country? Nor can the answer to this question be that he had no powers of public speaking, and would, if in Parliament, have been for the most part a silent member; because it would not be easy to name a more unbroken silence than was for many long years kept by such leading Whigs as Mr. Hare, Lord John Townsend, and General Fitzpatrick, without whom, nevertheless, it was always supposed that the Whig phalanx would have been wanting in its just proportions; and also because there are many important, many even high political, offices that can well and usefully be filled by men wholly unused to the wordy war; yet Mr. Allen never filled any place, except as Secretary, nay Under-Secretary, for a few months, to the Commissioners for treating with America in 1806. Then I fear we are driven, in accounting for this strange fact, to the high aristocratic habits of our Government, if the phrase may be allowed; and can comprehend Mr. Allen's entire exclusion from power in no other way than by considering it as now a fixed and settled rule that there is in this country a line drawn between the ruling caste and the rest of the community not, indeed, that the latter are mere hewers of wood and drawers of water, but that, out of a profession like the bar, intimately connected with politics, or out of the patrician circles, themselves the monopolists of political preferment, no such rise is in ordinary cases possible. The genius of our system, very far from consulting its stable endurance, appears thus to apportion its labours and its enjoyment, separating the two classes of our citizens by an impassable line, and bestowing freely upon the one the sweat and the toil, while it reserves strictly for the other the fruit and the shade.

LORD ABINGER.

FEW men have ever appeared in the profession of the law endowed with a greater store of the qualities required to form an accomplished advocate than James Scarlett, afterwards raised to the Bench as Lord Chief Baron, and to the Peerage as Lord Abinger. His understanding was piercing and subtle; no man had more sagacity in seeing through obscure matters, or finding his way through conflicting difficulties, or reconciling contradictions, or dispelling doubts, or, if need were, in raising them; no man could bring more ingenuity to devise explanations, or overcome obstacles, or provide defence, or secure escape. Then he was, though naturally irritable, yet by habit completely master of his temper, always entirely self-possessed, hardly ever to be thrown off his guard by anger or vexation; and, habit becoming a second nature, he had all the external aspect and much of the reality of a placid goodhumour, though this was drawn over a somewhat sensitive interior. He had thus in the largest measure these two great qualifications of the Nisi Prius leader -perfect quickness of perception and decision, and imperturbable self-possession.

There is the greatest difference between the two sides of Westminster Hall in the qualities which form. the leading Advocate. In truth, Courts of Equity hardly know what the lead of a cause is; for each of three, or it may be four or five counsel, go in much the same way over nearly the same ground; and it does not even follow that the junior takes the same view of the case with those who have gone before

him. All the materials on which they have to work are fully known before they enter the court; their adversary's case is as much before them as their own; nothing can possibly arise for which they are not thoroughly prepared; and even were it possible to make any slip, as in meeting or proving unable to meet some new view of the case unexpectedly taken by the opposite advocate, or thrown out by the court (a thing of very rare occurrence), abundant opportunities remain for supplying all defects and setting all oversights right. The words quick, ready, decisive, sudden, have therefore no application to equity practice, and are hardly intelligible in the courts where bills, answers, affidavits, and interrogatories reign.

It is far otherwise at Nisi Prius. What was all argument, all talk in Equity, is here all work, all action. What was all preparation and previous plan there, here is all the perception of the moment, the decision at a glance, the plan of the instant, the execution on the spot. The office of the leader here well deserves its name; he is everything; his coadjutors are useful, but they are helps only; they are important, but as tools rather than fellow-workmen ; they are often indispensable, but they are altogether subordinate. He is often wholly-in some degree he is always uncertain beforehand what his own case is to be; he is still more uncertain of his adversary's. He comes into court with an account in his hand of what his witnesses are expected to swear, because his client has seen and examined them, which he himself has not; but he is necessarily uncertain that they will so swear, both because his client may have ill examined them, and because they may give a different account upon oath before the court and jury. Then he is still more uncertain how far they may stand firm, how far they may be shaken upon cross examination, and upon the examination by the Judge. He is even uncertain of the effect his case and his witnesses may produce

upon the judge and upon the jury. So far is the advocate at Nisi Prius in the dark as to his own case and witnesses. But of his adversary's he knows little or nothing; he may have to meet a story of which he had no kind of warning whatever; and he may have to protect his witnesses against evidence called to discredit them by proving that they have told a different story to others from that which they have told in court. Documents, letters, receipts, acquittances, releases, title deeds, judgments, fines, recoveries—all may meet him, as well as unexpected witnesses; and on the spot he may have to devise and execute his measures of protection or of defence. It is needless to observe that this gives the greatest advantage to an advocate of quickness, sagacity, and decision; and that it is a just remark which likens the tact, and generally the practical skill and firmness, of the leader in jury trials, to the coup-d'œil of the leader in war.

Nor is this all. Far different from the effects of slip or blunder or oversight in equity are the consequences of the like mistakes or neglects at law; they are almost always irremediable, not seldom fatal. No relief is given against a verdict obtained by the miscarriage of counsel. Against a surprise in the adversary's case, or in the testimony of the witnesses of either side, there may be relief; but if the mishap was owing to the error of counsel, never. Thoughtless men have found fault with this rule; but were a contrary course pursued, the most careless transaction of all business would be one consequence, and another would be the giving business by favour or connexion to the most incapable men. It is quite necessary that the client should, to some such extent and under some such qualification as has been mentioned, be bound by the conduct of his professional representative.

From what has been said it will at once appear, first, how difficult and how anxious is the position of a Nisi Prius leader; next, how small a portion of his

needful qualification consists of mere eloquence. That which to the vulgar, the spectators at large, may seem the most important part of the whole, is in truth the leader's least important qualification. The object is to gain the cause; mere talk, if he spoke "with the tongues of men and of angels," would never get the verdict. By a great speech he may atone for minor errors in the management of the cause; for great slips, or great imperfections in the conduct of it, the eloquence of Demosthenes and Cicero combined could afford no compensation, nor any substitute. The importance of eloquence is admitted; with equal, or nearly equal conduct, the great speaker will have the advantage; but conduct without eloquence is safer by much to trust for the victory than eloquence without conduct. Mr. Wallace was a successful Nisi Prius advocate, with hardly any powers of speech; Mr. Wedderburn, afterwards Lord Loughborough, had but little success, though a very fine speaker; but Wallace was an excellent lawyer and a good leader of a cause; Wedderburn had so little law, that J. Lee said what he took in on the circuit at York had run through him before he got to Newcastle; and he was moreover an indifferent conductor of a cause.

What has just been said has prepared the reader for an admission that Mr. Scarlett was a more consummate leader in the conduct of a cause than in the eloquence wherewith he addressed the jury. Not that he was deficient in some of the greater qualities of the orator. He had a most easy and fluent style; a delivery free from all defects; an extremely sweet and pleasing voice -insomuch that a lady of good sense and of wit once said that as some people are asked to sing, Mr. Scarlett should be asked to speak, so agreeable and harmonious were his tones, though of little compass or variety. But he had far higher qualities than these, the mere external or ornamental parts of oratory. He had the most skilful arrangement of his topics, the quickest