SKETCHES OF EMINENT ENGLISH JUDGES.

ONE

LOUGHBOROUGH.

thy of his brilliant powers, and behold Lord Loughborough at London, the change seems almost like one of the metamorphoses in Ovid,”—a comparison more appropriate to his lordship's political than to his personal transformations.

At his outset at the English bar he meditated an unprecedented coup d'état. Having obtained his silk gown and the rank of king's counsel, he joined the northern circuit. This was against the etiquette of the bar, which restrains a barrister from changing his circuit except while "clothed in stuff," because otherwise he might step immediately into a great business, and advance himself over the heads of others long established on the circuit. To add to the enormity, he employed the clerk of Sir Fletcher Norton, the leader of the circuit who had just retired, and thus he hoped to command the late leader's enormous patronage. The attempt failed, and he relinquished it in the course of a year or two, and devoted himself to chancery and the House of Lords.

of the most brilliant, if not the worthiest, of the great men who came down from Scotland to London, and carried away the prizes of law and politics, was Alexander Wedderburn, Lord Loughborough and Earl of Rosslyn. He was born in 1733, and was liberally educated. He gave early indications of those remarkable powers which afterward rendered him famous. At an early age he was a favorite companion of such men as Hume and Robertson. The former gave him a letter of introduction to Dr. Clepham, of London, in which he wrote: "But I will say no more of him, lest my letter fall into the same fault which may be remarked in his behavior and conduct in life; the only fault which has been remarked in them, that of promising so much that it will be difficult for him to support it. You will allow that he must have been guilty of some error of this kind, when I tell you that the man with whose friendship and company I have thought myself very much favored, and whom I commend to you as a friend and companion, is just twenty." The young man was brought up to the bar and in the Presbyterian church, and soon distinguished himself in both by his vigor, originality, and independence. In the church, of which he was an elder, he made himself quite obnoxious by his defense of Hume against an attack leveled at his infidel writings, but his advocacy was so potent that his recommendation to "drop the overture anent Mr. David Hume, because it would not in their judgment minister to their edification," was adopted. Shortly afterward, the Reverend John Home having written the tragedy of Douglas, and several of the clergy having been seduced into witnessing its representation on the stage, the question was put in assembly, "whether there should be an overture anent the stage." Wedderburn made a strong speech in the negative, but was defeated. At the bar he fell into a quarrel with the lord president, and being ordered to make a humiliating apology, refused, and threw off his gown. On account of these incidents Scotland soon became too hot for Sandy, and he came up to London. With his gown he endeavored to get rid of his native accent, and took lessons in elocution of the elder Sheridan. In this, according to "Bozzy," he was successful, for he says: "Though it was late in life for a Caledonian to acquire the genuine English cadence, yet so successful were his instructors and his own unabating endeavors, that he got rid of the coarse part of his Scotch accent, retaining only as much of the native wood-note wild as to mark his country, which," | burning to hanging, in the case of women, because adds Bozzy piously, "if any Scotchman should affect to forget, I should heartily despise him!" And again he says: "When I look back on this noble person at Edinburgh, in situations so unwor

His great forte at the common-law bar seems to have been the statement of facts and dealing with them. His powers of examination were limited, and so was his store of law. But in chancery and the House of Lords he flourished. In the latter he gained great distinction in the Douglas cause, in which Fox pronounced his speech the very best he ever heard on any subject. When solicitor-general, he defended Clive before the House of Commons against the charge of mal-administration in India,"with extraordinary force of argument and language," says Macaulay. That essayist also remarks: "It is a curious circumstance that, some years later, Thurlow, "-now among Clive's assailants-"was the most conspicuous champion of Warren Hastings, while Wedderburn was among the most unrelenting persecutors of that great, though not faultless, statesman." Macaulay elsewhere says of Wedderburn, "that he was one of the few great advocates who have also been great in the House of Commons."

Loughborough presided for thirteen years as chief justice of the common pleas, and for eight years as lord chancellor, with courtesy, dignity, integrity, lenity, firmness, and impartiality. His learning, although not profound or exact, was generally sufficient. His judicial oratory was of the most elegant and captivating description, and his judgments were graced from his literary stores. He was really a merciful man, although theoretically quite the reverse. He approved the dissection of the bodies of malefactors, and opposed the changing of the punishment for coining from

of the greater terror of the spectacle of burning, while "no greater degree of personal pain is thus inflicted, the criminal being always strangled before the flames are suffered to approach her body." But

of the ties which bound the colonies to the mothercountry. Gibbon called North "the Palinurus of the State," who might safely sleep, while Wedderburn and Thurlow remained at their posts to watch out the long debate. "The minister," said Horne Tooke on his trial, "sat secure between his two brazen pillars, Jachin and Boaz, to guard the treasury bench." Townsend says "the one was the Ajax, the other the Ulysses, of debate; the one blunt, coarse, and vigorous, and hurled hard words and strong epithets at his opponent in a tremendous voice; the other elegant, subtle, and insinuating, arrayed his arguments in all the persuasive guises of rhetoric, and where he could not convince the reason or move the passions, sought to silence ob

Lord Campbell justly says, "such sentiments reflect discredit on the times rather than the individual." There has been some animadversion respecting his conduct on the trial of the Gordon rioters. Mr. Jesse declares that nothing like it had been seen since Jeffreys. But a careful scrutiny does not sustain this charge. Twenty-nine of the rioters were hanged, but under the law of the time they deserved it, and in his several charges he cannot be accused of an undue leaning against the prisoners. So, too, he has been roundly abused for deciding that gleaning, without the consent of the owner of the field, is trespass. Mr. Howitt, who thinks him one of the wickedest of the human race, comments on this with severity, and says "the law of Moses was more benevolent than Loughborough law." But Mr.jection with ironical pleasantry and bitter sarcasm." Howitt is a sentimentalist, and therefore forgetful; else it would have occurred to him that Loughborough law hardly justified the doctrine of "an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth." Still it must be confessed that Loughborough was not a great lawyer nor a great judge. He was not a lawyer by nature; he was a politician and a debater. While he transacted the business before him satisfactorily, his judgments will never be quoted as authority or perused for their learning.

Wedderburn was a most accomplished political debater and orator; Campbell thinks the greatest, for a lawyer, that ever sat in the House of Commons. "More sarcastic than Murray, more forcible than Pratt, more polished than Dunning, more conciliatory than Thurlow, he combined in himself the great physical and intellectual requisites for swaying a gentlemanlike mob." It must be remembered that Fox and Burke gained no decisive advantage over him, and he had the art to make the American war appear just and well conducted. In this, however, he had the sympathies of the audience on his side.

But Wedderburn debased his great powers to the service of a tyrannical court and the crushing of liberty and reform. He was the most earnest advocate of the doctrine of constructive treason, and promoted the State prosecutions against Tooke and others, which terminated so disastrously to the crown, thanks to the sublime exertions of Erskine. He opposed the extension of mercy in the cases of the clergymen Muir and Palmer, convicted of sedition. In short, he out-Heroded Herod in his endeavors to serve the court and advance his own interest, so that at last even the king said to him, "You have got us into the wrong box, my lord; you have got us into the wrong box; constructive treason won't do, my lord, constructive treason won't do."

Wedderburn and Thurlow in the lower house, and Mansfield in the upper house, of Parliament, were the staunch enemies of American independence, and to Wedderburn particularly were due those extreme measures which resulted in the disruption

The most interesting incident, to an American, in Wedderburn's political career, was his invective against Dr. Franklin in the affair of the Hutchinson letters. Franklin unquestionably never cared to explain how he obtained possession of the letters, but he stood unmoved and listened to Wedderburn's terrific denunciation before the Privy Council. The severest thing in the peroration was the declaration, "henceforth he will esteem it a libel to be called a man of letters, homo trium litterarum,"— the Roman fur, or thief. This speech produced a tremendous effect on the British nation, and did much to stir up the strife which ended so gloriously for our country. On account of it he was burned in effigy at Philadelphia. A contemporary epigrammatist wrote:

"Sarcastic Sawney, swoll'n with pride and hate, On silent Franklin poured his venal prate; The calm philosopher, without reply, Withdrew and gave his country liberty." Franklin himself says that the published report of the speech was "perfectly decent" in comparison with the speech as delivered. Undoubtedly Wedderburn had received a retainer to abuse Franklin

in unmeasured terms, and he gave his money's worth. It is a noteworthy fact, that when Franklin, on the termination of the war seven years afterward, as ambassador at Paris, signed the articles of peace, he wore the identical suit of clothes which he wore when Wedderburn delivered this philippic, and which he had never put on since, and never wore again. Nothing is left to us of this great speech save the peroration, and of this Brougham says, rather unjustly, "we are thus reminded of some statue of Cato, of which nothing remained save the middle region." Franklin himself testified to its rankling effect by his continual references to it, although at the same time he affected to despise it, and said of the orator, that so mercenary a man would have said as much in favor of the devil, as he had said against him, if he had been well paid for it.

Loughborough had neither wit nor humor, and his conversational powers were small. His private

He is also the subject of one of Sayer's caricatures. A debate had arisen, in 1755, on the "Irish Propositions," in which Stormont, for himself and Loughborough, who was absent, threw obstacles in the way of the secretary for home affairs, Sydney. The picture represents Loughborough, his face turned away, turning an enormous auger, with Stormont's head, and boring a piece of timber with two knots inscribed “first proposition" and "second proposition."

64

before referred to. Such of the minutes of this club
as have been preserved are, with one exception, in the
The exception
handwriting of Peter Van Schaack.
referred to is the minutes of an interesting debate
had on the 22d of January, 1768, on the question,
Whether, in an absolute monarchy, it is better that
the crown should be elective than hereditary." The
proceedings of that meeting are in the handwriting of
Egbert Benson. He presided on that occasion and
took minutes of the debate; and it will not surprise
those who are acquainted with his subsequent history
to be informed that he decided the question in favor
of an elective crown. And yet, on the question de-

bated at another time, "Whether, in the constitution
of Great Britain, it was a good political maxim that
the king could do no wrong," this prominent cham-
pion of the Revolution took the affirmative side. His
precise argument was, that inasmuch as there was no
mode of trying or punishing a king, the law consid-
ered that it would be better to say that the king could
do no wrong, than to suppose him to do wrong and yet
not to punish him. Benson's position was not dic-
tated by any real desire to screen the king from pun-

order to establish an abstract principle.

True, however, to those principles which governed

It is foreign to our purpose to trace the tergiversations and depict the disappointments of the life of this splendid adventurer, spent in the chase after the lord chancellorship. He was ever a mercenary in politics, a complete political weathercock, always turning in the direction of the great seal. For years it eluded his grasp. At one time, when he deemed himself sure of it, it was placed in commission, and he was appointed first commissioner! But his artful, supple, and accommodating behavior at length prevailed, and he clutched the coveted prize ishment, but he was willing to let his majesty off in -how trifling and fleeting a reward for such sacrifice of manliness and principle! In short, his poli-him in the Revolution, Benson concluded his argument tical career was totally unprincipled. In this respect, however, he was little worse than the best men of his time. One has only to read Fox's letter to him, apologizing for offering the seals to his rival, Thurlow, a letter of which the writer confessed that he felt ashamed-to understand how utterly corrupt and venal the politics and the politicians of the day were. It is pitiful and humiliating to observe men of great intellect prostrating themselves and prostituting their powers in the strife for the baubles of office; but when two men like Thurlow and Wedderburn were rivals for the same office, their unscrupulousness, their servility, their insincerity, and their eagerness, fill one with amazement and shame. Their unworthiness as statesmen is in singular contrast with their purity as judges.

"THE MOOT" AN OLD LAW CLUB. To the Editor of the Albany Law Journal:

IN

N the third quarter of the last century there existed in the city of New York, a constellation of remarkable men, who rose rapidly to be ranked among the distinguished men of the land, embracing in the number prominent champions of the Revolution, profound statesmen, learned jurists, ripe scholars, eminent philanthropists and enlightened proponents and wise constructors of the new governments under our State and national constitutions, and many of them called to fill leading positions created by those instruments.

It was natural that individuals of such promising mark should, at an early day, and in the exercise of a laudable ambition, form themselves into clubs and associations for mutual improvement and mental and professional discipline. As early as 1768, and probably for some time before, there existed in that city a debating club, composed of young gentlemen whose subsequent history accords to them the high character

by maintaining that the people, "if sensibly oppressed, would break all ties of allegiance and assert their natural rights," and that "they would new-model the constitution, as was the case in Rome upon the expulsion of the Tarquins."

In this ripening spirit of republican independence, he declared at the very commencement of the war, that he did not fear Lord North, nor Lord Mansfield, nor all the lords and devils upon earth."

But I desired, in the preparation of this paper, more particularly to speak of another pre-revolutionary club which existed in the city of New York through the last half of the decade which immediately preceded the Revolution. This society was called "The Moot." It was composed entirely of lawyers, who met regularly to discuss legal questions only. It was formed in 1770, and continued its meetings down to the 7th of April, 1775, or a few days previous to the battle of Lexington, which was the precursor in this city as elsewhere of the dissolution of many social ties.

The first officers of the Society were William Livingston, President; William Smith, Vice-President; and Samuel Jones, Secretary. Mr. Jones was succeeded as Secretary by Mr. Jay, and he by Peter Van Schaack, who held that office during the two last years of the existence of the Moot. He was the last custodian of its records; some of which are still preserved, and are matters of curious reference for a modern lawyer. The deliberations of the club were rendered highly useful by the regular attendance of the elder members of the bar, who participated in the debates upon a footing of perfect equality with their juniors. The names of those veteran lawyers, William Smith, Samuel Jones, James Duane, John M. Scott, Richard Morris, William Livingston, and Benjamin Kissam, need but be mentioned to prove that the debates in which they participated could not have been barren of legal sagacity, or of profound research into the hidden wisdom of the common law.

This society was established at a time when party spirit in the province had risen or was rising to a