The Mirror Of Literature, Amusement, And Instruction. Volume 17, No. 496, June 27, 1831

The result need scarcely be alluded to. Men of all parties, however discordant might be their opinions upon the point at issue, acknowledged and admired the intrepidity and splendid talents of Mr. Brougham on this memorable occasion.

Brilliant as has been the parliamentary career of Mr. Brougham from this period, our limits will allow us only to advert to a few of its brightest epochs. Whether advocating the rights and liberties, and a spirit of social improvement, at home, or aiding the progress of liberal opinion abroad, we find Mr. Brougham exercising the same uncompromising integrity and patriotic zeal. Spain, in 1823, became a fitting subject for his masterly eloquence. His remarks on the French government, on April 14, in the House of Commons, on the consideration of the policy observed by Great Britain in the affairs of France and Spain, will not soon be forgotten: "I do not," said Mr. Brougham, "identify the people of France with their government; for I believe that every wish of the French nation is in unison with those sentiments which animate the Spaniards. Neither does the army concur in this aggression; for the army alike detests the work of tyranny, plunder, cant, and hypocrisy. The war is not commenced because the people or the army require it, but because three or four French emigrants have obtained possession of power. It is for such miserable objects as these that the Spaniards are to be punished, because they have dared to vindicate their rights as a free and independent people. I hope to God that the Spaniards may succeed in the noble and righteous cause in which they are engaged."

In 1824, (June 1), we find Mr. Brougham in the House of Commons, moving an address to the King, relative to the proceedings at Demerara against Smith, the missionary; but, after a debate of two days, the motion was negatived.²

During the period of Mr. Canning's ministry, his liberality gained Mr. Brougham's support: this is the only instance of Mr. Brougham's not being opposed to the minister of the day; and, observes a political writer, "he has been as much above the task of drudging for a party as drudging for a ministry."

The year 1828 is a memorable one in Mr. Brougham's parliamentary life. Early in the session, upon the debate of the battle of Navarino, we find him expressing his readiness to support the ministry as long as the members who composed it showed a determination to retrench the expenditure of the country, to improve its domestic arrangements, and to adopt a truly British system of foreign policy. It was on this occasion that Mr. Brougham used the expression which has since become so familiar—"The schoolmaster is abroad." On Feb. 7, Mr. Brougham brought forward a motion on the State of the Law, in an elaborate speech of six hours delivery. The debate was adjourned to February 29, when Mr. Brougham's motion, in an amended shape, was put and agreed to, requesting the King to cause "due inquiry to be made into the origin, progress, and termination of actions in the superior courts of common law in this country;" and "into the state of the law regarding the transfer of real property." Even the heads of this speech would occupy one of our pages. A passage much quoted at the time of its publication is a good specimen of Mr. Brougham's forcible style of illustration: "He was guilty of no error—he was chargeable with no exaggeration—he was betrayed by his fancy into no metaphor, who once said, that all we can see about us, King, Lords, and Commons, the whole machinery of the State, all the apparatus of the system and its varied workings, end simply in bringing twelve good men into a box." In the same month, Mr. Brougham spoke at great length in support of Lord John Russell's motion for the repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts. On March 6, Mr. Brougham spoke in support of Mr. Peel's motion for Catholic Emancipation, which he described as going "the full length that any reasonable man ever did or ever can demand; it does equal justice to his Majesty's Roman Catholic subjects; it puts an end to all religious distinctions; it exterminates all civil disqualifications on account of religious belief. It is simple and efficacious; clogged with no exceptions, unless such as even the most zealous of the Catholics themselves must admit to be of necessity parcel of the measure."

In the session of 1829, Mr. Brougham explained the proceedings of the Commissioners appointed to inquire into Public Charities, who, it appeared, had examined sixteen counties, and partially examined ten; altogether amounting to more than 19,000 charities, being more than half the number in the whole kingdom.

In 1830, Mr. Brougham supported Lord John Russell's plan for Parliamentary Reform, as an amendment to a motion of Mr. O'Connell; in which Mr. Brougham opposed universal suffrage and vote by ballot. In the same week also, he spoke at some length on the punishment of Forgery by death. The opinions which he expressed, Mr. Brougham said, he had learned from his great and lamented friend, Sir Samuel Romilly; and he concluded by expressing his hope that he should live to see the day when this stain should be removed from our statute-book. In the following month Mr. Brougham brought in a bill for local jurisdictions in England, for diminishing the expense of legal proceedings. On June 24, Mr. Brougham spoke at great length upon the inadequacy of the ministerial bill for the reform of the Court of Chancery. On July 13, he moved for the abolition of West India Slavery, and expatiated at great length and with extreme earnestness—first, on the right of the mother country to legislate for the colonies, and next on the legal and moral nature of slavery.

Upon the dissolution of parliament, consequent upon the death of George IV., Mr. Brougham was invited to the representation of the extensive and wealthy county of York. In his speech to the electors he alluded to Parliamentary Reform, a revision of the Corn Laws, and the extinction of Colonial Slavery, as three grand objects of his ambition; and concluded by thus explaining his becoming a candidate—"because it would arm him with an extraordinary and a vast and important accession of power to serve the people of England." It need scarcely be added, that his election was secured; his return was free of all expense: indeed, never was triumph more complete.³

Soon after the assembling of the new parliament, Mr. Brougham, in connexion with the topic of the recent revolutions on the continent, and parliamentary reform in this country, concluded an interesting debate by saying—"He was for reform—for preserving, not for pulling down—for restoration, not for revolution. He was a shallow politician, a miserable reasoner, and he thought no very trustworthy man, who argued, that because the people of Paris had justifiably and gloriously resisted lawless oppression, the people of London and Dublin ought to rise for reform. Devoted as he was to the cause of parliamentary reform, he did not consider that the refusal of that benefit, or, he would say, that right, to the people of this country (if it were a legal refusal by King, Lords, and Commons, which he hoped to God would not take place) would be in the slightest degree a parallel case to any thing which had happened in France."

Mr. Brougham's elevation to the exalted station which he now fills need be related but briefly, since the particulars must be fresh in the recollection of our readers. Upon the resignation of the Wellington ministry—with the title of BARON BROUGHAM AND VAUX, he took the oaths as Lord Chancellor, November 22, and his seat in the Chancery Court on November 25, 1830.

In the House of Lords, in reply to some censurable observations on his acceptance of office which had been made elsewhere, his lordship explained his motives with great candour. After an allusion to his difficulty in resigning his high station as a representative for Yorkshire, Lord Brougham said, "I need not add, that in changing my station in parliament, the principles which have ever guided me remain unchanged. When I accepted the high office to which I have been called, I did so in the full and perfect conviction, that far from disabling me to discharge my duty to my country—far from rendering my services less efficient, it but enlarged the sphere of my utility. The thing which dazzled me most in the prospect which opened to my view, was not the gewgaw splendour of the place, but because it seemed to afford me, if I were honest—on which I could rely; if I were consistent—which I knew to be matter of absolute necessity in my nature; and if I were as able as I knew myself honest and consistent—a field of exertion more extended. That by which the Great Seal dazzled my eyes, and induced me to quit a station which till this time I deemed the most proud which an Englishman could enjoy, was, that it seemed to hold out the gratifying prospect that in serving my king I should be better able to serve my country."

Already has the official elevation of Lord Brougham been attended with manifest advantages, and promises of still greater benefits to the nation. Only such as are accustomed to the cares of office can form but a faint idea of the perplexities which beset the Lord Chancellor on the recent dissolution of parliament; yet in this arduous scene Lord Brougham is believed by all but the bitterest of his political opponents, to have comported himself with becoming equanimity. A political contemporary observes, upon his recent appointment—"There is no instance in modern times of an elevation marked with the same characters. Lord Brougham had never before been in office; he had passed through none of the degrees which for the most part, lead to the proud eminence where he now stands. We have had learned Chancellors, and political—or, we would rather say, politic Chancellors—but never before Lord Brougham (with, perhaps, the exception of Erskine), have we had what may be justly called a popular Chancellor. * * The consideration which he disdained to accept from party or from power in the House, his conduct has won from the great mass of his countrymen out of it. We speak the plain and simple truth when we say—and that not for the first time—that at no period of our history since the era of the Commonwealth has any one Englishman contrived to fix so many eyes upon him as Lord Brougham has for the last few years."⁴

Of Lord Brougham's qualifications as a barrister we have already spoken. To the hearing of appeals in the House of Lords, an important section of the public business, his Lordship brings qualifications not possessed by any of his predecessors. Seven years' practice at the Scotch bar, and a very extensive employment in appeals from that country (for he has been engaged in almost every case of importance for the last ten years) have made him familiar with the machinery of the law on which his decisions bear; and he therefore undertakes his judicial task with professional confidence.

Besides contributing to the Edinburgh Review, as we have noticed, Lord Brougham is the author of several papers in Nicholson's Journal, and in the Transactions of the Royal Society, of which his Lordship is a distinguished member. The chief entire work which bears his name is entitled, "An Inquiry into the Colonial Policy of the European States," 2 vols. 8vo. 1828; and a masterly pamphlet "On the State of the Nation," which has run through many editions. Several of his speeches have likewise been published.

It is, however, in connexion with Public Education, that the pen of Lord Brougham has been more extensively employed. His zealous co-operation with Dr. Birkbeck, and other patriotic men of talent, in the establishment of Mechanics' Institutions in the year 1824, must be gratefully remembered by thousands who have enjoyed their benefits; and, for the advantage of the London Mechanics' Institution, were republished from the Edinburgh Review, his excellent "Practical Observations upon the Education of the People, addressed to the Working Classes and their Employers."—The twentieth edition of this pamphlet is now before us, and from its conclusion, to show the practical utility of the author's suggestions, we quote the following:—

"I rejoice to think that it is not necessary to close these observations by combating objections to the diffusion of science among the working classes, arising from considerations of a political nature. Happily the time is past and gone when bigots could persuade mankind that the lights of philosophy were to be extinguished as dangerous to religion; and when tyrants could proscribe the instructors of the people as enemies to their power. It is preposterous to imagine that the enlargement of our acquaintance with the laws which regulate the universe, can dispose to unbelief. It may be a cure for superstition—for intolerance it will be the most certain cure; but a pure and true religion has nothing to fear from the greatest expansion which the understanding can receive by the study either of matter or of mind. The more widely science is diffused, the better will the Author of all things be known, and the less will the people be 'tossed to and fro by the sleight of men, and cunning craftiness, whereby they lie in wait to deceive.' To tyrants, indeed, and bad rulers, the progress of knowledge among the mass of mankind is a just object of terror: it is fatal to them and their designs; they know this by unerring instinct, and unceasingly they dread the light. But they will find it more easy to curse than to extinguish. It is spreading in spite of them, even in those countries where arbitrary power deems itself most secure; and in England, any attempt to check its progress would only bring about the sudden destruction of him who should be insane enough to make it.