rather than by legal knowledge or by any of his higher but less showy powers; and the machinations of his enemies were so disastrously successful, that in spite of his moral excellence and priceless services, he has too generally been ranked with slippery talkers, whilst his misapprehended career has been used to illustrate the proverbial cleverness and knavery of his profession.

But while so much is said concerning the unscrupulous ambition of political lawyers, it may not be forgotten that to professional lawyers more than to men of any other class we are indebted for the preservation-ay, for the creation of our constitutional liberties. Such lawyers as Coke and St. John, Bradshaw and Maynard, encouraged and instructed Englishmen to resist the encroachments of the Stuarts. Even John, Lord Colepepper, the cavalier Master of the Rolls, must be placed on the roll of those lawyers who fearlessly denounced the malpractices of Charles I.'s government. "One grievance more, which compriseth many," he exclaimed in the House of Commons at the opening of the Long Parliament; "it is a nest of wasps, or swarms of vermin, which have overcrept the land; I mean the monopolies and polers of the people. These, like the frogs of Egypt, have gotten possession of our dwellings, and we scarce have a room free from them. They sup in our cup. They dip in our dish. They sit by our fire. We find them in the dye-vat, wash-bowl, and powdering-tub. They share with the butler in his box. They have marked us and sealed us from head to foot. Mr. Speaker, they will not bate us a pin. We may not buy our own cloaths without their brokage. These are the leeches that have sucked the commonwealth so hard that it is almost become hectical." To such lawyers as Whitelock and Glyn the wisdom and success of Cromwell's vigorous rule may in some measure be attributed. And in the list of services rendered to the English legislature by "barristers in the House of Commons," notice should be taken of Sir Edward Coke's distinct and earnest advocacy of free-trade principles, more than a century before the birth of Adam Smith, and more than two hundred years before Richard Cobden first but a bad writer, and my Lord Northampton was a great writer but a bad speaker, while Lord Bacon was equally excellent in speaking and writing."

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raised his voice against the bread-tax. When it was said that reasons of state" were opposed to a bill for allowing "the sale of Welsh cloths and cottons in and through the kingdom of England," Sir Edward replied, "Reasons of state is often used as a trick to put us out of the right way; for when a man can give no higher reason for a thing, then he flyeth to a higher strain, and saith it is a reason of state. Freedom of trade is the life of trade; and all monopolies and restrictions do overthrow trade." So also in language that might have come two centuries later from corn-law repealers, he spoke against a bill "to prohibit the importation of corn for the protection of tillage." Anticipating our most admired writers on political science, Sir Edward, as early as 1621, exclaimed, "If we bar the importation of corn when it aboundeth, we shall not have it imported when we lack it. I never yet heard that a bill was preferred in parliament against the importation of corn, and I love to follow ancient precedents. I think this bill truly speaks Dutch, and is for the benefit of the Low Countrymen." And yet so great are the difficulties in the way of those who would preserve society from error, or enlighten the ignorant, our grandfathers loudly extolled the wisdom of Lord Kenyon who had the presumption to sneer at Adam Smith's instructions, and at a time "when in an evil hour" (as his lordship expressed it) all the statutes against forestalling had been repealed, could venture to punish with heavy fines and imprisonment a merchant whose wrong-doing consisted in buying corn and selling it at an increased price on the same day. James I.'s Chief Justice proposed to anticipate the consequences of bad harvests at home by drawing to our shores a portion of the fruits of superabundant harvests in foreign lands; but George III.'s Chief Justice was so ignorant and unobservant that he sought to remedy a partial famine by impoverishing honest dealers in human food. "The law has not been disputed," he observed, in his judgment in the case of Mr. Rusby the corn merchant, who was found guilty of misdemeanour at common law, because wilfully, and with selfish design, he had sold at an advanced price certain quarters of oats which he had bought on the same day; "for though in an evil hour all the statutes which had been existing were at one blow repealed,

yet, thank God, the provisions of the common law were not destroyed. The common law, though not to be found in the written records of the nation, yet has been long well known. It is coeval with society itself, and was formed from time to time by the wisdom of mankind. Even amongst the laws of the Saxons are to be found many wise provisions against forestalling and offences of this kind; and those laws laid the foundation of our common law. Speculation has said that the fear of such an offence is ridiculous; and a very learned mana good writer-has said, 'You may as well fear witchcraft.' I wish Dr. Adam Smith had lived to hear the evidence of to-day, and then he would have seen whether such an offence exists, and whether it is to be dreaded. If he had been told that cattle and corn were brought to market, and there bought by a man whose purse happened to be longer than his neighbour's, so that the poor man who walks the streets and earns his daily bread by his daily labour could get none but through his hands, and at the price which he chooses to demand; that it had been raised 3d., 6d., 9d., 18., 2s. and more a quarter on the same day, would he have said there is no danger from such an offence?" Referring to the time when the Chief Justice of England punished Mr. Rusby with a heavy fine and a long term of imprisonment, Sydney Smith wrote, "This absurdity of attributing the high price of corn to the combination of farmers and middle-men was the common nonsense talked in the days of my youth. I remember when ten judges out of twelve laid down this doctrine in their charges to the various grand juries on their circuits."

Notwithstanding the greatness of the services rendered by legal gownsmen to the Long Parliament, both within the house and on hard-fought fields, professional lawyers were even less popular during the Commonwealth than they had head in former times. The axe had scarcely severed Charles's been from his body when the Rump began to grumble against the sons of Zeruiah.

CHAPTER LVI.

HONOURS GAINED AND HONOUR LOST.

WHILST the dignity and influence of their order have

invariably suffered, individual lawyers have no less invariably reaped advantage from the temper and policy of those of our sovereigns who have signalized themselves by encroachments on the rights of the people, or by despotic intolerance. This remark is equally applicable to the crown lawyers who grew rich under the Stuarts, and to the crown lawyers who battened on ministerial prosecutions in the reign of George III. Upon the whole the popular despotism of Cromwell had a beneficial effect on the morality and social repute of barristers and judges; but there can be no doubt that the Protector's system did not favour the hopes of ambitious gownsmen. On the other hand, the unpopular tyrannies of the Jameses and the Charleses lowered the tone and status of the law, notwithstanding the profuseness with which honours and public money were squandered on a few obsequious judges and counsel. The inability of titles and pensions to win respect for an order which systematically provokes contempt, is well illustrated by the position of the bench and the bar throughout the seventeenth century. At first sight a superficial student might think that the Stuarts were good friends to the lawyers, and greatly raised the prestige of their profession; and unquestionably such a statement of the case would find an appearance of support from certain circumstances.

Under James I. the Attorney General won permission* to

* Francis Bacon was permitted to sit in the House of Commons, whilst he was Attorney Generai; but since 1614, the right of the Attorney to keep his seat has been questioned in debate. In 1620, 1625, and 1640 new writs were ordered because the office of Attorney General had been conferred on a member of the house. In

sit in parliament, from which he had hitherto been excluded on the ground that he was an assistant of the House of Peers. Under Charles II. lawyers gained such influence in the Commons that, of the seven speakers who presided in the lower house during his reign, six were of their order.* Had Elizabeth lived three lustres longer, Egerton would have gone to the grave like Puckering, Hatton, Bromley, and Nicholas Bacon, without the honours of the peerage; but James placed a coronet on his head, and by the subsequent elevation of Bacon to the hereditary nobility, contributed greatly to a custom which has been a chief source of honour to the law. Before the accession of James I., lay-keepers of the royal conscience had been created peers; and since the Revolution of 1688, a lawyer of decent fame, although of humble parts, has held the seals and missed his patent of nobility: but notwithstanding these earlier precedents and this later departure from the rule, the four Stuart kings may be said to have fixed the usage, in accordance with which the Lord Chancellors are now invariably made actual members of the chamber over which they preside by virtue of their office. The earlier half of the eighteenth century had indeed passed away before it was regarded as a matter of course that the Lord Chancellor should receive a peerage upon his appointment to the woolsack, but -Lord Keeper Sir Nathan Wright and certain lords commissioners excepted-no person entrusted with the seals since the deposition of James II. has failed to obtain a patent of nobility. Nor were the Stuarts content with raising holders of the Great Seal to the peerage. James I. made Sir Henry

1674 Francis North's right to continue in his seat for King's Lynn was made a subject of irregular discussion. Roger says, "The same good friends began to discourse of his incapacity of sitting as a member of that house, there being an order, as they said, against it, whereof the reason was that the Attorney is of course an assistant of the House of Peers." The discourses, however, did not take the form of a debate followed by a division; and since 1674 no attempt seems to have been made within the house to exclude the Attorney General.

The exception was Sir Edward Seymour. Mr. Foss observes with regard to the legal speakers: "When elected to that honourable office they desisted from practising; and so jealous was the house of their privileges, that on Sir Edward Turnour asking their opinion, in 1668, whether, the adjournment being a long one, he ought to be attended by the mace and forbear to practise, it was declared that the practice must be the same as in shorter adjournments."-Foss's Judges of England.