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mean ever to show the face of those symbols by which Justice is known to your country, without making them stand an eternal condemnation of yourselves, I call upon you instantly to dismiss this case, and for this single reason; and I will say not another word upon this subject."

It was in the same speech that he uttered his well-known description of the

duties of an advocate.

"I once before took occasion to remind your Lordships-which was unnecessary, but there are many whom it may be necessary to remind -that an advocate, by the sacred duty which he owes to his client, knows in the discharging that office but one person in the world, THAT CLIENT AND NONE OTHER. To save that client by all expedient means-to protect that client at all hazards and costs to all others, and among others to himself—is the highest and most unquestioned of his duties; and he must not regard the alarm -the suffering-the torment-the destructionwhich he may bring upon another. Nay, separating even the duties of a patriot from those of an advocate, and casting them, if need be, to the wind, he must prove reckless of the consequences, if his fate should unhappily be to involve his country in confusion for his client's protec

tion!"

This, if considered as propounding an article in the code of forensic ethics, is an exaggerated and erroneous view, against which the right reason of every one instinctively revolts; but the speaker meant it to apply to and foreshadow the necessity to which he might be driven of recriminating upon the King, and impugning his title to the throne in consequence of his marriage with Mrs. Fitzherbert. Although Mr. Brougham did not go so far as this, yet he went far enough in vindicating his claim to know in the discharge of his duty to his client "but one person in the world, that client and no other," when he called the King "the ringleader of the band of perjured witnesses;" and in quoting an affectionate letter from George III. to his daughter-in-law, said, that he could not read it "without a feeling of sorrow, when we reflect upon the reign that has passed, and compare it with the rule we live under."

It is needless to express any opinion upon the merits of the case, or to revive a controversy, in every aspect most unhappy, which has died away. We are dealing with the Queen's trial merely as it afforded a great occasion for a great advocate; and no one can deny the matchless skill with which the defense was conducted, and the

power with which the testimony of Majocchi, the "non mi ricordo," Majocchiof Demont, "the Machiavel of waitingmaids"-of Cucchi, with " that unmatched physiognomy, those gloating eyes, that sniffing nose, that lecherous mouth"-of Sacchi, and of Kress, and indeed of all the witnesses for the bill, was sifted, anatomized, and destroyed. We will quote the peroration of the speech, and chiefly for the purpose of calling attention to the rising climax at the beginning.

"Such, my Lords, is the case now before you! Such is the evidence in support of this measure evidence inadequate to prove a debt-impotent to deprive of a civil right-ridiculous to convict of the lowest offense-scandalous if brought forward to support a charge of the highest nature which the law knows-monstrous to ruin the honor, to blast the name, of an English Queen! What shall I say, then, if this is the proof by which an act of legislation, a parliamentary sentence, an ex post facto law, is sought to be passed against this defenseless woman? My Lords, I pray you to pause. I do earnestly beseech you to take heed! You are standing upon the brink of a precipice-then beware! It will go forth your judgment, if sentence shall go against the Queen. But it will be the only judgment you ever pronounced, which, instead of reaching its object, will return and bound back upon those who give it. Save the country, my Lords, from the horrors of this catastrophe -save yourselves from this peril-rescue that country of which you are the ornaments, but in which you can flourish no longer when severed from the people, than the blossom when cut off from the roots and stem of the tree. Save that country that you may continue to adorn it-save the Crown which is in jeopardy-the Aristomust stagger with the blow that rends its kincracy which is shaken-save the Altar which dred Throne! You have said, my Lords, you have willed-the Church and the King have willed-that the Queen should be deprived of its solemn service. She has, instead of that solemnity, the heart-felt prayers of the people. She wants no prayers of mine. But I do here pour forth my humble supplications at the Throne of upon the people, in a larger measure than the Mercy, that that mercy may be poured down merits of their rulers may deserve, and that your hearts may be turned to justice."

In connection with the Queen's trial another opportunity was afforded to Mr. Brougham for a great oratorical display. When she died in August, 1821, the bells of most of the churches throughout England were tolled-but those of Durham remained silent. Neither church nor cathedral there paid this tribute of respect to her memory; and a Mr. Williams, the

sense, and outrage the feelings of the whole human race! If you were hypocrites before, you were downright frank honest hypocrites to what you have made yourselves-and surely for all you have ever done or ever been charged with, your worst enemies must be satiated with the humiliation of this day, its just atonement and ample retribution!"

editor of a local newspaper at Durham, | you with it! This is indeed to insult commoncommented with some severity upon the omission. What he wrote would nowadays pass unheeded and disregarded, but those were times of ex-officio informations; and the late Lord Abinger, then Mr. Scarlett, the Attorney-General of the County Palatine, obtained a rule, which was afterwards made absolute, for a criminal information against John Williams, the publisher of the paragraph, for a libel against "the clergy residing in and near the city of Durham." We more than doubt whether such a body-having no corporate character or capacity-could, in point of law, be the possible subjects of a libel, so as to enable them to be the relators in a criminal information. But the rule was granted, and Williams was defended before a Durham jury by Mr. Brougham.

In the alleged libel occurred the following passage "Yet these men profess to be followers of Jesus Christ, to walk in his footsteps, to teach his precepts, to inculcate his spirit, to promote harmony, charity, and Christian love! Out upon such hypocrisy!"—and Mr. Scarlett, who conducted the prosecution, had suggested in his opening address to the jury that the reason why the bells of Durham were silent was because the clergy there too deeply sympathized with the Queen's fate to give open expression to their sorrow. This was indeed to expose an unguarded flank to the enemy and invite a terrible attack, and thus did Mr. Brougham avail himself of the opportunity.

"The venerable the clergy of Durham, I am

told now for the first time.

In the same speech occurs a passage which we must cite as perfect in its kind. Mr. Scarlett had lamented in his opening that the clergy had not the power of defending themselves through the public press. Mr. Brougham declared that they had largely used it and "scurrilously and foully libeled " the defendant. He then thus proceeded:

"Not that they wound deeply or injure much; but that is no fault of theirs: without hurting they give trouble and discomfort. The insect brought into life by corruption, and nestled in filth, though its flight be lowly and its sting puny, can swarm and buzz and irritate the skin and offend the nostril, and altogether give us nearly as much annoyance as the wasp, whose These revnobler nature it aspires to emulate. void of force to wield the sword, snatch the erend slanderers-these pious backbiters-dedagger; and destitute of wit to point or to barb it, and make it rankle in the wound, steep it in venom to make it fester in the scratch."

Nor was this the last occasion on which Lord Brougham defended the memory of the Queen. No one can doubt the sincerity of his conviction of her innocence, and he has seized every opportunity of proclaiming it to the world. In a debate tration of the Law in Ireland brought forin 1823, on the question of the Adminishis reference to a letter which had been did neverthe-ward by himself, Mr. Peel has censured addressed by the Irish Attorney-General, Mr. Saurin, to Lord Norbury, then Chief Justice of the Common Pleas in Ireland, and in which the writer had suggested that Lord Norbury should make use of his position as a judge on circuit to influence those with whom he came in contact against Catholic Emancipation. This letter was a private one, which had got into print by some improper means, contrary to the wish and intention of Mr. Saurin, and had been the subject of much public remark. On hearing the attack, Mr. Brougham turned to Mr. Denman and Mr. Williams, who with Dr. Lushington had been his colleagues on the Queen's trial, and, quoting Cromwell's words at

less, in reality, all the while, deeply sympathize with her suffering in the bottom of their reverend hearts! When all the resources of the most ingenious cruelty hurried her to a fate without parallel-if not so clamorous as others, they did not feel the least of all the members of the community-their grief was in truth too deep for utterance-sorrow clung round their bosoms, weighed upon their tongues, stifled every sound-and when all the rest of mankind, of all sects and of all nations, freely gave vent to the feelings of our common nature, THEIR silence, the contrast which THEY displayed to the rest of their species, proceeded from the greater depth of their affliction; they said the less because they felt the more !-Oh! talk of hypocrisy after this! most consummate of all the hypocrites! After instructing your chosen official advocate to stand forward with such a defense-such an exposition of your motives-to dare to utter the word hypocrisy, and complain of those who charged

the battle of Dunbar, said: "The Lord hath delivered them into our hands." When he rose to reply he thus dealt with the accusation, and thus retorted upon his adversary:

"And why, let me ask, am I to be blamed for simply referring to an extensively published letter, as if I had first given it publicity?

I entirely agree with the Right Honorable Gentleman, in his condemnation of those who have been concerned in obtaining the letter for the purpose of publishing it. Their conduct may not be criminal by the enactments of the law, but it is morally dishonest, and it is revolting to every honorable feeling. I go heartily along with him in reprobating all such odious practices; I hold with him that it is shameful, indecent, abominable to encourage them; I consider it truly detestable to hold out the encouragement of bribes for the purpose of corrupting servants, and inducing them to violate their first duty, and betray the secrets of their master-ay, and of their mistress too! I say of their mistress! of their mistress! and not only to betray her secrets and to steal her papers, and to purloin her letters, but to produce them for the treacherous, the foul, the execrable purpose of supporting a charge against her honor and her life, founded on the documents that have been pilfered by her servants and sold to her enemies! the proofs obtained by perfidy suborned, and larceny perpetrated! and then to carry on a prosecution wholly grounded on matter drawn from sources so polluted, as at once insulted, disgraced, and degraded the nation-a prosecution so foul, so utterly abominable, making the sun shroud himself in darknes, as if unwilling to lend the light of day to the perpetration of such enormous wickedness! And by whom was this infamy enacted? By the ministers of the Crown-by the very colleagues of the Right Honorable Gentleman who now pronounces so solemn a denunciation of all that tends to encourage servants in betraying the confidence of their masters and their mistresses!"

Lord Brougham is sparing in the use of metaphor, and hardly ever resorts to a simile. But when he does employ metaphor it is always apt and effective. We may give as a specimen his description of the benefits conferred by the Reform Bill, which occurs in a speech delivered by him in 1839, on what was called the Bedchamber Question, so fatal to Sir Robert Peel's attempt to form an Administration in the month of May in that year.

* An eclipse of the sun happened to take place at the time of the opening of the case for the Bill of Pains and Penalties against the Queen.

"It is my clear and deliberate conviction (and if I had not so believed I never would have consented to the change in 1831 and 1832, much tion is fit for the calm, it is yet better suited to less promoted it) that if the altered Constituthe tempest; if the vessel can ride the more safely in smooth water, since the repairs she then underwent, they were still more necessary for enabling her to bear the storm. Her being made more tight in her rigging, better trimmed, better manned, and by a more contented crew, sounder in her timbers, more secure and more seaworthy in all her fabric, far from rendering her less fit safely to ride through the troubled waters, must make her more powerful to defy the strife of the elements. The vessel has undergone a thorough repair; not unnecessary for her security in the fairest weather, but in the stress of wind and wave absolutely required to give her a chance of safety."

....

And, although it is not included in the collection we are reviewing, we can not resist the temptation of quoting an extract from his noble speech on the State of the Law, where a fine metaphor is beautifully sustained.

"The great stream of Time is perpetually flowing on; all things around us are in ceaseless motion; and we vainly imagine to preserve our relative position among them by getting out of the current and standing stock-still on the margin. The stately vessel we belong to glides down; our bark is attached to it; we might

pursue the triumph and partake the gale;' but worse than the fool who stares expecting the current to flow down and run out, we exclaim, Stop the boat!' and would tear it away to strand it for the purpose of preserving its connection with the vessel."

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It is, however, in the power of description that Lord Brougham peculiarly excels. No one can paint with more force a picture in words. Witness that tremendous passage with which he appalled the House of Lords when, in his speech on the Slave Trade in 1838, he described the horrors of the Middle Passage and spoke of the shark that follows in the wake of the slave-ship; "and her course is literally to be tracked through the ocean by the blood of the murdered, with which her enormous crime stains its waters." Our space will not allow us to do more than give a fragment of the picture in which are drawn scenes

"Scenes not exceeded in horror by the forms with which the great Tuscan poet peopled the Hell of his fancy, nor by the dismal tints of his illustrious countrymen's pencil breathing its horrors over the vaults of the Sistine Chapel!

Mortua quin etiam jungebat corpora vivis! On the deck and in the loathsome hold are to be seen the living chained to the dead-the putrid carcase remaining to mock the survivor with a spectacle that to him presents no terrors-to mock him with the spectacle of a release that he envies! Nay, women have been known to bring forth the miserable fruit of the womb, surrounded by the dying and the dead-the decayed corpses of their fellow victims."

After this, his affecting account of the sufferings of the people in his speech against the Orders in Council in 1812 seems almost tame. And yet his tale of starving penury and silent woe in the manufacturing districts was told with infinite skill-we fear with not more skill than truth—and touched the hearts of all who heard it. Speaking of Birmingham

he asked:

In what state do you find that once busy hive of men? Silent, still, and desolate during half the week; during the rest of it, miserably toiling at reduced wages, for a pittance scarcely sufficient to maintain animal life in the lowest

state of comfort, and at all times swarming with unhappy persons, willing, anxious to work for their lives, but unable to find employment. He must have a stout heart within him, who can view such a scene, and not shudder. But even this is not all. . . . . A third would say that he was afraid to see his people, because he had no longer the means of giving them work, and he knew that they would flock around him and implore to be employed at the lowest wages: for something wholly insufficient feed them. Indeed,' said one, our situation is greatly to be pitied; it is most distressing; and God only knows what will become of us, for it is most unhappy!'"

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He possesses also an unrivaled fertility in strong and apposite illustration. This is one of the most effective ornaments of a speech, vividly condensing the argument and bringing it home at once to the apprehension. We will give one or two examples. Alluding to the pressure of misery caused by the Orders in Council, and the wild ideas that were afloat of the relief that was likely to flow from the proposed abolition of the East-India Company's trading monopoly-when one district, which raised no earthly produce but black horned cattle, had petitioned for a free exportation to the East-Indies and "the ancient and respectable city of Newcastle, which grows nothing but pit coal, had earnestly entreated that it might be allowed to ship that useful article to supply the stoves and hot-houses of Calcutta," he said:

"They remind one of the accounts which have been handed down to us of the great pestilence which once visited this city. Nothing in the story of that awful time is more affecting than the picture which it presents of the vain efforts made to seek relief. Miserable men might be seen rushing forth into the streets and wildly grasping the first passenger they met, to implore his help, as if by communicating the poison to others they could restore health to their own veins, or life to its victims whom they had left stretched before it. In that dismal period there was no end of projects and nostrums for preventing or curing the disease; and numberless empirics every day started up with some new delusion, rapidly made fortunes of the hopes and terrors of the multitude, and then as speedily disappeared, or were themselves borne malady raged until its force was spent; the down by the general destroyer. Meanwhile the attempts to cure it were doubtless all baffled; but the eagerness with which men hailed each vast was their terror and how universal the successive contrivance, proved too plainly how suffering that prevailed."

And again, in the same speech, in answer to the question, what had the Orders in Council to do with the scarcity arising from a deficient crop?

"Why, Sir, to deny that those measures affect the scarcity, is as absurd as it would be to deny that our Jesuits' Bark Bill exasperated the misery of the French hospitals, for that the wretches there died of the ague and not of the bill. True, they died of the ague; but your murderous policy withheld from them that kindly herb which the Providence that mysteriously inflicted the disease, mercifully bestowed for the relief of suffering humanity."

Throughout these orations occur from time to time magnificent bursts of the finest eloquence, and our only difficulty is to make a selection. We might quote from his speech in 1812, at the Liverpool Election, his invective against the policy of Mr. Pitt. "Immortal in the triumphs of our enemies and the ruin of our allies, the costly purchase of so much blood and treasure! Immortal in the afflictions of England and the humiliation of her friends, through the whole results of his twenty years' reign, from the first rays of favor with which a delighted Court glided his early apostasy, to the deadly glare which is at this instant cast upon his name by the burning metropolis of our last ally !"* We might also quote from his speech on the Army Estimates in 1816-a speech

*The news of the burning of Moscow had arrived in Liverpool by that day's post.

With this it is worth while to compare his grand and impassioned burst of indignant eloquence, when denouncing in the House of Lords, in 1838, the cruelties practiced in our West-India Colonies, and calling upon the House to assent to the immediate emancipation of the Negro apprentices. Eleven female slaves had been severely flogged, and then forced by torture to work on the treadmill," till their sufferings had reached the pitch when life can no longer even glimmer in the socket of the weary frame." They died-and

which we are told by himself had a greater | the wild and guilty phantasy that man can hold success than any other made by him in property in man! In vain you appeal to Parliament-his comparison of France in treaties, to covenants between nations: the 1792, when "a prodigious revolution had covenants of the Almighty, whether of the old unchained twenty-six millions of men in covenant or the new, denounce such unholy pretensions." the heart of Europe," with France at the time he spoke, after "Jacobinism, itself arrested by the Directory, punished by the Consuls, reclaimed by the Emperor, has become attached to the cause of good order, and made to serve it with the zeal, the resources, and the address of a malefactor engaged by the police after the time of his sentence had expired." Or the peroration of his speech in 1823, on abuses in the Administration of the Law in Ireland, which Mr. Wilberforce in his "Diary" (see his "Life," vol. 5, p. 186,) called "quite thundering-magnificent, but very unjust declamation." With the justice or injustice of the attack we are not now concerned, but it is melancholy to think that such a theme should have afforded materials for a long oration in the House of Commons little more than thirty years ago, and that it should have been possible to say there, as Mr. Brougham did say: "In England, justice is delayed, but, thank Heaven, it can never be sold. In Ireland, it is sold to the rich, refused to the poor, delayed to all. It is in vain to disguise the fact; it is in vain to shun the disclosure of the truth. . . . . . We are driving six millions of people to despair, to madness.

But at the risk of choosing a passage which some may think eclipsed by others more rhetorical and brilliant, we will give an extract from the close of his speech in the House of Commons in 1830 on Negro Slavery, which we think remarkably fine:

"Tell me not of rights-talk not of the property of the planter in his slaves. I deny the right-I acknowledge not the property. The principles, the feelings of our common nature, rise in rebellion against it. Be the appeal made to the understanding or to the heart, the sentence is the same that rejects it. In vain you tell me of laws that sanction such a claim! There is a law above all the enactments of human codes-the same throughout the world, the same in all times-such as it was before the daring genius of Columbus pierced the night of ages, and opened to one world the sources of power, wealth and knowledge; to another all unutterable woes. Such it is at this day. It is the law written in the heart of man by the finger of his Maker; and by that law, unchangeable and eternal, while men despise fraud, and loathe rapine, and abhor blood, they will reject

"Ask you," said the great champion of the cause of African freedom, "ask you if crimes like these, murderous in their legal nature, as ticed; if inquiry was neglected to be made rewell as frightful in their aspect, passed unnospecting these deaths in a prison? No such thing! The forms of justice were, on this head, peremptory even in the West-Indies; and those forms, the handmaids of Justice, were present, though their sacred mistress was far away. The coroner duly attended; his jury were regularly order, and eleven verdicts returned. Murder! impanneled; eleven inquisitions were made in manslaughter! misdemeanor ! misconduct! No-but Died by the Visitation of God!' Died by the Visitation of God! A lie! a perjury! a blasphemy! The visitation of God! Yes, for it is amongst the most awful of those visitations by which the inscrutable purposes of his will times arms the wicked with power to oppress are mysteriously accomplished, that he somethe guiltless; and if there be any visitation more dreadful than another-any which more tries the faith and vexes the reason of erring mortals, it is when Heaven showers down upon earth the plague-not of scorpions, or pestilence, or famine, or war-but of unjust judges and perjured jurors; wretches who pervert the law to wreak their personal vengeance, or compass their sordid ends, forswearing themselves

*Some years ago, when a case was argued before Lord Denman and several other judges in Sergeant's Inn, involving incidentally the right of a Spanish or Portuguese vessel to carry slaves, the counsel who argued that a certain capture was unlawful, was assuming that, by the Law of Nations, slave-trading don't know that; I should like to hear that point was lawful; upon which Lord Denman said: "I argued." However, it was soon shown that what the laws of the principal nations of Europe had sanctioned could not be contrary to the Law of Nations; and indeed so Lord Stowell had decided in the case of the French vessel Le Louis in 1817.

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