The Sun.
London, England, 1844-04-08 00:00:00

cuit, and expired, after a few days' confinement, yes-
terday afternoon. As Mr., and afterwards Sir JAMES
SCARLETT, he was for a long course of years prior to
1835 (when he was created Baron ABINGER), a
distinguished member of the House of Commons. Up
to the period of Mr. CANNING'S Administration,
formed in April 1827, his Lordship had been, avow-
edly, a Whig. He sat with the Whigs, he ♦oted
with them ; he was, for the most part, a warm oppo-
nent of the Government of the Earl of LIVERPOOL',
which, established in 1812, endured until February,
1827. In April of the-latter year, Sir JAMES Seim-
LETT succeeded Sir CHARLES WiTHERELL, as At-
torney-General to Mr. CANNII4G'S Government;
and he occupied that office, beyond the Pre-
mier's demise, under the Earl of RIPON'S
Administration, until January, 1828, when he re-
signed. In May, 1829, however, the Duke of
WELLINGTON being Prime Minister, he was a second
time appointed Attorney-General, in the room of his
former predecessor, Sir C. 'WETHERELL, who, also,
had been a second time appointed, on the demise of
Mr. CANNING, and had retired on his Grace's taking
office. Sir JAMES, in his turn, once more gave up this
distinguished office on the coming in of his former
political friends, in November, 1830, under Earl
Gaur. In December, 1834, when Sir R. PEEL re-
ceived the seals of the First Lord of the Treasury, Sir
JAMES SCARLETT was appointed to the Chief Barony
of the Exchequer, and in the following year he received
his peerage. From this brief review of his official
and public career it may be surmised—and the sur-
mise would be but too well-founded—that the de-
ceased judge was neither a very pure Whig, nor
a very decided Conservative—that he who
was ostensibly the confidential legal adviser of the
generous-principled, the liberal-minded, the English-
spirited CANNING, could not have really filled the same
position, and frankly discharged its relations, to that
Minister—of far inferior capacity and character—who
had trodden, so to speak, over the mighty form of
his deceased, but more illustrious colleague, into the
vacant seat of power. The truth of history requires
us to admit that the Parliamentary career of the late
Lord ABINGER was of a nature fraught with signal
mischief to the influence of great constitutional prin-
ciples. It tampered with some of the dearest rights
of popular freedom. It vacillated between the love of
office and the loyalty of party. For we are not afraid to
avow our-deep conviction that no more salutary con-
trol can be devised to insure political morality in
public men, than that profession of political faith
which is vulgarly called the declaration of party. It
is assumed to be founded, and ought to proceed, on
the mature examination of such elementary principles
as are essential to the guarantees of private rights
and public liberty. This is an end, in which all good
and patriotic men must at all times collcur. The
true means to that end may be, at aoy time, a subject
of legitimate and conscientious difference and dis-
pute among them. But they who, upon examination
and conviction, have once determined that the popular
tendencies of Whiggery are the most nearly
identified with the spirit of our Constitution,
and the social and political advancement of the
empire, cannot, without incurring grave suspicions
if their sincerity, turn round upon such principles of
action, and record their adhesion to a Government
founded on high Tory maxims of government. Now,
no man can deny that there was all this amount of
discrepancy between the liberalised—we might call
it the emancipated—policy of Mr. CANNING'S Go-
vernment, as contrasted with that of Lord LIVER-
POOL, and between the Government of the Duke of
WELLINGTON and Sir R. PEEL, as collated with that of
Mr. CANNING. We remember, that on the odious
"Six Bills " of Lord CASTLEREAGH'S introduction,
which were insolent, but insidious, invasions of the
rights of free discussion, of public meeting, of
public petitioning, of personal immunity, of the
doctrine of Ministerial responsilsility and public
control over official action ; the language and
the votes of Mr. SCARLETT halted between large pro-
fessions of abstract constitutional opinions,—and dan-
gerous concessions to proposals for their practical
discouragement and defeat. Mr. SCARLETT was at all
times too strongly imbued with the impressions and
doctrine of a high prerogative lawyer to be a good
Whig;—we do not concern. ourselves to know how
far his Whig habitudes and associations damaged his
Tory or Conservative utility. We shall always in-
sist upon the fact, that his conduct was to be deplored
for the sanction it afforded to that laxity, or facility, of
political principle, the example of which became a
sort of epidemic in succeeding years. At the bar, as
a leading counsel, the name of SCARLETT will ever
stand among the highest on the list of accomplished,
astute, and winning advocates. His knowledge of
men, which was extensive and well digested, he
brought to bear on what a always
aptly termed his " management " of jurors ;
and his capacity in this art was pro-
found. He wielded it through a long and dis-
tinguished forensic career, with a success absolutely
Marvellous: It would have conduced much to his
reputation as a judge, could he have forgotten, on the
bench, the habits of thinking and modes of arraying
facts and evidence which had achieved for him so
signal a reputation at the bar. But on the seat of
justice, Lord A BINGEIt always appeared, to us, haunted
by a sort of involuntary partisanship; and if this was
the error of his judicial conclusions, he was liable to
occasional errors still more grave, both of temper and
discretion. We are loth to exceed, in our notice of
the dead, the limits of a temperate and even a lenient
censure; nevertheless, we cannot abstain from re-
marking, that, were we personally interested in the
posthumous reputation of the deceased nobleman, s‘ e
should have been better pleased' that his career had
closed upon him as Sir JAMES SCARLETT than as
Lord ABING ; and better still if on Mr., than on Sir
James, SCARLETT.