The Sun.
London, England, 1861-06-24 00:00:00

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had no objection to the principle of the bill, but
they deemed it unwise to give a falling Government
the appointments which it would necessarily create,
and they refused to let the measure come into ope-
ration until the following October, when a new Par-
liament would assemble. The bill was therefere
withdrawn, and there seemed every likelihood that
the Attorney-General would he left in the lurch
along with the Cabinet, es'pecially since—beyond
doing the Scottish metropolis the honour of calling
his youngest daughter after it, Edina, as he bad in
like manner in 1838 done Dudley the honour of
naming his youngest son after that town—he had
taken no precautions to secure his re-election for
Edinburgh. In this difficulty the. Irish Chancellor
was consulted, in the hope that the vvoul resign, but
Lord Plunkett declared with some spirit that he
would be no party to an arrangement by which an
English barrister was to be placed at the head of
the legal profession in Ireland, and a common law
barrister rendered supreme in equity. He was per-
suaded, however, to retire ;, and towards the end of
June, 1841, Campbell was raised to the peerage and
to the Irish Chancellorship. He did not retain
his office long. He did not sit in Court, we believe,
more than a day, or two days at most ; he left Ire-
land before the month was out, and in the Septem-
ber following he resigned with the Melbourne
Ministry. He retained the title and a pension of
£4,000 a-year, but he declined the pecuniary reward
and lived for the next five years without office,.pro-
fession, salary, or pension.
" Several Englishmen," wrote Lord Campbell,
inone of the numerous notes which he affixed to his
writings, " owe their distinction as authors to their
cresscs as politicians. If my " Lives of the Chan-
cellots" gain any celebrity my humble name may
be added to the class adorned by Clarendon and
I3olingbroke. I shall then be highly contented
With my lot. Ido not undervalue great judicial
reputation, but I would rather have written Hyde's
''lshrersetifferitikland _ • • minced the
most ce e -rated judg•• rdwieke or-
Lord Eldon." Lord active mind could
not rest satisfied without employment. He fre-
quently took a ltading part in the debates of the
House of Lords, and in particular threw off his
superfluous energy in duels with Lord Brougham.
But these exercitations were not sufficient, and he
recurred to those literary pursuits which in early
life had helped so materially to form his mind and
to advance his views. Revelling in the resumption
of classical studies and in the perusal of modern
authors, "by degrees I began to perceive the want
of a definite object," he says, " I recollected what
Lord Coke and Lord Bacon say of the debt due
from every successful lawyer to his profession; and
I felt within me a' revival of the aspiration after
'literary fame which in my most busy days I was
never able entirely to extinguish. Having amused
myself with revising for the press a selection of my
speeches at the bar and in the House of Commons,
I resolved to write the Lives of the Chancellors.'
The first series of these biographies was published
early in 1846, and the work became immediately
popular. The success, indeed, with which Lord
Campbell had portrayed successive Chancellors
was rather startling to those who were not
acquainted with his previous literary training, who
saw in him only a practical lawyer, and who had
overlooked the Scotchman's natural aptitude
for biography. It is generally supposed
that the Scotch are eminently metaphysical. It is
a great mistake. There is not a Scotch philosopher
of eminence who has not spent his life in proving
that metaphysics is an impossible study. Scottish
philosophy is nothing in the world but psychology
—nothing but a natural history of the human
mind. Every student who passes through the
Scottish Universities has to study this subject most
elaborately; it is the great study of his college life,
in the same way as the classics and mathematics
have the same pre-eminence at Oxford and Cam-
bridge ; and it is evidently the best preparative for
biography or the history of individual minds. In
this department of literature, accordingly, which,
simple as it may appear, contains perhaps more
examples of conspicuous failure in proportion to
the number of those who devote themselves to it
than any other, Scottish writers have fairly out-
stripped their English competitors. Boswell's Life
of Johnson is confessedly the best biography in the
language_; Lockhart's Life of Scott is probably the
second best; and Lord Campbell, in his rough but
ready style, has given additional proof of the na-
tional talent in this direction, a talent by the way
which is not only developed by the training of the
University, but which is immensely aided by that
estimation of clanship and that love for genealogical
detail which seems to be more or less inherent in
all Scotchmen, and which actuated the late Chief
Justice very powerfully. The Lives of the Chan-
cellors, indeed, and the subsequent series of Lives of
the Chief Justices must not be regarded as finished
specimens of biography. With all its vigour and
vivacity the style is as unkempt as it can well be;
Lord Campbell is palpably before us, not in robe
and wig, but in dressing-gown and slippers. Every
plige has its notes, and there are notes to the notes.
Not only in the notes but in the text he is continu-
ally referring to himself, to his speeches, to the
Acts of Parliament identified with his name, to the
incidents of his life, to his private opinions, in a
manner which is not unwelcome, bat very un-
artistic. Worse than this, there is something of the
" School for Scandal" in these biographies. While
smiling very complacently on his friends and prede-
cessors, Lord Campbell has displayed not a little
of Mrs. Candour's art in tearing their characters to
pieces with the utmost kindness ; he has in several
instances not been at sufficient pains to authenticate
his facts, being apparently more anxious to enjoy
the joke of the circuit and to give point to his sen-
tences than to find the truth or to save a friend ;
while for much of the information with which his
volumes abound it has been stated, and we be-
lieve with some justice, that he has been
indebted to sources which he ought to have more
fully acknowledged. With all its defects, however,
moral and critical, the portraiture in these volumes
is sharp and lifelike ; there is very little of what he
called " flummery" in his observations ; every page
is full of interesting matter, displaying immense
stores of information at once various and minute,
while he deserves credit for the impartiality with
which on the whole he has appreciated the characters
and acts of politicians differing from him in opinion.
The subject was most happily chosen, and the work
has been executed with an ability which precludes
any future biographer from lightly attempting the
same theme.
Probably, in the choice of his subject Lord Camp-
bell had an eye to the Chancellorship, and when
Lord John Russell's Cabinet was formed in 1846 it
was expected that he would obtain the Great Seal.
Lord John Russell, however, offered to Lord Camp-
bell only the Chancellorship of the Duchy of Lan-
caster—a post which he hesitated to accept until the
Premier overcame his scruples by saying, " Remem-
ber, the office has been held by Sir Thomas More
and by Dunning." His seat in the Cabinet, however,
scarcely interrupted his literary pursuits, and, in
-fact during his lease of office he published several
volumes of his biographical series. His leisure was
not seriously invaded until Lord Denman, early in
1850, retired from the Chief Justiceship of the
Queen's Bench, when Lord Campbell was appointed
to reign in his stead. Even this appointment was
cavilled at. Lord Denman had a noble presence
and a dignified eloquence, looked every inch a
judge, and, though not a great lawyer, made his
office respected. Lord Campbell was certainly not
of a commanding address; his language Was
homely, and his judicial faculty was almost un-
tried. To his honour it must be recorded that
with few natural advantages in his favour he very
soon proved to be superior even to his more fortu-
nate predecessor. He did not fail to maintain the
dignity of his office; he was not less alive than
Lord Denman to popular sympathies, and he was
a more profound lawyer. His conduct, too, in those
great criminal trials in which the direction of the
presiding judge is of the highest importance, has
been worthy of the bench on which he sat. It once
suited the argument of Horne Tooke to speak of the
judge in a jury trial as an efficer whose function is
like that of the common crier, merely to preserve.
order. At a trial like that of the notoz ious
am
Palmer such a view of the duties of a judge, if ever
for a moment seriously entertained, would
eases ofuld have
been rudely shaken. It was one of these
gult on the
shadow of a doubt of the prisNo,
enre;Bstronig attempt
circumstantial evidence which could leave not the
mind of any juryman; but
ncomletethe
,
and
a
However clear might be
the murder and the
efit opf
d to
our
rs m
assuranceade tto provewth r that,gar
m dt
he raeir
Palmer, stilltloleuglehgtaltuevhidaevnecethme,absoui
lapse in the argument._
The case was removed from
Stafford to be tried before Lord Campbell at the Old
oasienc
übteitotue rwlaaswo and
tao
d b y fairerth
efiAeltdiornTehye-
General in person. Great as Was the praise which
Bailey, where it was expected that the prisoner
Crownwoul would obtain
Sir A. Cockburn justly reaped on this occasion, to
none engaged upon the trial was its satisfactory
result more due than to Lord Campbell, who, un-
awed by the opposition which the friends of Palmer
attempted to raise and the confidence which they
expressed, overruled their frivolous objections, and