self. Upon this, some question arose as to the legality of torture; and the judges being called upon for their advice, thus at length driven to speak, delivered a unanimous opinion that the prisoner ought not to be tortured, because no such punishment was known or allowed by the English law; which English law, it now appeared, had for two hundred years been systematically disregarded under the eye and by the advice of judges and sworn lawyers, members of the Privy Council, and without any protest or interference on the part of the courts !

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Another instance of similar acquiescence occurred in regard to the Court of Chivalry, which in the reign of Charles I. undertook to assume jurisdiction in the case of words spoken. Thus a citizen was ruinously fined by that court because, in an altercation with an insolent waterman, who wished to impose upon him, he deridingly called the swan on his badge a goose." The case was brought within the jurisdiction of the court, by showing that the waterman was an earl's servant, and that the swan was the earl's crest, the heavy fine being grounded on the alleged "dishonoring" by the citizen of this nobleman's crest. A tailor, who had often very submissively asked payment of his bill from a customer of “gentle blood" whose pedigree was duly registered at the herald's college, on a threat of personal violence for his importunity, was provoked into saying that "he was as good a man as his debtor." For this offence, which was alleged to be a levelling attack upon the aristocracy, he was summoned before the earl marshal's court, and mercifully dismissed with a reprimand on releasing the debt!

No aid could be obtained from the common law courts against this scandalous usurpation, by which, without any

trial by jury, enormous damages were given.* Legal comity" perhaps prevented any interference. Presently, however, the long Parliament met, and a single resolution of that body stopped forever this usurpation.

But while a scrupulous adherence to technicalities and to legal etiquette prevented the common law courts, on the one hand, from doing justice in private cases, and on the other from guarding the subject against official injuries and usurpations, they showed themselves, as the following biographies will prove, the ready and willing tools on all occasions of every executive usurpation. If the people of Great Britain and America are not at this moment slaves, most certainly, as the following biographies will prove, it is not courts nor lawyers that they have to thank for it.

How essential to liberty is the popular element in the administration of criminal law-how absolutely necessary is the restraint of a jury in criminal cases was most abundantly proved by the proceedings of the English courts of Star Chamber and High Commission. The Court of Star Chamber, though of very ancient origin, derived its chief importance from statutes of Henry VII. and Henry VIII., by which it was invested with a discretionary authority to fine and imprison in all cases not provided for by existing laws, being thus erected, according to the boasts of Coke and Bacon, into a (C court of criminal equity." The Court of High Commission, whose jurisdiction was mainly limited to clergymen, was created by a statute of Elizabeth as the depository of the ecclesiastical authority as head of the church assumed

* Hyde, (afterwards Lord Clarendon,) himself a lawyer, by whom the usurpations of this court were brought to the notice of Parliament, stated that more damages had been given by the earl marshal in his days, for words of supposed defamation, of which the law took no notice, than by all the courts of Westminster Hall during a whole term.

after the reformation by the English sovereigns. Both these courts consisted of high officers of the crown, including judges and crown lawyers; and though not authorized to touch life or member, they became such instruments of tyranny as to make their abolition one of the first things done after the meeting of the Long Parliament. The only American parallel to these courts is to be found in the authority conferred by the fugitive act of 1850, upon certain commissioners of the Circuit Court of the United States, to seize and deliver over to slavery peaceable residents in their respective states, without a jury, and without appeal.

History is philosophy teaching by example. From what judges have attempted and have done in times past, and in England, we may draw some pretty shrewd conclusions as to what, if unchecked, they may attempt, and may do, in times. present, and in America. Nor let any man say that the following pages present a collection of judicial portraits distorted and caricatured to serve an occasion. They have been borrowed, word for word, from the Lives of the Chief Justices and of the Chancellors of England, by Lord Campbell, himself a lawyer and a judge, and though a liberal-minded and free-spoken man, by no means without quite a sufficient share of the esprit du corps of the profession. Derived from such a source, not only may the facts stated in the following biographies be relied upon, but the expressions of opinion upon points of law are entitled to all the weight of high professional authority.

Nor let it be said that these biographies relate to ancient times, and can have no parallelism, or but little, to the present state of affairs among us here in America. The times which they include are the times of the struggle in Great Britain between the ideas of free government and

attempts at the establishment of despotism; and that struggle is precisely the one now going on among us here in America, with this sole difference, that over the water, among our British forefathers, it was the despotism of a monarch that was sought to be established; here in America, the despotism of some two hundred thousand petty tyrants, more or less, in the shape of so many slaveholders, who, not content with lording it over their several plantations, are now attempting, by combination among themselves, and by the aid of a body of northern tools and mercenaries, such as despots always find, to lord it over the Union, and to establish the policy of slaveholding as that of the nation. In Great Britain, the struggle between despotism and free institutions closed with the revolution of 1688, with which these biographies terminate. Since that time the politics of that country have consisted of hardly more than of jostlings between the Ins and the Outs, with no very material variance between them in their social ideas. Among us the great struggle between slaveholding despotism and republican equality has but lately come to a head, and yet remains undetermined. It exhibits, especially in the conduct of the courts and the lawyers, many parallels to the similar struggle formerly carried on in Great Britain. That struggle terminated at last with the deposition. and banishment of the Stuart family, and the reëstablishment in full vigor of the ancient liberties of England, as embodied in the Bill of Rights. And so may ours terminate, in the reduction of those who, not content with being brethren seek to be masters, to the republican level of equal and common citizenship, and in the reëstablishment of emancipation, freedom, and the Rights of Man proclaimed in our Declaration of Independence, as the national and eternal policy of these United States!

ATROCIOUS JUDGES.

CHAPTER I.

ROGER LE BRABACON.

ROGER LE BRABACON,* from the part he took in settling the disputed claim to the crown of Scotland, is an historical character. His ancestor, celebrated as "the great warrior,” had accompanied the Conqueror in the invasion of England, and was chief of one of those bands of mercenary soldiers then well known in Europe under the names (for what reason historians are not agreed) of Routiers, Cottereaux, or Brabançons. Being rewarded with large possessions in the counties of Surrey and Leicester, he founded a family which flourished several centuries in England, and is now represented in the male line by an Irish peer, the tenth Earl of Meath.

* The name is sometimes spelt Brabaçon, Brabançon, Brabason, and Brabanson.

† Hume, who designates them "desperate ruffians," says "troops of them were sometimes enlisted in the service of one prince or baron, sometimes in that of another; they often acted in an independent manner, and under leaders of their own. The greatest monarchs were not ashamed, on occasion, to have recourse to their assistance; and as their habits of war and depredation had given them experience, hardiness, and courage, they generally composed the most formidable part of those armies which decided the political quarrels of princes." - Vol. i. 438. In America we have no mercenary soldiers, but plenty of mercenary politicians, almost as much to be dreaded. - Ed.