66 condition of a man"-when the latter is described "as totally regardless of his own honour," noted for "the blackness of his heart," and a "steady perseverance in infamy;" "long since discarding every principle of conscience;" a man every one action of whose life for two years has separately deserved imprisonment." But many specific accusations were scattered abroad. We have seen the pure invention of the writer's malice in the falsehoods deliberately told against the Duke of Bedford, especially in the fabrication respecting the Peace of Paris; and we have seen how he grafted that untruth upon the story imported by Dr. Musgrave, and relating to other parties. That his motive was to hit in the point which he believed was the most sensitive, is beyond all doubt. The Duke's public character mainly rested on the success of his negotiation; and as he was naturally tenacious of that reputation, so were the people of this country equally alive to any suspicion of pecuniary corruption in public men. Therefore it was that the species of falsehood must be coined which should meet those several demands for it. But we are not left to conjecture upon this point. Under the writer's own hand we have a history of the designs over which his heart brooded. The printer had been deterred from publishing a letter, under the signature of Vindex, by the fear of prosecution. Junius tells him that the charge contained in it is the only one to which its object has not long been callous. The intended victim was the King; the charge was of cowardice! "I must tell you," says Junius, "and with positive certainty, that our gracious is as callous as stock fish to every thing but the reproach of cowardice. That alone is able to set the humours afloat. After a paper of that kind he won't eat meat for a week." (i. 221). I need hardly add that the utter falsehood of such a charge was at all times of George III.'s life admitted by all parties, even in the utmost heat of factious conflict. But this writer, with the malignity of a fiend, frames his slander in order to assail with certainty the tender point of his victim. And such, we may be assured, are the motives which actuate the greater number of those who drive the base trade of the concealed slanderer. It is truly painful to reflect upon the success which attended the disreputable labours of this author, at a time when good writing was very rare in ephemeral publica tions, and long before the periodical press had lost its influence and respectability by the excesses into which of late years it had run. The boldness of the assaults made upon individuals, full as much as the power with which they were conducted, had the effect of overawing the public, and in many cases of silencing those against whom they operated. The very circumstance which should have impaired their force, gave them, as it always does, additional impression. The "unknown" and the "great" were, as usual, confounded. The same things which, said by any one individual, though respectable in himself, would have had but little weight, seemed to proceed from an awful and undefined power, which might be one or many, and possess an importance that the imagination was left to expand at will. But it is still more painful to observe such men as Lord North and Mr. Burke lending themselves to support the popular delusion, the one from his wonted candour and good humour, the other from factious motives; both, in some degree, from the kind of fear which makes supersti-, tious men sacrifice to evil spirits. Lord North calls him "the great Boar of the Forest," and the " mighty Junius;" Mr. Burke wishes that Parliament had the benefit of "his knowlege, his firmness, his integrity." It would have been a worthier task for Lord North to bring his unblushing falsehoods to trial before a jury of his country, as the Duke of Bedford should certainly have done; and it would have conferred more honour on Mr. Burke to have joined with all good men in reprobating the practices by which one of the foulest of libellers degraded the liberty of the press, and prepared the way for the excesses which Mr. Burke himself was fated afterwards to deplore, and the contempt in which his perspicacity did not then perceive this great safeguard of our liberties was at a still later period in peril of falling. At all events, we who now have had leisure to contemplate the period in which those great statesmen lived, and to weigh the justice of their tributes to this too celebrated writer, have the duty cast upon us of exposing his falsehoods, and of rendering a necessary, though a tardy reparation, to those characters which he unscrupulously assailed. Nor is there any duty the discharge of which brings along with it more true satisfaction. It may be humble in its execution, but its aim is lofty; it may be feebly performed, but it is exceedingly grateful. Nor can any one rise from his labours with a more heartfelt satisfaction than he who thinks that he has contributed to rescue merit from obloquy, and to further the most sacred of all human interests, the defeat of injustice-injustice in which they share who fear to resist it. 66 Sed injustitiæ genera duo sunt; unum eorum qui inferunt; alterum eorum qui ab iis, quibus infertur, si possunt, non propulsant injuriam." (Cic. De Off., I.) EARL CAMDEN. AMONG the names that adorn the legal profession there are few which stand so high as that of Camden. His reputation as a lawyer could not have gained this place for him; even as a judge he would not have commanded such distinction, though on the Bench he greatly increased the fame which he brought from the bar; but in the senate he had no professional superior, and his integrity for the most part spotless in all the relations of public life, with the manly firmness which he uniformly displayed in maintaining the free principles of the constitution, wholly unmixed with any leaning towards extravagant popular opinions, or any disposition to court vulgar favour, justly entitle him to the very highest place among the judges of England. It was a remarkable circumstance that, although he entered the profession with all the advantages of elevated station, he was less successful in its pursuit, and came more slowly into its emoluments than almost all others that can be mentioned who have raised themselves to its more eminent heights from humble and even obscure beginnings. One can hardly name any other chief judge, except Bacon himself, who was the son of a chief justice. Lord Camden's father presided in the Court of King's Bench. He himself was called to the bar in his twenty-fourth year, and he continued to await the arrival of clients-their "knocks at his door while the cock crew,"*-for nine long years; * Sub galli cantum, consultor ubi ostia pulsat.-Hor. but to wait in vain. In his thirty-eighth year he was, like Lord Eldon, on the point of retiring from Westminster Hall, and had resolved to shelter himself from the frowns of fortune within the walls of his College, there to live upon his fellowship till a vacant living in the country should fall to his share. This resolution he communicated to his friend Henley, afterwards so well known first as Lord Keeper, and then as Lord Chancellor Northington, who vainly endeavoured to rally him out of a despondency, for which it must be confessed there seemed good ground. He consented, however, at his friend's solicitation, to go once more the western circuit, and through his kind offices received a brief as his junior in an important cause-offices not perhaps in those days so severely reprobated as they now are by the more stern etiquette of the profession. The leader's accidental illness threw upon Mr. Pratt the conduct of the cause; and his great eloquence, and his far more important qualifications of legal knowledge and practical expertness in the management of business, at once opened for him the way to a brilliant fortune. His success was now secure. After eight years of very considerable practice, though unequal to that which most other great leaders have attained, he was made at once Attorney-General; and three years after, in 1762, raised to the Bench as Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, "the pillow," according to Lord Coke, "whereon the attorney doth rest his head." In 1749, when in his forty-sixth year, he had been chosed to represent the borough of Downton, but during his short experience of the House of Commons he appears not to have gained any distinction. The rewards of parliamentary ambition were reserved to a later period of his life. Of his forensic talents no records remain, beyond a general impression of the accuracy which he showed as a lawyer, though not of the most profound description; par negotiis neque supra. The fame of his legal arguments in Westminster Hall is not of that species which at once rises to the mind on the mention of Dunning's name, or Wallace's, the admirable variety and fertility of whose juridical resources were such that "their points" are spoken of to this day, and spoken of with admiration. But he greatly excelled them both in powers as a leader at Nisi Prius; and his eloquence was apparently of that chaste and gentle but persuasive kind which distinguished his great rival Murray, and made all the readers of Milton involuntarily apply to him the famous portraiture of Belial 1 Belial, in act more graceful and humane A fairer person lost not heaven; he seemed Dropt manna, and could make the worse appear The better reason. But his eminently judicial qualifications shone forth conspicuously when he rose into their proper sphere. His unwearied patience, his unbroken suavity of manner, his unruffled calmness of temper, the more to be admired because it was the victory of determined resolution over a natural infirmity, his lucid clearness of comprehension and of statement, his memory singularly powerful and retentive, his great anxiety to sift each case to the very bottom, and his scrupulous, perhaps extreme care, to assign the reasons for every portion of his opinions, went far to constitute a perfect judge, inferior in value though these qualities might be to the profound learning that has marked some great magistrates, like Lord Eldon and the older lawyers; and, perhaps, to the union of marvellous quickness, with sure sagacity, for which others, like the Kenyons, and the Holroyds, and the Littledales, have been famous. There was, however, in Lord Camdem no deficiency of legal accomplishments, nor any want either of quickness or perspicacity in the conduct of judicial business. And it must ever be remembered, that as a judge has always or almost always, the statements and the suggestions of all parties before him, and in thus rather placed in a passive situation, those faculties of rapid perception and of deep penetration, that circumspection which no risk can escape, and that decision, at once prompt and firm, which instantly meets the exigencies of each sudden emergency, are far less essential virtues, far less useful attributes, of the ermine than of the gown. It is but rarely that a judge can be taken off his guard; never in any important civil suit, unless by some accident there is an extreme overmatch of the advocate upon one side compared with his antagonist; and chiefly possible in criminal cases, disposed of by a law which lies within a narrow compass, and connected with facts generally of ordi |