The Tories rallied rather rapidly for an annihilated party; and the wavering state of his own mind while the result was in abeyance might have suggested a more charitable view of the conduct and motives of his opponents; especially Lord Lyndhurst, to whom he is systematically unjust. Thus, vividly describing the second night of the grand debate in the Lords:

"Lord John Russell was standing or sitting by me a great part of the time, and we criticised the different speakers together. They were almost all lawyers, whom I very intimately knew. Wynford performed indifferently. Brougham was magnificent, and Copley clever. There is now a complete breach between him and Grey, who must now repent his coup d'état in making him Chief Baron, instead of offering the office to Scarlett, as he ought in fairness to have done. Copley must consider the Whigs in a bad way, for he vilified Grey and the whole of them. Grey's reply was admirable,

and the conclusion of it threw me into tears.'

He sees nothing at all strange or reprehensible in the conduct of Lord Abinger, who, after being a steady Whig past middle life, was converted into a determined Tory; but a vague rumor that Lord Lyndhurst had been prior to his entrance into public life a Liberal, is deemed ground enough for denouncing or sneering at him on every available occasion as a renegade.

Campbell's first confidential communication from the Government was the draft of the Irish Coercion Bill of 1833.

"It was then still more arbitrary than when introduced into the House of Commons, several very obnoxious clauses having been omitted, or qualified, on my earnest remonstrances to Lord Grey. The bill no doubt was the measure of Stanley, the Irish Secretary, and very much in accordance with his rashness, wilfulness, and determined spirit ; but I am now quite at a loss to understand how all the rest

of the Cabinet were induced to concur in it. They had not the experience which we have since happily obtained of the good effect upon Ireland of a kind, liberal and confiding govNEW SERIES.-VOL. XXXIII., No. 5

ernment; but that it should have been defended by those who had so often reprobated and moved for the repeal of Lord Castlereagh's Six Acts only shows how differently men feel on the same subjects in different situations."

This was written in 1842. His first display as law officer was on the question whether Mr. Pease, the Quaker, might be permitted to sit on making an affirmation at the table, without taking an oath. He maintained the affirmation,

and was much applauded by the Liberal press.

'But my popularity was soon dimmed by the arrival of the Irish Coercion Bill from the mously. I thought it was gone on the first readLords, where it had passed almost unaniing-it was so very inefficiently opened by Lord Althorp, who seemed heartily ashamed of it; but Stanley came to the rescue and showed such nerve, such knowledge, such tact, and such eloquence, that he brought round the House to the opinion that it was necessary, mild, and humane.'

Despite of his dislike to this bill, the ing it in Committee, and had many Solicitor-General could not help defend"tussles" with O'Connell, who denounced him as a tool of the "base and bloody Whigs." His business (he states) was now much greater than that of any other man at the bar, except his father-in-law, to whom he was generally opposed, and some unpleasant collisions took place.

"I of course thought that I behaved with great moderation and forbearance, and that the fault was his in expecting that at the expense of my client I should defer to him as in private life. Unfortunately he had now gone over most zealously and bitterly to the Tories. This arose partly from bad luck, by which he gradually and imperceptibly drifted into a false Brougham, who when the Whigs took office in position, and partly from the treachery of

1830 was commissioned by Lord Grey to con ciliate Scarlett, and hold out to him the prospect of being made Chief Justice of the King's Bench, but who withheld the communication and forced him from the Liberal side, with the

feeling rankling in his breast of having been betrayed and cast off by the party he had long zealously supported."

It is far from clear how Brougham could have been commissioned to conciliate Scarlett by the prospect of the Chief Justiceship, which, on the death or retirement of Lord Tenterden, would regularly devolve (as it did, in fact) on the Attorney-General, Denman. Another strange statement is when he mentions the arrangements (in 1833) conse

38

quent on the death of Sir John Leach, Master of the Rolls, who was succeeded by Pepys, the Solicitor-General :

"There was a considerable demur about naming me a colleague as Solicitor-General. With my concurrence Charles Austin was first proposed, and I wrote to him strongly advising him to accept. But he had made £40,000 in one session before railway committees; this practice he must have sacrificed and he preferred it to all the allurements of ambition. He was a man of consummate abilities, and might have made himself a great name. His health soon after broke down, and he was obliged to retire into obscurity.'

Charles Austin was at the commencement of his career in 1833. The railway mania, which enabled him to make £40,coo in one session, did not begin till many years later, and it was on the formation of the Whig Ministry in 1846 that the offer of the Solicitor-Generalship was made to him at the suggestion of Lord Lansdowne, who had been struck by his varied acquirements and remarkable powers of mind, which unfortunately were concentrated too long on money-making. He made (as he told the writer) more than £80,000 in two consecutive sessions; but eminence at the parliamentary bar was never deemed a title to the higher honors of the profession.

The patent appointing Campbell Attorney-General in succession to Horne passed the Great Seal on the 23d of February, 1834. This vacated his seat for Dudley, and failing to get re-elected, he was out of Parliament for three months, when "what no god nor whipper-in could promise" was brought about by the resignation of an old Scotch judge, who was succeeded by Jeffrey, and one of the seats for Edinburgh was thus left open to competition. Sir John Hobhouse, who had been thrown out for Westminster, had put forth feelers to try how a Government candidate would fare, and then shrank from the attempt. Lord Grey, on being consulted, told Campbell, "It is a very perilous thing for you and for us. Another defeat would be most injurious to you individually, and ruin to us as a Government. Brougham, whom he suspected of a spice of jealousy at the thought of his representing the Scotch metropolis, wrote: “DEAR A.—I am puzzled about Edinburgh. I still think you are not the

man, but it is by no means certain. All I have made a point of is that it must be a certainty." On his way to the scene of action in the mail, they took up a gentleman who had just left Edinburgh and (not knowing his fellow-traveller) ended an animated description of the state of feeling there by the consolatory reflection: "As for poor Campbell, he has not the remotest chance. When the day of election arrived, he had more votes than both his opponents put together.

The change of Premier from Lord Grey to Lord Melbourne made no perceptible difference in his position, and he remained in office till the Whig Administration was summarily ejected in November, 1834. On the ensuing dissolution he stood again for Edinburgh, where he was opposed by Lord Ramsay (afterward Governor-General of India and Marquis of Dalhousie) and his former adversary, Learmonth, a wealthy coachmaker. Lord Ramsay, appealing to the Scotch weakness for pedigree, had boasted of being the twenty-third in lineal descent of his house :

"I reminded him of what Gibbon said of the Faerie Queen' and the triumphs of Marlborough as connected with the house of Spencer, and advised him to be most proud of Allan Ramsay, the barber, well known to be his cousin, and to regard 'The Gentle Shepherd as 'the brightest jewel in his coronet.' The coachmaker and the noble of twenty-three descents were at the bottom of the poll.

the

In the course of the discussion of the Municipal Reform Bill, he was provoked into denouncing the freemen as plague spot of the Constitution ;" and advantage was instantly taken of this escapade by distributing copies of his speech in every town in which there were freemen holding votes. His colleagues maintained a prudent silence, and the only defence or apology attempted for him was by Mr. Philip Howard, the member for Carlisle :

"We should remember that the honorable

and learned Attorney-General once represented the borough of Stafford, and I am afraid that his recollection of the freemen there is not to be reckoned among the pleasures of memory."

It is remarkable how long incisive expressions of this sort stick to the speaker, and how impossible it has been found to throw them off. Lord Lyndhurst's "aliens in blood, language, and

64

Unless we are mistaken as to the man, Stephenson, Boots" Stephenson, one of the oracles of Brooks's, was an odd person for Lord Lyndhurst to consult about the leadership of the Tory party. In his contests with Brougham, who was indiscreet and inaccurate, Campbell sometimes obtained the advantage; with Lyndhurst, whose magnificent intellect overawed him, he had not a chance; and (unconsciously, we hope) he en

deavors to throw off the sense of inferiority by depreciation.

In allowing the Solicitor-General, Pepys, who was made Master of the Rolls in 1834, to be promoted over his head, Campbell, then Attorney-General, had submitted to a sacrifice which he was not disposed to repeat. On hearing, therefore, toward the end of 1835, that arrangements were in progress for making Pepys Lord Chancellor, and giving the Rolls thus vacated to Bickersteth, with a peerage, he wrote to Lord Melbourne and Lord John Russell to enter a firm protest. He had interviews with both, the general purport of which may be gathered from Lord Melbourne's letter to Lord Lansdowne, dated January 10th, 1836 :

Campbell, after much discussion on the subject, which I must say, considering how deeply his interests are involved and his feelings touched, he has carried on with great fair

ness and good temper, has this morning sent to me his final determination, which is that he cannot submit to be passed over, and must resign if our arrangement is carried into effect."'*

The matter was at length arranged by his accepting a peerage for his wife, by the name and title of Baroness Stratheden, which, it was represented to him, would remove all semblance of slight :

"Pollock, and one or two others, blamed me for not resigning, and said 1 had lowered the office of Attorney-General; but Abercromby, Follett, and those whose opinions I repented any part of my conduct on this occamost regard, approved, and I have never since

sion.

His

The right which he declared to be unquestionable was the right of his office, not a personal right to be bartered away for a personal object, and with all due respect for Follett and Abercromby, such was the opinion of the bar. defence that he got what he could-resembles that of the learned counsel arraigned before the tribunal of the Circuit-mess for unprofessional conduct in taking a fee in silver (some five or six shillings), instead of gold, with a brief to defend a prisoner : I took all the poor devil had in the world, and I hope you don't call that unprofessional."'

His account of the case of Norton v. Melbourne adds little to what is popularly know of it, with the exception of Lord Melbourne's letter to him, beginning:

"MY DEAR ATTORNEY: I have been thinking over again the matter of this trial, and I know not that I have anything to add to what I have already written, and to what passed the other day at the consultation. I repeat that I wish it to be stated in the most clear, distinct,

and emphatic manner that I have never committed adultery with Mrs. Norton, that I have never held with her any furtive or clandestine correspondence whatever, and that both in visiting and in writing to her I always considered myself to be acting with the full knowledge and with the entire approbation of her husband."

A measure for the abolition of churchChancellor of the Exchequer, in 1837rates was brought in by Spring Rice, the "When he sat down, Follett said to me.

The Lord has delivered you into our hands;' and all England was instantly in a flame.' When the regular debate

* " Memoirs of the Right Hon. William, second Viscount Melbourne." By W. M. Torrens, M.P. Vol. ii. p. 173.

came on, Poulett Thompson, who had been told off to follow Follett, turned to Campbell and said, "I cannot answer this,' and retreated into the library. Campbell undertook to answer it and (to say the truth) it was no difficult task for a lawyer. Not content with replying to Follett, he was sarcastic on Stanley, who the next night retorted "most furiously and unfairly." This led to the publication of "A Letter to Lord Stanley on the Law of Church-Rates," a pamphlet which (he states) was commended by Sydney Smith as "an excellent specimen of Liberal juridical reasoning and of genuine Anglicism, neither to be expected from a Scot." Such was not the opin ion of his father-in-law, who, hearing that an answer was in preparation by a well-known juridical writer, sent for him, carefully indoctrinated him, and ended by saying, "Don't spare Mr. Attorney; give it him hot and strong!"

He boasts, and not altogether without reason, that his arguments were substantially adopted by the courts of law and the Legislature. Not so the view he took of the celebrated Parliamentary Privilege question, on which the best lawyers are now agreed that he was wrong. He misstates it at starting. It was not simply-" Whether an action for a libel could be maintained against the printer of the House of Commons for publishing their proceedings by their authority," but whether a libellous publication did not cease to be privileged when exposed for sale or otherwise circulated in a manner not required for the due discharge of the business of the House. We entered fully into this question on its occurrence, and have neither time nor inclination to renew the argument.

*

Although the remaining part of the Autobiography abounds in passages which invite quotation and provoke comment, we can do little more than recapitulate the steps by which he attained the

*The Quarterly Review for January, 1838, Art. V. Talking over this article with the writer, Follett owned that he had not fully considered the subject when he gave the opinion which mainly induced Sir Robert Peel to take the democratic side. Campbell states that the Duke of Wellington refused to permit the pass ing of the Declaratory Act until it was distinctly understood that the judgment of the

court of law was not to be overruled.

As soon as

highest dignities of the law. the dissolution of 1841 was resolved upon, Lord Melbourne and Lord John Russell, foreseeing the result, proposed to him to take the Great Seal of Ireland as successor to Lord Plunket, with a peerage, to which he assented, supposing that the matter had been arranged with Lord Plunkett, who at first declined to give way. It was an undeniable job, for Campbell was to retire with the Government and secure a pension of £4000 a year by a few weeks' tenure of the office. When, therefore, Plunket reluctantly yielded, declaring that the resignation had been forced upon him, Campbell agreed to waive the right to a retiring pension and became Lord Chancellor of Ireland and (" never having done anything to make me ashamed of my name") John Lord Campbell. After a few weeks spent in Dublin, he resigned, and his position on his return is thus described:

'Thus was I of office, pension, and practice at once bereft. With decent resignation I put on my scarlet robes as a peer, was introduced by the Earl Marshal and two Barons, had my patent read at the table, took the oaths, and, after making the requisite number of bows, was placed upon the Barons' bench."

The low condition of his party, to which he thinks they were reduced by their own mismanagement, is mentioned in a letter to his brother, September 1st, 1841:

"

Perhaps you may have some curiosity to know, what the newspapers cannot tell you, how the Party bear this change: stunned, in a state of stupor, with a feeling of annihilation, quite unlike Milton's devils awakening in hell, who were animated by revenge and meditated schemes again to get in. Peel bestrides the world like a Colossus, and we are only looking out for dishonorable graves. At Brooks's Hope ne'er comes that comes at all.' 'Voi che entrate lasciate ogni speranza. The universal opinion is that the game is irrecoverably up, and that the Tory party will be in power for fifty years to come. Most of our men are gone to Scotland to shoot, or are flying abroad. The few who remain in London say there is no use in attending either House.'

"

4

Hopeless of judicial or official occupation for many years to come, he resolves to engage in some definite pursuit "to fill up my mornings and prevent me from going to sleep on the sofa in the evening," and, December 29th, 1841, he sets down that he has resolved upon

The Autobiography is suspended from November 27th, 1842, and not resumed till November, 1847, when it is taken up from the point where it stopped, so as to preserve the continuity of time. It recommences thus :

"I took possession of my new home a few days before Christmas, and found it most convenient. The famous Lady Holland said there were three great pieces of good-luck which had befallen me the first was marrying my wife, whose grace and sweetness she justly prized; the second was the selection of my subject for a literary work, The Lives of the Chancellors; and the third, purchasing Stratheden House."

The selection of subject was certainly a lucky hit. Legal biography, when well handled, is one of the pleasantest and most instructive sorts of light literature. He was by no means the first to cultivate it; but his name and position enabled him to attract general attention, while the labors of his predecessors in the same walk were little known beyond the pale of the profession. To him was reserved the honor and profit of making legal sages an object of interest in drawing-rooms and a topic of animated discussion in the clubs. The comic alarm expressed by ex, actual, or expectant Chancellors was also calculated to quicken curiosity. "He has added a new pang to death,' was their cry." The book was consequently in demand as soon as it was announced, and it fully answered the expectations that had been formed of it:

*

At last Mr. Murray's trade sale came (I

think the 15th of December, 1845), which was the day of publication, and a rumor having got abroad that the book was lively, the chief part of the edition was subscribed for, that is, taken by the retail booksellers. In a few days the Quarterly Review appeared with warm commendation of the work, and the same strain was adopted by other periodicals -- daily, weekly, monthly, and quarterly. I can safely say that no new work of solid information had caused such an excitement for many years. In a very little time it was out of print,' and a new edition was called for."

chariot :

Brougham has exploded in the Morning Herald, the journal in which he now lauds himself and vituperates his friends. Last Saturday appeared there an editorial articleviolently abusing me rather than my Lives,' which are denominated ponderous trifles,' but calling me plain John,' and alluding to my peerages and my son Dudley, etc.-so evidently from Brougham's pen that everybody immediately recognized the author."

On the formation of the Whig Government in 1846, Campbell became Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, with a seat in the Cabinet-an arrangement to which he was reconciled by the reflection that the office had been similarly held by Dunning, and that it would not interfere with the completion of his magnum opus. He here pauses to give studied portraits of his colleagues, which are tolerably good likenesses, although sometimes overcharged. After the highest praise of Macaulay as a writer, he goes on:

"Tom's manners I cannot defend. To him it is a matter of utter indifference who the company may be, ladies, bishops, lawyers, officers of the army, princes of the blood, or distinguished foreigners, whom the guests are invited to meet, off he goes at score with hardly a gleam of silence, without any adaptation to his auditory of the topics he discusses, and without any remorse or any consciousness of his having acted at all improperly when they have left him in disgust."

This is partially true of Macaulay in early life, before his return from India, although even then he so evidently spoke because his mind was full that no one could suspect him of assumption or conscious rudeness; but it was in no respect true of him at the time of which Campbell was speaking, when, let him monopolize the conversation as he would, such were the richness of his mind and his felicitous range of topics, that rare indeed was the "auditory" who did not leave him with regret. Toward the end of 1846, Campbell writes:

"My second series of the Lives of the

This joke was really made by Sir Charles Wetherell at a grand dinner in Lincolns-inn Hall, Lord Lyndhurst and Lord Brougham being present. Campbell mentions the dinner, but assigns another locality to the joke.

Revolution in 1688 till the death of Lord Thurlow.' Its success was not at all inferior to that of the first. I printed 3000 copies, and 2050 were sold the first day. To lessen my vanity I was told that at the same time 3000 copies were sold of a new cookery book, and 5000 of a new knitting book. These, however,