for the bench, since it is impossible to get learned and upright judges from an ignorant and pettifogging bar. We say thus much to neutralize the effect of certain petty, jealous, carping insinuations which it is the fashion to scatter against the bar, being well aware that the profession is in no very great immediate danger, though at the same time it is impossible to say where a principle of deterioration, once set in motion, may stop. As to the threatened innovation, its probable mode of working may be illustrated by an argument used in favour of Catholic Emancipation. What interest (it was asked) has the Irish peasant in having a road to dignity laid open to him, which he can never hope to tread, except by a degree of good fortune little short of miraculous? The interest (it was answered) which every man possesses in the elevation of his class, in the acquirement of a new element of self-esteem, in the additional incitement held out to the exertion of his talents and industry. Something of the same sort may be replied to those who urge the insufficiency of one grand prize, like the Chancellorship, to sustain the position of the bar. Slight and subtle as the train of associations may be thought, it is still clear to us that the possibility of attaining to this rank forms a grand attraction to most of our young recruits of promise, and that the knowledge that they may attain to it acquires them no trifling portion of their consideration with the world. It is from the apex of the pyramid that men calculate its height; and lustre may be reflected over a whole profession from the coronet which sparkles at its top.

A well-known incident in the life of Thurlow will help to show the prevalence of this feeling in the community.

In the course of the inquiry into Lord Sandwich's administration of Greenwich Hospital, the Duke of Grafton thought proper to taunt Lord Thurlow with his humble birth and his recent creation as a peer. Thurlow rose from the woolsack and advanced slowly to the place from whence the Chancellor addresses the House. "I am amazed,' he said, in a level tone of voice, at the attack the noble duke has made on me. Yes, my lords,' raising his voice, I am amazed at his grace's speech. The noble duke cannot look before him, behind him, or on either side of him, without seeing some noble peer who owes his seat in this House to his successful exertions

in the profession to which I belong. Does he not feel that it is as honourable to owe it to these, as to being the accident of an accident? To all these noble lords the language of the noble duke is as applicable and as insulting as it is to myself. But I don't fear to meet it single and alone. No one venerates the peerage more than I do; but, my lords, I must say, that the peerage solicited me, not I the peerage. Nay more, I can say, and will say, that as a peer of parliament, as speaker of this right honourable house, as keeper of the great seal, as guardian of his majesty's conscience, as lord high chancellor of England, nay, even in that character alone in which the noble duke would think it an affront to be considered,—as a man, I am at this moment as respectable,-I beg leave to add, I am at this moment as much respected, as the proudest peer I now look down upon.' The effect of this speech,' (adds Mr. Butler, from whom we quote,) both within the walls of parliament and out of them, was prodigious. It gave Lord Thurlow an ascendancy in the house which no chancellor had ever possessed: it invested him, in public opinion, with a character of independence and honour; and this, though he was ever on the unpopular side in politics, made him always popular with the people."

Why did this speech make him always popular with the people? Because it embodied the true principle of equality, because it struck home to the sympathies of the mass, because it put him forward as the champion of the peoples' rights, and because the meanest amongst the people could feel, that the privilege of rising by honourable exertion to the first rank amongst the hereditary peerage of the land, was one in which they, and their children, and their children's children, were interested-the best preservative against the exclusive spirit of an aristocracy, the surest proof of the popular character of the constitution. Yet it is a popular ministry that now proposes to close up perhaps the only remaining avenue through which unaided talent can work its way to nobility.

We cannot refuse ourselves the gratification of here appealing to the authority of Mr. Canning, though Sir Edward Sugden has already called attention to the speech:

"For his own part, he could not see any objection to the union of the two characters in the same individual; especially as they

were far, very far from being inconsistent with each other. When the advocates for their separation told him that they saw a great objection to the making a political character a Judge, he was inclined to ask them what the situation of the country would be, supposing that there were placed at the head of the hereditary magistracy of the land an individual unacquainted with its laws and institutions? Would not such an occurrence lower the respect in which they were now universally held throughout the country? and if it did lower the standard of the magistracy and the dignity of the Peerage, would it not be inflicting a severe and permanent injury on the Constitution, instead of correcting one that was comparatively trivial and temporary? It had not occurred twice in the history of our country, that the cold impartiality of the Judge had given way to the warmth of his political passions; and if, in the long night of ignorance in which so much of our annals were involved, not more than two instances of this judicial profligacy could be discovered, he thought that he was not too bold in saying that at an æra so intelligent as the present, such instances were not likely to occur again. To avoid, however, a contingency which he contended was remote and improbable, it was now proposed to convert the Lord Chancellor into a mere lawyer; to destroy all the ancient grandeur and dignity of his office; and to degrade, as much as possible, the race of men from which it had hitherto been usual to select that ancient and distinguished officer. To such proposition he had formerly felt, and he still continued to feel, the strongest aversion.'

The question therefore stands thus. The separation may be fairly expected to cure some of the inconveniences resulting from the political character of the appointment, but, on the other hand, it will render the supreme appellate jurisdiction ineffective, weaken the cabinet, lower the whole profession of the law, and ultimately endanger the very existence of the peerage by giving it a new character of exclusiveness. H.

This topic was also remarkably well put by Mr. Horace Twiss.-See Hansard, New Series, vol. xix. P. 76-78.

146

ART. VIII.-THE BROUGHAM AND COOPER REPORTS.

Select Cases decided by Lord Brougham in the Court of Chancery, in the years 1833 and 1834, edited from his Lordship's original Manuscripts. By CHARLES Purton COOPER, Esq. Barrister at Law. Vol. I. pp. 521, Roy. 8vo. London, 1835,

We have already passed on Lord Brougham's judgments a sentence1 we see no occasion to recall, and it is not our immediate intention to subject the Select Cases now before us to criticism. But we think it right to notify the existence of the book to the profession, since it is to be apprehended that its existence will only become known to them through this sort of notification or by the advertisements. Moreover, the circumstances attending its appearance are, we undertake to say, altogether anomalous. The first paragraph of the Preface runs thus

"La plupart aussi de ces reports sont composés de décisions qui ne diffèrent en rien de celles qui sont déjà imprimées.' No volumes can be more liable than the present to this objection brought in my Lettres sur la Cour de Chancellerie against the modern Reports. The greatest part of the cases comprised in them have already been edited with great accuracy and ability by Mr. Mylne and Mr. Benjamin Keen, and in a form which, as it admits a fuller statement of facts, must always be deemed more satisfactory to the profession than that in which they now appear."

This candid avowal so completely demolishes all prospect of circulation in the profession, that we wonder even the pleasure of quoting from himself should have induced Mr. Cooper to hazard it. But it is unnecessary to state the unavoidable conclusion, for he anticipates it:—

"What, then, it will be asked, is the motive for this new publication? And I must frankly own my inability to make any reply to the question, except that this publication originates in a promise to a distinguished Jurist and Statesman of another country, who was desirous of possessing, in a separate work, authentic copies of all such Judgments of Lord Brougham, whilst presiding in the Court of Chancery, as had previous to the delivery been put into writing -a promise, hastily, and looking at my other occupations, impru

1 Law. Mag. vol. vii, 348.

dently given, but from the performance of which, for reasons that it is not necessary here to mention, I have not thought myself at liberty to withdraw."

It has been stated in a morning paper with which Mr. Cooper is understood to be in frequent communication, that the distinguished jurist and statesman of another country is M. Dupin, with whose name Lord Brougham has constantly shown an excessive anxiety to associate his own; and we are expected to believe that M. Dupin is so extremely anxious to possess, in a separate work, copies of judgments which are to be found consecutively and more accurately given in Messrs. Mylne and Keen's excellent Reports, that (Shylock-like) he holds Mr. Cooper to the very letter of his bond ;-though the promise was most probably given under the belief that no one else would turn reporter to Lord Brougham, though it was "hastily, and looking at Mr. Cooper's other occupations, imprudently given;" and though the performance of it must unavoidably entail an expense of two or three hundred pounds on somebody.

As the Preface proceeds, however, we find Mr. Cooper has not done justice to his collection, which has actually one feature of novelty:-

"It will be seen that the Cases now published are entitled 'Select,' a term which, without explanation, is calculated to mislead. The utility of a judgment, as a judicial precedent, is by no means the criterion by which I have been guided in my choice. It was the wish of the eminent individual, to whom I have above alluded, that all judgments should be inserted, which, from the recital of circumstances contained in them, or from the short abstract prepared from the papers in my possession, would be intelligible to the reader, although affording nothing more than specimens, either of Lord Brougham's mode of sifting and combining facts, and reasoning upon them, or of his juridical style. Hence some few Judgments will be found in these volumes which Mr. Mylne and Mr. Keen have very properly rejected, as being altogether foreign to the legitimate object of Equity Reports."

It is Mr. Moore, we believe, who justifies the preservation of some of Sheridan's loose memoranda by comparing them to chippings in the workshop of Phidias. This was unjust as regards Sheridan, for Phidias' chippings must have been