can see no essential benefit arising from their institution to the community. . . . I am therefore desirous-I am earnestly desirous-that a day may be appointed for examining into the conduct of such judges as dare to establish this anti-constitutional practice in our courts. I am well assured from the most respectable authority, that the practice is immediately subversive of our dearest rights, our most invaluable liberties; and, profligate as the times may be, there are objects that interest should lead us to defend, even if we are wholly unactuated by principle."

After Lord Camden had spoken, in terms even more bitter and direct, the Duke of Grafton, on behalf of the Government, moved the adjournment of the House, which was carried by a large majority. Here it would have been well for Lord Mansfield to have let the matter rest; but, smarting under the censure which Burke and Dunning had heaped upon him in the Lower Chamber, he next day intimated that he had a matter of importance to submit to the Peers, and moved that they should be summoned for the purpose.

Accordingly, on the 10th of December, their Lordships assembled in large numbers, eagerly expecting "a passage of arms," in which Toryism, as represented by Lord Mansfield, was to lay low the principle of Anarchy, as represented by Lords Chatham and Camden. But in the interval Lord Mansfield's courage had oozed out, and his constitutional timidity had got the better of him. To the intense surprise of the House, he contented himself with saying that he had left with the clerk of the House a copy of the judgment of the Court of King's Bench, in the case of The King against Woodfall, and that their Lordships might read it and take copies of it if they pleased. On an inquiry from Lord Camden whether he meant to have the paper entered on the

Journals, he replied: "No, no; only to leave it with the clerk."

On the following day, Lord Camden, addressing the House, said that he considered the paper delivered in by the Chief-Justice as a personal challenge, and he accepted it. In direct contradiction to Lord Mansfield, he maintained that his doctrine was not the law of England. And he proposed four questions to Lord Mansfield, founded on the aforesaid opinion of the Court of King's Bench, to which he desired categorical answers.

"I have the highest esteem,' said Lord Mansfield, with manifest uneasiness, 'for the noble and learned lord who thus attacks me, and I have ever courted his esteem in return. From his candour I had not expected this treatment. I have studied the point more than any other in my life, and have consulted all the judges on it, except the noble and learned lord, who appears to view it differently from all others. But this mode of questioning takes me by surprise. It is unfair. It is unfair. I will not answer interrogatories.'

"Lord Chatham, sarcastically: 'Interrogatories! Was ever anything heard so extraordinary? Can the noble and learned lord be taken by surprise when, as he tells us, he has been considering the point all his life, and has taken the opinions of all the judges upon it?"

"Lord Camden: 'I am willing that the noble and learned lord should have whatever time he deems requisite to prepare himself, but let him name a day when his answers may be given in, and I shall then be ready to meet him.'

"Lord Mansfield: 'I am not bound to answer, and I will not answer, the questions which the noble and learned lord has so astutely framed and so irregularly administered; but I pledge myself that the matter shall be discussed.""

The Duke of Richmond here congratulated the House

that the Chief-Justice had at least pledged himself to the point.

"Lord Mansfield, breaking down: 'My Lords, I did not pledge myself to any particular point. I only said I should hereafter give my opinion. And as to fixing a day, I said, No, I will not fix a day.'"

"The dismay and confusion of Lord Mansfield," says Horace Walpole, "was obvious to the whole audience; nor did one Peer interpose a syllable in his behalf."

After this unfortunate fiasco, Lord Mansfield, for some time to come, took little if any part in the debates. Mr. Justice Bathurst was made Lord Chancellor, and Mansfield resigned his post as Speaker of the House of Lords.

In 1775, when the great struggle with the American colonies occupied the thought and energy of the nation, he received the leadership of his party, and became again the chief organ of the Government in the Upper House. We have already alluded to this part of his career, and pass from it with the remark that his services were highly esteemed by the King, who created him a Knight of the Thistle, and afterwards raised him to the dignity of Earl of Mansfield, with remainder to his nephew, Viscount Stormont, and his heirs. In 1777 he was called upon to try Horne Tooke for a libel written in opposition to the American War, and on this occasion he left to the jury not only the question of fact but of law, not only of publication but of criminality. Horne Tooke was found guilty. Mansfield was present in the House on the 7th of April, 1778-the day which witnessed the great Chatham's last appearance on the political stage. Who does not remember the scene the entrance of the aged statesman, "hanging upon two friends, lapped up

in flannel, pale and emaciated "—those friends being his son, William Pitt, and his son-in-law, Lord Mahon. As he passed to his seat with slowness and difficulty, leaning on his crutches, the Peers all rose as a mark of respect. "Within his large wig, little more was to be seen than his aquiline nose and his penetrating eye. He looked like a dying man, yet never was seen a figure of more dignity.'

"I thank God," he said, "that I have been enabled to come here this day to perform my duty, and to speak on a subject which has so deeply impressed my mind. I am old and infirm

-have one foot, more than one foot, in the grave. I am risen from my bed, to stand up in the cause of my country—perhaps never again to speak in this House."

He expressed his pleasure that he was still able to protest against the dismemberment of this ancient and most noble monarchy.

"My lords, his Majesty succeeded to an empire as great in extent as its reputation was unsullied. Shall we banish the lustre of this nation by an ignominious surrender of its rights and fairest possessions? Shall this great kingdom, that has survived, whole and entire, the Danish depredations, the Scottish inroads "—and here he looked at Lord Mansfield-" and the Norman Conquest; that has stood the threatened invasion of the Spanish Armada, now fall prostrate before the House of Bourbon? Surely, my lords, this nation is no longer what it was! Shall a people that, seventeen years ago, was the terror of the world, now stoop so low as to tell its ancient inveterate enemy, Take all we have, only give us peace?' It is impossible!

"I wage war," he continued, "with no man, or set of men. I wish for none of their employments; nor would I co-operate

*Seward, "Anecdotes," ii. 383.

with men who still persist in unretracted error; or who, instead of acting on a firm decisive line of conduct, halt between two opinions, where there is no middle path. In God's name, if it is absolutely necessary to declare either for peace or war, and the former cannot be preserved with honour, why is not the latter commenced without hesitation? I am not, I confess, well informed of the resources of this kingdom, but I trust it has still sufficient to maintain its just rights, though I know them not. But, my lords, any state is better than despair! Let us at least make one effort; and if we must fall, let us fall like men."

The Duke of Richmond having replied, Chatham made an effort to speak again.

"He fell back npon his seat," says Lord Camden, “and was to all appearance in the agonies of death. This threw the whole House into confusion. Every person rose upon his legs in a moment, hurrying from one place to another—some sending for assistance, others producing salts, and others reviving spirits; many crowding about the Earl to observe his countenance; all affected; most part really unnerved; and even those who might have felt a secret pleasure at the accident, yet put on the appearance of distress, except only the Earl of Mansfield, who sat still, almost as much unmoved as the senseless body itself."

In the "No Popery" riots of 1780, so vividly depicted by Charles Dickens in his "Barnaby Rudge," Lord Mansfield was fated to be a signal sufferer. His judicial decisions, conceived in the most enlightened spirit, had always acknowledged and protected the rights of conscience, and vindicated the liberties of the Protestant Dissenter as of the Roman Catholic. This wise tolerance excited the popular wrath. On the 6th of June, the so-called "Protestant Association," some 60,000 strong, after marching in procession through the City, swept