and Best, afterwards created Lord Wynford, who had previously been rewarded for deserting his party by the Chief Justiceship of Chester, having resigned that office on being raised to the bench in Westminster Hall, it was conferred on the new renegade, who had already had a slight foretaste of ministerial favour in being created a King's serjeant. "The statesman we abhor, but praise the judge." Immediately proceeding on the circuit, he displayed those extraordinary powers and qualities which might have made him the very greatest magistrate who has presided in an English court of Justice during the present century. But, admired and praised by all who saw and heard him clothed in scarlet and ermine, Copley cared for none of these things, and he was impatient to finish his business in Denbighshire, Flintshire, and Cheshire, that he might get back to St. Stephen's to prosecute his ambitious schemes, for which the times seemed so propitious. His name is now to be found in the list of the ministerial majority in every division, and he could be relied upon in every emergency of debate, doubtless saying to himself, "the sailor who looks for high salvage and prize money must be ready to go out in all weathers." CHAP. II. A.D. 1818. He is made tice of Ches Chief-Jus ter and Soli citor Gene As a matter of course, upon the first vacancy he was made Solicitor General to the King, and he regularly became a al member of Lord Liverpool's government. He talked rather A.D. 1819. licentiously of his chief and of his colleagues, but he very steadily co-operated with them in all their measures, good or bad. From the beginning Lord Eldon had an instinctive dislike to him, and seems to have had a presentiment that the man had at last appeared who was to turn him out of office. The worthy old-fashioned Peer, who had been a sincere and bigoted Tory all his life, could not look with benignity on one who, he was credibly informed, had danced round the Tree of Liberty to the tune of Ça ira, and he declared that he had no faith in political conversions. Copley always behaved to him respectfully, but showed no earnestness to cultivate him, knowing that he did not hold of the Chancellor, and that the Chancellor's long tenure of office must of necessity ere long come to a conclusion. CHAP. II. Mr. Solicitor's great mortification was to find himself serving under Gifford, the Attorney General, his junior in A.D. 1819. standing and greatly his inferior in acquirements and oratory. His great success in his new career. Unhappy fate of a brother RAT. His marriage. He now transferred himself from the Court of Common Pleas, where he had practised since he became a serjeant, to the Court of King's Bench, where there is more profitable business. But, although he had precedence here, Gifford having stationed himself in the Court of Chancery as a school for the woolsack, he had not the first practice. This was retained by Scarlett, who (take him for all in all) was the most formidable champion for his opponent I have ever known at the English bar, and who was at this time irresistible from the entire ascendancy he had acquired over Lord Chief Justice Tenterden, the presiding Judge. Mr. Solicitor's position, however, now appeared very prosperous. His spirited and noble bearing had secured him a favourable hearing in the House of Commons, and his very agreeable manners had made him popular with all branches of the profession of the law. Nor did he seem to suffer from any unpleasant conciousness of having acted questionably, or from any suspicion that he might be ill thought of by others. His gait was always erect, his eye sparkling, and his smile proclaiming his readiness for a jest. How different his fate from that of poor Charles Warren, who had only been "a Whig and nothing more." After being for years petted by the Whigs, their destined Attorney General, and possessed of such celebrity as a "diner out" that he would not accept an invitation till he had a list of the company he was to meet,—in an evil hour he too afterwards ratted, being made Chief Justice of Chester; but he could not stand the reproachful looks and ironical cheers of his former friends in the House of Commons, and he soon died of a broken heart "Ille crucem pretium sceleris tulit, hic diadema." I am now to present Sir John Copley in a new light—as a man of fashion. Hitherto his converse with the gay world had been very limited; he had seldom been in higher society than at a Judge's dinner in Bedford Square; he himself generally dined at a coffee-house, and when the labours of the day were CHAP. life. II. over he solaced himself in the company of his friends in Crown Office Row. But he now fell in love with a beautiful young widow, whose husband, Lieut.-Colonel Thomas, had A.D. 1819. been killed in the battle of Waterloo. She was the niece of Sir Samuel Shepherd, the late Attorney General, at whose house he first met her. She received his attentions favourably, and they were married on the 13th of March, 1819. Forthwith he set up a brilliant establishment in his His domestic father's old house, George-street, Hanover-square, which he greatly enlarged and beautified. Lady Copley was exceedingly handsome, with extraordinary enterprise and cleverness. She took the citadel of fashion by storm, and her concerts and balls, attended by all the most distinguished persons who could gain the honour of being presented to her, reflected back new credit and influence on her enraptured husband. There were afterwards jealousies and bickerings between them, which caused much talk and amusement; but they continued together on decent terms till her death at Paris in 1834-an event which he sincerely lamented. He was sitting as Chief Baron in the Court of Exchequer when he received the fatal news. He swallowed a large quantity of laudanum and set off to see her remains. But his strength of mind soon again fitted him for the duties and pleasures of life. CHAPTER III. CHAP. SOLICITOR GENERAL-ATTORNEY GENERAL· MASTER OF THE ROLLS. 1819-1827. SIR John Copley continued Solicitor General five years, doing his official duty in Court very ably and unexcepA.D. 1819. tionably, but supporting all the measures of Government in Parliament with an ostentatious contempt of public opinion. He was quite satisfied with the consolation that the Government was strong, and that while it lasted his promotion was Trial of the Cato street conspirators. Qy. Should high treason secure. During this long period the only great State prosecution was that which arose out of the Cato street Conspiracy, which looked like a travesty of Venice Preserved,' but was a real and very detestable plot, to begin with the murder of all the fifteen members of the Cabinet when assembled at a Cabinet dinner. Thistlewood, a half-pay officer, who induced a number of mechanics and clowns to join with him in his scheme of liberation, was first brought to trial, and a clear case was made out against him. Mr. Solicitor General replied, and satisfied himself with calmly and clearly recapitulating the evidence, and showing that it substantiated the charge of high treason. In some of the other cases he opened the prosecution to the jury in the same tone as if he had been conducting an action for "goods sold and delivered," to which no defence could be set up. Convictions were obtained without difficulty, and five of the prisoners actually suffered death according to the sentence pronounced upon them. This is the last instance of capital punishment being be a capital actually inflicted for the crime of high treason in these realms. Frost and his associates were convicted of high offence? III. treason at Monmouth when I was Attorney General, they CHAP. having engaged in a very formidable armed insurrection and taken the town of Newport by storm. I succeeded, against A.D. 1819. the opinion of several members of the Cabinet, in having their sentence commuted to transportation for life, because a question had been raised upon which the Judges were nearly equally divided, as to the regularity of the procedure preparatory to their trial. Again, Smith O'Brien was convicted of high treason in Ireland when I was a member of the Cabinet, guiding the deliberations of the Government in such matters. He was clearly guilty in point of law and fact too; but his rebellion was so ludicrously absurd that I thought it would take away all dignity and solemnity from the punishment of death if it should be inflicted upon him, and my advice was followed in offering him a pardon on condition of transportation. So foolish was he, that he denied the power of the Crown to commute the sentence without his consent; and he insisted on being immediately liberated,-or hanged, beheaded, and quartered. I was actually obliged to bring in and push a Bill through Parliament (against which he petitioned) to sanction the conditional pardon; and under this he is still an exile in the southern hemisphere.* But, upon a satisfactory conviction in a real and serious case of high treason, I am clearly of opinion that capital punishment is proper. The temptation to ambitious and unprincipled men to engage in revolutionary plans which may at once give them power and fame is not adequately met by the mere dread of lengthened imprisonment in case of failure, and one of the conditions on which resistance may be justifiable is that it is successful. policy of the government at the con clusion of I must now submit to the painful task of exhibiting Mr. Arbitrary Solicitor Copley as a politician. Antigallican Toryism generated by the French Revolution—although near its end, was still in morbid vigour, and exhibited most alarming and revolting symptoms. The old genuine Tories I very much respect. They carried to excess their desire of defending what they considered the just privileges of the Church and August, 1858. He has since received a free pardon, and been permitted to return to Ireland, where, on account of his folly, he is harmless. the reign of George III. |