THE CHANCELLOR. IT has been truly said by the biographer of Archbishop Williams, that "the Chancellorship of England is not a chariot for every scholar to get up and ride in. Saving this one, perhaps it would take a long day to find another. Our laws are the wisdom of many ages, consisting of a world of customs, maxims, intricate decisions, which are responsa prudentum. Tully could never have boasted, if he had lived amongst us, Si mihi vehementer occupato stomachum moverint, triduo me jurisconsultum profitebor. He is altogether deceived, that thinks he is fit for the exercise of our judicature, because he is a great rabbi in some academical authors; for this hath little or no copulation with our encyclopedia of arts and sciences. Quintillian might judge right upon the branches of oratory and philosophy, Omnes disciplinas inter se conjunctionem rerum, et communionem habere. But our law is a plant that grew alone, and is not entwined into the hedge of other professions; yet the small insight that some have into deep matters, cause them to think that it is no insuperable task for an unexpert man to be the chief arbiter in a court of equity. Bring reason and conscience with you, the good stock of nature, and the thing is done. Equitas optimo cuique notissima est, is a trivial saying, a very good man cannot be ignorant of equity; and who knows not that extreme right is extreme injury? But they that look no further than so, are shortsighted for there is no strain of wisdom more sublime, than upon all complaints to measure the just distance between law and equity; because in this high place, it is not equity at lust and pleasure that is moved for, but equity according to decrees and precedents foregoing, as the dew-beaters have trod the way for those that come after them." The four principal qualifications of a Chancellor are, as A Lawyer, A Statesman, And the Patron of Preferment. The union of all these requisites appears to be strongest in Lord Bacon. As a Lawyer, he had for a series of years been engaged in professional life. He had been Solicitor and Attorney General; had published upon different parts of the law; had deeply meditated upon the principles of equity, and had availed himself of every opportunity to assist in improvement of the law, in obedience to his favourite maxim, "that every man is a debtor to his profession, from the which, as men do of course seek countenance and profit, so ought they of duty to endeavour themselves by way of amends to be a help and ornament." As a Judge, he, from his infancy, had seen the different modes in which judicial duties were discharged, had meditated deeply and published his opinions upon the perfection of these duties. "to the suitors, to the advocates, to the officers of justice underneath them, and to the sovereign or state above them ;" and in his addresses to the judges upon their appointment or promotion, he availed himself of every opportunity to explain them. As a Statesman, he was cradled in politics; his works abound with notices of his political exertions; his advice to Sir George Villiers is an essay upon all the various duties of a statesman, with respect to religion, justice, the council table, foreign negociations, peace and war, trade, the colonies and the court; and of his parliamentary eloquence his friend Ben Jonson says, "There happened in my time one noble speaker who was full of gravity in his speaking; his language, where he could spare or pass by a jest, was nobly censorious. No man ever spake more neatly, more pressly, more weightily, or suffered less emptiness, less idleness in what he uttered. No member of his speech but consisted of his own graces. His hearers could not cough or look aside from him without loss. He commanded where he spoke, and had |