promittere nemo auderet "—we have HENRY Lord BROUGHAM and He
will still lend his voice to the matured plans of the Cabinet VAux seated in the most honourable place that a subject can oc- of which he is so distinguished an ornament, for the equitable set- cupy—the place which we pronounced him so admirably qualified tlement of the question between the Abolitionists and the West to fill, at a period when more intimate friends held out the subor- India proprietors. No longer in a position to act as the advocate dinate offices of Attorney-General or of Master of the Rolls as the of the one party or of the other, he will, as an upright daysman, highest to which his honest ambition could fairly aspire. stand between the two, and, laying his hands on each, endeavour to The present Ministry enters on its high duties under peculiar reconcile the demands of interest on the side of the Planter with circumstances—the voice of the King and the voice of the Coun- the demands of benevolence on the side of the Abolitionist. His try have2 been concurrent in choosing it ; and the King and the eloquence and his influence will still be exerted in the great cause of People have been equally influenced in their choice, by the same Parliamentary Reform. For the education of the labouring classes expectation of great and permanent good to be effected by it. The of England, his old and favourite object of pursuit—the correction Members of the Cabinet are bound to a liberal and an enlightened of abuses in those charitable institutions by which that education course, not so much by the solemn pledges into which they have was meant to be promoted—the repeal of injurious and the just dis- entered, as by the strong and almost unlimited confidence which tribution of necessary imposts—reduction of expenditure, abolition all parties in the state are disposed to place in them. of sinecures, removal of monopolies—wherever a bad law is to be But if this be the ease with the Ministry at large, much more is put down or a good one to be upheld—wherever an evil is to be it the case with the Lord Chancellor. There is no instance in averted from the people or a source of advantage to be opened or Modern times of an elevation marked with the same characters, augmented—we expect to have his voice and his vote given with Lord BROUGHAM had never before been in office ; he had passed the same earnestness and single-heartedness, and disregard to per- through none of the degrees which for the most part lead to the sonal consequence, as they have hitherto been. But, expecting all proud- eminence where he now stands. The Great Seal has this from Lord BROUGHAM, we would yet counsel him to reserve hitherto been held by two descriptions of men,—by such as Lord his chief and most continuous efforts for the cleansing of the ELDON, on whose surpassing knowledge of law public opinion had Augean stable of the Law. been stroM4r pronounced or by trading politicians, who. by In that fine specimen of grave eloquence, the peroration of his nicely wataing the ebbs and flows of party politics, have con- celebrated speech on Law Reform, delivered two or three years hived to -get a-head of more uncompromising and more honest ago in the Hbuse of Commons, Lord BriovoilAu observed truly candidates forpoblie lieaoaiPs. We have had learned Chancellors, and well, that higher honours awaited the Monarch who could say and political—or we *oak rather say politic Zhancellors—het belied found law dear and left it cheap—that he had found it. a never before Lord Banuataitlialktetheps, the 'exception oaf sealedbook and left it an open. letter—than were awarded to him quiry, our respectable informant has invariably found that the fires have The consideration which he disdained to accept from party or ' been kindled on the property of persons who were disliked in their from power in the House, his conduct has most liberally won neighbourhood. No force can be made to operate so powerfully, and from the great mass of his countrymen out of it. We speak the with such immediate effect, as the steady resistance of the influential plain and simple truth when we say—and that not for the first classesto acts of violence, but not so as to forbid the hope that real griev- time—that at no period of our history since the writ of the Corn- ances will be investigated and relieved. • monwealth has any one Englishman contrived to fix so many eyes Scorcn LAW APPOINTMENTS.—Our contemporaries are in error as Mr. Fox, whose popu- has been such a one, it was to Mr. JEFFREY having refused the appointment of Lord Advocate of upon him as Lord BROUGHAM has for the last few years. Per- Scotland. He will be Lord Advocate, Mr. Cockburn, Solicitor-General, haps if there and Mr. Gibson Craig, Crown Solicitor : appointments highly credit- larity was acquired in the same school; but even the considera- able to the Government, if the opinions of their professional brethren are tion in which Fox was held, was at no time so great or so un- to be relied on,—for the first has been placed at the head of the bar, as versal as that which has for many years been given to the late Dean of Faculty, by the unanimous vote of both political parties ; the member for York. Falling short, perhaps, of Mr. Fox in some of second has been long esteemed as one of the most eloquent of advo- the higher branches of eloquence, Lord BROUGHAM brings to every Cates ; and the last has had the unprecedented tribute paid to his subject to which his mind may be turned by study or by accident, character, of the Society of Writers to the Signet ordering his bust to a more enlarged knowledge of men and things, a more minute ac- be placed in their library. quaintance with books, and, with an equal respect for sound prece- dent, a more enlightened and steady attachment to general princi- ples. OF THE DAY. He has employed his learning, such as few professional scho- lars attain to—his oratory, such as the most renowned of ancient or THE LORD CHANCELLOR. of modern speakers have rarely surpassed—with a laboriousness and 4, What the country requires, is a man of large and extended views, able to compre- continuity of exertion all but miraculous, in the great cause of so- bend the vast and unequal field of Equity Law, where so many crooked ways re- quire to be as3ade straight, so many valleys to be filled up, and so many high places cial government—the extension of the freedom and augmentation to be levelled—with knowledge sufficiently profound and multifarious to tit him of the happiness of the people ; and to the gratitude of the people, for the task of its reformation, and industry and energy to carry him through it. not hastily or inconsiderately given, but slowly, deliberately, al- ine. B HOU Gil AM is perhaps the only man in the country who possesses all these requisites. Hitherto his attempts at reform in various departments have been de. most tardily yielded, but yielded at last with a zeal and a univer- sultory, partly from his position in the House of Commons, partly from his nu- sality which does as much honour to those that pay the tribute lamas avocations out of It ; but, were he placed at the head of the Chancery of England, he would not only have the power to carry on his plans, but they would as to him who receives it, Lord BROUGHAM and VAU X owes the be directly associated with the duties of his high OffiCe.".–SPECTATOR, 3rd July, Chancellorship of England. He said that he was proud of the re- 1830. presentation of Yorkshire—and well he might be, for it was an THE above quotation is from an article which, it will be seen, ap- homage paid to his principles by men who knew him only as their peared in our columns rather more than four months ago, on one of professor ; and from the same cause may he be proud of the dig- the most hazardous subjects which a public journalist can approach nity ofthe woolsack. It was not, indeed, in the direct gift of his —the plan of a new Ministry. We were forcibly attracted, as countrymen, but it has been equally derived to him from the most of our brethren were at that time, to the great defects of the general sympathies of Englishmen, operating on a Monarch really existing Cabinet ; and we ventured to point out the individuals in and truly English. ERSKINE) have we had what may be justly called a popular Chan- cellor; Former aspirants had gone along with—the greater part of them had been—the industrious jobbers of the faction to which they owed their rise. Lord BacroGaAla alone has not only been invariably opposed to the Minister of the day (with the exception of Mr. CANNING, whose liberality earned and deserved his support), but he has been as much above the task of drudging for aparty as of drudging for a Ministry. As he was not to be diverted from his onward path by any considerations of honour or emolument, still less was he capable of swerving from it by fear or favour. Like COWLEY'S hero,
" His purpose chose, he forward pressed outright, Nor turned aside for danger or delight."
:vino uoasteu luta_ Lie iouud his metropolis brick and left it marble. Lord BROUGHAM little thought at that moment, as little as did his deeply attentive hearers, that in so brief a space the Sovereign would have passed from the stage, and that he, the speaker, should be placed in a situation where he would' e free to realize the pic- ture by the exhibition of which he sought to allure another to the highest as well as the most useful of human pursuits. To the reformation of the Law, and first of the Chancery Law, we pray Lord BROUGHAM to give for the present his undiVided attention. Not that there are not among the plans which he stands pledged to support, many of great weight and importance ; but the most weighty and important may be originated by other men. In all others he may properly and adequately act the part of an assistant ; in the reform of Chancery his wisdom must de- vise the plan, and his power and influence must carry it into effect. Let him not imagine that the task is unworthy of his best endea- vours, or that even with his powers he will find the task a light one.
If Lord BROUGHAM should want (which we hardly think he can) any stimulus to the task which the greatness of the good to be effected does not supply, let him for a moment think of the hopes which the elevation of his immediate predecessor inspired, infinitely inferior as they were to those that are entertained of him- self: let him think of the disappointment that ensued, and of the utter contempt from which not all the dignity and talent of that learned Lord could shelter him, that was the consequence of the disappointment. When Lord LYNDHURST received the Great Seal, it was admitted by all men, that from the want of experience in Chancery practice, he could never hope to rival Lord ELDON in the minute accuracy of his judgments ; but he was looked on with the more favourable eyes on that account—he was considered as only the better fitted to be a reformer of the errors of Chancery, that he had not from long habit become wedded to them and the system out of which they grew. Lord BROUGHAM does not per- haps carry into Chancery a more intimate knowledge of Equity law than did Lord LYNDHURST. Yet we have not the slightest doubt of the soundness of his judgments ; nor do we fear, that, like the two last Chancellors, he will change the essence of justice by the tardiness with which he administers it. Much less do we fear that he will lack in any degree the dignity of speech or bearing which his elevated station requires. It would indeed be curious, if this much-talked-of quality, which is possessed of hereditary right by the most simple of God's creatures that happen to be born heir to a coronet, should be unattainable by one that pos- sesses a mind of surpassing capacity, exercised for thirty years in the close and successful study of books and men. Lord BROUGHAM goes into a new court, but a few weeks will enable him to master its necessary technicalities ; he appears in •a new department of the Legislature, but a few days will make him conversant with its forms—it is concerning his old, not his new character, that we are anxious. It is not Lord BROUGHAM, the head of the Equity Coati—not Lord BROUGHAM, the head of the House of Peers—but Lord BROUGHAM, the legal and political re- former, who awakens our hopes, and calls forth our admonition. His reputation, his very existence as a public man, is staked on reform—by which we mean systematic improvement—improve- ment not in one department, but in all. If he pursue it in power as he has done out of power—honestly, heartily, consistently—he may fail ; but his failure will be unaccompanied by reproach, nor will it be followed by weakness.
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