of the session. "He has been pleased," said Lord Durham, of his antagonist, "to challenge me to meet him in the House of Lords.1 I know well the meaning of the taunt. He is aware of his infinite superiority over me in one respect; and so am I. He is a practised orator and a powerful debater. I am not. I speak but seldom in Parliament, and always with reluctance in an assembly where I meet with no sympathy from an unwilling majority. He knows full well the advantage which he has over me; and he knows, too, that in any attack which he may make on me in the House of Lords, he will be warmly and cordially supported by them. With all these manifold advantages, almost overwhelming, I fear him not; and I will meet him there, if it be unfortunately necessary to repeat what he was pleased to term my criticisms."" Thus did the ground appear to be prepared for a new assertion of the people's cause, in regard to the reforms remaining to be achieved; but, before the time came, the King had interposed, Lord Brougham had taken leave of office, and the Conservative party was in power. The King, it was understood, did not look forward with any satisfaction to the proposed controversy in the House of Lords; and his mind had long been uneasy about the treatment of the Irish Church by the Whig Ministry. He seized the occasion of the Dissolution of death of Lord Spencer- by which Lord Althorp was the Ministry. raised to the peerage to dismiss his ministers, and seek for satisfaction to his mind from the opposite party.

The surprise to the ministers themselves appears to have been great. All that had happened was, that Lord Althorp could no longer be Chancellor of the Exchequer, from his removal to the Upper House. But Lord Melbourne had an immediate resource in Lord John Russell. He went down to Brighton on the 13th, and remained there till the Friday evening, when he returned to town, to tell his colleagues that the King had sent for the Duke of Wellington. Whether he had any thing more to tell, whether he understood any secret causes of a change so sudden,

or whether he agreed with the general belief as to the King's apprehensions and dislikes, there is no saying. The one fact of the case avowed by Lord Melbourne was, that he was taken by surprise, the cordiality of the King towards himself having never been interrupted.

The event occasioned a prodigious sensation, abroad as well as at home. French politics were forgotten at Paris; and on the quays of New York, New Orleans, and Boston, men stood in groups to read the papers or discuss the news. Here was an experiment of a recurrence to principles of government which had been solemnly, and with much sacrifice on every hand, dis

1 Spectator, 1834, p. 1034.

Retirement of Lord Brougham.

avowed by the British nation. The most interesting spectacle to the world now was of the success or failure of the experiment. Those who looked at the weakness and faults of the Whig administrations of the last four years believed it would succeed. Those who looked deeper into the mind, so lately declared, of the English people-knew that it would fail. But the suspense was exciting and painful, more exciting and painful than people could believe a year afterwards; for it was not long before the Whigs were in again, with Lord Melbourne at their head, but not with Lord Brougham on the woolsack. Lord Brougham now finally left office, after having held the great seal four years. He did not, however, acquiesce at the moment in the relinquishment of all office. The Duke of Wellington could not fill up all the appointments. for some time, as Sir Robert Peel's presence was indispensable, and Sir Robert Peel was at Rome; but the Lord Chancellor must clearly be Lord Lyndhurst, and he was appointed at once, on the 21st of November.1 Lord Brougham immediately wrote to him, to offer to take, without salary, the office of chief baron, actually held by Lord Lyndhurst. The application did not succeed. Lord Lyndhurst could say nothing till the return of Sir Robert Peel; and, before that return, Lord Brougham had withdrawn his request. The public voice on this act was not to be mistaken. Lord Brougham pleaded that his intention was to save 12,000l. a year to the country, and to spare suitors the evils of a double appeal: 2 but this last object, of the abolition of the vice-chancellorship, he had not pursued during the four years when the power of chanceryreform was in his hands; and, as for the saving of salary, the general feeling was that it would have been no compensation for the evil of the "political immorality" of taking office under the Conservatives, in a manner which indicated confidence in their remaining in power. Lord Brougham therefore withdrew his application, but not before the act had affected his political reputation in foreign countries, where all preceding inconsistencies had been allowed for, or unrecognized.

Lord Lyndhurst succeeds.

Lord Brougham's law-reforms.

In reviewing his four years of office, the most agreeable point to dwell upon is his activity in his function, and in the cause of law reform. In the summer of 1830, he had brought forward a Bill for the establishment of courts of local jurisdiction in certain districts, intended to apply afterwards to the whole of the kingdom. By this measure it was hoped that justice would be rendered cheap and of attainment in a number of cases where it could not be

Local-courts

Bill.

easy

1 Annual Register, 1834, p. 336.

2 Lord Brougham's Letter to Bulwer, December, 1834.

Chancery

reform.

had by multitudes, unless brought near their doors. As soon as he was in office, in December, 1830, — Lord Brougham brought forward this measure in the House of Peers, where it was laid on the table for consideration, being, as Lord Lyndhurst testified, an affair of the very highest importance; one consideration being that it would create fifty new courts, with fifty new judges and their establishments. To the great grief of its author, and of all who intelligently wished that justice should be accessible to every citizen, this, which was called, both lightly aud seriously, the Poor Man's Bill, was thrown out by the Lords on the 9th of July, 1833.1 The rejection of the measure was believed to be owing to the fear that it would draw away too much business from the higher courts, impose too much expense, and yield too much patronage. In the session of 1833, Lord Brougham brought in a Bill, which was passed by the Commons on the 22d of August, for abolishing thirteen offices in the Court of Chancery, and reducing others, effecting altogether a saving of about 70,0001.2 Lord Eldon did not think he should be able to persuade himself to go down to Parliament again, he had, as God knew, too little strength to spend on an attendance utterly hopeless; and it weighed him down more than he could endure, to observe what was going on there, and how. This was written while waiting upon the progress of this Bill, "vindicating his own conduct" the while, and objecting "to the haste" with which Parliament was abolishing thirteen sinecures which had flourished under his own eye. Alas! there was other haste to object to,—in the Chancellor's judicial function. The clearance of business that he effected in the Court of Chancery was such as to make his predecessor feel as if the "iron mace," that Sydney Smith spoke of, were swinging about his ears.1 "For twenty-five long years," said Sydney Smith, just after the coming-in of the Grey Ministry, "did Lord Eldon sit in that court, surrounded with misery and sorrow, which he never held up a finger to alleviate. The widow and the orphan cried to him, as vainly as the town-crier cries when he offers a small reward for a full purse; the bankrupt of the court became the lunatic of the court; estates mouldered away, and mansions fell down: but the fees came in, and all was well. But in an instant the iron mace of Brougham shivered to atoms this house of fraud and of delay.” And it is true that from that hour we have heard no more of the delays in the Court of Chancery being ruinous to property, as well as trying to the patience. It is true, also, that there was at the time, and has been since, much impugning of the quality of the judgments

4

1 Hansard, xix. p. 372.

3 Life of Lord Eldon, iii. p. 187.

2 Hansard, xx. p. 831.
4 Works, iii. p. 129.

the

which were dispensed so industriously and so promptly. However this may be, whatever might be true about Lord Brougham's qualifications for such a post of judicial decision, – there can be no question of the benefit to the country, after so long a rule of Lord Eldon's, of the clearance which was made by Lord Brougham. At another period, the quality of the judge's law must be the first consideration: then, and for once, there was something more important, that racked minds should be eased, and unsettled minds certified; that a vast amount of deteriorating property should be restored to use and good management; and that the reproach of the highest court of the realm reproach of being a bottomless pit of perdition-should cease.1 In Lord Brougham's farewell to the court, on the 21st of November, he said, after lamenting the compulsion which obliged him to give up the seals in haste, "I have the greatest satisfaction in reflecting that this court, represented by its enemies as the temple of discord, delay, and expense, has been twice closed within the space of five months." He went on to ascribe the merit of this to the Vice-Chancellor and late Master of the Rolls, and also to the bar; but these functionaries all existed in Lord Eldon's days, and did not save the court from its reproach. Lord Brougham was himself the spring of their activity, as Lord Eldon had been the check upon it; and Lord Brougham was, doubtless, entitled to the satisfaction he naturally expressed on this parting occasion. As for the rest, it is not necessary here to enter into the controversy between himself and his contemporaries as to the share he had in promoting some good measures, and defeating others. "I should be only fatiguing you," he wrote to Mr. Bulwer, "were I to name the other measures of large and uncompromising reform with which my name is connected." There were, indeed, many popular interests in former years with which his name was connected; and it should not, and will not, be forgotten, amidst speculations on his short official career, that, in early and unpromising days, the most conspicuous advocate of political reforms, and of education, and the most effectual denouncer of negro slavery, and of tyranny in every form, was the Henry Brougham who, in 1834, was sighing for that position among commoners in which he had won his fame. At public meetings in London, and latterly in Scotland, he earnestly put forward his regrets that he had ever quitted the scene of his triumphs, the House of Commons, and his longing to "undo the patent" of his nobility; and there were many who lamented that he should ever have left the ranks of opposition. Such now hailed his retirement from office, and the clear indica

2

1 Annual Register, 1834, Chron. p. 176.

2 Lord Brougham's Letter to Mr. Bulwer, December, 1834.

tions of circumstances that the retirement was final; for they had a lingering expectation, that, though in another House, he might resume his old habits, and be again the hope of the oppressed, and a terror to tyranny in high places.

Retirement

Lord Althorp, now become Lord Spencer, was thus soon at liberty to enter upon the privacy he sighed for. He never returned to office. Perhaps no man ever left of Lord the House of Commons and an official seat about Spencer. whom there was so little difference of opinion among all parties. Nobody supposed him an able statesman; and nobody failed to recognise his candor, his love of justice, his simplicity of heart, and his kindliness and dignity of temper and manners.