had assailed; and they read a memorable lesson to the people, if upon such subjects the people ever can be taught, not to repose confidence in those who are unknown against men whose whole lives are passed in the face of open day, and under the constant security of personal responsibility. Nor let it be forgotten upon what flimsy pretences the country was required to embark in a persecution of Lord Mansfield. Nor let it cease to be remembered that upon such grounds as we have been surveying the most popular writers of the day were suffered to call him "cowardly "-" cunning"-" dishonest"-" a juggler "-" a bad man and a worse judge -"a creature at one time hateful, at another contemptible"-" one meriting every term of reproach and every idea of detraction the mind can form 66 a cunning Scotchman who never speaks truth without a fraudulent design"-" a man of whom it is affirmed, with the most solemn appeal to God, that he is the very worst and most dangerous man in the kingdom."

But it turned out afterwards that the same anonymous writer who while he wore the mask of Junius, almost ever praised Lord Chatham, had under other disguises assailed him as bitterly as he had his antagonists; and his rancorous abuse of the great patriot does all but outstrip his slanderous assaults upon the venerable judge. He (Lord Chatham) is described as "not a man of mixed character, whose vice might be redeemed by some appearance of virtue and generosity, but a man purely and perfectly bad." It is said we may easily foretell "the progress of such a traitor, and the probable event of his crimes," since he led “a life of artifice, intrigue, hypocrisy, and impudence;" a career "which equally violates every principle of honour and morality ""an abandoned profligate""so black a villain, that though we have no Tarpeian rock, yet a gibbet is not too honourable a situation for * Junius's Letters, xli. lix. lxiii. lxix.

"_"the

the carcase of a traitor". "a base apostate stalking horse of a stallion" (Lord Bute)—"below contempt "" a venomous reptile "-"a lunatic”—and "a raving madman.”* The great gravamen too of these charges against him is his leaning towards the Americans, of whom the furious shallow and conceited writer was a bitter and intemperate opponent, as he was a bigoted advocate of the mother-country's tyranny.

It may surely be said with justice, that such disclosures as these, while they reduce to their true level the claims of Junius to fame, easily account for the author having died and kept his own secret. He appears to have been a person in whose bosom every fierce and malignant passion raged without the control of a sound judgment and without any kindly feeling to attemper his nature. Writing at a time when good or even correct composition was little studied, and in the newspapers hardly ever met with, his polished style, though very far from being a correct one, and farther still from good pure English, being made the vehicle of abuse, sarcasm, and pointed invective, naturally excited a degree of attention which was further maintained by the boldness of his proceedings. No man can read a page of any letter without perceiving that the writer has but one way of handling every subject, and that he constructs his sentences with the sole design of saying the most bitter things he can in the most striking way, without ever regarding in the least degree their being applicable or inapplicable to the object of the attack. The consequence is, that the greater part of his invective will just suit one bad man or wicked minister as well as another. It is highly probable that whoever he might be, he had often attacked those with whom he lived on intimate terms, or to whom he was under obligations. This affords an additional reason for his dying unrevealed. That

• Miscellaneous Letters, published by Woodfall (1814), vol. ii.

he was neither Lord Ashburton, nor any other lawyer, is proved by what we have said of his gross ignorance of law. To hold that he was Mr. Francis is libelling that gentleman's memory; and although much external evidence concurs in pointing towards him, he cer tainly never wrote anything of the same kind in his own character.

But those charges made against Lord Mansfield's judicial conduct were definite and precise. Others were urged of a kind so vague, that it was impossible distinctly to apprehend or pointedly to meet them. He was accused of encroaching upon the certainty of the common law, by making his views bend to general notions of substantial justice. That he was always anxious to get at the body of the case, and deal with it so as to give merited success to undoubted right is admitted; and in sometimes neglecting the dictates of technical rules, when they obstructed his path towards substantial justice, he might possibly overlook the great advantages of having a fixed rule applicable to all cases, advantages well worth the unavoidable price which must be paid for them in the occasional hardship, or even apparent absurdity, that may attend their inflexible application. But when the same objection is advanced to his introducing rules universally applicable, and choosing those which are more consistent with common sense and liberal feeling than with merely technical analogy, we are bound to turn from the criticism with indignation. By this course he was improving our jurisprudence, and not encroaching upon its principles; nor was the certainty of the law in any way impaired by establishing its rules upon an enlarged basis."

That he was fond of drawing over equitable notions from the Courts in which he had been chiefly trained, and applying them to the consideration of legal matters, is the same objection in another form. Some of the most valuable portions of our common-law

remedies are derived from Equity; witness the action for money had and received, and indeed the action of Indebitatus assumpsit generally: and special pleaders who never saw a bill or an answer, but when they were used in evidence at nisi prius, such men as Mr. Justice Chambre, (among the first ornaments of his profession, as among the most honest and amiable of men,) have shown their sense of the advantage thus gained to the common law by reminding other but less learned men, like Lord Chief Justice Gibbs, of this circumstance, when they grounded their argument upon the position that the point they were attacking was one of an equitable, and not of a legal consideration. As for the clamour (and it was nothing more than clamour, and ignorant clamour, too) that Lord Mansfield was making the old Saxon principles of our jurisprudence bend to those of the Civil Law, it is wholly marvellous that men of any understanding or education should have ever been found so much the slaves of faction as to patronize it. Lord Mansfield at no period of his life ever had, or could have had, the least predilection for the civil law, arising from any familiarity with its institutions. He never was a Scotch advocate at all; or if he was, it must have been in the cradle, for he left Scotland at three years of age. With the Consistorial Courts, if by their practice the Civil Law is meant, he had necessarily very little intercourse.* Chancery has nothing to do with that system unless in so far as it prefers the bad practice of written depositions to viva voce examinations; and also in so far as every rational system of jurisprudence must necessarily have much in common with the most perfect structure that ever was formed of rules for classifying rights and marshalling the

It would, in our times, have been impossible for him to have any practice at all in these courts unless in cases of appeal, formerly before the Delegates, now in the Privy Council. But when Lord Mansfield was at the bar, it was the custom for common lawyers to attend important cases in Doctors' Commons. This, however, was of rare occurrence.

P

remedies for wrongs. Nor can anything be found in all the train of his decisions which betokens more leaning towards the Roman code than a regard for the enlarged and universal principles of abstract justice sanctioned, if it did not prescribe. Yet could the most popular writers of the day, those, too, whose pretensions even to legal learning were the most obtrusive, denounce the Chief Justice as engaged in a deliberate plot to reduce slavery to system, "by making the Roman code the law of nations, and the opinion of foreign civilians his perpetual theme," after the example of "the Norman lawyers, who made the Norman Conquest complete;" and as thus "corrupting by such treacherous arts the noble simplicity and free spirit of our Saxon laws."* Ignorance cannot surely go beyond this point. The civil law only became hostile to liberty through the imperial portion of it introduced by the Emperors, and which made the will of the Prince the law of the land. In no other particular is it at variance with freedom; and who ever dreamt that Lord Mansfield had the power of introducing that portion, let his inclination have been ever so much bent in such a direction?

He

But this topic leads us to the political charges which were brought against this great magistrate. Unfortunately for his fame as well as for his tranquillity, he continued to mix in politics after he ceased to be in the service of the crown as an advocate. not only acted as Speaker of the House of Lords for above a year, but for a much longer time he had a seat in the cabinet, and took a part in the business of government, all the more objectionable in his position, that it was much more active than it was open and avowed.

While the Great Seal was in commission previous to Lord Bathurst's obtaining it as Chancellor, Lord Mansfield was, to all political intents and purposes,

*Junius's Letters, No. xli.