he was knighted. A melancholy event soon gave him the most public opportunity for the display of his official faculties. In the autumn of 1788, the king was attacked with disorder of the mind, and the great question of the regency necessarily came before Parliament. The Whigs, who regarded the Prince of Wales as their dependent, if not as their dupe, insisted on his succession to the unlimited prerogatives of the sovereign; the Tories insisted, on the other hand, that Parliament alone had a right to confer the regency and to assign its powers, though they admitted that the choice, in the present instance, ought to fall upon the Prince of Wales. A question of this importance naturally brought out all the ability on both sides. Pitt and the solicitor-general took the lead on the side of limitation, and the prince ultimately accepted the regency on their terms. It became unnecessary, however; for, while the bill was in the House of Lords, a communication was made by the chancellor, that the king's health was in a favourable state.

His majesty was able to return to business in March.

Lord Thurlow had been universally charged with carrying on an intrigue with the Opposition, for the purpose of continuing in office under the regency. Lord Eldon's belief is introduced against that charge; but there can be no doubt whatever that the charge was universally rumoured at the time; that anecdotes confirmatory of the fact were told in every direction; that no known attempt was ever made to answer them; and that, from the period of the regency, an alienation arose, which finally determined his dismissal by the minister. The well-known boast of the chancellor's loyalty to the incapacitated king, which produced such animadversion in the House, and such burlesque out of it-Burke's ridicule of his official sensibilities, "the iron tears down Pluto's cheeks," were all founded on the public belief of this intrigue. And it is certainly no answer, at the end of half a century of uncontradicted opinion, to say that no formal accusation on the subject was made on the king's recovery, when the whole subject of the regency had become alike

distasteful to both sides of the House -to Ministers, from delicacy to the king; and to Opposition, from a sense of failure.

Soon after Scott became solicitorgeneral, the king, at Weymouth, said, "Well, I hope your promotion has been beneficial to you?" He asked his majesty if he meant his professional income. 66 Yes," said the king, "in that and in other respects." Scott told him that he must lose by it about £2000 a-year; and on the king expressing surprise, he said "That the attention of the law-officers was called to matters of international law, public law, and revenue lawmatters which, as they were not familiar to them, took up a good deal of their time, and that the fee usually given to the solicitor-general with the government cases was only three guineas, while those from private cases were from ten to twenty-five." "Oh!" said the king," then for the first time I comprehend what I never could understand, why it has always been so difficult to get any opinion from my law-officers."

At the close of the session of 1792, Lord Thurlow gave up the great seal. "What it was," said Lord Eldon afterwards, "that occasioned the rupture between Lord Thurlow and his colleagues, I never could find out." We here see an instance of the ignorance in which a high official was content to remain, on a subject which might naturally and fairly excite his curiosity. It is obvious that he wished to keep himself out of the mêlée, and took the best probable way of doing so, by asking no questions. But a dilemma arose out of this resignation to Scott himself. Pitt sent for him, and said, "I have a circumstance to mention to you, which, on account of your personal and political connexion with Lord Thurlow, I wish that you should first hear from myself. Lord Thurlow and I have quarreled, and I have signified to him his Majesty's commands that he should resign the great seal."

Scott replied, that he was not at all surprised at the event which had taken place; but added, that he owed too great obligations to Lord Thurlow to reconcile it to himself to act in political hostility to him, and he had also been too long in political

connexion with the minister to join any party against him; so that nothing was left but to resign his office, and make his bow to the House of Commons. Pitt argued against this, and finally induced him to consult Lord Thurlow. Thurlow at once told him, that to resign would be a foolish thing; adding in the spirit of a prediction, which was afterwards strik ingly realized, "it is very possible that Mr Pitt, from party and political motives, at this moment may overlook your pretensions; but, sooner or later, you must hold the great seal. I know no man but yourself qualified for its duties."

His

If the ex-chancellor was complimentary to Scott, it notoriously was not his habitual style; the fierceness of his tone was well known. language of Loughborough, who succeeded him, was savagely contemptuous. On one occasion, when the latter was speaking with considerable effect on a subject on which Lord Thurlow had an adverse opinion, though he did not regard himself as sufficiently master of it for direct refutation, he was heard to mutter, "If I was not as lazy as a toad at the bottom of a well, I could kick that fellow Loughborough heels over head, any day in the week."

Thurlow told the Prince that though Loughborough "had the gift of the gab in a marvellous degree, he was no lawyer;" and added, "in the House of Lords I get Kenyon or somebody to start some law doctrine, in such a manner that the fellow must get up to answer it, and then I leave the woolsack, and give him such a thump in his bread-basket that he cannot recover himself."

The solicitor-general was now growing rich, and he purchased for L.22,000 the manor of Eldon, a property of about 1300 acres in the county of Durham. He was an "improving landlord," and for several years he expended the income of the estate on planting-which at once much increased its value, and added to the beauty of that part of the county of Durham.

In 1793, he ascended another step in his profession, by his appointment to the great office of attorney-general, in succession to Sir Archibald Mac

donald, who was made chief baron of the exchequer. The new attorneygeneral was soon summoned to the highest exercise of his abilities, his learning, and his courage; he commenced office in the midst of national convulsion.

The Revolution of France, which had been growing in violence and havoc for the last four years, had now arrived at its height. The change, beginning with popular reform in 1789, had, in 1793, been consummated in regicide. The republic proclaimed in the year before, within three months had darkened into a democracy. The general alarm of the continental kings, combined them in an attempt to overthrow a government which threatened them all; the attempt was found to result only in consolidating its power; and, in the first year of war, France presented to the disaffected of all nations, the tempting spectacle of a land in which the foremost prizes of power had fallen into the hands of men of the humblest condition; and in which those men humbled to the dust the proudest diadems of Europe. Obscure pamphleteers, country advocates, monks, and editors of struggling journals, were suddenly seen in the first offices of state, wielding the whole power of the mightiest kingdom of the Continent, absorbing its revenues, directing its armies, and moving in the rank of princes among the proud hereditary sovereignties of the world. To the crowd of unprincipled men, engendered by the habits of European life, and their consciousness of abilities fully equal to those which had won such opulent enjoyments and lofty distinctions in France, the success of the Revolution was an universal summons to conspiracy. On the Continent that conspiracy was, according to the habits of the people, crafty and concealed. In England, equally according to the habits of the people, it was bold and public, daring and defying. Great meetings of the population were held in the open air; committees of grievance were appointed; correspondences were spread through the country; the whole machinery of overthrow was openly erected, and worked by visible hands. Even where secresy was deemed useful by the more cautious or the more fearful, it was of a

different character from the assassinlike secresy of the foreign insurgent; it was more the solemn and regulated observance of a secret tribunal. The papers which have transpired of those secret committees have all the forms of diplomacy, combined with a determination of language, and an intensity of purpose, which would do honour to a nobler cause. But the contest was now at hand, and on three men in England depended the championship of the monarchy. These three were the King, the Minister, and the Attorney-General. There were never three individuals more distinctly, and we shall scarcely hesitate to say, more providentially, prepared to meet the crisis. George III., a sovereign of the most constitutional principles, and of the most unshaken intrepidity; William Pitt, the most sagacious and the most resolute statesman that England had ever seen, formed by his manly eloquence to rule the legislature, and, by his character for integrity, to obtain the full confidence of the empire; and Sir John Scott, at once wise, calm, and bold, profoundly learned in his profession, personally brave, and alike incapable of yielding to the menaces of party or the corruptions of power. It is not to be forgotten, as a portion of that genuine public respect which in England is always withheld from even the most shining personal gifts, when stained by private profligacy, that those three were wholly and alike above the breath of slander. The king, eminent for domestic virtue; Pitt, unstained by even an imputation; and Scott, fondly attached to his wife and family.

In January 1793, the cruel murder of the innocent and unfortunate Louis XVI. had been perpetrated by the National Convention-an act which Napoleon long afterwards pronounced

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a grand political error, sufficient to stamp the government not merely with guilt, but with infatuation." The French minister at the Court of St James's was ordered to leave the country, and war was proclaimed. The revolutionary committees in England now assumed increased activity. Communications were established between them and the Jacobin government; and while France prepared for war, English republicanism prepared

for revolution. The time of the struggle was fully come. The English minister now buckled on his armour. A succession of vigorous measures employed the legislature during the whole period; they were fiercely combated, but they were all ultimately carried. Opposition never exhibited more brilliant parliamentary powers. Fox was matchless in declamation, alternately solemn and touching; Sheridan, Grey, and a long list of practised and indefatigable talent, were in perpetual debate; but Pitt, "with huge two-handed sway," finally crushed them all. The classic illustration of Hercules destroying the Hydra, was frequently used to express the solitary prowess of this extraordinary man in resisting the multiplied, wily, and envenomed attacks of his opponents; and he realized the fable to the full-he not merely crushed the heads, but he seared them. He extinguished that principle of evil increase, by which all the efforts of foreign governments had been baffled in their contests with Jacobinism; and in the midst of an empire at all times inclined to look with jealousy on power, and at that moment nervous for the suspended privileges of its constitution, Pitt utterly extinguished the Whigs. Fox was defeated so hopelessly, that he gave up Parliament altogether, and his party followed his example. Pitt had not merely cut down the statelier trunks of Opposition, but he had swept away the brushwood, and smote the ground with sterility. His bold enterprise had not merely taken the citadel of faction by storm, and driven its defenders, faint-hearted and fugitive, over the face of the land, but he had sown the foundations with salt. The total solitude of the Opposition benches, during the greater part of the minister's political life, was the most unequivocal and striking evidence ever given to ministerial supremacy.

The services of the attorney-general were in another less wide, but not less important province. On the Continent, the conspirators against the state would have been thrown into dungeon for life, or shot. In France, the idol of the revolutionist of all countries, they would have been carried before a mob tribunal, their

illustrious battle for Europe, which accomplished the liberation of mankind.

The attorney-general had now given such undeniable proofs of fitness for the highest rank of his profession, that office seemed to fall to him by right of universal acknowledgment; and on a vacancy in the Common Pleas, he was promoted to the chief-justiceship in 1799, and at the same time raised to the peerage by the title of Baron Eldon. It is an instance of the dutiful and affectionate nature, which long connexion with the world and the pride of success-the two strongest temptations to heartlessness-could not extinguish, that he made a point of writing the first letter which he signed with his title to his aged mother. In this interesting document, after mentioning his double promotion, and attributing it, "under the blessing of Providence," to the lessons of virtue which he had received from his parents; he adds- "I hope God's grace will enable me to do my duty in the station to which I am called. I write in some agitation of spirits; but I am anxious to express my love and duty to my mother, and affection to my sisters, when I first subscribe myself, your loving and affectionate son, ELDON."

Lord Kenyon, then chief-justice of the King's Bench, pronounced a panegyric on this promotion, congratulating the profession, and especially those who practised in the Common Pleas, on the appointment of one who would probably be found "the most consummate judge that ever sat in judgment."

The step from the office of attorneygeneral to the presidency of one of the courts, has been not unusual; but, as modern experience has shown, it is by no means a necessary procedure. In Lord Eldon's instance, it received the universal approval of the bar. But he held the chief-justiceship only for a year and a half, when he was raised to the summit of the bar, and sat down lord chancellor.

We hasten over the melancholy details of the following period. The labours of the attorney-general were light and cheerful compared with the toils and responsibilities of the chancellor ; the disturbed state of the king's mind;

the growing difficulties of that millstone round the neck of English legislation, the Popish claims; the retirement of Pitt, and the general alarm of the nation at its external hazards, formed a trial of unexampled severity to all public men. The death of the Great Minister in 1806, (23d of January,) at length broke up the Tory administration; the Whigs assumed power, and Lord Eldon, of course, resigned the Seals.

But the mere official routine of a chancellor's life is tremendous. Lord Eldon's account of one of his days, shows at what a price the honour of the Seals must be purchased. In one of his letters he says-"Mine has been no easy life. I will tell you what once happened to me. I was ill with the gout, it was in my feet, and so I was carried into my carriage, and from it was carried into court. There I remained all the day, and delivered an arduous judgment. In the evening, I went straight from my court to the House of Lords. There I sat until two in the morning, when some of the lords came and whispered to me, that I was expected to speak. I told them that I really could not, that I was ill, and could not stand. It was an important question, (the peace of Amiens,) I forgot my gout, and spoke for two hours. Well, the House broke up, I was carried home, and at six in the morning I prepared to go to bed. My poor left leg had just got in; when I recollected that I had important papers to examine; so I put on my clothes, and went to my study. I examined the papers; they related to the Recorders' Report, which had to be heard that day. I was again carried into court, where I had to deliver another arduous judgment. Again went to the and it was not till second night that I got into bed!" Such desperate performances do not occur every day in the life even of lord chancellors; but the judicial labours, combined with the political, are too heavy a task for the body or the mind of any man.

House of Lords, the middle of the

The Whigs are never destined to a long supremacy. They have never come into power but in some perverted state of the public feelings. There must be some terror, or some infatuation, in the public mind, before