those judges who, in directing the jury, merely read over their notes and let them guess at the opinions they have formed; leaving them without any help or recommendation to form their own judgments. Upon each case that came before him he had an opinion; and while he left the decision with the jury, he intimated how he thought himself. This manner of performing the office of judge is now generally followed and most commonly approved. It was the course taken by this great judge in trying Lord Cochrane and his alleged associates; but, if any of those who attacked him for it had been present at the trial of the case which stood immediately before it or after it in the paper, he would have found Lord Ellenborough trying that case in the self-same way-it being an action upon a bill of exchange or for goods sold and delivered.

I must, however, be here distinctly understood to deny the accuracy of the opinion which Lord Ellenborough appears to have formed in this case, and deeply to lament the verdict of guilty which the jury returned, after three hours' consulting and hesitation. If Lord Cochrane was at all aware of his uncle, Mr. Cochrane Johnstone's, proceedings, it was the whole extent of his privity to the fact. Having been one of the counsel engaged in the cause, I can speak with some cofidence respecting it, and I take upon me to assert that Lord Cochrane's conviction was mainly owing to the extreme repugnance which he felt at giving up his uncle, or taking those precautions for his own safety which would have operated against that near relation. Even when he, the real criminal, had confessed his guilt by taking to flight, and the other defendants were brought up for judgment, we, the counsel, could not persuade Lord Cochrane to shake himself loose from the contamination by giving him up.

As regarded the Lord Chief Justice's conduct at the trial, none of us entertained any doubt that he had acted impartially, according to his conscience, and had tried it as he would have tried any other cause in which neither political nor personal feelings could have interfered. Our only complaint was his Lordship's refusal to adjourn after the prosecutor's case closed, and his requiring us to enter upon our defence at so late an hour, past nine o'clock, that the adjournment took place at midnight, and before we called our witnesses. Of course I speak of the trial at Guildhall

only. Lord Ellenborough was equally to blame with his brethren in the Court of King's Bench for that most cruel and unjustifiable sentence, which at once secured Lord Cochrane's re-election for Westminster when the Commons expelled him upon his conviction, and abolished for ever the punishment of the pillory, in all but one excepted case, perjury, in which also it has practically ceased to defile and disgrace our criminal jurisprudence.

In 1833, the government of which I was a member restored this great warrior to his rank of admiral in our navy. The country, therefore, in the event of hostilities, would now have the inestimable benefit of his services, whom none perhaps ever equalled in heroic courage, and whose fertility of resources, military as well as naval, place him high among the very first of commanders. That his honours of knighthood so gloriously won should still be withholden is a stain not upon him, but upon the councils of his country; and after his restoration to the service, it is as inconsistent and incomprehensible as cruel and unjust.

LORD CHIEF JUSTICE BUSHE.

ALTHOUGH I had not the advantage of knowing this eminent person in his judicial capacity, yet I had the great pleasure of his acquaintance, and I also upon one remarkable occasion saw him examined as a witness upon matter partly of fact and partly of opinion; it was before the Irish committee of 1839. The testimony of a judge thus given bears a close resemblance to the opinion which he delivers in Court and the directions which he gives to a jury. Acting in both capacities under the obligation of his oath, and in pursuit of nothing but the truth, it becomes him to pronounce, with most scrupulous fairness, the opinions whch he states, to relate with the utmost precision the facts which he knows, and to weigh nicely every word which he uses in conveying his statement. No one who heard the very remarkable examination of Chief Justice Bushe could avoid forming the most exalted estimate of his judicial talents. Many of the questions to which he necessarily

addressed himself were involved in party controversy, exciting on one side and the other great heats; yet never was a more calm or a more fair tone than that which he took and throughout preserved. Some of the points were of great nicety; but the discrimination with which he handled them was such as seemed to remove all difficulty and dispel whatever obscurity clouded the subject. The choice of his words was most felicitous; it always seemed as if the form of expression was selected, which was the most peculiarly adapted to convey the meaning, with perfect simplicity and without the least matter of exaggeration or of softening. The manner of giving each sentence, too, betokened an anxiety to give the very truth, and the slowness oftentimes showed that each word was cautiously weighed. There was shed over the whole the grace of a delivery altogether singular for its combined suavity and dignity. All that one had heard of the wonderful fascination of his manner, both at the bar and upon the bench, became easily credible to those who heard his evidence.

If we followed him into the circle of private society, the gratification was exceedingly great. Nothing, indeed, could be more delightful; for his conversation had no effort, not the least attempt at display, and the few moments that he spoke at a time all persons wished to have been indefinitely prolonged. There was a conciseness and point in his expressions which none who heard him could forget. The power of narrative which so greatly distinguished him at the bar was marvellously shown in his familiar conversation; but the shortness, the condensation, formed perhaps the feature that took most hold of the hearer's memory. They who passed one of his evenings with him during that visit to London will not easily forget an instance of this matchless faculty, and, at the hazard of doing it injustice, I must endeavour here to preserve it. He was describing a Gascon who had sent him wine, which was destroyed at the Custom House fire in Dublin, and he contrived to comprise in a few sentences, to all appearance naturally and without effort, his narrative of the proceeding, with two documents, and the point.-" He had sent me wine which was consumed in the Custom House fire, and he wrote to condole with me on the loss to the public and the arts, but especially on that of the wine, which, he said, he found was by law at the purchaser's

risk. I answered, and offered as some consolation to him the assurance that by law it was at the risk of the seller."Some members of the Northern Circuit then present were reminded of a celebrated story which the late Mr. Baron Wood used to be called upon to relate, in exemplification of the singular conciseness, and, I may add, felicity, of his diction.*

But it is fit that we should turn to the merits of Chief Justice Bushe while in the earlier period of his life he filled a high station at the bar. His education had been classical, and he studied and practised the rhetorical art with great success in the Historical Society of Dublin University, an institution famous for having trained about the same time Lord Plunket to that almost unrivalled excellence which he early attained, and for having at a former period fostered and exercised the genius of Grattan, and Flood, and all the eminent Irish orators. The proficiency of Bushe may be estimated from the impression which Mr. Grattan confessed that the young man had made upon him. Having been present at one of the debates in the scene of his former studies, and heard Bushe speak, his remark was, "that he spoke with the lips of an angel." Accordingly, upon being called to the bar in 1790, he soon rose to extensive practice, and this he owed as much to his nice discretion, to the tact and the quickness which forms a Nisi Prius advocate's most important qualification, as to his powers of speaking. Of law he had a sufficient provision without any remarkable store of learning; nor did he ever either at the bar or on the bench excel in the black letter of the profession.

But his merit as a speaker was of the highest description. His power of narration has not, perhaps, been equalled. If any one would see this in its greatest perfection, he has only to read the inimitable speech on the Trimbleston cause the narrative of Livy himself does not surpass that great effort. Perfect simplicity, but united with elegance; a lucid arrangement and unbroken connexion of all the facts; the constant introduction of the most picturesque expressions, but never as ornaments; these, the great qualities of narration, accomplish its great end and purpose;

*It would be difficult to name any composition superior in this respect to the two Tracts of Mr. Baron Wood, on the Tithe Law and its defects. They were printed, but not published.

they place the story and the scene before the hearer, or the reader, as if he witnessed the reality. It is unnecessary to add, that the temperate, and chaste, and even subdued tone of the whole is unvaried and unbroken; but such praise belongs to every part of this great speaker's oratory. Whe ther he declaims or argues, moves the feelings or resorts to ridicule and sarcasm, deals in persuasion or invective, he never is, for an instant, extravagant. We have not the condensed and vigorous demonstration of Plunket; we have not those marvellous figures. sparingly introduced, but whensoever used, of an application to the argument absolutely magical; but we have an equal display of chastened abstinence, of absolute freedom from all the vices of the Irish school, with, perhaps, a more winning grace of diction; and all who have witnessed it agree in ascribing the greatest power to a manner that none could resist.

The utmost that partial criticism could do to find a fault was to praise the suavity of the orator at the expense of his force. John Kemble described him as "the greatest actor off the stage" but he forgot that so great an actor must also have stood highest among his Thespian brethren had the scene been shifted.

In 1798 he came into Parliament. The great struggle of the Union was then beginning; he at once flung himself into the ranks of its adversaries; and the most splendid speech to which that controversy gave rise, after Mr.

Let no one hastily suppose that this is an exaggerated description of Lord Plunket's extraordinary eloquence. Where shall be found such figures as those which follow-each raising a living image before the mind, yet each embodying not merely a principle, but the very argument in hand-each leaving that very argument literally translated into figure? The first relates to the Statutes of Limitation, or to prescriptive title:" If Time destroys the evidence of title, the laws have wisely and humanely made length of possession a substitute for that which has been destroyed. He comes with his scythe in one hand to mow down the muniments of our rights; but in his other hand the lawgiver has placed an hourglass, by which he metes out incessantly those portions of duration which render needless the evidence that he has swept away."

Explaining why he had now become a Reformer, when he had before opposed the question :-" Circumstances," said he, "are wholly changed; formerly Reform came to our door like a felon-a robber to be resisted. He now approaches like a creditor; you admit the justice of his demand, and only dispute the time and the instalments by which he shall be paid."