promoting that worse evil, a sympathy with wickedness justly punished, rather than with the law, whether of God or man, unjustly violated."

The contemplated changes of Sir Samuel Romilly in the law of real property were opposed by the Chief Justice with equal vigour. He objected to his scheme of subjecting freehold estates to the payment of simple contract debts, observing that "the bill would be like putting on, for the sake of a little inconvenience, a huge blistering plaster, that might corrode or gangrene the whole system." This righteous measure (through the exertions of Mr. J. Romilly, a son of the originator) has become part of the law of the land, and the gangrene is invisible.

"I had before," says Romilly in his Diary, "sent a copy of the bill to Lord Ellenborough (a bill to make freehold estates' assets to pay simple contract debts), and I last night received a note from him, in which he says I cannot help thinking that the simple contract creditor should have his remedy by action against the heir and devisee as well as the specialty creditor;' for, as I have drawn the bill, freehold estates are to be assets for simple contract debts to be administered only in courts of equity. He adds in his note, 'As so very great a change in the law will be effected by the proposed bill if it should pass, I think the judges should have an opportunity of considering it before it is introduced into parliament. If the bill commenced in the lords, as bills of this nature used formerly to do, it would, I believe, be referred to the judges in the first instance, as a matter of course, to report their opinion thereupon; and though the proposed bill originates in the commons, where no such reference can be made, it would still be expedient to obtain their opinion individually respecting the alteration meant to be effected, and to leave the bill in that view for their consideration a reasonable time before it is brought in. In the hurry of term I have not yet had time to attend to it as I ought. The general principle of subjecting real estates to the demands of simple contract creditors I much approve.""

Though Romilly understood from this note that Lord

Ellenborough wished him to defer his motion, he determined to persevere; excused himself from consulting the judges, as incompatible with his unavoidable occupations, and entertained an objection to the proceeding, which he did not think it necessary to mention. "It appears to me," he adds, "a most unconstitutional doctrine that no important alteration can be made in the law, unless the judges are consulted on it. If they are to be consulted, of course their opinions are to be followed; and therefore if they, or only a majority, disapprove of any proposed alteration in the law it must be abandoned.

The remarks of Lord Ellenborough on the Insolvent Debtors' Bills (mutatis mutandis) are more deserving of attention, especially at a juncture when such a decisive shock to credit is contemplated, as the abolishing altogether the punishment of imprisonment for debt. "The absence of imprisonment," he contended, "would go far to the destruction of trade in this commercial country. There were twenty fraudulent debtors for one vexatious and unmerciful creditor. He trembled at the destruction of all trust in barter, if, after a short confinement, the debtor might be discharged. The man who, tottering on the verge of a gaol, could not with effect place his debtor there, must enter the walls of a prison or a workhouse himself." Though he opposed the recurrence to Insolvent Debtors' Acts to the last, and found his opposition strengthened by the fruits of experience and time, he appears not to have been adverse to some moderate remedial measure; and in 1808 introduced a bill for the relief of persons confined for small debts in certain cases, viz. where the party had been imprisoned in execution for twelve calendar months, and where the debt, exclusive of costs, did not exceed 201.; in such case, upon application to any of the superior courts at Westminster, the party might be discharged, but with a provision that his goods and effects should be liable to execution, in the same manner as if the plaintiff had not taken in execution the body of the defendant. "The bill, if found to be expedient," said its author, "might afterwards be extended; but he would not consent, in the first instance, to run the risk of affecting public credit by extending pro

visions of this nature too far. As Chief Justice of England, he was sensitively adverse to incautious or intemperate legislation."

When it was suggested to a survivor of Lord Ellenborough's school that a bill for abolishing contingent remainders had been brought into Parliament, he exclaimed, in a transport of legal horror, "Abolish contingent remainders! Why not repeal the law of gravitation !"

CHAPTER IX.

THE LIFE OF LORD ELLENBOROUGH CONCLUDED.

IT is to the noble lord as Chief Justice, rather than a legislator, that the friends and admirers of a great man must look for materials of panegyric. They, who would gather just reasons of praise and avoid fit topics of censure, must follow him to the Court of King's Bench, over which he most worthily presided for the term of sixteen years. As judge, Lord Ellenborough never had a superior, scarcely an equal. He took his seat in court on the first day of Hilary Term, 1802, with as majestic a presence as if he had been the king himself at Westminster. His predecessor, Lord Kenyon, was a good plain man and homespun lawyer, of unsullied purity and sound learning. He had sat for years in the same pair of glossy doe-skins, delivering the decisions of the court, which were full of good law, in a sort of pie-bald jargon — a perfect stranger to amenity, dignity, or grace. His successor had been the object of his captious dislike, partly from aversion to his patron, Mr. Justice Buller, and partly from jealousy of his stately bearing. On every occasion he loved to slight the arguments and disparage the legal lore of Sir Edward Law, even when attorney-general. It affords abundant proof of the magnanimity of his mind, that he bore this petulant demeanor without even a look of rebuke, and treated with silent scorn the petty aversion of the Chief. Not that he was insensible to such unworthy treatment. The quotation in which he noticed it, when replying to Erskine, is universally known. The rebuke was conveyed in a classical language, that the inferior auditors might not rejoice at the prospect of a personal skirmish between the grandees of the

court:

"non me tua fervida terrent

Dicta, ferox, Dii me terrent et Jupiter hostis."

We are informed, in the amusing notice of his contempora

ries by the late Mr. Espinasse, that the Chief Justice declared, soon after taking his seat, that his feelings as a barrister had been so often outraged by the insults of Lord Kenyon, that no gentleman should be compelled to submit to indignity without the power of repelling or punishing it. Except in rare yet memorable instances, he kept his word.

No deportment could be more signally becoming the chief criminal magistrate of England than was Lord Ellenborough's bearing throughout the trial of Colonel Despard for high treason, which occurred soon after his accession to the bench. His address to the misguided traitor after conviction (Lord Nelson and other gallant brothers in arms having borne witness to the faded glories of the prisoner's former career) softened the stern displeasure of the Judge into accents of grave urbanity and compassion.

accus

"As to you, Colonel Edward Marcus Despard, - born as you were to better hopes,—intended and formed as it should seem by Providence for better ends and purposes, tomed as you heretofore have been to better habits of life and manners, pursuing as you once did, together with the honourable companions of your former life and services (and who have appeared as witnesses to your character during that period), the laudable objects of virtuous and loyal ambition, I will not at this painful moment point out to you how much all these considerations, and the degraded and ignominious fellowship in which you now stand, enhance the particular guilt of your crime, sharpening and embittering, as I know they must, in the same proportion, the acuteness and pungency of your present sufferings. I entreat you, however, by the memory of what you once were, to excite, revive, and renew in your mind an ardent and unceasing purpose to endeavour, during the short period of your remaining life, to subdue that callous insensibility of heart, of which, in an ill-fated hour, you have boasted, and to regain that salutary and more softened frame and disposition of the heart and affections, which I trust you once had, and which may enable you to work out that salvation which, from the infinite mercy of God, may even yet be attainable by effectual penitence and prevailing prayers."