man's life by the new treasons they invented, and every man's conscience by the extraordinary oaths they imposed.' The life and character of Coke, the oracle of the common law, are so well known that it is needless to dwell on them. He was a proud and arrogant man, and a harsh advocate; but he was a fearless and upright judge at a time when corruption was rife in almost every department of the state. Judge Whitelock says of him, 'Never was man so just, so upright, so free from corrupt solicitations of great men and friends as he was; never put Counsellors that practised before him to annual pensions of money or plate to have his favour. In all causes before him the Counsel might assure his client from the danger of bribery.' But it would be unfair to omit mention of Lord Chancellor Ellesmere, who held the Great Seal for seven years under Elizabeth, and for nearly fourteen years under James I., amidst the universal applause of his contemporaries. Bishop Hacket describes him as one qui nihil in vitâ nisi laudandum aut fecit aut dixit aut sensit;' and the very exaggeration of this praise shows the estimation in which he was held. The strange and improbable story that Chief Justice Popham, in the same reign, became the owner of Littlecote, in Wiltshire, as his reward for allowing Darrell, the former proprietor, to escape on his trial. for an atrocious murder, which forms the subject of Scott's ballad in 'Rokeby,' 'The friar of orders grey,' is entirely discredited by Mr. Foss; and we agree with him that it would be curious to trace the circumstances to which such a tradition owes its origin, but we fear that this is now impossible. Does any record or document exist to show that a man, named Darrell, was tried at that period for such a crime? Mr. Foss suggests that if the petition, which Sir Francis Bacon in his argument against Hollis and others for traducing public justice, states was presented to Queen Elizabeth against Chief Justice Popham, and which, after investigation by four Privy Councillors, was dismissed as slanderous, could be found, it might possibly turn out that this story was the slander; and the Chief Justice's subsequent enjoyment of his high office would be a sufficient proof of its utter falsehood.' It is certain that, notwithstanding the high eulogium passed upon Popham by Lord Ellesmere and Sir Edward Coke, an evil tradition clings to his name; for he is said in his wild youth to have gone on the highway and taken purses as a common robber. We wish that Mr. Foss had been a little more explicit in informing us how the business of the courts of justice, both at Westminster and in the provinces, was carried on during the great Rebellion. We believe that the Judges went circuit as usual, usual, and it is a remarkable proof of what we may call the stable equilibrium of the English nation and its reverence for law, that in the midst of contending armies causes should be decided and the gaols be delivered, as in a time of profound peace. In the confusion that followed after the King's murder it was different: : The expulsion of the Parliament,' says Mr. Foss, 'put a stop for a time to legal business, and in the following October the hearing of causes in Chancery was suspended for a month while the Bill for the suppression of the Court was under discussion. In the summer of 1654 the Assizes were delayed by an Ordinance of Council that none of the Judges should go out of town till further order; and in the disordered state of the nation, after the return of the Long Parliament, there were no less than three terms lost, all writs, fines, and assurances were stopped, and there was danger of having no Assizes.' With respect to the Protectorate, he says:— 'Whatever opinion may be entertained of the general merits or demerits of the actors in the great Rebellion, all parties must allow that, judging from most of the legal appointments, it was the desire and endeavour of the usurping powers to keep the course of justice uncontaminated, and to preserve respect for the administration of the With few exceptions the Judges of the interregnum were men capable and respectable, and in some instances of high character and attainments.' laws. Lord Shaftesbury, in the reign of Charles II., was the last Judge who was not previously a regularly trained lawyer. He, however, like Sir Christopher Hatton, had studied law in his youth, and was a member of the Society of Lincoln's Inn. We need not give the details of his versatile career as Member of Parliament, soldier, courtier, and statesman. A Royalist at the commencement of the Civil War, he soon deserted the cause of the King and commanded the army of the parliament in Dorsetshire, where he took Wareham, Blandford and Abbotsbury. During the Protectorate he sat in the Barebones Parliament, and 'Bartering his venal wit for sums of gold, He cast himself into the saint-like mould: Groan'd, sighed, and prayed while godliness was gain, He joined General Monk when he saw that the restoration of the King was probable, and was one of the deputation sent by the two Houses of Parliament to the Hague to invite Charles II. to return. He was afterwards created a peer. When the Great Seal was taken from Lord Keeper Bridgman, it was given to him, and the new Lord Chancellor astonished the lawyers by the dress he wore while occupying the marble chair. He Vol. 119.-No. 238. 2 B sat sat on the bench in an ash-coloured gown, silver-laced, and full-ribboned pantaloons displayed, without any black at all in his garb.' But he surprised them still more by the excellence of his decisions, which extorted from Dryden his well-known and noble eulogium; and King Charles is said to have declared he had a Chancellor that was master of more law than all his Judges, and was possessed of more divinity than all his Bishops.' He did not, however, hold his high office long, for in less than a year he was compelled to resign the Great Seal, and became for the rest of his life a turbulent and factious opponent of the Court until he died a fugitive at Amsterdam in 1683. And now we have passed the period for which Mr. Foss's work stands alone and unrivalled as an authority, and we find ourselves surveying his portraitures of men whose conduct has been often narrated and commented upon, and forms part of modern history. Gladly, therefore, do we dismiss from consideration the despicable list of time-serving and worthless Judges who abounded in the times succeeding the Restoration, nor will our space permit us to dwell on the great names of Nottingham and Hale, and Holt and Somers, or on Talbot, so much esteemed and of whom so few particulars are known. Of the men of still more recent days the public has already heard enough; for to say nothing of Lord Campbell's Lives,' and Lord Brougham's vigorous sketches, Roscoe, and Welsby, and Harris, and Twiss, and Townshend, have made us familiar with the characters in their strength and in their weakness, of Hardwicke, and Camden, and Mansfield, and Thurlow, and Wedderburn, and Erskine, and Eldon, and Ellenborough; and we seem to know all about them, almost as well as if they were our contemporaries.— Hardwicke, who held the Great Seal longer than any of the Lord Chancellors except three, who was one of the most eloquent orators of his day, and of whom it was said that, when he pronounced his decrees, Wisdom herself might be supposed to speak.'-Camden, the friend and colleague of Chatham-the popular judge, whose portrait was placed in the Guildhall, with a Latin inscription by Dr. Johnson, designating him as the zealous supporter of English liberty by law.-Mansfield, the founder of our commercial law, who tempered with the good sense of equity many of the harsh and crabbed principles of the common law, and of whom Lord Thurlow used to 'ninety-nine times out of a hundred he was right in his opinions and decisions, and when once in a hundred times he was wrong, ninety-nine men out of a hundred would not discover it. He was a wonderful man.'-Thurlow, with his Jupiter Tonans look, and an intellect that put Johnson on his mettle, 'I honour say that Thurlow Thurlow, Sir,' said he; Thurlow is a fine fellow; he fairly puts his mind to yours.'-Wedderburn-the ingenious reasoner and brilliant speaker, who attained the highest prizes of the legal and political career, yet died a mere despised and disappointed courtier, because he had no real dignity of character. -Erskine, the great orator of the English Bar, but a very poor judge and politician.-Eldon, the most profound in his knowledge of Equity, and the most involved and obscure in his utterance of it, of all the Chancellors who have occupied the Woolsack. And last of all, Ellenborough, with his rough manners, his masculine intellect, and his bigoted opposition to law reforms, who, when a Bill was brought in for abolishing the punishment of death in cases of stealing above the value of five shillings, said, 'My lords, if we suffer this Bill to pass we shall not know where to stand; we shall not know whether we are upon our heads or our feet.' Space fails us, or we should like to speak of Grant and of Stowell (whom, however, as a civilian, Mr. Foss does not include in his list), and of others who have more recently passed away from among us, or have left the Bench. We doubt whether Mr. Foss has done wisely in introducing the present occupants of the Bench. He says that he resolved to limit his account of them to little more than the formal mention of the facts already publicly given in the peerages and other periodical lists, and to avoid offering any opinion on their respective judicial merits, which it would be presumptuous in him to criticise. But such skeletons of lives are really valueless, and Mr. Foss might without any loss have reduced his nine volumes to eight. There is no body of men in this country whom their fellowcitizens are disposed to treat with more respect and deference than the Judges, and great must be the falling off on their part before they can forfeit the homage which all are willing to pay. They represent a great institution, which has throughout our history reflected fairly the intelligence and morality of the educated classes of the nation, and has, with rare exceptions-failing just when the other classes of the nation were at their worst-stood between the people and that high-handed violence which but for the intervention of such a compact and powerful body of magistrates would almost certainly have destroyed our liberties. Twice *His fierce attack upon Benjamin Franklin before the Privy Council had immense effect in exasperating the Americans against England. 'Sarcastic Sawney, full of spite and hate, On modest Franklin poured his venal prate; every every year at least each county is visited by two of the common law Judges, who, representing the Crown in its noblest office of dispenser of justice, take precedence of the highest peers, and are looked up to with reverence and awe by the populace. In them are expected legal learning and acuteness, and absolute impartiality; the manners of gentlemen, and something of the accomplishments of scholars. The more these qualities can be secured for the Bench, the more surely will it retain the salutary influence which it exercises over the feelings and customs of the nation. ART. III.-1. Reports of the Commissioners appointed to enquire into the Employment of Children and Young Persons in Trade and Manufactures not already regulated by Law, 1863, 1864, 1865, and 1866. 2. Reports of the Inspectors of Factories to Her Majesty's Princi pal Secretary of State for the Home Department, 1865. HERE had long existed a belief that the labour of young T was a children was employed to a very pernicious extent in many of our great manufactures. Even as early as the commencement of the present century the attention of the legislature was directed to the subject of factory labour; and abuses were then brought to light compared with which the abominations of negro slavery were examples of mildness and humanity. A new traffic was found to have sprung up. Childjobbers traversed the country for the purpose of purchasing children from their parents, and selling them again into worse than Egyptian bondage. The consumption of human life in the manufactories to which these children were consigned was frightful. The machinery in some establishments never stood still; one set of children was worked by day and another by night. The laws of nature were wholly disregarded, and hundreds of the most sensitive and helpless of beings were used up annually by their remorseless taskmasters, only to have their places filled by fresh victims. The evil was partially checked; but although public opinion was strongly pronounced against the system, and the cotton mills were placed under government inspection, the labour of very young children has continued to be in request in a great variety of employments which had not at that time come under public observation. The first Factory Act* was passed in 1802, and * 42 Geo. III., c. 73, entitled 'The Factories Health and Morals Act.' |