BOOKS. • COCKBITRE'S MEMORIALS OP HIS TIME. * Tan late Lord

Cockburn, of the Scottish Bench, was born at Edinburgh in 1779, and died in 1854. His family was connected both with the land and the law ; his father was a Laird of Cock- pen as well as a Baron of the Scotch Exchequer ; the first Lord Melville was his uncle. Young Henry Cockburn was sent to the High School in 1787, and to the College of Edinburgh in 1793; acquiring little at either seminary, so far as the learned languages went, and, like Gibbon at Oxford, rather receiving a distaste for study. The lectures of Finlayson Professor of Logic and Du- geld Stewart, Professor of Moral Philosophy, first stimulated him, less by what they actually taught, than, in Finlayson's case, by awakening the mind, and in Stewart's, by exciting a love of lite- rature and virtue. His success at the bar was decisive ; but, being a stanch Whig in days when Liberalism implied proscrip- tion, he did not attain the official honours of the profession tall the accession of Earl Grey to the Premiership, in 1830, when he was appointed Solicitor-General, Jeffrey being Lord-Advocate ; and in 1834 he was raised to the bench.

Henry Cockburn, however, was something more than a successful lawyer, and a consistently active politician in days when consist- ency to party meant adherence to principles. He had a taste for literature, and, what in those days was much rarer, for art and ar- chaeology. He was a contributor to the Edinburgh Review, and mixed familiarly with that galaxy of literary and scientific cele- brities which threw a lustre over Edinburgh during the first part of the present century ; while youthful memory, or observation if somewhat distant from its objects, acquainted him with the stronger and tougher characters of a sterner time. His profession gave him that definite conception and clear expression (within the limits of a man's natural capacity) which Chesterfield notes as a characteristic of lawyers, and he had the activity which Chaucer ascribes to his Sergeant. These things, however, are common to a class. Henry Cockburn possessed a keen perception of character, noting the slightest qualities of mind, as well as the more ex- ternal traits of manners or costume that indicate mind. He looked upon passing life with discerning eyes, and correctly in- ferred approaching change from apparently slight causes. His style, copious in the accumulation of particulars necessary to make out the reality he is describing, is simple, natural, and easy, with sufficient refinement and considerable variety of structure. It has also a touch of the quietest satire—so quiet that it may not be perceptible to every reader. These Memorials of His Time were begun in 1821, in the vigour of his life, and were, with the exception of some revisions and ad- ditions, completed in 1830. In form and to some extent in sub- stance they are an autobiography.; entering rather fully into his school and college days, and noticing in after life any remarkable event that occurred to himself. The autobiography is also a framework for observations on and descriptions of public men, political events, public opinion in Scotland from the bad times of the French Revolution fill the approaching triumph of Reform, Scottish manners during the same period, and Edinburgh topo- graphy—for the "romantic town" has proportionately grown as much as London during the same period of time. The minuteness of the topographical accounts may sometimes appear rather local to those who are unacquainted with Edinburgh, or who do not see in it a type of the urban growth which has during the last seventy years especially distinguished. the Anglo-Saxon race in Great Bri- tain, America, and Australia. The same remark may apply to the Edinburgh politics, and occasionally to the Edinburgh characters ; but the last especially are redeemed from provincialism by the obvious truth and naturalness of the likeness.

It is, indeed, mainly as a portrait gallery of men and manners that the great charm of this book consists, though its value to the future social and political historian will be considerable. When the excesses of the French Revolution mad their ill-judged patronage by the Whigs had thoroughly frightened the majority of the respectable classes, Opposition politics exposed their pro- fessors to disrepute in England, and often to social persecution. Still, a cautious man was safe from actual proceedings; and even if he had imprudently committed himself, the Jury was a palladium, and public opinion had an influence upon the Judges and the Crown. In some sort Dublin might be worse than Edinburgh, but there was little chance for a man in Scotland whom the authorities determined to put down : for the Judge selected the Jury ; the prisoner had no right of challenge ; the punishment of transportation for "sedition"—meaning any- thing displeasing to authority—was ready to remove a man ; and the Judges cared nothing for public opinion, which in fact was * Memorials of his Tints. By Henry Cockburn. Published by Black, Edin- burgh.

nonexistent. This is one of several pictures of the state of Scot- land at the close of the last century ; in which piece merit enough is attributed to the author's friends the Whig lawyers,—an amiable weakness which Harry displays throughout his Memorials.

" A country gentleman with any public principle except devotion to Henry Dundas was viewed as a wonder, or rather as a monster. This was the creed also of almost all our merchants, all our removeable office-holders, and all our public corporations. So that, literally, everything depended on a few lawyers ; a class to which, in modern times Scotland owes a debt of

gratitude which does not admit of being exaggerated. Nor have any men, since our revolution, been obliged to exercise patriotism at greater personal risk or sacrifice. Could there have been the slightest doubt of their purity or courage, public spirit must have been extinguished in Scotland. The real strength of their party lay in their being right, and in the tendency of their objects to attract men of ability and principle.

"With the people put down, and the Whigs powerless, Government was the master of nearly every individual in Scotland, but especially in Edin- burgh, which was the chief seat of its influence. The infidelity of the French gave it almost all the pious; their atrocities all the timid ; rapidly increasing taxation and establishments all the venal; the higher and middle ranks were at its command, and the people at its feet. The pulpit, the bench, the bar, the colleges, the Parliamentary electors, the press, the ma- gistracies, the local institutions, were so completely at the service of the party in power, that the idea of independence, besides being monstrous and absurd, was suppressed by a feeling of conscious ingratitude. And in addi- tion to all the ordinary sources of Government influence, Henry Dundas, an Edinburgh man, and well calculated by talent and manners to make despot- ism popular, was the absolute dictator of Scotland, and had the means of rewarding submission, and of suppressing opposition, beyond what were ever exercised in modern times by one person, in any portion of the empire.

"The true state of things, and its effects, may be better seen in a few specific facts, than in any general description.

As to our institutions—there was no popular representation ; all Town- Councils elected themselves • the Established Church had no visible rival ; persons were sent to the criminal courts as jurymen very nearly according to the discretion of the Sheriff of their county; and after they got there, those who were to try the prosecution were picked for that duty by the pre- siding Judge, unchecked by any peremptory challenge. In other words, WO had no free political institutions whatever. "The consequences of this were exactly what might have been expected, and all resolved into universal prostration. The Town-Councils who elected the Burgh Members of Parliament, and the 1500 or 2000 Freeholders who elected the County Members, formed so small a body, that a majority, and in- deed-the whole of them, were quite easily held by the Government strings ; especially as the burgh electors were generally dealt with on a principle which admitted of considerable economy. Except at Edinburgh, there was only one Member for what was termed a district of four or five burghs. Each town- council elected a delegate ; and these four or five delegates elected the Mem- ber; and instead of bribing the Town-Councils, the established practice was to bribe only the delegates' or indeed only one of them if this could secure the inajority. Not that the Councils were left unrefreshed, but that the hooks with the best baits were set for the most effective fishes. There was no free, and consequently no discussing press. For a short time, two newspapers, the Scots Chronicle and the Gazetteer, raved stupidly and vulgarly, and as if their real object had been to cast discredit on the cause they professed to espouse. The only other newspapers, so far as I recollect, were the still surviving adedontan Mercury, the Courant, and the Advertiser; and the only other periodical publication was the doited Scots Magazine. This magazine and these three newspapers actually formed the whole regular produce of the Edinburgh periodical press. Nor was the absence of a free public press compensated by any freedom of public speech. Public political meetings could not arise, for the elements did not exist. I doubt if there was one during the twenty-five years that succeeded the year 1795. Nothing was viewed with such horror as any political congregation not friendly to existing power. No one could have taken a part in the business without making up hmind to be a doomed man. No prudence could protect against the false- hood or inaccuracy of spies ; and a first conviction of sedition by a judge- picked jury was followed by fourteen years' transportation. As a body to be deferred to, no public existed."

Preeminent in that bad age was Justice-Clerk Maequeen of Brax- field—the Thurlow, or, as the memorialist says in reference to the political trials of 1793-'94, "the Jeffreys of Scotland." Yet there was a courage, humour, and naturalness about the man, which inspired a kind of admiration. Lord Cockbium's portrait of him is one of his most elaborate delineations.

• "Strong-built and dark, with rough eyebrows, powerful eyes, threaten- ing lips, and a low growling voice, he was like a formidable blacksmith. His accent and his dialect were exaggerated Scotch ; his language, like his thoughts, short, strong, and conclusive.

"Our commercial jurisprudence was only rising when he was sinking ; and, being no reader, he was too old both in life and in habit to master it familiarly ; though even here he was inferior to no Scotch lawyer of his time except Day Campbell the Lord President. But within the range of the feudal and the civif branches, and in every matter depending on natural ability and practical sense, he was very great; and his power arose more from the force of his reasoning and his vigorous application of principle, than from either the extent or the accuracy of his learning. I have heard good observers describe with admiration how, having worked out a prin- ciple, he followed it in its application, fearlessly and triumphantly, dashing all unworthy obstructions aside, and pushed on to his result with the vigour and disdain of a consummate athlete. And he had a colloquial way of ar- guing, in the form of question and answer, which, done in his clear abrupt style, imparted a dramatic directness and vivacity to the scene.

" With this intellectual force as applied to law, his merits, I fear, cease. Illiterate and without any taste for refined enjoyment, strength of under- standing, which gave him power without cultivation, only encouraged him to a more contemptuous disdain of all natures less coarse than his own. Despising the growing improvement of manners, he shocked the feeling' even of an age which with more of the formality had far less of the sub- stance of decorum than our own. Thousands of his sayings have been pre-

served, and the staple of them is indecency which he succeeded in making many people enjoy or at least endure, by hearty laughter, energy of manner, and rough humour. Almost the only story of him I ever heard that had some fun in it without immodesty, was when a butler gave up his place be- cause his Lordship's wife was always scolding him: Lord !' he exclaimed,

ye've little to complain 0'; ye may be thankfn' ye're no married to her.'

"This union of talent with a passion for rude predomination exercised in a very discretionary. court, tended to form a formidable anddangerous judicial character. This appeared too often in ordinary cases ; but all stains on his administration of the common business of his court disappear in the indelible iniquity- of the political trials of 1793 and 1794. In these he was the Jeffreys of Scotland. He as the head of the Court, and the only very powerful man it contained, was the real director of its proceedings. The reports make his abuse of the judgment-seat bad enough ; but his miscon- duct was not so fully disclosed in formal decisions and charges, as it trans- pired in casual remarks and general manner. Let them bring me prison- ers, and I'll find them law' used to be openly stated as his suggestion, when an intended political prosecution was marred by anticipated diffienl- ties. If innocent of this atrocious sentiment, he was scandalously ill-used by his friends, by whom I repeatedly heard it ascribed to him at the time, and who instead of denying it, spoke of it as a thing understood, and rather admired it as worthy of the man and of the times. Mr. Homer, (the father of Francis,) who was one of the jurors in Muir's case, told one that when he was passing, as was often done then behind the bench to get into the box, Brasfield, who knew him, whispered, Come awa, Minder Homer, come awa, and help us to hang site o' thee daamned scoondreles' [Hang was his phrase for all kinds of punishment.] The reporter of Gerald's ease could not venture to make the prisoner say more than that Christianity was an innovation.' But the full truth is, that in stating this view he added, that all great men had been reformers' even our Saviour himself.' Muckle he made o' that,' chuckled Brasfield in an under-voice,. he was henget.' Before Hume's Commentaries had made our criminal record in- telligible, the forms and precedents were a mystery understood by the in- itiated alone and by nobody so much as by Mr. Joseph Norris, the ancient clerk. Brasx'field used to quash anticipated doubts by saying, Hoot! just gie me Josie Norrie and a gude jurv, an' I'll doo for the fallow.' He died in 1799, in his seventy-eighth year."

Something as regards mode may be ascribed to Brasfield's age ; but not much, unless it be said that the less influence of social opinion in the last century enabled every man to show like what he was. Twenty years after Brasfield's death, died Adam Rolland, an advocate who must have been trained in much the same school as the judge. He was said to have been the original of Scott's Pleydell ; but this seems impossible—there is not a trait in common.

"His dresses, which were changed at least twice every day, were always of the same old beau cut; the vicissitudes of fashion being contemptible in the sight of a person who had made up his own mind as to the perfection of a gentleman's outward covering. The favourite hues were black and mul- berry ; the stab velvet, fine kerseymere, and satin. When all got up, no artificial rose could be brighter, or stiffer. He was like one of the creatures come to life again in a collection of dried butterflies. I think I see him. There he moves a few yards backwards and forwards in front of his house in Queen Street; crisp in his mulberry-coloured kerseymere coat, single- breasted ; a waistcoat of the same, with large old-fashioned pockets ; black satin breeches, with blue steel buttons; bright morocco shoes, with silver or blue steel buckles ; white or Quaker grey silk stockings ; a copious frill and ruffles ; a dark brown, gold-headed, slim cane or a slender green silk um- brella; everything pure and increased. The countenance befitted the garb ; for the blue eyes were nearly motionless, and the cheeks, especially when slightly touched by vermilion, as clear and air ruddy as a wax doll's - and they were neatly flanked by two delicately pomatumed and powderej side-curls, from belund which there flowed, or rather stuck out, a thin pig- tail in a shining black riband. And there he moves slowly and nicely, picking his steps as if a stain would kill him, and looking timidly but some- what slyly from side to side, as if conscious that he was an object, and smiling in self-satisfaction. The whole figure and manner suggested the idea of a costly brittle toy, new out of its box. It trembled in company, and shuddered at the vicinity of a petticoat. But when well set, as I often saw him, with not above two or three old friends, he could be correctly merry, and had no objection whatever to a quiet bottle of good claret. But a stranger,. or a word out of joint, made him dumb and wretched. "It is difficult to account for his practice' for though industrious, ho- nourable, kind, and timidly judicious, he had slender talents, and no force, and the age in which he acted was one in which I should have thought that neither bar nor bench would have had any patience with gilded filigree. I wonder Braxfield did not murder him by a single grunt. However, I sup- pose that there must have been something more in him than I am aware of else he could not have been the oracle that some people held him. When I was about to begin my legal studies I was reckoned a singularly fortunate youth, because he had condescended to intimate that he would advise me how to conduct them. I was therefore ordered to wait upon him."

In strange contrast with the manners and character of Rolland, let us look at the age which must have seen his "youthful prime," and that in which he was bred was no better. The writer is speaking of 1780-'90.

"Yet, in some respects, there was far more coarseness in the formal age than in the free one. Two vices especially, which have been long banished from all respectable society, were very prevalent, if not universal, among the whole upper ranks—swearing and drunkenness. Nothing was more common than for gentlemen who had dined with ladies, and meant to rejoin them, to get drunk. To get drunk in a tavern, seemed to be considered as a natural if not an intended consequence of going to one. Swearing was thought the right and the mark of a gentleman. And, tried by this test, nobody, who had not seen them could now be made to believe how many gentlemen there were. Not that simple were worse-tempered then than now. They were only coarser in their manners, and had got into a bad style of admonition and dissent. And the evil provoked its own continuance - because nobody who was blamed cared for the censure, or understood that it was serious, unless it was clothed in execration; and any intensity even of kindness or of logic, that was not embodied in solid commutation, evaporated, and was supposed to have been meant to evapo- rate, in the very uttering. The naval chaplain justified his cursing the sailors, because it made them listen to him ; and Brasfield apologized to a lady whom he damned at whist for bad play, by declaring that he had mis- taken her for his wife. This odious practice was applied with particular offensiveness by those in authority towards their inferiors. In the army it was universal by officers towards soldiers ; and far more frequent than is now credible by masters towards servants."

It is the custom of all ages to look too exclusively to their own day, and to vituperate whatever differs from them. Sometimes people of a philanthropical turn overlook what is immediately tin- der their eyes to denounce a similar abuse at a distance. The following picture of the late abolition of slavery in Great Britain will be new to many.; yet some years before this event strenuous efforts were making favour of the Negroes. " An exposition of things not merely true, but proveable, and yet incre- dible, would be a very curious work. And few countries could supply bet- ter materials for it than Scotland, where modern changes have been so nu- merous and so striking. "For example there are few people who now know that so recently as 1799 there were ;laves in this country. Twenty-five years before, that is, in 1775, there must have been thousands of them ; for this was then the condition of all our colliers and salters. They were literally slaves. They could not be killed nor directly tortured; but they belonged, like the serfs of an older time, to their respective worke7 with which they were sold as a part of the gearing. With a few very rigid exceptions, the condition of the bead_of the family was the condition of the whole house. For though a child, if never entered with the work, was free, yet entering was its natural and rdinest certain destination ; for its doing so was valuable to its father, and its getting into any other employment in the neighbourhood was re- sisted by the owner. So that wives, daughters, and sons went on from generation to generation under the system which was the family doom. Of course it was the interest of a wise master to use them well, as it was to use his other cattle well. But, as usual, the human animal had the worst of it. It had rights, and could provoke by alluding to them. It could alarm and mutiny. It could not be slain, but it had no protection against fits of ty- ranny or anger. We do not now know much of their exact personal or de- mesne condition. But we know what their work makes them, even -when they are free, and within the jealous benevolence of a softer age. We know that they formed a separate and avoided tribe, as to a great extent they still do, with a language and habits of their own. And we know what slavery even in its best form is, and does. The Completeness of their 4egradation is disclosed by one public fact. The statute passed in 1701, which has been extolled as the Scotch Habeas Corpus Act, proceeds On the preamble that Our Sovereign Lord,. considering it is the interest of all his good subjects that the liberty. of them persons be duly secured.' Yet, while mtroducing regulations against wrongous imprisonment, and undue delays in trials,' the statute contains these words, And sicklike it is hereby provided and declared that this present act is noways to be extended. to colliers or salters.' That is, being slaves, they had no personal liberty to protect. * • * "The first link of their chain was broken in 1775, by tlse 15th act of George Third, chap. 28. It sets out on the preamble, that 'many colliers and :alters are in a state of .slavery and bondage.' It emancipates future enes,entirely,—that is—those who after the 1st of July 1775shedl begin to work as colliers and salters.' But the existing ones were only liberated gradually; those under twenty-one in seven years ; those between twenty- one and thirty-five in ten years. The liberation of the father was declared to liberate his family And the freed were put under the act 1701. But this measure, though effective in checking new slavery, was made very nearly useless in its application to the existing slaves by one of its condi- tions. Instead of becoming free by mere lapse of time, no slave obtained his liberty unless he instituted a legal proceeding in the Sheriff Court, and incurred all the cost, delay, and trouble of a lawsuit ; his capacity to do which was extinguished by the invariable system of masters always having their workmen in their debt. The result -was that, in general, the existing slave was only liberated by death. "But this last link was broken in June 1799, by the 39th Qeorge Third, plias>, 56, which enacted, that from and after its date all the eolliers in Scotland who were bound colliers at the passing- of the 15th George Third, chap. 28, shall befree from their servitude.' This annihilated the relic. "These two statutes seem to have been neither the effect nor the cause of any public excitement. I do not see either of them even mentioned in the Sots Magazine. People cared nothing about colliers on their own account, and the taste for improving the lower orders had not then begun to dawn."

Pointed stories of celebrated men fly about, and are repeated, especially if they furnish an illustration of anything, rill it is hopeless to establish the truth. Cockburn -was counsel in Burke's case, defending his paramour ; and this story was not only told but printed of him, apparently to illustrate the morality of the bar.

"The evidence against Burke was far too clear to be shaken by even Monereiff's energy and talent ; but the woman who had been assigned to my care escaped, because- there were some material doubts in her favour. It is stated, in eel. 44 page 101 of the Quarterly Review, that at the mo- ment I was addressing the Jury I whispered, 'Infernal hag the gudge- ons swallow it !' And I suppose that a credulous Quaker, whose work (on the principles of morality) was reviewed in that article, believes this, and, as I understand, comments upon it as a piece of professional fraud. It is utterly untrue. No one could be more honestly convinced of anything than I was, and am, that there was not sufficient legal evidence to warrant a conviction of Helen Macdougal. Therefore, no such expressions or senti- ment could be uttered. At any rate, none such, and none of that tendency, were uttered."

This notice could be extended by " characters " with nicer and more critical discrimination than any quoted,—as Dugald Stewart, Playfair, Alison the preacher ; as well as by many sketches of manners. The growth of freedom of opinion, which, like the im- perceptible flowing of the tide, cannot beseen, but must be noted by marks, could also be chronicled in successive slight but fre- quent events. These and some similar topics of leas moment must be sought in the volume; which we can heartily recom- mend. It has the attraction of gossip and anecdote with the value of biography and history.