IN

CHAPTER LV.

SONS OF ZERUIA H.

N the sixteenth century, a slight knowledge of law went a long way, and clever courtiers could climb to high judicial places without the advantages of a systematic legal education. Thomas Cromwell, Wolsey's pupil in state-craft, amongst his numerous offices held the post of Chief Justice in Eyre beyond Trent; but though he achieved this professional eminence and in his upward course was much assisted by reputation for familiarity with the law, the highest school in which he is said to have studied the statutes and usages of the realm was an attorney's office. So also Hatton rose to be Chancellor, though he had neither practised law, nor taken holy orders.

Indeed throughout the earlier dynasties of English history, a large proportion of conspicuous lawyers owed their elevation less to their legal attainments than to their mastery of those arts by which courtiers are wont to benefit themselves at the expense of the industrious classes. The morality of these dexterous politicians, whether they were ecclesiastics or laymen, is illustrated by countless sarcasms, many of which have passed from the popular tongue to the repertories of old proverbs. A pungent distich assigns the pliancy of the willow, in place of the firmness of the oak, to William Paulet, Marquess of Winchester, who having held office under Henry VII., and kept the seals under Protector Somerset, died in the ninety-seventh year of his age, whilst his feeble hand still rested on the Lord Treasurer's staff, which Queen Elizabeth's kindness permitted him to retain till his last breath. Richard Rich's open violations of truth suggested a happy thought to the wits who, on the lawyer's elevation to the peerage, maintained that he ought

to take his title from Lighes* in Essex, where he possessed the rich lands of an abolished priory. Not without reference to the repeaters of this excellent witticism, some of whom represented Rich as having acted on the satirical suggestion, did the audacious Chancellor issue his famous proclamation, enjoining His Majesty's justices of the peace "to arrest all coiners and tellers abroad of vain and forged tales and lies, and to commit them to the galleys, there to row in chains during the king's pleasure." The dexterous equivocations by which Stephen Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester and Lord Chancellor to Queen Mary, habitually endeavoured to secure the advantages and escape the penalties of untruthfulness, gave rise to the remark, "My Lord of Winchester is like Hebrew, to be read backwards." Another churchman, who held the seals something more than seventy years later, and who, like most of his spiritual precursors in Chancery, greatly strengthened the vulgar belief in the dishonesty of lawyers, gave his employers a piece of knavish counsel that has passed into proverb. "Swim with the tide, and you cannot be drowned," was the advice which Dean Williams gave to the conspirators who made him Lord Keeper. To mention Nicholas Bacon amongst lawyers who have risen by artifice rather than law would be unjust, for he was an able judge and a virtuous citizen; but in this page it is worthy of observation that, in an age when honesty was fruitful of dangers, and craft was deemed necessary for the achievement of high ambitions in public life, Lord Bacon's father contrived to rise without falsehood and to retain his good fortune without dissimulation. The secret of this success appears to be that the honest man was not less moderate than veracious, and that caution saved him from the indiscretions which would have either wrought his downfall or necessitated evasion. His motto was "mediocria firma;" his favourite saying, "Let us stay a little, that we may have done the sooner." Less cautious, though not less honest, than his father, Francis Bacon raised himself to the woolsack by eloquence†

Victorian wit fabricated a somewhat similar joke concerning a far more respectable public character, when on a rumour of Her Majesty's intention to raise her obstetric physician to the peerage, it was whispered in the London clubs that "Dr. Locock was about to become a peer with the title of-The Lord Deliver Us."

+ Of that eloquence Raleigh observed, "Lord Salisbury was a great speaker

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."

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.