneath her, and thus incur the degradation of which she was then accused. "But who," he asked, "are they that bring | this charge, and above all, before whom do they urge it? Others may accuse her-others may blame her for going abroad-others may tell tales of the consequences of living among Italians, and of not associating with the women of her country or of her adopted country; but it is not your Lordships that have any right to say so. It is not you, my Lords, that can fling this stone at Her Majesty. You are the last persons in the world-you who now presume to judge her, are the last persons in the world so to charge her; for you are the witnesses whom she must call to vindicate her from that charge. You are the last persons who can so charge her; for you being her witnesses, have been the instigators of that only admitted crime. While she was here she courteously opened the doors of her palace to the families of your Lordships. She graciously condescended to mix herself in the habits of most familiar life with those virtuous and distinguished persons. other views opened when that power was to .. But when changes took place when be retained which she had been made the instrument of grasping-when that lust of power and place was to be continued its gratification, to the first gratification of which she had been made the victim-then her doors were opened in vain; then that society of the Peeresses of England was withholden from her; then she was reduced to the alternative, humiliating indeed. . . . . either to acknowledge that you had deserted her . . . . . or to leave the country and have recourse to other society inferior to yours." Our limits will not allow us to attempt an analysis of this celebrated speech, and indeed, it is too well known to need that we should do so. All who have read it must have stamped upon their memories the way in which Mr. Brougham shattered the evidence in support of the bill, and the irresistible force with which he insisted upon its rejection, not only on account of the worthlessness of the witnesses who were called, but the absence of the witnesses who were not. In anticipation of the taunt which might be expected from those who would say that he might call the latter himself, he burst forth: "And if you do not call them'-in the name of justice, what? Say! Say!-For shame, in this temple-this highest temple of justice, to have her most sacred rights so profaned, that I am to be condemned in the plenitude of proof, if guilt is; that I am to be condemned, unless I run counter to the presumption which bears sway in all Courts of Justice, that I am innocent until I am proved guilty; and that my case is to be considered as utterly ruined, unless I call my adversary's witnesses! Oh! most monstrous! most incredible! My Lords! my Lords! if you |