Shortly after Sir John Scott came into office the first mental indisposition of the king gave rise to the memorable struggle of the Regency question. He proved an able and strenuous supporter of the administration; and by his services at this time first obtained that personal favour from most of the members of the royal family which he continued to enjoy throughout life. Pitt, as regards the king and court, was a tolerably independent minister; while Sir John Scott, a sort of Bailie Macwheeble, at once lawyer, agent, and zealous humble friend, was cherished according to these deserts. We learn, on the authority of Lady Eldon, that one of the king's first acts after his recovery was, to send for her husband to Windsor for the sole purpose of thanking him "for the affectionate fidelity with which he adhered to him when so many had deserted him in his malady." liberty through these victims, did not lie on the soul of the Attorney-general. The mingled self-delusion and barefaced hypocrisy, so characteristic of Lord Eldon, broke strongly forth in the course of these trials. His hypocrisy, indeed, verged on the kind which must excite disgust and indignation, if it did not, by a sort of half-witted, ostrich-like simplicity, irresistibly provoke laughter. The high-flown moral pretensions of the Chancellor, his everlasting and paramount sense of duty, are exactly on a par with the professions of piety of the most canting of the Roundheads. It is marvellous, that so shrewd a man did not renounce this species of affectation. Part of it, no doubt, was calculation, and in part he was his own dupe. said to be given on his own authority, though that appears questionable. It appeared in the Law Magazine. The memoir contains a pretty fair description of the progress of these trials. The hissed and In 1793, Sir John Scott succeeded Sir Archibald hooted Attorney-general must have been heartily Macdonald as Attorney-general. No one that ever tired of them long before they closed. The fol held that office could be more zealous in the prose-lowing account of the result of the first trial, is cution of all manner of real or constructive political offences, which, of whatever nature, with him inferred the pains and penalties of High Treason. This, too, was the distinguished era of unconstitutional legislative measures. The new Attorney-general was an adept at all manner of Traitorous-Correspondence bills, Traitorous-Attempt and TraitorousPractice bills. The Habeas Corpus act was more frequently suspended than in force. This to constitutional freedom was the most threatening period in our recent history; and Sir John Scott, if not the prime mover, was the most active and zealous agent in the subversion of the bulwarks of civil liberty. The times, without doubt, were troubled; but Mr.Twiss writes of them more like an alarmist of 1794 than a reflective man looking back from the vantage ground of 1844. The epoch of the trials of Hardy and Horne Tooke had arrived. The experiment, successfully made in Scotland with Muir and Palmer," gave the Attorney-general courage to proceed still farther than in that country, and to institute proceedings which might have consigned men to the block for the expression of opinions now become common as household words. This sanguinary and unconstitutional attempt was fortunately baffled. Corrupt as the government was, and cruel as, for a season, alarm had made it, there was still a sound portion in the national heart, to which the genius of Erskine did not appeal in vain. Liberty triumphed; and the Attorney-general was signally discomfited and mortified, both as a politician and a lawyer. Mr. Twiss, who regrets this, lamely attempts to defend the policy of his hero, coolly passing over the enormity of charging a number of fellow-creatures with high treason, an attempt which happily failed, instead of prosecuting them for misdemeanour or sedition. The Anecdote Book, so far as we see, contains no expression of thankfulness that the blood of Horne Tooke and Hardy, and the immolation of "The jury retired to deliberate. Upon their return their names were called over. I never shall forget that awful moment. Gentlemen of the jury,' said the Clerk of Arraigns, are you agreed in your verdict? What say you? Is Thomas Hardy guilty of the high treason of which he stands indicted, or is he not guilty - Not guilty,' in an audible tone, was the answer. It was received in court silently, and without noise; all was stul; but the shout of the people was heard down the whole The door of the jury-box was opened for the street. jurymen to retire: the crowd separated for them, as the saviours of their country." We are bound to acknowledge the candour of Mr. Twiss in including what follows in his Life of Lord Eldon; nor is this the only instance of the sort. In commencing his general reply upon the whole case, made some allusion to his own feelings and his own re(in the trial of Horne Tooke,) the Attorney-general sponsibility: "I here declare," said he, "that not one step would I take in this prosecution repugnant to the dictates of my own judgment, exercised according to what my cen science prescribes to that judgment, not for all which this world has to give me. Gentlemen, why should I You will allow me to say, after all that has passed, that I have no desire with respect to myself in this cause, but that my name should go down to posterity with credit. I cannot but remember this is an interest most dear to me. Upon no other account my name will be transmitted to posterity: with these proceedings it must be transmitted. That name, gentlemen, cannot g down to that posterity, without its being understood by posterity what have been my actions in this case. And when I am laid in my grave, after the interval of life that yet remains for me, my children, I hope and trust, will be able to say of their father, that he endeavoured to leave them an inheritance, by attempting to give them an example of public probity, dearer to them ther any acquisition or any honour that this country coals have given the living father to transmit to them." "At this period," says the Law Magazine," Sir John Scott shed tears; and, to the surprise of the court, Mr. It is worthy of notice that as this sheet passes through the press, the citizens of Edinburgh are about laying, on the magnificent Calton Hill, the foundation-stone of a monument to the memory of Messrs. Muir, Palmer, Gerrald, and the oth victims of the state prosecutions of 1793, 1794. For the erection of this monument subscriptions have been received fr the leading Whig noblemen, members of parliament, and individuals of all parties-save one. The fact is enough to make Lord Eldon weep in the shades. He not only vindicated the principle of judges having a discretionary power to award the amount of punishment for political offences, but the shameful stretch of it on this occasion. Solicitor-general was seen to weep in sympathy with the emotion of his friend. Just look at Mitford,' was the remark of a neighbour to Horne Tooke; what on earth is he crying for?'-At the thought of the little inheritance,' retorted Tooke, that poor Scott is likely to leave his children.' Encouraged by the success of this sally, and the scarcely suppressed merriment of those within hearing, the accused soon contrived to fasten a public interruption on his accuser." This is not the first occasion on which Mr. Scott had appealed to posterity, and taken Heaven as the witness of his purity of motive. He set out from the first in this highly moral strain. Indeed, he had not been long in Parliament, nor looked upon as the legal prop and special pleader of the government, when, by a happy intuition, Mr. Francis afterwards Sir Philip Francis, and imagined author of the "Letters of Junius"-not only apprehended the general scope of his character as a speaker in the House, but also those peculiarities which distinguished him throughout his whole career. Under some extraordinary hallucination, or, as Mr. Twiss imagines, the temptation of imitating the brilliancy and wit of Sheridan, Mr. Scott, on his first ambitious appearance, delivered the most extraordinary piece of disjointed rigmarole that had ever astounded the ears of the House. Though mortified from failing in the assumed part of a Burke or Sheridan, his good sense led him to correct the blunder; and his next appearance was in the part which he supported through life, and which drew forth the remarkable -may we not say, so far as regards Mr. Scott's individualities, the prophetic ? reply of Mr. Francis. The occasion was on Mr. Scott's strenuous defence of the East India Declaratory Bill, which he had induced Mr. Pitt to bring in. After some general remarks, Mr. Francis said Did you perfectly understand him? Did he perfectly artifice: he made many subtle argumentative distinc- The Attorney-general, who had so long sat for the borough of Weobly, was in 1796 returned for Boroughbridge in Yorkshire, having for his colleague Sir Francis Burdett. His next great step was being made Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, on which occasion he was called to the House of Peers by the title of Baron Eldon. It was not a legal but a legislative question: and it was absurd for Parliament to ask of lawyers what it meant by its own act and deed. "In this House, to be eure," continued Mr. Francis, we have every assistance that learning and practice can afford. We have a learned person, (Mr. John Scott) among us, who is uniThe only innovation ever attempted by Lord Elversally acknowledged to be the great luminary of the don was to get rid of his official wig; but here his law, whose opinions are oracles, to whose skill and autho- gracious master happily maintained the balance of rity all his own profession look up with reverence and the constitution. "No, no," said George III. amazement. Well, sir, what information have we gained when applied to; "I will have no innovations in from that most eminent person? I will not attempt to follow or repeat so long, and, as I have been told, so in- my time." And the favourite minister was comgenious an argument. Ingenuity, it seems, is the qua- pelled to submit to the infliction. It has been gelity which is chiefly wanted and relied on, on the pre-nerally acknowledged, that while in the Court of sent occasion. But I well remember the course of it. The first half hour of his speech, at least, was dedicated to himself. He told us who he was; he explained to us, very distinctly, the whole of his moral character, which I think was not immediately in question; and assured the House that his integrity was the thing on which he valued himself most, and which we might with perfect security rely on. Of his learning, I confess he spoke with more than moderation, with excessive humility. He almost stultified himself for the purpose of proving his integrity. For the sake of his morality, he abandoned his learning; and seemed to dread the conclusions that might be drawn from an overrated opinion of his excessive skill and cunning in his profession. In my mind, sir, there was no occasion for this extraordinary parade. The learned gentleman's reputation in private life, I believe, is unimpeached. What we wanted, what we expected of him, was his learning, not his character. At last, however, he proceeded to the subject of debate. Here we were all in profound silence: attention held us mute. Did he answer your expectation? Common Pleas Lord Eldon made an excellent Sir William Scott, his lordship shows that the play was not worth the pay. Lord Eldon to Sir William Scott.-(Extract.) Not dated, but probably written in 1800. "DEAR BROTHER,—I have had a letter from Burdon. He assigns no reason but a love of retirement. He adds only, what surprises me, but what is, in effect this: that his support of the Treason and Sedition bills, and the stronger measures of government, have created him bitter, fierce, and unrelenting enemies, in a county in which he seems to say and to think all good men are inconceivably timid. Sir H. Vane Tempest, I understand, has offered himself, and bids defiance to competitors. Mowbray, the great land-agent of the county, has called upon me he says he is sure the thing would do. Sanderson of Sunderland has written to me to say that three-fourths of the Sunderland freeholders are divided; but to this there is an objection, like poor Edmund Burke's to modern revolutions-the working begins with the lowest instead of the highest. One great objection to the proposition must be of this sort, from the nature of things. I am necessarily a new man in the county, because I am so every where; the property nothing; of ficial reputation worth nothing in the eye of a country squire or a county lord. The weight of great men, therefore, must be on the other side. But if it was otherwise, I do not descry any thing prudent in engaging in such a business. Sir John Eden, with a better fortune in his family than I have, has been taught by experience, that, with only such a fortune, a man has more reason to rejoice when he can slip away from the representation of a county, than when he is placed in it. Here we must begin with a contest; and, if not, there is no security against it in future, and no retreating from it when it comes. An immediate expenditure of £15,000 or £16,000 would, in my opinion, be a gross injury to John. It would break up all that I have been projecting to render peerage to him a tolerable evil. Besides this, a man ought to have a certainly continuous income, very large indeed, who can have a son, in his lifetime, living as the member of a county. I don't know what allowance would be equal to such a station in modern times. I pay now, to and for John, about £1000 a-year; that is, £800 to himself, £80 as his income-tax, and the rest for his chambers in Lincoln's Inn. Attending to the purposes which this seems to answer, four times that sum would not do; and I could do nothing so unjust to him, as to engage, at all events, for a system of expense, the whole weight of which, in justice to the rest of my family, must eventually fall upon him. And for what is the present expense of a contest, and the expense of such a system, to be incurred? That any younger son of mine should ever have such a seat is out of all probability. I have no right to reckon upon seven years' existence. Is it to be incurred for a seat for those few years Suppose Providence continues me here longer, what security is there against a second contest? or rather is there not a certainty of it? The thing will never do. I hope to hear no more of it. But I hope, more anxiously, that nobody will suggest it to John. Don't imagine by this that I imagine you would, in a grave matter of this sort, unless you and I were agreed upon it previously. But there are foolish and meddling people, who are too apt to talk upon interesting subjects. I can't wish you better, than by wishing that God may preserve you to see your son twenty-six, and that, in the mean time, he should give you no more uneasiness than John has given me. But, if we both live to that period, I will ask you whether nine-tenths of the little uneasiness you will have had, have not proceeded from the tattle which strangers to you and your circumstances hold to him who ought to know nothing of them but from yourself. You see I am writing in affectionate confidence. I am growing grave, however, and that's not right towards you at Southampton. I close this part of the letter, therefore, by saying, that I am sorry to say that John has been again plagued with his asthmatic complaint; but he is better, thank God. "In confidence, my opinion is, that we are as likely to have invasion as peace." Mr. Pitt's retirement from office, in consequenc of the king's obstinate resistance to the Catholie claims, and the formation of the Addington administration, paved the way for Lord Eldon's receiving the Great Seals, which he did,—as he delights to tell,-as the King's Chancellor, receiving the appointment rather by personal favour of his majesty, than in the ordinary constitutional way. In his Anecdote Book, he thus expresses himself on the same point :- Upon the duty of a subject to obey the commands of the King as to accepting office, I have some notions that I believe are much out of fashion. In the year 1801, I became Chancellor, upon the formation of Mr. Addington's administration. I have mentioned the fact as to my undertaking to his Majesty in 1799, with respect to the Chancellorship, that it may be known to my family that I was indebted for that office to the King himself, and not, as some supposed, to Mr. Addington, and as some of Mr. Addington's friends supposed; although it is but justice to him to add, that he so conducted himself, in forming his administration, with respect to me, that my feelings towards him were the same as if he had been the instrument by whom the King was prevailed upon to promote me to the office." More than thirty years afterwards, he said to Mrs. Forster "I do not know what made George III. so fond of me; but he was fond of me. Did I ever tell you the manner in which he gave me the Seals? When I went to him, he had his coat buttoned thus, (one or two buttons fastened at the lower part,) and putting his right hand within, he drew them out from the left side, saying, I give them to you from my heart.” These vivacious special marks of kindness which accompanied the royal gift, are ascribed by Mr. Twiss, with some show of probability, to incipient aberration of the royal mind. Although the nomination of the great officers of state were the uncontrolled prerogative of the king of England, and not the duty of the responsible minister whom he chooses to form an administration, George III. was not in a mental condition to select the Lord Chan cellor. But, in all states of mind, Lord Eldon possessed those qualities which better adapted him to the taste of his master, than either Thurlow, Loughborough, or any other individual. He made many of those customary expressions of regret at resigning his judgeship in the Common Pleas which the reader may either despise or laugh at, as best suits his humour. For the necessity of resigning, he pleads a promise given to the king, that he would be his Chancellor, and confesses, as we have seen, to holding opinions as to the king's right to confer such offices, and exact such promises, which are utterly inconsistent with cousti tutional principles. In point of fact, he did no resign the office of Chief Justice, in the Court of Common Pleas, for a considerable time, nor unl he had made himself perfectly sure that the Seals could not be wrested from him by another change of administration. During the weak and unpopular administratie of Addington, the Chancellor held the even tener of his way. Mr. Twiss records, that "To no one individual, so eminently as to Lord Eldon, was owing the long and successful resistance maintains! against the Roman Catholic claims. In his deli berate and solemn judgment, the concession of them was fraught with danger to the State and to the Church." We fully accord to Lord Eldon the honour here claimed for him. He opposed the rights of the Irish Catholics, until, as we are wofully experiencing, concession, with much of its healing virtue, had lost all its grace. Notwithstanding the King's disinclination to Mr. Pitt, which about this time was almost as violent as his hatred of Fox, it was found impossible longer to maintain his favourite administration. Mr. Twiss ought to have coupled the Chancellor with Mr. Addington in the following explanatory passage. The Chancellor was at this time the more useful of the two in concealing the infirmities of temper, if not the positive mental alienation of the King. Lord Eldon was a busy intriguer in subservience to the Court; and was directly charged by Mr. Pitt with influencing the royal mind, or assuming unconstitutional power, a charge which he indignantly denied ; though his denial does not altogether disprove what was then the universal opinion. Mr. Twiss says:— critical period, to form a strong and broad-based government, which should include Fox and the Grenville party; but this was prevented by those obstinate personal animosities of the King, in which he was apparently encouraged by his courtly Chancellor. Nor was Pitt sufficiently high minded to follow the example of Lord Grenville and his friends, who refused to form part of a government upon what Lord Grenville correctly termed "a principle of exclusion." Had Pitt shown equal spirit and patriotism, and left the King to his deferential Premier and "excellent Chancellor," how different might the results have been, both to the country and to Mr. Pitt himself, whose death was certainly accelerated by the circumstances in which he was placed. The premature death of Mr. Pitt put an end to this weak and discordant administration, and brought in the government known by the nick-name of "All the Talents," which afforded Lord Eldon an opportunity to seek the retirement for which he had always professed so strong an inclination, though he had never hitherto been able to attain it. took a pathetic leave of the Chancery Bar. He Lord Eldon, about this time, suffered a severe domestic calamity, in the rather sudden death of his eldest son, who died a very short time before Mr. Pitt, and but a very few days after the birth of the present Earl of Eldon. Mr. Pitt's return to power was far from being personally desired by his majesty, who seems to have submitted to it only as matter of necessity. The royal ear, for some time accustomed to the mild and deferential key of Mr. Addington, was somewhat painfully startled by the loftier tone of Mr. Pitt; and under the irritation of an illness not yet completely dissipated, this comparative dissatisfaction was more than usually excited. A note from the king, animadverting upon the enclosure in Mr. Pitt's letter to the Chancellor, of 2d May, will show how unwillingly his majesty contemplated the re-instate-jesty had anticipated; and but for his death, the reign of the Talents might for some time have been protracted. ment of its author. King George III. to Lord Eldon. "May 5th, 1804, 19 minutes past 6 P.M. "The King is much pleased with his excellent Chancellor's note: he doubts much whether Mr. Pitt will after weighing the contents of the paper delivered this day to him by Lord Eldon, choose to have a personal interview with his Majesty; but whether he will not rather prepare another essay, containing as many empty words and little information as the one he had before transmitted. "His Majesty will, with great pleasure, receive the Lord Chancellor to-morrow between ten and eleven, the time he himself has proposed. "GEORGE R." Coming in himself, it was Pitt's desire, at this On more intimate acquaintance, Mr. Fox proved less personally obnoxious to the king than his ma Each change of Administration since 1801, had been unpleasing to the King; but upon further acquaintance, his prejudice against Mr. Fox became much abated. the King said it was but just to acknowledge, that Mr. Some time after the dissolution of the Whig Ministry, Fox, though certainly forced upon him, had never presumed upon that circumstance to treat his sovereign like a person in his power, but had always conducted himself frankly and yet respectfully, as it became a subject to behave. "His manner," the King was wont to say, " contrasted remarkably with that of another of the Whig Ministers, who, when he came into office, walked up to me in the way I should have expected from Buonaparte after the battle of Austerlitz." (To be continued.) FEAST OF THE POETS FOR SEPTEMBER 1844. She was an ancient gentlewoman, of lineage high and bold; And they said she had a great huge chest filled to the brim with gold; For there her rents she did lay by that were paid most punctually, And at her girdle, all the day, she bore about the key. And her chambers they were richly deck't, with velvet, and with pall; And many a portrait, dark and grim, in armour clad the wall; And lovely ladies, too, attired in silken sheen were there, With poodle dogs upon their knees, and powder in their hair. 3 B And rusty armour hang around, that her greatsires had | worn, Mixed with the spoils of sylvan war, with spear, and bow, and horn: And paved with marble was the hall; and by the chimney there She sat, and listened to the poor within an oaken chair. Her rivers they were filled with fish, her pastures swarmed with kine, And in her cellars there was store of old and generous wine : But tho' she cheered her neighbours' hearts, she drank no other thing, This good old country gentlewoman, but water from the spring. And she kept a table always spread, by night as well as day, And not a stranger ever thence was fasting sent away:--And her fame went through the country round, and much beloved was she, For such an ancient gentlewoman no one did ever see. And she had a chapel in her house, and there she went each day; She had an ancient chaplain, too-his hair was silver gray: Amidst her household did she kneel, upon the cushioned floor, And many a stranger there would pray, who ne'er had prayed before. She was a stately gentlewoman, of form erect and proud; And tho' her heart was warm and kind, her voice was stern and loud: She leaned upon an oaken staff, her face was long and thin; And many a straggling hair appeared upon her maiden chin. And when she paced along the hall, she was a goodly sight; And much the wondering rustics stared, she was so richly dight; For such a hoop and farthingale, they ne'er had seen before, And a long train of rustling silk behind her swept the floor. His trunk was like a huge tree Like some rhinoceros. Till he could drink no more. A daughter of the sea. His big round eye was red; From off his clumsy head. He rivalled with his wails. From Pluto's gloomy sphere. The hoary god appeared; He could not give the monster His own white snowy beard; The beard that charmed young Doris More than mad Triton's eye; But Nereus had an eye, too, Of calm blue prophecy. Quoth Nereus," Son of Neptune, If thou wilt win her love, Eat not the flesh of mortals, Revere the name of Jove:And yet thy case is hopeless, Ev'n wert thou free from blame,- His monstrous jaws were sundered; II. It was an hour of stilness, And the sultry ray of noon. |