Attending the Council when the Perreaus had been found guilty, he strongly concurred in rejecting the powerful intercession for mercy; and the fate of Dr. Dodd was afterwards ascribed to the pointed answer which he gave when the King asked whether, on account of the convict being a clergyman, his life might not be spared,"If Dr. Dodd does not suffer the sentence of the law, the Perreaus have been murdered." This feeling proceeded by no means from any cruelty in his nature, but from the opinion then and long after very generally entertained by reflecting men, as well as by the multitude, that it was indispensably necessary, for our commercial credit, to visit forgery with death in every instance. That he was not in advance of the age in which he lived, justifies regret but not censure. Before resuming my narrative, I have only to mention that for forty years Lord Mansfield took the principal part in disposing of Scotch appeals in the House of Lords. For this task he was peculiarly well qualified by the familiar knowledge of Scotch law, in which a succession of Chancellors-Northington, Camden, and Bathurst-were utterly deficient. At the hearing of these cases he often sat as Speaker on the woolsack, and they were always disposed of according to his opinion. He was bold alike in his decision of feudal and of commercial cases; and he set the Scotch judges right in the construction of their own law, as well as of that which he was in the daily habit of administering. He was particularly obliged to restrain their devoted love of perpetuities, which English lawyers are trained to hate; and in the great Duntreath Case he reversed the unanimous judgment of the fifteen Lords of Session in favor of a defective entail, and thereby struck off the fetters of half the entailed estates in Scotland. At first there was deep grumbling against this decision in the Parliament 1 Holl. 148, 149. * I myself once heard a judge, at Stafford, thus conclude an address to a prisoner convicted of uttering a forged one-pound note, after having pointed out to him the enormity of the offense, and exhorted him to prepare for another world :-" And I trust that through the merits and mediation of our Blessed Redeemer, you may there experience that mercy which a due regard to the credit of the paper currency of the country forbids you to hope for here." 1787.] House at Edinburgh; but it was afterwards allowed, even there, to have proceeded on sound feudal principles. Although, generally speaking, no lay lord interfered in the consideration of any Scotch appeals, the Douglas cause agitated all the members of the House, and was a subject of intrigue and canvass as much as a motion for an address of want of confidence to turn out a minister. Lord Mansfield, I think took the right side in holding the claimant to be the true son of Lady Jane Douglas, not of the Paris rope-dancer; but his speech, as reported, is very inferior to his usual juridical efforts. This may be accounted for from the audience he addressed, who were more likely to be influenced by an appeal to their feelings and their prejudices than by a sound exposition of the principles of law involved in the case, and a masterly analysis of the evidence.' From this sketch, however imperfect, of Lord Mansfield as a Judge, I think it must be admitted that he is one of the greatest who has ever appeared; and that, while he impartially dealt out justice to the litigants who appeared before him,-by the enlightened principles which he laid down and the wise rules which he established he materially improved the jurisprudence of his country. This is surely fame little inferior to that of winning battles or making discoveries in science." I must now follow his political career, which was more checkered, and on which opinions are much more. divided. 1 The chief argument he relied upon was, that Lady Jane Douglas, being of such illustrious descent, could not possibly have committed the fraud imputed to her See Lives of the Chancellors, v. 234. I again apologize for introducing so many law cases into a memoir intended for general circulation; but it should be recollected that the selec tion is made from many volumes of Reports, extending over a period of above thirty years. CHAPTER XXXV. CONTINUATION OF THE LIFE OF LORD MANSFIELD L ORD MANSFIELD had hardly been inaugurated as Chief Justice of the King's Bench when he was offered the high dignity of Lord Chancellor. Lord Hardwicke, notwithstanding the efforts made to retain him, had insisted on resigning along with the Duke of Newcastle; and the new ministers were much at a loss for a successor to him, there being no lawyer connected with them whom they could put forward in such a conspicuous position. It seems strange to us that they should have thought of the Attorney General of the Government they had overturned; but we must remember that, in the reign of George II., all political men who were candidates for office were Whigs alike, professing nearly the same political principles, and separated only by personal associations and enmities; so that, if considerations of private honor permitted, a politician. took what course he chose, without incurring obloquy. The crime of ratting from one great party to another was then unknown. As the ties that had united Lord Mansfield with the Duke of Newcastle and Lord Hardwicke were understood to be dissolved, he might, without loss of character, have taken office with Pitt under the nominal headship of the Duke of Devonshire. But he at once rejected the proposal. He easily foresaw that the present Government, which had neither court favor, nor parliamentary strength, nor popularity, must. soon fall to pieces; and he was swayed by nobler considerations than the imprudence of exchanging an office which he held during life for one the tenure of which would be so precarious,-for all the glory to be acquired by perfecting our system of equitable jurisprudence had been already reaped, and he was just entering upon the untried untertaking of adapting the administration of justice in our common law courts to the new circumstances of the country. The great seal was therefore given in commission to Lord Chief Justice Willes, Mr. Justice Wilmot, and Mr. Baron Smith.' On the meeting of Parliament Lord Mansfield took his seat in the House of Lords,' where he was destined fully to support the reputation he had acquired as an able debater. There is only one volume of the Parliamentary History for twelve years, from 1753 to 1765, so that we have very few specimens of his oratory; but we know from contemporary memoirs that, not confining himself to legai questions, he was in the habit of speaking with powerful effect upon subjects connected with the general government of the empire. His maiden. speech was drawn forth by a rather ludicrous incident, which we should consider harmless, and treat with a laugh. As a "quiz" upon the Ministers, on the day when Parliament assembled there was printed and sold in the streets a spurious King's Speech, purporting to be "His Majesty's most gracious Speech to both Houses of Parliament." There being some talk of proceeding against the author, the King satirically observed, “I hope the man's punishment will be of the mildest sort, for I have read both speeches, and, as far as I under 1 Walp. Mem. Geo. II., 106, 107. 2" Immediately after the King's Speech at the commencement of the session, the Speaker acquainted the House that there were some new created Lords without ready to be introduced.' Whereupon William Murray. Esq., Lord Chief Justice of His Majesty's Court of King's Bench, being, by letters patent dated the 8th day of November, in the 30th year of the reign of his present Majesty, created Lord Mansfield, Baron of Mansfield, in the County of Nottingham, was (in his robes) introduced between the Lord 'Villoughby, of Parham, and the Lord Edgecumbe (also in their robes), the Gentleman Usher of the Black Rod, Garter King at Arms and the Lord Great Chamberlain of England preceding. "His Lordship, on his knee, presented his Patent to the Speaker at the woolsack, who delivered it to the Clerk; and the ame was read at the table. 46 etc. His Writ of Summons was also read, as follows:-' George the Second, "Then his Lordship came to the table, and, having taken the oaths and made and subscribed the Declaration, and also taken and subscribed the Oath of Abjuration, pursuant to the statutes, was placed on the lower end of the Barons' Bench." -29 Journal, p. 5. stand them, the spurious speech is better than the one I delivered." However, Lord Sandwich brought the matter before the House of Peers as a breach of privilege; and Lord Hardwicke, still taking the lead, having in a dictatorial way moved "that the delinquent parties. should be imprisoned, and that the insolent document itself should be burnt in Palace Yard by the hands of the common hangman," Lord Mansfield agreed that such an insult to the Crown and the two Houses, if taken notice of, could not be passed over or dealt with more leniently than proposed by the noble and learned Lord, who had so long presided over their deliberations: although he might perhaps have done better by moving the previous question or an adjournment.' Soon after, Lord Mansfield co-operated with Lord Hardwicke on a more worthy occasion, in rejecting the bill sent up from the Commons to authorize the officers who had sat on Admiral Byng's court-martial to disclose the deliberations which had taken place among them before they found him guilty and sentenced him to be shot; but he was in no respect answerable for the atrocity of carrying into execution a sentence which was illegal on the face of it, as it acquitted the accused of cowardice and all bad motive, and was accompanied by a unanimous recommendation to inercy.' Before many months had elapsed, the Ministry was dissolved; and, on the dismissal of Mr. Legge, Lord Mansfield actually became Chancellor of the Exchequer. This was according to the ancient usage by which, on a vacancy of this office, the seals of it are delivered to the Chief Justice of the King's Bench for the time being, There had been serious differences about the speech between the King and Pitt, who had written it. 9 15 Parl. Hist. 779: Walp. Mem. Geo. II., 109, 110; Waldegrave's Mem. 89. 2 15 Pa.l. Hist. 803-822. Horace Walpole represents that in opposing the bill, he indecorously entered into the merits of the case, trying to rouse indignation against the prisoner, and concluding with the observation,— "that there had been times when a sea-officer had blown up his si ip rather than be taken or retreat”—(Mem. Geo. II., vol. ii. p. 174). But this is a palpable misrepresentation, proceeding from the writer's spite against the Duke of Newcastle, to whose influence he wishes to impute the execution of Byng. Lord Mansfield, at this time, was neither in, nor connected with the Government, and could be under no bias against the side of mercy |