tial part is argument enough to set up a rule to abrogate an ill custom.

There is not, perhaps, a greater cause of the corruption of parliaments, than by adopting members who may be said to have no title by their births.

The juries, are by the law, to be ex vicineto; and shall there be less care, that the representatives of the people be so too?

Sure the interest of the county is best placed in the hands of such as have some share in it...

The outliers are not so easily kept within the pale of the laws.

6

They are often chosen without being known, which is more like choosing Valentines than members of parliament. The motive of their standing is more justly to be supposed that they may redress their own grievances which they know, than those of the country to which they are strangers.

6

They are chosen at London to serve in Cornwall, &c. and are often parties before they come to be representatives: one would think the reproach it is for a county, not to have men within their own circle to serve them in parliament, should be argument enough to reject these trespassers, without urging the ill consequences in other respects of being admitted.

'XIV. As in some cases it is advisable to give a total exclusion to men not fitly qualified, so in others it is more proper to lay down a general rule of caution, with allowance of some exceptions, where men have given such proofs of themselves as create a right for them to be distinguished.

. Of this nature is that which I shall say concern

ing Lawyers, who by the same reason that they may be useful, may be also very dangerous.

'The negligence and want of application in gentlemen hath made them [lawyers] to be thought more necessary than naturally they are in parliament.

They have not only engrossed the chair of the Speaker, but that of a Committee is hardly thought to be well filled except it be by a man of the robe.

This maketh it worthy of the more serious reflexion of all gentlemen, that it may be an argument to them to qualify themselves in parliamentary learning in such a manner, as that they may rely upon their own abilities in order to the serving of their country.

But to come to the point in question: it is not without precedent, that practising lawyers have been excluded from serving in parliament; and without following those patterns strictly, I cannot but think it reasonable that, whilst a parliament sitteth, no member of parliament should plead at any bar.

The reason of it is in many respects strong in itself, and is grown much stronger by the long sitting of parliaments of late: but I will not dwell upon this; the matter now in question being concerning lawyers being elected, which I conceive should be done with so much circumspection, that probably it would not often happen.

'If lawyers have great practice, that ought to take them up: if not, it is no great sign of their ability; and at the same time giveth a suspicion, that they may be more liable to be tempted.

If it should be so in fact, that no King ever wanted Judges to soften the stiffness of the laws that

were made so as to make them suit better with the reason of state and the convenience of the government; it is no injury now to suppose it possible for lawyers in the House of Commons so to behave themselves in the making of new laws, as the better to make way for the having their robes lined with fur.

6

They are men used to argue on both sides of a question; and if ordinary fees can inspire them with very good reasons in a very ill cause, that faculty exercised in parliaments, where it may be better encouraged, may prove very inconvenient to those that choose them.

And therefore, without arraigning a profession that it would be scandalous for a man not to honour, one may by a suspicion (which is the more excusable, when it is in the behalf of the people) imagine, that the habit of taking money for their opinion may create in some such a forgetfulness to distinguish that they may take it for their vote.

They are generally men, who by a laborious study hope to be advanced: they have it in their eye, as a reward for the toil they undergo.

This maketh them generally very slow, and ill disposed (let the occasion never so much require it) to wrestle with that soil where preferment groweth.

Now if the supposition be in itself not unreasonable, and that it should happen to be strengthened and confirmed by experience, it will be very unnecessary to say any more upon this article, but leave it to the electors to consider of it.'

448

SIR WILLIAM TEMPLE.*

[1628-1698.]

THIS eminent statesman, descended from a younger branch of the Temples of Temple Hall, Leicestershire, was grandson of Sir William Temple (Secretary to the unfortunate Earl of Essex, and subsequently Provost of Trinity College, Dublin) and son of Sir John Temple, Master of the Rolls in Ireland in the reign of Charles I., by Mary, sister of Dr. Henry Hammond. He was born in London, in the year 1628.

From his youth he discovered a singularly penetrating genius, and a remarkable thirst after knowledge, which his father anxiously cultivated by a liberal education. At eight years At eight years of age, he was sent to school at Penshurst in Kent, under the care of his uncle Dr. Hammond, then minister of that parish. Thence, at ten, he was transferred to the tuition of Mr. Leigh of Bishop Stortford; and, at seventeen, he was placed at Emanuel College, Cambridge, under Dr. Ralph Cudworth, author of The Intellectual System.'

* AUTHORITIES. Boyer's Memoirs of the Life and Negotiations of Sir William Temple; Temple's Life, prefixed to his Works; and Birch's Lives of Illustrious Persons.

There he distinguished himself by the improvements which he made in various parts of learning; having, in addition to the ancient tongues, rendered himself perfect master of the French and the Spanish. So that, upon leaving college, he had largely qualified himself for the employments of public life.

At nineteen, he set off on his travels into France: on his way through the Isle of Wight, he met the lady who subsequently became his wife, Mrs. Dorothy Osborn; accompanied her and her brother to France; and having passed two years in that country, returned home by Holland, Flanders, and Germany.

During the Usurpation he led a private life with his wife, father, two brothers, and a sister in Ireland; spending his time chiefly in his closet in the investigations of history and philosophy, and refusing all public appointments till the Restoration, when he was chosen member of the Convention in Ireland, as he was likewise in the subsequent parliament for the county of Carlow. In 1662, he was appointed one · of the Commissioners from the Irish parliament to the King.

Thenceforward, for twenty years, he continued to act as a Councillor of State. This period, comprehending the interval from his thirty fourth to his fifty fourth year, he deemed the period most fit to be dedicated to the service of his country; the rest being, as he observed, too much taken up previously with pleasure, and afterward with ease.

To give a particular account of his labours at home and abroad, would lead us into a tedious detail of the foreign transactions of the reign of Charles II. We shall, therefore, only notice the most material nego