Lord Mansfield and His Relation to Our Laws. PAPER READ BY WILLIAM L. ROYALL, Boswell tells us that an unlucky Scotchman praising his native country to Dr. Johnson one day, having nothing else to advance, broke out with, "Scotland at least has a great many noble wild prospects." To which Johnson retorted, "I believe Sir, you have a great many. Norway, too, has noble wild prospects; and Lapland is remarkable for prodigious noble wild prospects. But, Sir, let me tell you, the noblest prospect which a Scotchman ever sees is the high road that leads him to England." In the early part of the eighteenth century a number of young men took this high road to see what they could do for themselves in England. Amongst them there was one named Wedderburn, who, as Lord Loughborough, became Lord High Chancellor of England and of whom Junius said, "As for Wedderburn there is something about him that not even treachery can trust." Another was William Murray, who, as Lord Mansfield became Lord Chief Justice of England, and his name is today revered and beloved in every nook and corner of the civilized world where the blessed institutions that mankind has inherited from England, prevail. Boswell ventured on one occasion to cite him as proof that Scotchmen did have elements of greatness in them, when the old Doctor retorted, "Much may be made of a Scotchman if he be caught young." Murray was the son of a broken down Scotch Peer who had four sons. The Father and Mother were strongly tinctured with Jacobitism and William's oldest brother, James, actually ( 191 ) quitted England to dwell with the Pretender as his trusted and confidential adviser. William, himself, was strongly suspected during his youth of a leaning toward the exiled Stuart, but if he ever had any penchant in that direction he abandoned it and became one of the most loyal supporters of the Hanoverian House in England. He was put at Westminster School when very young and from the beginning he impressed all with whom he came in contact as a youth of remarkable powers. . When in later life he fell under discussion between Dr. Johnson and his intimates, Boswell said, "Lord Mansfield is not a mere Lawyer," and Johnson replied, "No, sir, I never was in Lord Mansfield's company; but Lord Mansfield was distinguished at the University. Lord Mansfield when he first came to town 'drank champagne with the wits,' as Prior says. He was the friend of Pope." He was the intimate friend of Pope, who lamented, in some elegant verses, that he had not dedicated himself to the Muses, whereby the world had lost another Ovid. I must pass by other features of his public life. But before dealing with his relation to our jurisprudence something should be said of his part of Statesman in English affairs. Lord Mansfield, prior to the time of his going on the Bench, and afterwards also, played a very important part in the public affairs of England as a politician and a statesman. William Pitt, afterwards Earl of Chatham, was one of the greatest orators the world has ever known, and he is in that galaxy of world's characters, not numerous, really entitled to be called great. Up to the time that Lord Mansfield went upon the Bench he had been invariably matched against Pitt in the great debates of the day in the House of Commons, and great and commanding as Pitt was, Mr. Murray, as he then was, was his peer and never suffered by comparison with him. Horace Walpole, an unfriendly cynic, says, after hearing one of his great speeches, of his oratory, "He spoke for two hours and a half. His voice and manner, composed of harmonious solemnity, were the least graces of his speech. I am not aware that I ever heard so much argument, so much sense, so much oratory united. His deviation into the abstruse minutiae of |