be laid before his Majesty," and also "that they be carried up by the whole house," the name of Viscount Melville was struck from the list of privy-councillors. On the 11th of June Viscount Melville himself, having been admitted within the body of the house, entered into an elaborate defence; but on his retiring, Mr. Whitbread, after an able speech, moved "That Henry Lord Viscount Melville be impeached for high crimes and misdemeanors." This proposition was baffled by various intervening debates till the 25th, when it was finally carried by a majority of one hundred and sixtysix against one hundred and forty-three. On the 26th Mr. Whitbread moved that the house should nominate twenty-one members to prepare and manage the articles, and was himself placed at the head of this list as manager, on the nomination of Lord Temple.

On the 4th of July Mr. Whitbread brought up the report of this committee, which was followed by eight articles of impeachment. The trial accordingly commenced in Westminster-hall on Tuesday, April 29th, 1806. Mr. Whitbread, as soon as the charges and answer had been read, rose and opened the accusations in a speech of great power. The trial then proceeded through fourteen days, and on the fifteenth day Mr. Whitbread closed the proceedings by a rejoinder to the counsel for Lord Melville. On the sixteenth and last day Lord Erskine pronounced a verdict of acquittal.

To have obtained a majority in the House of Commons against Pitt on this subject, was considered such a triumph for Whitbread, that he rose greatly in public estimation, which was not materially diminished by his not obtaining a verdict from the House of Lords.

Whitbread declined to accept any office from the Fox ministry in 1806, as he thought it would shackle his senatorial independence: and he is one of the few violent Opposition statesmen to whom the desire of place for themselves cannot be imputed as having acted as an incentive to their efforts to eject others from it.

Whitbread was an energetic and unremitting opponent of the slave trade; he was zealous in whatever concerned the diffusion of knowledge and the extension of education, and in every measure connected with the amelioration of the condition of the people, the mitigation of the penal laws, and the management of the poor. His thorough and well-known honesty, his fearlessness of incurring dislikes or of making enemies by denouncing what he thought to be wrong, and his steady resolution in following out a purpose, combined to give him weight in the House, and procured for him

a degree of respect and influence which his mere oratorical powers could scarcely have acquired for him; for though always fluent, and frequently forcible, he was deficient in all the arts and graces of elocution. Byron, who was a somewhat fastidious judge of eloquence, says, in a passage in his letters in which he reviews the various great speakers whom he had heard, "Whitbread was the Demosthenes of bad taste and vulgar vehemence, but strong and English."

He attended with honourable regularity to the large and flourishing business which his father had left to him, and which he had the good sense not to be ashamed to carry on. private life was most exemplary.

His

A few years before his death he was induced, partly from motives of friendship and partly from a taste for the drama, to undertake to re-organise the chaos of the Drury-lane property, and to rebuild the theatre, which had been two seasons in ruins. The rogueries and annoyances which he encountered in theatrical affairs are said to have preyed much on his mind, and to have aggravated a natural tendency to disease of the brain. He was in vain recommended by his physicians to withdraw for a time from every kind of business and avoid all mental exertion. He persevered in attempting to fulfil his accustomed round of active duties, and the consciousness of his growing incapacity aggravated the disease which caused it. At length the intellect totally failed, and he died by his own hand on the 6th of July, 1815. The diseased state of the brain, as it appeared on a post mortem examination, showed conclusively that he must have been deprived of reason at the time when this melancholy act was committed.

Few men have been so universally regretted after death, by their political adversaries as well as by their friends, as was Whitbread. Out of many eulogiums that were pronounced on him in Parliament at the time of the motion being made for a new writ for the place which he had represented, that of Mr. Wilberforce deserves most respect.

"Mr. Wilberforce wished to add his testimony to the excellent qualities of the lamented individual whose death had rendered the present motion necessary; and, in doing so, he could with truth declare that he was only one of many thousands, rich as well as poor, by whom his character had been highly estimated. Well had it been termed by the noble marquis, 'a truly English character.'

Even its defects, trifling as they were,-and what character was altogether without defects?-were those which belonged to the English character. Never had there existed a more complete Englishman. All who knew him must recollect the indefatigable earnestness and perseverance with which, during his life, he directed his talents and the whole of his time to the public interest; and although he, Mr. W., differed from him on many occasions, yet he always did full justice to his public spirit and love of his country. For himself, he could never forget the important assistance which he derived from his zeal and ability in the great cause which he had so long advocated in that house. On every occasion, indeed, in which the condition of human beings was concerned,-and the lower their state, the stronger their recommendation to his favour,-no one was more anxious to apply his great powers to increase the happiness of mankind." (Cunningham's British Biography.)

SIR JAMES MANSFIELD.

THIS able and upright judge was educated on the foundation at Eton, and succeeded to a scholarship at King's in 1750. He applied himself, on leaving Cambridge, to the study of the law, and obtained great eminence in that profession. He attained, in succession, the rank of King's Counsel, and that of SolicitorGeneral, and had the distinction of being one of the representatives in Parliament of the university of Cambridge.

In Easter Term, 1804, he was appointed Lord Chief Justice of the Court of Common Pleas, to succeed Lord Alvanley, who had died on the spring circuit. The new Chief Justice was knighted on his appointment.

Sir James Mansfield presided in the Court of Common Pleas until Hilary vacation, 1814. During this period he earned, and retained, the respect both of the profession and the public in general. His decisions, as they are preserved in the reports of Bosanquet and Pullen, and those of Taunton, are much esteemed for the clearness and the fulness with which they frequently expound the principles, and define the practice, of our law.

Sir James Mansfield on his retirement was succeeded by another Etonian and King's-man.

SIR VICARY GIBBS.

THIS eminent lawyer was born at Exeter in 1750. He availed himself fully of the advantages which Eton gave him in acquiring a sound classical education, and when he went to King's he gained an university reputation for scholarship. After he had taken his B.A. degree he left Cambridge for London, and applied to the study of the law with an union of assiduity and ability such as is not often exhibited. He had the stimulant arising from necessity; and the Res angusta domi, was to him the motive for steady and systematic industry; and not, as it too often proves, only an incitement to occasional fits of violent intellectual exertion, mingled with long pauses of despairing inactivity, or wild ebullitions of reckless folly. His professional biographer says of Gibbs, "During the three years of his pupilage he carefully abstained from all clubs, either of a literary or social character, was a stranger to the west-end and to the parks, and in general only emerged from his chamber once in the day to eat, in haste and alone, his half-commons of minced veal, and then earth himself again in the midst of precedents and reports."

He made himself an excellent lawyer, and instead of being called to the bar as soon as he kept his full number of terms at Lincoln's Inn, he remained for nearly ten years more in laborious obscurity as a Special Pleader.

This most abstruse, complicated, and dry part of our law exactly suited Gibbs. I once heard the question whether it was probable that a certain young student would like Special Pleading, answered by the grim forensic veteran, to whom it was addressed, with the cross-interrogatory-" Like it, Sir? Can he eat sawdust without butter?"

If ever there was a man gifted with such peculiar taste, it was certainly Vicary Gibbs; and his was also a mind that could appreciate and adapt itself to the strict and logical order, and the minute and subtle analysis, and the merciless accuracy, which are the advantageous characteristics of our pleading system. Gibbs acquired large practice as a pleader, and when at length he was called to the bar in 1784, he had at once an extensive connexion

of clients, and soon was looked on in the profession as one of the soundest lawyers and most useful juniors of the day.

He was employed with Erskine (and, it is said, by Erskine's wish) in the celebrated Irish trials of 1794. This first brought him into public notice; and as he then was engaged on the popular side, many persons supposed (very unreasonably and very incorrectly) that he was a favourer of what are called popular principles. If they retained this opinion until Gibbs was made Attorney-General, he must then have quickly undeceived them; for no law-officer of the Crown ever assailed the press with such virulent animosity as did Sir Vicary.

In the course of 1794 Gibbs was made Recorder of Bristol, and a King's Counsel. His professional practice was now large and lucrative, especially in mercantile causes and others of the like description, in which a sound and ready knowledge of law, steady industry in learning the facts of each case, and strong common sense in dealing with them, make up far better materials for success in an advocate than eloquence however fervid, and wit however sparkling. In these last qualities Gibbs was wholly deficient. He made no pretence to oratory, and on the few occasions when he tried to be witty, it was truly said of him that "he capered like an elephant."

At

In 1805 he was knighted, and appointed Solicitor-General. the general election of 1807 he became M.P. for Cambridge; in 1812, Attorney-General. In 1813 he was elevated to the bench as Chief Baron of the Exchequer, and soon afterwards ChiefJustice of the Court of Common Pleas, on the resignation of Sir James Mansfield, which important office he was himself obliged to resign in 1818, on account of ill health.

It has been already mentioned that he was distinguished, when Attorney-General, by his crusades against the press. "There were in his time no less than fifty-two newspapers published in London, one half of which are said to have been at one and the same period under prosecution. He hung them all on the horns of a dilemma. If the editor apologised for a libel, his apology came too late; for the Attorney-General would not allow him 'first to calumniate a man, and then to nauseate him with flattery.' If, on the other hand, the unhappy author made no apology, he obviously deserved punishment as a hardened offender." In some

6 Townshend's Eminent Judges.