over again, and my children shall read it hereafter. There was CHAP. an inaccuracy in my little sonnet upon the infant Hampden which should run thus: Thy infant years, dear child, had pass'd unknown, But that the name of Hampden fires each soul, In the great cause of law and liberty. To servile judgments; boldly plead the claim Like Hampden, urge their justice in the field.' "These last lines may one day get this young gentleman hanged, unless he can take one just turn in hanging very many who so richly deserve it. "Yours, very affectionately, " ERSKINE." Dr. Parr, in his will, thus testified his feelings for his patriotic correspondent: "I give to the right honourable Lord Erskine a mourning ring, as a mark of my unfeigned respect for his noble exertions in defending the constitutional rights of juries and the freedom of the press, and for his vigorous and effectual resistance to the odious principle of constructive and accumulative treasons, and I thankfully add for his disinterested acts of kindness to my sister and myself." To support the cause of the Greeks, in the autumn of the CLXXXIX. 1821-1823. Erskine and Dr. Parr. * The lawyer and the divine had long been accustomed to praise each other very Correlavishly. Erskine writes, soon after the State Trials in 1794,-"The approba- spondence tion of such an excellent judge of every accomplishment is a great prize. It between was not for nothing that I left the full-monied term of last November at Westminster. No, I am no better than my neighbours, - I was only prudently preaching in these days of innovation for coin not subject to be debased in the esteem and approbation of such men as yourself; and I have so far succeeded, by the dint of sheer honesty (for I have little else to boast of), as to be compared to Demosthenes and Cicero, by one of the very few who are capable of estimating either of them, and who ought to take the lead in England, whether ancient learning and eloquence are to be judged of in the abstract, or compared with the shadows which their descended radiance still gives birth to in our latter days." When the two met, their flattery seems to have been still more intense. On one occasion, Parr, at last, as the highest recompence that could be bestowed, said, “ When you die, I will write your epitaph." Erskine replied, "This is almost a temptation, my dear doctor, instantly to commit suicide!" CHAP. year 1822 Erskine published a pamphlet, in the shape of a CLXXXIX. "Letter to Lord Liverpool;" which, if it be marked by a 1821-1823. growing false taste in composition, proves a true and unabated His love of freedom. He presented a copy of it to a lady of in favour of literary celebrity, with the following note: – pamphlet the Greeks. His letter, presenting a copy of it, to gan. “ DEAR LADY MORGAN, "A long time ago, in one of your works (all of which I have read with great satisfaction), I remember you expressed your Lady Mor- approbation of my style of writing, with a wish that I would lose no occasion of rendering it useful. I wish I could agree with your Ladyship in your kind and partial opinion; but as there never was an occasion in which it can be more useful to excite popular feeling than in the cause of the Greeks, I send your Ladyship a copy of the second edition, published a fews days ago. "With regard and esteem, &c. &c. Extracts from his pamphlet on the Greeks. "No. 13. Arabella Row, Pimlico, London, October 11, 1822. E Lady Morgan, when first introduced to him a good many years before, wrote this account of him to a friend: "I was a little disappointed to find that Erskine spoke like other persons, - was a thin, middle-aged gentleman, and wore a brown wig; but he was always delightful, always amusing, frequently incoherent; and, I thought, sometimes affectedly wild, at least paradoxical." Now she wrote, with great candour and kindness of heart: "The pamphlet for the Greeks is worth citing as a testimony to prove that years do not make age, and that freshness of feeling and youthful ardour in a great cause may survive the corporeal decay which time never spares, even to protracted sensibility." I give one or two specimens to justify this criticism: "I feel, whilst I am writing, that the ink must first have become blood, to enable me fitly to express my detestation and abhorrence of their Turkish oppressors. To judge of what the Greeks under good government are capable of being, we have only to look back to what they have been. Their pedigrees, in which we can trace so many great men who never should have died, ought to protect them from the Saracens, who cannot show in all their escutcheons a single man who CHAP. CLXXXIX. should have lived." Proposing to eject the Turks from Europe, he declares that "he would confide the matter to some long-practised diplomatist, with the assistance of a 1821-1823. lawyer to draw up the notice to quit." He does not go on to explain how the writ of habere facias possessionem was to be executed.-But it should be recollected that at this time such sentiments were shared by the most distinguished men. Byron was actually carrying arms in the great enterprise; and Lord Dudley, though a non-combatant, wrote to the Bishop of Llandaff, " I have always considered it the greatest disgrace of Christendom to suffer these hated barbarians, the Turks, to remain encamped upon the finest and most renowned part of Europe for upwards of four centuriesduring at least two of which it has been in our power to drive them out whenever we pleased; let us at least have one civilised and Christian quarter of the globe, although it be the smallest." In advocating the liberty of the Greeks, Erskine showed that he had become a zealous convert to the abolition of the African slave trade, forgetting even that he had once been deluded by the apparent happiness which he had seen the negroes enjoying in their midnight dances in the West Indies. After giving an affecting description of the horrors of the middle passage, particularly the slaves jumping overboard to be devoured by the sharks, which he says he had frequently beheld, he adds, "When, after all this, it fell at last to my lot, and through ways as unaccountable as unexampled, to preside in the Lords' House of Parliament, on their deliverance to hold up in my hands the great charter of their freedom, and with my voice to pronounce that it should be law, your Lordship, I am sure, whom I respect and regard as a man of honour and feeling, will rather approve than condemn my retaining the whole subject of slavery in the most affecting remembrance." * * I am sorry to say that the lawyers were the last in the community to support the rights of their black brethren. Wilberforce, in his Diary, says,— "That the general bias of the Bar was in favour of an established trade in slaves with Africa, was confirmed by the defence which burst from the CHAP. Erskine was thus employed during the visit of George IV. CLXXXIX. to the Scottish metropolis. He privately expressed a wish 1821-1823. that he might have been of the party, to point out the beauties of his "own romantic town" to the first Brunswick Sovereign who had "kept court in Holyrood,” but there was a complete alienation between "Tom" and his old patron, who now hated all liberal men as well as liberal principles, and by-and-by could with great difficulty be persuaded by his Tory Ministers to agree to the emancipation of the Catholics. His pamphlet cultural Distress " Though no longer attending in Parliament, nor even on Agri. making speeches at anniversary dinners, our Ex-Chancellor was still desirous of keeping his name before the public,—or I ought, perhaps, rather to say, of rendering service to the country, and in the beginning of the year 1823 he published a pamphlet, which proved to be his last; for though his figure was still juvenile and his eye piercing, his career was near its close. The all-absorbing subject of the day was "Agricultural Distress," which, notwithstanding the protecting sliding scale of 1815, intended to prevent the price of wheat falling under eighty shillings the quarter, was now said to be dreadful; and certainly Erskine's attempts to raise wheat on land intended by nature only for the production of birch brooms had turned out very disastrous. In his "Letter to the Proprietors and Occupiers of Land, on the Causes and Remedies for the Decline of Agricultural Prosperity," he still harps upon "insufficient protection," and the "burdens He exposes on land;"* but he makes some good observations on the abuses of the old Poor Law, which many are so eager to Poor Law. restore. He thus illustrates his objection to the "allowance the abuses of the old system" (i. e. apportioning parish relief according to the boisterous Thurlow, and for a moment trembled upon the lips of Erskine." The Bar were all against us upon the question of the African Slave Trade. Fox could scarcely prevent Erskine from making a set speech in favour of the trade." "It was well observed by Mr. Holme Sumner, that a successful clamour for cheap bread, by the encouragement of foreign importers, would soon leave the people no bread at all. No schemes for the sustentation of the poor, however judicious, will be attended with any material relief to the country, until we shut our ports by a higher scale than we have adopted.”― Lord Erskine's Pamphlet. 6 CLXXXIX. number of the family and the price of corn) then prevailing CHAP. over the south of England: "A friend of mine in Sussex had a useful servant, who managed his small farm, and, being 1821-1823. satisfied with his services, gave him higher wages than the common rate, a comfortable house to live in, besides firewood, with some little advantages which occasionally occurred. Nevertheless, this innocent-minded man, in a state of breathless agitation, addressed his master as follows: Master, be I bound to maintain five children?' To which the master said, • Whose children are they?' Why, I believe them to be my own,' was the answer; to which the gentleman replied, Who else should maintain them?' " Why, the parish,' replied the countryman, still more agitated. What can you mean by that?' said the master; have you not sufficient wages to maintain your wife and children comfortably?' Why, to be sure, I have,' said the countryman, thanks to your honour's kindness; my wife is a sober, good woman, so that we lays by a few shillings a week; but why be I to have no money from the parish, when every one else is paid who has children?' The end of this dialogue was, that the man was directed never to think of the parish any more; and he now lives contented in his place." - The public was disposed to applaud what was good, without criticising severely what might be questionable, in the writings or actions of an old favourite. He was now regarded with general fondness. Annually, at a dinner which he was not asked to attend, that his praise might be sounded more freely given to celebrate the acquittal of Hardy in 1794, his health was drunk with increasing enthusiasm — the company, on account of the tergiversation of his colleague, drinking in solemn silence "The memory of Sir Vicary Gibbs." Ridgway, under his revision, had a few years before published a collection of his speeches at the Bar. my utter astonishment, it never reached a second edition; but it was now in the hands of all who had any taste for genuine oratory, and it proved that his great fame as an advocate was scarcely equal to his merits. The "Indian Chief" was declaimed by schoolboys, lawyers conned, night and day, his To Publica tion of his Speeches. |