of conduct, and honourable support of his friends, as head of a great party; and unfortunately the party is like Snip, and would look much better without its head. It is like the sign of the good woman!"

"Lord Loughborough's acceptance of the seals," Sir Gilbert continues, "I believe sincerely to be eminently necessary for the public service. His conduct has been highly honourable, and every thing like personal claim, or even party claim, on him by the Duke of Portland is certainly at least cancelled, if not converted into a direct provocation, by what has passed since the commencement of this session. But the public good, in my opinion, requires his services, and for that reason they are due from him. I shall certainly not only approve, but applaud his acceptance of the seals.”

On the second of January Lord Loughborough read a long letter, or rather manifesto, in which he recapitulated all that had passed since June; that Dundas pressed him to accept; that he himself wished to wait, as it was of such importance to be joined by so respectable a character as the Duke of Portland. He had seen Dundas, and stated to him fairly that the consequence of his taking the great seal would be, that forty or fifty members only would join government; that as many more now with government would probably return to opposition; that it was for ministers to consider whether it was for their interest to take him on these conditions. "Lord Loughborough," adds the diplomatist, "does not appear to have communicated all that was said, for, at the close of the interview, Dundas still continued of opinion that it was for the interest of government to take him.”

At length, having affected a coy, reluctant, amorous delay, with such desperate fortitude as twice to reject the overtures of Dundas, Lord Loughborough thought he had done enough to prove his constancy, and acquiesced in becoming, what for thirty years he had sought to become, Lord High Chancellor of England.

CHAPTER VI.

THE LIFE OF LORD LOUGHBOROUGH—concluded.

The greatest

ON the 23d of January, 1793, Lord Loughborough was rewarded with the long-sought object of his toils, hopes, and intrigues, the possession of the Great Seal.* The strong evidence of competent witnesses attests that he had some admirable qualifications for this high office. "His judicial oratory," says Charles Butler, "was exquisite. detractors from his merit acknowledged the perspicuity, the luminous order, and chaste elegance of his arguments. Like Lord Camden, he frequently and successfully introduced law phrases into them. His greatest failings were, that he too clearly showed his want of attention to much of what he heard from the bar, and his want of real taste for legal learning. With this taste Lords Mansfield, Camden, and Thurlow were deeply imbrued." But though he might display less attention than was due to the arguments of the bar, his graceful demeanour and intuitive quickness of perception rendered him a most agreeable judge to practitioners. Mr. Hargrave, in his Jurisconsult Exercitations, also speaks of the captivations in the manner of his judgments, and of his most splendid judicial eloquence. The volumes of Vesey, which faithfully report these judgments, are in much esteem with lawyers, but of course involve questions too abstruse and technical to interest any other than professional readers. There are, however, two causes of such general concern, and which display the character and acquirements of the

* Among the many satires with which the press teemed on this event, the following, by Matthias, was the most playful yet stinging. "The Serenata of Acis and Galatea has been performed in Downing Street to a private company. The part of Acis by Mr. Pitt, Polypheme by Lord Thurlow, and Galatea by Lord Loughborough. The baritone of Lord Thurlow was quite Polyphemeish, and fully sustained, but it was impossible to do justice sufficiently to Lord Loughborough's diminuendo, when he died away in the arms of Acis."

Chancellor in such an engaging light, that a short analysis and extract will repay perusal.

A bill was filed, (Myddleton v. Lord Kenyon and others, 2 Vesey, 413,) to set aside an improvident agreement, by which the father, who was tenant in fee, had surrendered large estates to trustees for the use of the son. Mr. Hargrave, counsel for the plaintiff, enforces the peculiar hardships of the case in a singular style of oratory. "It is the cause of an aged, worthy, and respectable father, of ancient family, against a respectable and only son;-of a father, in disposition kind and generous, but who, in the expenditure and management of a vast family fortune, has been heretofore somewhat indolent, inattentive, careless, incautious, and improvident, against a son, in understanding, I am told, cultivated and enlightened, and, if he is to be judged of by this cause, sufficiently vigilant and cautious about the preservation of his rights and interests in the family estates. In an ardent contention between relatives so described, who can discharge the functions of an advocate without being disturbed by his feelings as a man? Nor are the objects of contention less striking than the description of the parties. Mr. Myddleton the father, as plaintiff, impatiently struggles to regain independence; to regain the use and disposal of an immense property; and to unshackle himself from stipulations which he, at least, feels as impoverishing, degrading, and oppressive; and to accomplish this deliverance he addresses himself to the protecting justice of a court of equity. On the other hand, Mr. Myddleton the son, as a defendant, claims the fullest benefit of those very same stipulations; defends them as just, proper, and necessary; peremptorily insists on the most rigid and unqualified observance of them; and strongly refuses to yield an iota of the provisions in his favour either to the demands or to the occasions of his father. But in such a case who can argue without painful emotions?

"I admit," continues Mr. Hargrave "that there is entwisted into the transaction, which the plaintiff seeks to invalidate, an aggregate of the most unimpeachable integrity. The first of the trustees, Lord Kenyon, is of so peculiar a description, that to suppose him to be privy to a fraud would be to

suppose justice itself transmuted; would be to suppose what we must all presume, and I heartily believe to be, a moral impossibility." The advocate being conscious that to cry out fraud in such a case seemed like saying that a wrong thing had been done without a wrong man to do it, has resort to an idea that the son has been won into that species of deception, which aims to serve the person it imposes upon, and so considered his taking advantage of his father's error, and all the incidental deceptions, as a sort of pious fraud. "Mr. Hargrave suggests that the court may for a moment (for the father's great age will scarce admit of more) suspend decision by recommending an amicable adjustment between the father and the son, and recommending a new settlement. But should the son force the court to make a decree, he submits for the father, that there will be sufficient scope to decide the case according to natural feelings, to decide it for the incautious father against the too cautious son."

The Chancellor refused the application, and gave his reasons in a strain of blended dignity and feeling. "There was no misapprehension. No person would have dared to impose so grossly on the plaintiff as to tell him he could not sell an estate of 7,000l. a year, of which he was tenant in fee. Would any man have presumed to tell him he could not pay those debts by selling part of that estate? No man would have been idiot enough to represent that it was necessary for paying his debts that his son should join. But it is true it was necessary for the purposes he meant; purposes of the heart, not of the understanding; purposes it would be the pride of a man to say, at that time of life, he had completed: that he had put his affairs in such a way that his son would be owner of a great estate, with his debts paid, and a magnificent castle, and in a high situation in the world. For the purposes of that arrangement, it was truly represented to him—he felt and knew that it was not sufficient that his will alone should operate; but the concurrence of his son was necessary. With what anxiety he observes the motions of his son! How he watches him when engaged with Aylmer (his attorney)! What happiness he feels when the son comes, with duty and propriety, throws himself into his father's arms, and desires to

be guided by his attorney and counsel, whom the father, having so many money transactions, must have known, whom the son could not have known. Trustees were named on the part of the father. Every thing is reversed in this case. The bill is perfectly novel. I recollect cases where young men have complained of restraint, that the son being full of affection and duty, the father, taking advantage of that disposition, or perhaps some accommodation of money, had imposed upon the son by making him resettle the estate. Such cases may have occurred: they are the reverse of this case. The extravagance is on the other side, the frugality on that of the young man. The father complains that he has been deluded to make a settlement for the payment of the debts and the preservation of the family; and upon being permitted to employ his own people, among whom are names that one would not suspect to be affected by such a word as fraud. Suppose the plaintiff's situation was misrepresented to him as stated; he must have had but one degree of intellect beyond that situation that would have made him an object of the protection of this court, if he had been so grossly deceived. I am of opinion, therefore, that the relief prayed is completely incompetent. It has been emphatically pressed by Mr. Hargrave, that this matter might be much better arranged than by a court of justice. It was pressed as a subject on which the court might interpose by way of recommendation. I cannot recommend where I can make no decree. Sitting here as a judge in a court of equity, I am bound to decide upon the case brought before me; but in any other place, and abstracted from the character in which I now sit, there is no doubt it must be the wish of every honourable mind to comply with the proposal."

Another case in the decision of which Lord Loughborough proved himself no less the scholar than the gentleman, was a petition from Mr. Francis Wrangham, the late venerable Archdeacon of Chester, a name of high note in the republic of letters, to be admitted a fellow of Trinity Hall. The only ground for the Chancellor's interference rested on the meaning of the founder in the words "idoneus moribus et ingenio," the charter of foundation containing a provision, "quòd in loco