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And other works.

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THE

QUARTERLY REVIEW.

ART. I.-A Memoir of the Right Hon. James, First Lord Abinger, Chief Baron of Her Majesty's Court of Exchequer, including a Fragment of his Autobiography, and Selections from his Correspondence and Speeches. By the Hon. Peter Campbell Scarlett, C.B. With a Portrait. London, 1877.

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6

HE subject of this Memoir was not pre-eminent in forensic or judicial eloquence. He was not a great lawyer, nor a great judge, nor (in the highest sense) a great advocate; but he was, by general admission, the most successful advocate, the greatest verdict-getter,' the greatest winner of causes, recorded in the annals of the English Bar. He was, moreover, a man of the strictest honour, and he never, like more than one distinguished contemporary that shall be nameless, condescended to trickery or to unworthy arts of any kind. It would be difficult to set before the rising members of the profession a more improving model or a more elevating example; and it is most fortunate, therefore, that he has clearly analysed and fully described in his Autobiography what he conceived to be the essential causes of his success. Before coming to these, we will attempt a rapid summary of those passages of his early life. which exercised the most influence on his career, or contributed most largely to his mental training and the formation of his character.

In a preliminary chapter, headed 'The Origin and Genealogy of the Scarletts,' the name is derived from Carlat or Escarlat (Aquitaine); and Bernard, Viscount of Carlat, A.D. 932, is mentioned as the first or founder of the family, 'who,' Mr. Scarlett adds, soon after the Conquest were undoubtedly large landowners in Kent, and down to the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries had landed estates in five other counties.' His father begins by saying that having at no time taken an interest in genealogy, he can give but little account of his paternal Vol. 144.-No. 287.

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ancestors;

ancestors; that even how long they had been settled in Jamaica was entirely unknown to him. My grandfather, James Scarlett, married the daughter of a West Indian proprietor. I have heard my father say that she was related to the family of General Wolfe, who fell at Quebec.' His mother was the daughter of Colonel Philip Anglin, a wealthy colonist. He was born in Jamaica on the 13th of December, 1769, and among his earliest recollections is that of reading the Psalter and Bible to his mother, who had a very happy art of teaching her children to read when they were too young to retain in their memory any traces of the process she adopted.' The result of her teaching was indelibly impressed :

'I acknowledge with gratitude the early lessons I received from her, inculcating a high tone of moral and religious feeling, which has never ceased to influence my habits and my conduct.

'It is but justice to her to state, that though surrounded by slaves, I was brought up with an abhorrence of the slave trade, and the system of slavery which is the necessary consequence of it. Be it known, notwithstanding the confident allegations of several journalists to the contrary, that I was never at any school.'

His education, as he grew up, was principally conducted by tutors, first a Scotchman, and then an Englishman,-‘a man of great good-nature and some talent, but not so great a proficient in Greek as I wish he had been, though he professed to make it an essential part of our studies.' From fourteen to fifteen he had no other director of his studies than his father, whose favourite authors were Pope, Addison, and Swift. These they read and re-read together. Swift's prose in particular the father delighted in, considering it as a model of simplicity, perspicuity, and force; and I owe to his lessons an early taste I still retain for the genius and manner of writing of the Dean of St. Patrick.'

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It was about this time that his father announced the intention of sending him to Oxford preparatory to a course of study for the Bar. He himself had a boyish predilection for the navy, which, he says, soon yielded to authority and the advantages of practising at the Bar of Jamaica, where the family influence was strong; for this was the highest object of ambition then placed before him. He set sail from his native isle on the 1st of June, 1785, and arrived in London on the 1st of August. Shortly after his arrival he was entered a student of the Inner Temple, under the auspices of a relation, who thought 'the proper consequence' of his manly appearance was to add one year to his age in the formal entry, and the same course was followed on his admission as a Fellow Commoner at Trinity College, Cambridge,

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