Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

Royet, he describes in elevated language the feelings with which he contemplated the career before him :—

"It would seem," he says, "that you thought I had affected doubt of succeeding in the way of life on which I am to enter, only to draw from you such praises as might encourage me in my pursuit. That object, had it been mine, must have been fully gratified by your silence, which, introduced as it is, is a greater encouragement to me, and is more offensive to modesty even than a panegyric upon talents which your indulgence might have supposed me to possess. However, I assure you I had no such wish, and that what I wrote to you was but a faithful transcript of what I felt. Could I but realise the partial hopes and expectations of my friends, there could be no doubt of my success, almost beyond my wishes; but in myself I have a much less indulgent censor, and in this, perhaps alone, I cannot suffer their judgment to have equal weight with my own. I have taught myself, however, a very useful lesson of practical philosophy, in order to make myself easy in my situation, which is, not to suffer my happiness to depend upon my success. Should my wishes be gratified, I promise myself to employ all the talents and all the authority I may acquire for the public good. Should I fail in my pursuit, I console myself with thinking that the humblest situation of life has its duties, which one must feel a satisfaction in discharging; that, at least, my conscience will have ever the pleasing testimony of having intended well; and that, after all, true happiness is much less likely to be found in the high walks of ambition than in the secretum iter et fallentis semita vita. Were it not for these consolations, and did I consider my success at the bar as decisive of my future happiness, my apprehension would be such that I might truly say, 'cum illius dici mihi venit in mentem, quo mihi dicendum sit, non solum commoveor animo, sed etiam toto corpore perhorresco.'"*

* Cicero, in Q. Cæcil. Div. 13. "Memoirs of Sir Samuel Romilly," i. 257, 258.

To the high key-note pitched in these remarks, Romilly's whole life responded. I often think that men's failure in life is due to the low standard which they set up for themselves at the start; we make more misses by aiming too low than too high. But, after all, "success" and "failure" are relative terms; and what the world calls "success," God and angels may regard as "failure."

Again in May, 1783, he writes:

"I am soon to enter on a career which possibly (though I grant not very probably) may place me in important and critical situations, which will certainly give one practical and selfish interests incompatible with the good of others, and which will throw me amidst mankind, and condemn me to hear the profession of dishonourable sentiments without opposing them, and to be a mere spectator of selfish and degrading conduct without discovering any detestation of it. It will in part depend on you to save me from the contagion of such examples; for though my heart still recoils from them with an antipathy that seems quite insurmountable, I have I know not what kind of terror, which I cannot overcome, of the force of habit, of perpetual temptations, of being familiarised with a contempt for virtue, and, above all, of our habitual attachment to the miserable gold which one earns."

For the first four or five years, Romilly's professional progress was very slow. His sensitive and nervous temperament was a grave obstacle, as it prevented him in public from doing justice to his really great powers. But if it were a source of weakness, it was also a source of strength. It refined and elevated his genius; quickened his sympathies; and promoted that human and compassionate disposition which animated his efforts for the amelioration of our universal law. Meanwhile, he con

tinued to persevere in the performance of his professional duties, labouring patiently and assiduously, and preparing himself for the fit discharge of any responsibility that might devolve upon him. He attended the courts of law at Westminster, and went on the Midland circuit with exemplary regularity. He contrived in some measure to overcome his diffidence, and to acquire a greater degree of self-possession. By degrees it began to be known that his knowledge of law was sound and extensive, his judgment accurate, his perception rapid and exact; solicitors saw in him a man to be trusted; and in 1791 his practice as junior counsel was very considerable. In society he had established a reputation for grace of manner and charm of conversation which made him a welcome guest in the most distinguished circles, and the Marquis of Lansdowne, no mean judge of character, delighted in his company.

In 1797 he began to be employed as a leader, and in several important cases his success confirmed and extended his reputation. In 1800 he was appointed one of His Majesty's counsel, and thenceforth took a prominent position in the Court of Chancery. Having secured a moderate independence, he felt himself at liberty to seek a wider and nobler field of exercise than his profession in itself could offer, and waited only for an opening to enter upon that public life to which his hopes and aspirations had always pointed. His political views were those of the Whig party, but he was incapable of becoming a vehement or narrow partisan; his intellect was too philosophical, his judgment too impartial, his views of public duty too Hence he desired to enter Parliament unshackled by promises. In 1805-the same year in which the Bishop of Durham appointed him his

broad and lofty.

Chancellor he was offered a seat in the House of Commons by the Prince of Wales, but he respectfully declined. In the following year, in Mr. Fox's ministry, he was appointed Solicitor-General, and was immediately returned to Parliament as member for Queenborough. He was sworn in on the 12th of March, and, according to custom, knighted. Thus favourably, at the age of forty, did he enter upon his public career.

A few days after taking his seat in the House, Sir Samuel was appointed one of the managers in the impeachment of Lord Melville for peculation and jobbery during his tenure of office as First Lord of the Admiralty; and a duty which was not less disagreeable than onerous hedischarged with great ability and scrupulous impartiality. On the 10th of May he summed up the case for the prosecution in a luminous and effective speech which lasted three hours and twenty minutes.

The philanthropical bias of his mind was shown in the warmth and eloquence with which he attacked the slave trade, in support of Mr. Fox's motion for its abolition. He tells us that he did not attempt to argue the question, whether the slave trade should be abolished; this he took as long ago decided; his object was to impress on the House a sense of the "reproachful situation" in which England stood with respect to this subject. Fifteen years before it had had the courage to inquire minutely into the subject, and had ascertained, by a mass of evidence which had been carefully sifted and recorded, that the trade was carried on by "robbery, rapine, and murder." And yet, with the full knowledge of this fact, it had persisted in the inhuman traffic, and dragged from the coasts of Africa no fewer than 360,000 human beings.

Y

At the time of Romilly's entering upon public life, the English law was an Augean stable, offering ample work to any reforming Hercules who would undertake its cleansing. Romilly was anxious to do something in this direction; but, aware of the small result that is ever to be obtained from a general attack, he wisely resolved to bring his efforts to bear upon some particular abuse. The bias of his mind and the natural benevolence of his disposition led him to select, as the field in which he might hope to employ his energies most advantageously, the amelioration of our criminal code. To this his attention had early been directed, and he was painfully aware of the urgent necessity for prompt and efficient action. The criminal code, as it then existed, was more than Draconian in its severity; it was written in blood; almost every clause ended in "death." Crimes and offences, ranging from the nadir to the zenith of enormity, met with the same penalty; a man was hung for murder, and he might be hung for stealing five shillings. Such rigour was as impolitic as it was inhuman, not alone from its ill effect upon the criminal classes, whom it only hardened and exasperated, but from its influence upon juries, whom it not unnaturally deterred from pronouncing verdicts which carried with them the possibility of so awful a penalty.

Mr. Roscoe remarks that it has been sometimes objected to Romilly that he did not apply himself to the correction of the abuses which then discredited the administration of justice in his own court, the Court of Chancery; and he adds that it ought surely never to be regretted that he preferred the noble labour of reforming a code, the excessive severity of which had for centuries disgraced the institutions of our country. The former,

« AnteriorContinuar »