rounded him. He expired on the 12th of September, 1806, in the seventy-sixth year of his age. CHAP. CLXI. A. D. 1806. Although the news of this event cannot be said to have produced any deep sensation in the public mind, the few sur- Sensation produced vivors who had lived with Thurlow on terms of intimacy spoke by his and thought of him with respect and tenderness. I have death. pleasure in recording, to the honour of the Prince of Wales, that he immediately sent for a nephew of the deceased, then a very young man,-kindly made him an offer of assistance in any profession he might choose, - spoke of his uncle as one whom he sincerely loved,—a faithful friend and upright councillor ;-and, lamenting his loss, was so much moved that he could not refrain from tears. ral. The Ex-chancellor's remains being sent privately to his His funehouse in Great George Street, Westminster, were conveyed thence, with great funeral pomp, to the Temple Church, Lord Chancellor Eldon, the Chiefs of the three superior Courts, and other legal dignitaries and distinguished men attending as mourners, followed by almost the whole profession of the law. Being still only a student at Lincoln's Inn, I did not witness the solemnity; but I well remember being told, by those who were present, of its grandeur and impressiveness. The coffin, with the name, age, and dignities of the deceased inscribed upon it, and ornamented with heraldic devices, was deposited in the vault under the south aisle of this noble structure, which still proves to us the taste as well as the wealth of the Knights Templars. * * Here I saw Thurlow reposing, when, nearly forty years after, at the con- Character clusion of funeral rites as grand and far more affecting, I assisted to deposit of Sir the body of my departed friend, Sir William Follett, by his side.'-May I be William allowed to pay a passing tribute of respect to the memory of this most eminent, Follett. amiable, and virtuous man?-If it had pleased Providence to prolong his days, he would have afforded a nobler subject for some future biographer than most of those whose career it has been my task to delineate. When he was prematurely cut off, the highest office of the law was within his reach; and I make no doubt that, by the great distinction he would have acquired as a judge, as a statesman, and as an orator, a deep interest would have been given to all the incidents of his past life, which they want with the vulgar herd of mankind, because he never sat on the bench, nor had titles of nobility conferred upon him. One Sir R. Peel, the Prime Minister, Lord Lyndhurst, the Chancellor, and many distinguished persons on both sides in politics were present. CHAP. His epitaph. His defects as a Judge. In the choir was soon after placed his bust in marble, with the following inscription by the Reverend Martin Routh, D. D., President of Magdalen College, Oxford: "BARO THURLOW A THURLOW, Vixit Annis LXXV. Mensibus x. Vir altâ mente et magnâ præditus, Nactus præclarissimas occasiones Firmo et constanti animo This unqualified praise may be excused in an epitaph; but the biographer, in estimating the character and the conduct of the individual so extolled, is bound to notice his weaknesses, and to warn others against the faults which he committed. Even as a Judge, the capacity in which he appears to most advantage, most remarkable circumstance would have been told respecting his rise to be the most popular advocate of his day, to be Attorney General, and to be a powerful debater in the House of Commons that it was wholly unaccompanied by envy. Those who have outstript their competitors have often a great drawback upon their satisfaction by observing the grudging and ill-will with which, by some, their success is beheld. Such were Follett's inoffensive manners and unquestioned superiority that all rejoiced at every step he attained — as all wept when he was snatched away from the still higher honours which seemed to be awaiting him. It is said: But envy may be conquered. I do not agree in the sentiment contained in Pope's letter to Addison: "I congratulate you upon having your share in that which all the great men and all the good men that ever lived have had their share of envy and calumny. To be uncensured and to be obscure is the same thing; '"-nor in the aphorism of Mr. Burke: “Obloquy is a necessary ingredient in the composition of all true glory ;"-nor in the Spanish proverb to be found in Lopez de Vega: "Dixo undiscreto que era matrimonia thus translated by Lord Holland: 66 99 Envy was Honour's wife, a wise man said, There is a superlative degree of excellence, which, like that of superior intelli- CHAP. CLXI. although he was entirely free from personal corruption or undue influence, and uniformly desirous to decide fairly, he was not sufficiently patient in listening to counsel, and he did not take the requisite pains to extricate the facts or to comprehend nice legal distinctions in complicated cases which came before him. Without devoting much time out of court to the duties of his office, no Judge can satisfactorily discharge them, and Thurlow seems to have despised the notion of reading law to extend or keep up his stock of professional knowledge. Only on very rare occasions would he take the trouble in his library of examining the authorities cited at the bar, and he used to prepare himself for giving judgment in his way from Great Ormond Street to the Court of Chancery. "An old free speaking companion of his, well known at Lincoln's Inn, would say, I met the Great Law LION this morning going to Westminster and bowed to him, but he was so busy reading in the coach what his provider had supplied him with, that he took no notice of me.'” * He certainly had an excellent head for law, and with proper pains he might have rivalled the fame of Lord Nottingham and Lord Hardwicke; but he was contented with the character of a political Chancellor, and, so that he retained power, he was rather indifferent as to the opinion which might be formed of him by his contemporaries or by posterity.† He often treated His rudethe bar with great rudeness, and his demeanour to the other ness to the branch of the profession sometimes awakened recollections of Jeffreys. A solicitor once had to prove a death before him, and being told upon every statement he made, "Sir, that is no proof," at last exclaimed, much vexed, "My Lord, it is very hard that you will not believe me; I knew him well to his last hour; I saw him dead and in his coffin, my Lord. My Lord, he was my client." Lord Chancellor. "Good God, Sir! Why did you not tell me that before? I should • Cr. i. 80. † Lord Eldon used to be fond of quoting Thurlow as a great lawyer; but this was partly from personal liking, Thurlow having patronised him at the bar, and was partly in odium of Lord Loughborough, whom he despised as a Judge, and of Lord Mansfield, whom he always wished to depreciate from the time when he bade adieu to the King's Bench, on the ground that only Westminster and Christchurch men were favoured there. — Twiss's Life of Eldon. bar and to solicitors. CHAP. His enmity to law re form. His con duct as a statesman. not have doubted the fact one moment; for I think nothing can be so likely to kill a man as to have you for his attorney." As to legal reform, instead of imitating those who held the Great Seal in the time of the Commonwealth and soon after the Revolution, he not only originated no measures of improvement himself, but he violently and pertinaciously opposed those which were brought forward by others. Mr. Pitt, though thwarted by Thurlow, really seems to have had a desire to reform our jurisprudence as well as our commercial policy, till the breaking out of the French revolution, when the terror of Jacobinism put an end to all improvement, and it was unwisely determined to try to cure disaffection by rendering the laws more arbitrary. Of statesmanship he several times declared with great candour and truth that he knew very little. Unless when he went into open opposition to the Minister under whom he held the Great Seal, he blindly adopted whatever measures were brought forward by the Government, supporting them much less by information and argument than by zeal and violence. Yet he seems to have been considered a very useful partisan—from the protection he could afford to his friends, and the terror he inspired into his enemies. He served Lord North with unwearying good faith, and I really do not think he can justly be accused of treachery to Lord Rockingham, as while in the cabinet with that nobleman, he avowedly led the opposition from the woolsack. His doubledealing during the King's illness has affixed a permanent blot upon his character; but his subsequent hostility to Mr. Pitt, though very intemperate and wrong-headed, cannot be denominated perfidious, as it was openly manifested in parliament, instead of working in secret intrigues. His career after he was deprived of office, must be allowed to have been obscure and inglorious his late-born zeal for liberty appearing to have sprung from personal dislike of the minister- not from any altered view he had taken of the constitutional rights, * This jest, which was probably thought innocuous by the author of it, is said to have ruined the reputation and the business of the unfortunate vic tim. and having died away with the chance of his own restoration CHAP. to office. CLXI. age. His judicial patronage was upon the whole well exercised, His judinotwithstanding his occasional indulgence in personal anti- cial patronpathies, as in the case of Pepper Arden, who, in spite of him, was made Master of the Rolls and Baron Alvanley, and whose judgments are now regarded with high respect. * When created Lord Chancellor, he would not remove any of the officers appointed by his predecessors, or any Commissioners of Bankrupt †, except one, who made an application to him to be continued through his mistress. ‡ The public owed to him the services of Lord Kenyon, and other eminent Judges, and he first discovered, and put in the line of promotion, the greatest lawyer of our times - John Scott afterwards the Earl of Eldon. siastical appoint. In his ecclesiastical appointments he is said to have been His eccleless scrupulous, and to have been chiefly influenced by personal favour or political convenience. Yet forming a high ments. opinion of Horsley, merely, from accidentally reading his Letters to Priestley, he gave him a stall at Gloucester, saying that "those who supported the Church should be supported by it," and afterwards recommended him to the episcopal bench. When Patten, who dedicated to him a translation of Æschylus, had published his translations of Sophocles and Euripides, Thurlow procured for him a stall A.D. 1788. at Norwich, observing that "he did not like to promote him earlier for fear of making him indolent." He first put other eminent divines in the line of high promotion. § *Thurlow's preference of Buller to Pepper Arden is thus referred to by Peter Pindar: "And bonâ fide, not of rapture fuller, Thurlow the Seal and royal conscience keeper Sees his prime favourite, Mister Justice Buller, High thron'd in Chancery, grieve the poor Sir Pepper." † It had been usual for a new Lord Chancellor to have what was called a scratch,"sweeping away the greater part of the seventy, and substituting his own favourites. He thus imitated the conduct of Geoege II. with respect to Lady Suffolk. Having received the copy of an Essay from a Yorkshire parson which pleased him, he thus wrote to him: " Sir, I return many thanks for the Essay you have sent me. Give me leave, in my turn, to inquire after your situation, and how far that or your inclination attaches you to Leeds or Yorkshire. I am, Sir, your obt servt, THURLOW."— I wish your answer in return of post." |