ing nothing but what relates to the particular cases before them, shutting out all liberal knowledge from their minds, and contracting their views to the little objects with which they are continually occupied; when we see them, after a time, ad vanced to the offices of Solicitor and AttorneyGeneral, in which to defend and to extol every provision of the law seems to be considered as a kind of duty, as the test of loyalty, and as an earnest of their fitness for some high judicial office; when we see them compelled to become politicians because they are the lawyers of the Crown, and acting, in the House of Commons, not the part of liberal and enlightened statesmen, but that of the retained counsel of the King and his Ministers; not debating for the public, but pleading for their peculiar clients;-can we be surprised that, stepping from hence into the seat of Chancellor, they do not at once assume a new character; that their dispositions and their habits are not altered; but that the same ignorance of every thing but law, the same narrow views, the same prejudices, the same passions, the same little mind, are to be found in the magistrate, as marked before the hired and hackneyed advocate? But you will ask, "Is not this satire, rather than instruction and advice?" Do I not know that you too are a practising lawyer, that your business is very considerable, and that your life passes in the same hurry, and is engrossed by the same occupations, as those whose faculties I represent as being so much injured by them and degraded? Do I imagine that you possess some magic charm by which you can preserve your energy and liberality of mind unimpaired in situations so dangerous to others? or would I advise you to give up your practice, and to devote yourself entirely to the study of the great principles of philosophy and legislation which alone can form a statesman in the genuine sense of that word? Most certainly that is not the advice which I would give you: you could not adopt a more effectual expedient for excluding yourself for ever from the Chancellorship, than such a course of preparation for it. If ever you are Chancellor, it will be because you are a lawyer in great practice: and those parts of your character and attainments on which I set the highest value will be only excused in favour of those which appear to me to be comparatively mean and unimportant. Neither do I suppose you possessed of any charm to preserve your mind untainted by professional habits, or to render it inaccessible to those prejudices which an advocate, in the course of his practice, usually contracts; but I would have you be on your guard against them. I would prevent your so devoting yourself to your present occupations as not to look forward to that higher destiny which awaits you. I would have the expectation of that destiny be itself the charm which shall render you proof against all the corruptions of your present condition; and, as we have seen Chancellors who, though invested with all the dazzling insignia of the highest magistracy, were still nothing more than advocates, so I would have you, while an advocate, be already, in the extent of your views and the elevation of your mind, a Chancellor. I would have you keep that high station continually in your thoughts; not, indeed, as it has possessed the minds of many, serving only as a spur to their ambition, and prompting them to suffer no opportunity of facilitating their accession to it to pass unimproved, but that you may lose no time in preparing yourself for the discharge of those duties which you know not how soon may be imposed upon you; and, perhaps, before you can be enabled to make the most for mankind of the advantages which you will possess. Reflect, again and again, not only on every thing which you are to accomplish, but on all the means by which you are to accomplish them. Suffer nothing to escape you which has the least chance of being useful to a Chancellor, such as you conceive he ought to be; and note down every thing which you observe. Look about amongst your friends and acquaintance for the men who are likely to be zealous coadjutors in your designs, and treasure up their qualifications in your memory, till you can call them into action ; and in the mean time consider yourself as such a coadjutor; as one to whom a Chancellor-anxious to make his talents, his knowledge, his honours, his authority, his influence, in short, all the extensive means which God has afforded him, as profitable as he can to his fellow-creatures - has opened his glorious projects; and endeavour to assist to the utmost of your power in their execution, by availing yourself of all the opportunities which a Chancellor in the execution of his office cannot possess. It will be an encouragement to you, in the fatigue and irksomeness of your daily practice, to have such an object in view. With this ever present to your mind, a private cause, which in itself would only afford you weariness and disgust, * II.1 NOTHING that has passed, my dear C., since I last wrote to you, has at all weakened my expectation of seeing you one day in that high station to which I then so anxiously encouraged you to aspire. I do not wish to divert you from such anticipations; nay, on the contrary, I would have you entertain and dwell on them. If, indeed, I could suppose that, in such reveries, the circumstances on which your imagination dwelt with most pleasure were the splendour and magnificence which attend so high an office; the homage which is always paid to the man, be he who he may, before whom the mace and the great seal are borne; the advantage of appearing with high distinction in the brilliant circle of a court; of living in habits of familiarity with those to whom the vulgar look up with awe and veneration; the pride of transmitting a title to your posterity; or even the satisfaction of thinking that it is your own exertions alone which have raised you to such an eminence,-I should fear the indulgence of them would be attended with consequences the most pernicious. Men with whom such things are objects of ambition are seldom very scrupulous about the means by which their ambitious ends may be accomplished; and if they happen to fail of success, the dreams of greatness which they had There is no date to this letter in the original. - ED. |