Page images
PDF
EPUB
[blocks in formation]

priate to se

this nation a behind it an est period since its and pathetic e They, the Fr. part of our Awhat is protan's known as the de "Impigar, ro. gentlemen

their dectrical subtle char

There is indic

[ocr errors][merged small]
[ocr errors]
[merged small][ocr errors][ocr errors][merged small][merged small]
[graphic][merged small]

Life and Character of Lord Brougham

BY A. W. WALLACE, OF FREDERICKSBURG, VIRGINIA

Mr. President, Ladies, Gentlemen of the Virginia Bar Association: Leaving to others actively engaged in professional work the solution of the practical legal problems of to-day, and veiling from view that omnipresent commercialism the bane of the age to all ideal and I may say real progress, I have thought it not inappropriate to select as my theme a short sketch of an historic life, for this nation needs great men as never before, a life which has left behind it an example for the emulation of the lawyer of every period since its termination and a life so linked with one dramatic and pathetic episode, that I thought even the ladies would listen. They, the ladies, are entitled to be specially considered as a part of our Association; for they are here, the evolutionists of what is profanely termed that social and unsocial protoplasm, known as the dry, cold, technical, unrelaxing, inflexible lawyer, "Impigar, iracundus, inexorabilis, acer," into the appreciative gentlemen, capable of being, and desiring to be, magnetized by their electrical attractions, and rejoicing to be refined by their subtle charms.

There is little originality in the substance of this paper, taking the word in its highest and most useful application, as indicating important discovery of facts, or philosophical deduction therefrom; but I only claim for it that species of originality which consists of forming a new combination of old information, and exhibiting, with condensed brevity and my own conclusions, what has been previously and more elaborately chronicled.

In one of those beautiful and delightful villas, which I have seen shaded by the olive and orange trees of Southern France, on the shores of the Mediterranean, there died, on the 7th day of May, 1868, in the ninetieth year of his age, one of the most remarkable men and distinguished English lawyers of the Eighteenth or Nineteenth Centuries, Lord Henry Peter Brougham, Baron

Brougham and Vaux. His life and character I shall endeavor succinctly to portray.

Lord Brougham, unlike Dr. Johnson, has been singularly unfortunate in his biographers, although an eminent reviewer of one of his scientific works on Natural Theology, wrote in 1835, when Lord Brougham was in the meridian of his fame, suggesting his biography in the following language:

"At an era, such as the present, when so many are beating their brains for an happy subject of literary work in the shape of heroic narrative, nothing could be more appropriate, or afford a finer scope for variety, activity and splendor, than to make the learned Lord's history and career the subject of such a book; there would be nothing commonplace in it, there would be enough of stir; but still more of brilliant achievement in the service of virtue and mankind. We know no public man who could be beheld in so many different positions, and to such advantage. Of one thing we may be sure, when his race has been finished on earth (and distant may that period be,) he will furnish to some biographer a splendid theme."

But as I said above, he was unfortunate in his biographers, only two biographies remain-one, the animus of which was anticipated by Lord Brougham and its misstatements afterwards exposed by Edward Sugden, was written by Lord Campbell, both of whose works leave no doubt that the author was better fitted for a practical lawyer than a man of letters. This biography was published after the death of the author and the subject of it, and is written in a hostile and carping tone unworthy of an honorable personal enemy, and is in striking contrast with the fulsome adulation and lavish gratitude for past favors expressed in letters to Brougham when seeking from him the position of Attorney General in 1833, and of Master of Rolls in 1834, both of which were refused him by Brougham, who then controlled the Cabinet, but Brougham was in good company, as Lords Somers, Hardwick, Eldon and others equally eminent have been similarly decorated by Lord Campbell. His work, the "Lives of the

1

Dead Chancellors," is the work of which Sir Charles Weatherel said, "John Campbell has added new terror to death."

The other biography, or rather autobiography, was written by Lord Brougham himself, was commenced when he was more than eighty-three years old, his faculties and his memory failing, and with slight material by him to assist him, concluding, pathetically, in these words: "Above all there was not left one friend or associate of my earlier days whose recollection might have aided mine. All were dead. I, alone, survive of those who acted in the scenes I have endeavored to retrace." But no biography was needed to perpetuate his greatness, contemporaneous political, parliamentary, judicial and legislative records and scientific, literary and educational works have imperishably preserved the just meed of praise to which he was entitled, and have demonstrated, as has been written of him, that "during a great portion of a life extending to the unwonted time of ninety years, but specially in the third and fourth decades of the Nineteenth Century, from 1820 to 1840, no Englishman in any civil career played so conspicuous a part in public affairs, or enjoyed so wide a fame as Henry Brougham."

"His indomitable energy, his vehement eloquence, his enthusiastic attachment to the cause of freedom, progress and humanity, to which he rendered so many signal services, caused him to be justly regarded as one of the most illustrious men of his age and his country."

He brought to all he undertook a vigor and variety of intellect almost without parallel, for his ambition was to excel in all things, and he seemed to aspire to universal fame; his boundless command of language, his will power, his audacity, his memory stored with every sort of knowledge, his animal spirits and social powers; the magical modulation of his voice and enunciation gave him the lead everywhere.

At fourteen years of age he formed and led, at Edinburgh, in a boys' debating society, composed of such youths as Jeffrey, Cockburn and Sidney Smith, and others, afterwards eminent in Parliament and on the bench of justice; he led his classes at the University where he omnivorously devoured every branch of knowledge; he was the leading editor of the Edinburgh Review

« PreviousContinue »