Page images
PDF
EPUB

"For the society, I shall always think myself honoured by every mark of their esteem, affection, and friendship, and shall desire the continuance of it no longer than while I remain zealous for the constitution of this country, and a friend to the interests of virtue."

Shortly after Lord Mansfield's promotion he became deeply engaged in the various ministerial arrangements which took place at that period. On the dismissal of Mr. Pitt, and the resignation of Legge, the chancellor of the exchequer, the seals of the latter office were, pro tempore, placed in the hands of Lord Mansfield, who, upon Lord Waldegrave being directed to form a new administration, was employed to negotiate with his friend the Duke of Newcastle and his old rival, Mr. Pitt, for their accession to the projected ministry. He was directed to attend the king at Kensington, for the ostensible object of delivering back the exchequer seals; but being admitted into the presence, the king consulted him confidentially on the subject of the administration, and finally intrusted him with full powers to negotiate with Pitt and the Duke of Newcastle. The power thus given him appears, however, to have been soon withdrawn. "The negotiation," says Lord Waldegrave "did not remain long in Lord Mansfield's hands; some thinking him too able, others that he was not enough their friend. The Duke of Newcastle, after what had passed, was ashamed and afraid to appear in the king's presence, so the treaty was undertaken and concluded by the Earl of Hardwicke." Many years afterwards, in one of the debates on the American war, Lord Mansfield alluded to the coalition which took place at this time, in effecting which he stated he had the honour of being an instrument. † The impression which an insight into these negotiations gave him, of the motives and views of the public men of that day, was most unfavourable, though probably most just. " I have been," he observes, in a speech delivered many

*

[ocr errors]

* Memoirs, p. 133.

† Parl. Hist. vol. xviii. p. 956.

years afterwards *, " I have been in cabinets where the great struggle has not been to advance the public interests; not by coalition and mutual assistance to strengthen the hands of government, but, by cabals, jealousy, and mutual distrust, to thwart each other's designs, and to circumvent each other, in order to obtain power and preeminence."

Lord Mansfield had now attained the station which, it is very probable, he had always regarded as the summit of his ambition. His temperament, cautious even to timidity, had prevented him from preferring those just pretensions to political offices to which his fame and talents entitled him; the same reasons probably induced him to refuse the office of the great seal, when it was, upon more than one occasion, tendered to him. The resignation of the Duke of Newcastle, at the close of the year 1756, was shortly afterwards followed by that of Lord Hardwicke, the chancellor, and strenuous endeavours were made to induce Lord Mansfield's acceptance of the seals; but his attachment to the Duke of Newcastle, and his disinclination to a political life, led him to decline the office.t The great seal was consequently given in commission to Lord Chief Justice Willes, Mr. Justice Wilmot, and Mr. Baron Smyth. In the following year, it was again offered to Lord Mansfield, upon whose repeated refusal, it was committed to the hands of Sir Robert Henley, afterwards created Lord Northington.

One of the first occasions on which Lord Mansfield distinguished himself in the house of lords, after his elevation to the peerage, was in the debate on the bill for the amendment of the habeas corpus act. A gentleman having been impressed and confined in the Savoy, his friends applied for a writ of habeas corpus; but as the imprisonment was not for any criminal matter, it was found that the statute of 31 Car. 2. c. 2. did not apply. This palpable deficiency in the law attracted Parl. Hist. vol. xviii. p. 279. + Walpole's Memoirs, vol. ii. p. 106. + Id. p. 226.

the attention of some friends to liberty, who introduced a bill into the house of commons for the purpose of extending the provisions of the statute of Charles II. to cases where the imprisonment was not upon any crininal charge. The bill passed the lower house, but was violently opposed in the house of lords by Lord Mansfield and Lord Hardwicke. The king himself talked openly against the bill at his levee, and the supporters of it were understood to incur his displeasure. The motives which actuated Lord Mansfield in his opposition to a bill so reasonable and so constitutional, are attributed by Horace Walpole to personal feelings; and such was the earnestness and so great the ingenuity and eloquence which he exerted on the occasion, that the bill was ultimately rejected. "The fate of the bill," says Horace Walpole, "which could not be procured by the sanction of the judges, Lord Mansfield was forced to take upon himself. 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 averse to own that I never heard so much argument, so much sense, so much oratory united. His deviations into the abstruse minutiæ of the law served but as a foil to the luminous parts of the oration. Perhaps it was the only speech which, in my time at least, had real effect; that is, convinced many persons; nor did I ever know how true a votary I was to liberty, till I found that I was not one of the number staggered by that speech. I took as many notes of it as I possibly could; and, prolix as they would be, I would give them to the reader, if it would not be injustice to Lord Mansfield to curtail and mangle, as I should, by the want of connection, so beautiful a thread of argumentation." * In the year 1816, a bill passed without opposition, similar in its provisions to that which was rejected by the efforts of Lord Mansfield.

On the occurrence of the disputes between England and her North American colonies, Lord Mansfield sup* Memoirs, vol. ii. p. 301. 56 G. 3. c. 100.

ported the right of the mother country to tax the colonists, without any assent on their part; and in the debate which took place in the month of February, 1766. spoke at considerable length on the subject. Of that speech a copy, corrected with his lordship's own hand, has been preserved. A great portion of it was directed in answer to Lord Camden, who had spoken against the right of taxation without assent. In reply to those arguments, Lord Mansfield insists upon the unintelligible doctrine of virtual representation.

*

"There can be no doubt but that the inhabitants of the colonies are represented in parliament, as the greatest part of the people of England are represented; among nine millions of whom, there are eight who have no votes in electing members of parliament. Every objection, therefore, to the dependency of the colonies upon parliament, which arises to it upon the ground of representation, goes to the whole present constitution of Great Britain; and I suppose it is not meant to new-model that too. People may form their own speculative ideas of perfection, and indulge their own fancies, or those of other men. Every man in this country has his particular notions of liberty; but perfection never did, and never can, exist in any human institution. For what purpose, then, are arguments drawn from a distinction in which there is no real difference, of a virtual and actual representation? A member of parliament, chosen for any borough, represents not only the constituents and inhabitants of that particular place, but he represents the inhabitants of every other borough in Great Britain. He represents the city of London, and all other the commons of this land, and the inhabitants of all the colonies and dominions of Great Britain; and is in duty and conscience bound to take care of their interests."

According to another report of his lordship's speech preserved in the Hardwicke Collection†, he advanced in the course of his argument doctrines which in other

Holliday, p. 242.

+ Parl. Hist. vol. xvi. p. 172.

times would have subjected him to the well-merited censures of the commons. "In Great Britain the legislative is in parliament, the executive in the crown. The parliament first depended upon tenures. How did representation by election first arise? Why, by the favour of the crown."

Lord Mansfield thus concluded:-" You may abdicate your right over the colonies. Take care, my lords, how you do so, for such an act will be irrevocable. Proceed then, my lords, with spirit and firmness, and when you shall have established your authority, it will then be a time to shew your lenity. The Americans, as I said before, are a very good people, and I wish them exceeding well; but they are heated and inflamed. The noble lord who spoke before concluded with a prayer; I cannot end better than by saying to it Amen! and in the words of Maurice, prince of Orange, concerning the Hollanders, God bless this industrious, frugal, and well-meaning, but easily-deluded people.'”

It may not be improper in this place to notice the part which, at subsequent periods, Lord Mansfield took with regard to the American question. In the stormy debate of the 7th of February, 1775, on the address to the king upon the disturbances in North America, his lordship stated, that this country was reduced to the alternative of adopting coercive measures, or for ever relinquishing her claim of sovereignty and dominion over the colonies. He argued also that the Americans were in a state of actual rebellion, and asserted the right of the mother country to repress them. In answer to some observations of the Duke of Grafton, he explained and defended the part that he had taken as a minister of the crown in the different administrations which had governed the country. "He said he had been a cabinet minister part of the last reign, and the whole of the present; that there was a nominal and an efficient cabinet; that for several years he acted as a member of the latter, and consequently deliberated with the king's minister; that, however, a short time previous to the

« PreviousContinue »