on the day previous to his execution, evinced I union between the husband and wife. George feeling and genius. He had squandered a considerable fortune before he became a conspirator. Remote journals published their letters, poetry and speeches of the plotters. The policy pursued by the Ministry was execrable. No man protested against it more courageously and firmly than Thomas Denman, although he thus became deeply marked; and he was sensible of all the scores against him in the opinion of the Cabinet. Mr. Denman was returned to Parliament, for the borough of Wareham, in the year 1818, through the influence of Mr. Calcraft, a well-known Whig or Radical. His Parliamentary career was alike distinguished and judicious. He seldom addressed the Commons, except on legal questions, and he vigilantly watched all the measures calculated to abridge the liberty of the subject, introduced under Lord Liverpool's Government by Lords Castlereagh and Sidmouth. He invariably opposed the coercion of opinion, and vindicated zealously the rights of conscience. Through all the debates and discussions that preceded the reforming era from 1829 to 1834, Mr. Denman bore a conspicuous part in advocating the extension of freedom, or resisting infringement on rights already secured; yet, generally, confining his arguments to the legal bearings of the point reviewed. A brilliant exception runs like a golden thread through silver work, in all his long life. He was the ceaseless opponent of slavery; the earnest advocate of negro freedom, not on legal grounds, for the question was out of their range; but on the broad principles of moral right. Like Lord Brougham he opposed the recent policy of the Whigs in equalizing the duties on slave and freegrown produce of the tropics. He supported the blockading system of Africa against all the opponents of that plan; and he had the proud satisfaction in finding a practical and successful exponent of his views, in his son, Captain Denman, who was long engaged in suppressing the slave-trade on the African She IV. charged his queen with infidelity during her residence in Italy. The King endeavored to bargain with his Ministry for a divorce bill. They at first refused the terms; but they consented to omit the Queen's name from the Liturgy, and enjoined that it should be excluded from public prayers. The clergy very generally, both in England and Scotland, obeyed their instructions; but exceptions were found in many places. An old Scotch minister was blamed by his brethren for including the Queen's name in his public prayers. He replied, that if she were guilty, his prayers were much needed, and if she were innocent, she could be made no worse for them. Mr. Denman, in one of his numerous speeches on this subject, said, that if the Queen had a place in the Prayer-book at all, it was in the prayer for "all that are desolate and afflicted." When this omission was promulgated, the Queen hastened from Italy to England, having first written to Lord Liverpool, with the request that her name should be inserted and her title recognized. landed at Dover on the 6th June, 1820. Upon the same day the King, by a message to the House of Peers, recommended their lordships to inquire into the conduct of his wife. Her journey to London was a triumphal progress; and in London her public reception resembled that which might have been accorded to a great national benefactor. Two commissioners, Messrs. Brougham and Denman for the Queen--and the Duke of Wellington and Lord Castlereagh for the King, endeavored to arrange their differences. They failed, and on the 9th June the failure was announced. The three subsequent months were periods of great popular excitement. The people adopted the Queen's cause; and her overwrought advocates shared her popularity. The legal skill, the cool bearing, the eloquence, and the astute powers brought by Mr. Denman to the crossexamination of the witnesses arrayed against her, established his professional character upon a very wide basis; while it barred the way to any advancement that his opponents could withhold. Both Mr. Brougham and Mr. Denman acted with courage and disinterestedness. They incurred the personal enmity of the reigning sovereign and his probable successors; for this was a family quarrel, in which the Dukes of York and Clarence joined. The arguments, examinations, pleadings, and replies did not close until the 2d of November. Upon the 6th, the second reading of the bill of pains and subsequent winter brought wild work to Sir | Thomas Denman. Harassed by the legal business of the great Reform measure, he was compelled to recognize a lawless state of society both in the agricultural and the manufacturing districts. Fire-raising and machine breaking were prevalent crimes, and when a homestead or its corn-ricks made the sky lurid in the dark nights of winter, it also added to the load of business in the Crown Office. The Ministry were surrounded by anxieties, and that new destroyer, the cholera, in the autumn of 1830, and the winter of 1831, was creeping to the north and west in slow but solemn and sure progress, to increase the disorder. The Reform Bill was introduced by Lord John Russell to the Commons on the 1st of March, 1831. The debate was the longest remembered in Parliament on any single measure, and the division on the second reading was the largest. The numbers respectively were 302 and 301. The Bill was read a second time by a majority of 1. Mr. Calcraft, who had been Sir Thomas Denman's first Parliamentary friend, managed to get into the lobby only in time to present an even vote. He had been in Parliament for thirty-five years. He remained thus to carry the Reform Bill, and he never voted again; having, like another friend of the Attorney-General, committed suicide. The Easter recess was passed by many persons in the organization and strengthening of the political unions, which trode on the fringes and margin of the constitution. On the 18th of April the Commons met in Committee on the Bill, and the Ministry were defeated by a majority of 8 on General Gascoyne's amendment against the reduction of the number of members which constitute the House; and again by 22 on an amendment upon the Chancellor of the Exchequer's motion to go into a Committee of Supply. The real crisis of the Reform Bill had arrived. Its opponents in Parliament were confident and furious; its supporters were desponding and doubtful; not that they were afraid for the ultimate fate of their measure, but for the means by which it should be carried. The King was favorable, but would not contemplate the dissolution of a Parliament which had not completed its first year. The Peers denied the propriety of this exercise of the prerogative. The denial roused the energy of the King, and on the 22d of April he prorogued Parliament. These historical events are referred to here merely to indicate the hidden work of the Attorney-General; on whom the responsibility of keeping these movements within the limit of th ally devolved. He was again ret constituency, but was re-elected little personal exertion; and Par again assembled, and the Bill wa troduced before two months h Although the Grey Ministry had majority, yet the opposition to extremely severe; and the last d Commons terminated on the 21st ber by a vote of 345 to 236, in measure, which now rested with while the Birmingham and oth unions assumed an attitude of th barrassing character to the Attorn the representative of a large a constituency, foreseeing the pro sity for prosecutions, which esser might become in his official, w necessarily injure bis Parliamenta The Peers threw out the Bill on tober. Upon the 20th the King, his attachment to the Reform i Ministry, prorogued Parliament. of 1831 and 1832 was even m and riotous than its immediate Bands of ill-conditioned men, as titles and the wrongs of Reform riots to profit by the temporary of society. Incendiarism begai and spread to Nottingham, the General's constituency. The Du castle's castle at Nottingham down. The county paid 21,00 fire; and the Attorney-General for the exercises of his official fun own town. Near to the end of Charles Wetherell, the Recorder proceeds to open his Court in th great riot ensued, for Sir Cha zealous Tory. His presence wa for rogues and vagabonds to inst nival of disorder. Half of one burned down, and many lives we Mayor was a singularly quiet shrunk from giving those imp which the commanding officer, Co ton, required. The latter gent kind-heartedness temporized wit and endeavored to restore peace sion, without bayonets. The mag the officer were brought to trial. ceedings against the former were painful to the Attorney-General were acquitted. The proceedin Colonel Brereton were painful to He had endeavored to reconcile and duty, and he was misdirected formed. The fourth day of his He had two little daughters, and they had no mother. Always his last act at night had been to look into their bedroom and say good night to the sleeping children. Afterwards the servants observed that on this night he passed their door. He was heard walking in his room until they all slept. In the morning he was dead-shot by his own hand -a brave man and kind, but unwilling to fire | even upon the worst of the people. The fierce agitations of these troubled times, the close treading on the edges of constitutional law by all parties; the absolute infringement of its principles by the nominal supporters of his own party; the investigations into riots and the trials of the rioters, weighed heavily on the energies and the heart of the Attorney-General. The history of the Reform Bill belongs rather to the life of other statesmen than to that of Sir Thomas Denman. It became law; and other grand struggles opened on the Parliamentary and political fields. None was grander than the destruction of slavery, or nearly equal to it in moral sublimity. This discussion, and all its consequent labors, was a sunny spot in his overwhelming toil; and among many friends of the negroes, no man labored more assiduously to uproot this insulting crime to humanity, or rejoiced more sincerely at the advent of that august day when the British flag, wherever it was planted, shadowed only freemen. He expressed a lively interest in all those social reforms that were either partially or wholly effected in the years immediately subsequent to the passing of the Reform Bill. The Bank and East India Charters had to be remodelled, and the opinion of the Law officers of the Crown had to be obtained. These few words were often lightly spoken, but the opinion of the chief officer was never lightly formed. The retirement of Earl Grey from the Premiership virtually broke up the Reform Ministry; and a peerage was conferred on Sir Thomas Demnan in that year, 1834, when he was named Chief Justice of England. Thenceforward his years flowed more equally. The Chief Justice was remarkable for his calm and dignified bearing on the Bench; his cheerful devotion to its important duties; the attention and cares which he bestowed on cases, and the diligence with which he pursued his duties, and cleared away the arrearage of his Court. No man since the days of Sir Mathew Hale discharg: ed the functions of Chief Justice of England with more dignity than Lord Denman. Like dent. His decisions proceeded upon an arduous application to the arguments and evidence. The incorruptibility of our judges is now unquestioned, but their application to business is a different subject, and deficiency in that respect is one form of corruption, and judgments are given in some courts with a rapidity altogether inconsistent with justice. The counsel on both sides, in perhaps the greatest cases of the last thirty years, solicited the Bench for an early decision, which was promised to them in three days. These three days, lawyers relate, were passed by the presiding representative of justice in busy pic-nicing, at a rural retreat, from which he returned fresh for judgment. Lord Denman might have arrived at the same findings, but he would not have reached them through the medium of a cigar-case. As Chief Justice he adequately represented the feeling of the English people in his time. He united firmness with a mild demeanor towards all men, and patiently examined the statements adduced before him in his official capacity. The greater portion of his labors originated in cases with which, after the decision is given and the costs are paid, the principals alone are interested; but during his presidency two important political questions were discussed and settled in a manner not calculated to raise the character of the courts with the people. The case Stockdale v. Hansard was the first. The House of Commons had ordered the publication of certain reports on prisons, in which a book published by Stockdale was described as obscene and disgusting in the extreme. He raised an action of libel against the publishers who pleaded the privileges of Parliament, in bar, for whom Messrs. Hansard acted. In November, 1836, Lord Denman declared that the authority of the House could not justify the publication of the libel. In May, 1837, the Committee of the House arrived at an opposite conclusion. Lord Denman argued that Parliament could not be permitted to libel individuals through the reports of their committees without a remedy. The Commons maintained that the publication of evidence supplied to their committees was essential to good legislation, and should be privileged. They, however, directed their publishers to plead, who were subjected to damages, and having defended the action they were bound to meet its consequences. The trial occupied some time, and, at its conclusion, Stockdale brought another action, for the Hansards continued to |