to the most direct breach of trust." Nevertheless, while by narrowminded decisions he prevented any improvement being introduced judicially into these institutions, he not only abstained from seeking to reform them by legislation, but sneered at an act passed by Sir Samuel Romilly for the better administration of all charities.

In no other department was he more active as a law reformer. He did not think, like one of his successors, that the Chancellor alone was able, with proper vigour, to do all the business of the Court, but often truly declared that its judicial strength was wholly insufficient. Yet he took no adequate measures to remedy the deficiency. Although aware of all the facts proved before the Commission appointed in 1824, which showed that all the procedure in a cause-from the filing of the bill to the execution of the decree-was calculated to occasion delay and expense, he never even attempted to supply a remedy, either by his own authority or by Act of Parliament. It is a curious fact that, having held the Great Seal longer than any Chancellor since the foundation of the monarchy, he left the Court exactly as he found it, and that the "New Orders," framed on the suggestion of the Chancery Commissioners, were not published till the accession of Lord Lyndhurst. The only bills he ever brought into Parliament, or cordially supported, were for suspending the Habeas Corpus-putting down public meetings-rendering persons convicted a second time for a political libel subject to transportation beyond the seas,—and extending the laws against high treason.*

He frustrated the efforts of Romilly and Mackintosh to mitigate and amend our penal code, and I suspect that he retarded and enfeebled those of Sir Robert Peel.

He even resented any effort of courts of law proprio vigore, to improve their procedure,-as by dispensing with the production of written instruments, lost or destroyed-or by granting a commission to examine witnesses abroad, without the aid of a court of equity.†

"He came into power," said Mr. Millar boldly, while Lord Eldon was still Chancellor, ‡ "at a conjuncture when the decided change which was taking place in the texture of society, when increasing wealth, commerce, and population, indicated that a greater change in our law and legal institutions would soon become desirable than had taken place at any antecedent period of our history. Had he prompted, promoted, or superintended this great work, the length of his reign and extent of his influence would have enabled him to bring it almost or altogether to its completion, and thus to have left a monument to his memory which it falls to the lot of few individuals to have the power of erecting. Unfortunately for the country and his own reputation, he has pursued a totally opposite course. Feeling that his strength did not lie in the depth and comprehensiveness of his general views so much as in the extent of his acquaintance with the minutiae of precedents and practice, and

* An exception ought to have been made of the famous statute, called, par excellence, "LORD ELDON'S ACT,"-" to empower the Lord Chancellor to make serjeants-at-law in vacation as well as in term time !!!"—passed in 1813.

† See 1 Swanston, 124.

‡ A. D. 1824.

perceiving also that the surest way of continuing in place is to abstain from all innovation, his love of power combined with his love of superiority to induce him to withhold from all decided improvements himself, and to look with an unfavourable eye on those which were proposed by others. In this course he has invariably persevered. It is probable that at this moment Lord Eldon has no conception of the sentiments which are almost universally entertained of his judicial administration, either by the persons who frequent his court, or by those who are capable of judging out of it. He has never heard the truth spoken with that freedom and affection with which it flows from the lips of friends of equal understanding. It is one of his greatest misfortunes that through life he has made age, submissiveness, and mediocrity the passports to his favour, and has as steadily kept aloof from men of liberal and independent minds as they have kept aloof from him."*

An apologist says, "He saw with intuitive acuteness the abuse, but his heart failed him for fear' when he came to apply the remedy. Timidity of temper, and excess of official toil, are sufficient reasons for this reserve, without imputing unworthy motives, as harsh professional critics have not scrupled to do." He has been compared, rather rashly, to D'Aguesseau, who, according to St. Simon, being asked whether, with his experience of the chicanery of the law and the length of legal proceedings, he had never thought of some regulation which might put an end to them, answered, "I had gone so far as to commit to writing the plan of such a regulation; but after I had made some progress, I reflected on the great number of avocats, avoués, and huissiers, whom it would ruin,—compassion for them made the pen drop from my hand." But it is a well-known fact that the virtuous French Chancellor, after due deliberation, introduced most important reforms in the procedure of the courts at Paris, without respect to the profit of himself or others. In considering Lord Eldon as a politician, I begin with the eulogium (using the liberty to abridge it) of one well qualified to estimate his qualities in this line:-"He possessed a consummate power of managing men, an admirable address in smoothing difficulties with princes, of whom he had large experience, and a degree of political boldness where real peril approached, or obstacles, seemingly insurmountable, were to be got over, that contrasted strongly with his habits of doubting about nothing, and conjuring up shadowy embarrassments, and involving things of little moment in imaginary puzzles-the creation of an inventive and subtle brain. The counsellor, so hesitating in answering an important case the judge, so prone to doubt, that he could hardly bring his mind to decide one-was, in all that practically concerned his party or himself, as ready to take a line, and to follow it with determination of purpose, as the least ingenious of ordinary politicians. On great occasions—that is, the occasions which put his interest or his power in jeopardy—a less wavering actor-indeed, one more ready at a moment's warning to go all lengths for the attainment of his object-never ap

* Millar on the Civil Law of England, 525.

† 2 Townsend, 457, 458.

peared upon the political stage. His fears in this respect very much resembled his conscientious scruples, of which no man spoke more or felt less; he was about as often the slave of them as the Indian is of his deformed little gods, which he now makes much of, and now breaks to pieces or casts into the fire. Let there come any real embarrassment, any substantial peril, which required a bold and vigorous act to ward it off;-let there be but occasion for nerves to work through a crisis which it asked no common boldness to face at all;-let there arise some new and strange combination of circumstances, which, governed by no precedent, must be met by unprecedented measures; and no man that ever sat at a council-board more quickly made up his mind, or more gallantly performed his part. Be the act mild or harsh, moderate or violent, sanctioned by the Law and Constitution, or an open outrage upon both, he was heard indeed to wail, and groan much of piteous necessity, often vowed to God, spoke largely of conscience, complained bitterly of his hard lot, but the paramount sense of duty overcame all other feelings; and, with wailing and with tears, beating his breast, and only not tearing his hair, he did, in the twinkling of an eye, the act which unexpectedly discomfited his adversaries, and secured his own power for ever. He, who would adjourn a private road or estate bill for weeks, unable to make up his mind on one of its clauses, or would take a month to decide on what terms some amendment should be allowed in a suit, could, without one moment's hesitation, resolve to give the King's consent to the making of laws when his Majesty was in such a state of mental disease that the keeper of his person could not be suffered to quit the royal closet for an instant, while his patient was, with the keeper of his conscience, performing the highest function of sovereignty."**

* Lord Brougham's Statesmen, 2d series, 54, 58. Although he had no doubts where power was concerned, he did not act with the same decision respecting profits,—at least when delay did not prevent him from deciding at any time in his own favour. “He had, it appears, entertained some doubts upon the right of the Chancellor to receive, for his own use, the large fees in bankruptcy, which used, before the change in 1832, to form part of the emoluments, and which former Chancellors had never hesitated to take as a matter of right and of course. His doubts were great; he could not solve them; he could not get over them; he oftentimes consulted the officers; oftentimes chatted on the matter with Mr. Richards; often did he seek for light from Heaven, and assuredly much would he have groaned over it when found if unfavourable to the claim. But all in vain; nothing could be found satisfactory. So he would not touch the fees, but desired that they might all be carried to a separate account for a year or two. At length, and long after he had ceased to discuss the subject, or apparently to think of it, just before the Court rose for the summer he called for the Secretary of Bankrupts, and asked to how much the fund then set apart amounted? It had reached an enormous sum; and, as if that which should have added force to his doubts were sufficient to dispel them, or as if the force of temptation applied to his mind were too strong to be resisted, and powerful enough to overcome its doubting propensities, he in one word directed the whole to be transferred to his account,-in which, be it observed, he was perfectly right, no mortal but himself having ever been able to descry the shadow of a reason for questioning the claims of the Great Seal to this fund."-Law Review, No. II. p. 275.

But, consummate as was his skill in party manœuvres-in acquiring and retaining office, slender praise can be bestowed upon him as a statesman. It is a strange but undoubted fact, that when he had once formed a Cabinet, he gave himself very little trouble about its measures. I have heard that even upon law questions he would generally give no opinion-desiring Lord Liverpool, or the Premier for the time being, to consult the Attorney and Solicitor General. He was utterly ignorant of foreign politics, and his only maxim for the domestic government of the country was to preserve all things as he found them when he first entered public life, unless where he thought he saw a necessity for new coercive laws. "Mistrusting the most specious improvements, considering any organic change as synonymous with confusion, and satisfied that audacity in reform was the principle of revolution, he paid too little heed to the advancing speed of investigation, and persisted in following at the flood those ancient fords and pathways which could only be pursued with safety at an ebb-tide.”*

His inordinate love of political prosecutions and measures of coercion seemed to be morbid and incurable. By his course of policy he no doubt thought that he preserved the Constitution of his country; but in truth he greatly endangered it. "A few drops more of Eldonine, and we should have had the PEOPLE'S CHARTER." Notwithstanding his furious resistance to the disfranchisement of a single corrupt borough, perhaps he would now acknowledge that since the Reform Bill our representative system stands on a surer basis than in the times when he thought it unsafe to allow the nation to enjoy the Habeas Corpus, or the holding of public meetings to petition Parliament; and he could not deny that the popularity and the influence of the Church have considerably increased since all the civil disabilities of the Dissenters have been removed, although he thought that it would be fatal to religion if they should be allowed to marry in their own way. My own firm opinion is, that, by the liberal measures which he so severely reprobated, we have escaped a revolution which would have been violent, bloody, and destructive.

Lord Eldon must, at all events, be allowed to be free from the suspicion of sudden political conversion. Qualis ab incepto he continued without flinching to his dying day. The sentiments expressed by him at the last Pitt dinner which he attended‡ varied in nothing from his first address to the electors of Weobly.§ "It should be recollected that his attachment to the institutions of England, as he first knew them, was one of the laws of his moral and intellectual nature: it might be narrow, bigoted, inconvenient; incapable of gracefully bending to the necessities

* 2 Townsend, 457.

† Quarterly Review, lxxiii. 542.

Sentiments very unlike those of the statesman whose name was usurped. § I am not aware of any opinion he ever changed, except that in 1795 he agreed with Lord Kenyon in the answer to George III., that the coronation oath was not binding on the King in his legislative capacity, but afterwards loudly asserted that it disqualified the King from giving the royal assent to any act mitigating the Roman Catholic penal code.

of the times; but still it was part of his true self: an attack on Church and State was to him the same thing as a violation of his paternal roof, or an insult to a domestic affection."*

Yet his steadiness to his opinions did not interfere with his political intrigues, or prevent him from choosing or changing leaders, or associates, according to his views of expediency. His temporary connexion," says Mr. W. E. Surtees, "with Queen Caroline when Princess of Wales, and perhaps some other incidents, suffice to show that in public life there was no deficiency, on the proper occasion, of a convenient versatility—an invaluable ingredient to those who would rise. It was probably from a consciousness of this, that he so pertinaciously arrogated to himself the credit of undeviating consistency, [in political attachments as well as principles,] and that flattery, of which he was somewhat exacting, never stole more sweetly upon his ear than when it invested him with this attribute!"†

In weighing the deserts of a Chancellor, much consideration is to be given to the exercise of his immense patronage. Very qualified praise only can be bestowed upon Lord Eldon in this department. He was disposed to do what was right, both in lay and ecclesiastical promotion; but he had no zeal in discovering and rewarding merit, and he often allowed himself to be swayed by undue influence. The solicitations of the royal family," says Mr. Twiss, "were his chief embarrassment." While we are indebted to him for such judges as Abbot, Holroyd, Bayley, Littledale, and Richardson, he was made an instrument for advancement of others who, though honourable men, were extremely incompetent, from the want of ability or of professional knowledge, or of both. He was thus assailed by many gibes from the witlings of Westminster Hall,-one example of which I may give in a saying respecting a near connexion of a court physician, whose advancement to the bench was defended on the ground that he was a judge by prescription."

66

When Lord Eldon was pressed to make a bad appointment, his way was to delay it as long as possible, and by seeming reluctance to throw the blame off his own shoulders. He rescued one of the superior courts from having a Chief wholly unskilled in the first rudiments of law, though a man of singular natural acuteness; but he made the same individual a puisne Baron, giving him power to decide upon questions of property and life. He said himself, in conversation, "On occasion of a vacancy on the Bench, by the death of one of the puisne judges, the Prime Minister of that day took upon himself to recommend a certain gentleman to the King as a very fit person to fill that vacancy: and finding there was a disposition in the King to take that recommendation, I very respectfully urged that it was on the responsibility of the Lord. Chancellor that these judges were appointed, and that I should not consider myself worthy of holding the Great Seal if I permitted the advice of any other man to be taken-at the same time tendering my

* Q. Rev. vol. lxxv. p. 42.

† Surtees, 189. ‡ Ch. Ixiii.