AMERICAN JURIST. NO. LIV. JULY, 1842. ART. I.-LIFE OF LORD CHANCELLOR LOUGHBOROUGH. [On the dismission of lord Thurlow (June 15, 1792,) from the office of chancellor, the seals were put in commission, in the hands of sir James Eyre, sir William fl. Ashurst, and sir John Wilson, until the 28th of January, 1793, when they were delivered to lord Loughborough, then chief justice of the common pleas, with the title of lord chancellor. The following life of this distinguished judge is abridged from the Law Magazine, volume xiii.] THE fame of an eloquent advocate is scarcely less evanescent than that of a favorite actor. They both fret the busy hour on the stage of public favor, are rewarded for their exertions with ready plaudits, and realize the poet's wish, "virum volitare per ora." But no sooner has the popular tragedian made his farewell bow, than his fame dwindles into narrow limits; and even the Bettertons or Booths of the day derive a precarious immortality from the traditions of partial contemporaries. Nor, except in the immediate precincts of Westminster hall, is the public mind more retentive of the merits of the pleader, who was once most eagerly sought after by anxious suitors, whose triumphs found their daily tribute in the newspapers, and who moved juries by his nod. The names of Wedderburn, Loughborough, and Rosslyn, once familiar to the ear, are now becoming forgotten sounds, and it is with a cold interest only that the general reader can be expected to peruse a memoir of him. Yet was he distinguished at an era, when distinction could not be won unless by rare desert over such rivals as De Grey, and Thurlow, and Dunning; and he has left a reputation for acuteness, versatility, and eloquence, which may vie with that of any of the fortunate holders of the great seal, from a Shaftesbury to a Brougham. Alexander Wedderburn was the eldest son of Peter Wedderburn, of Chesterhall, esq., well known as a shrewd lord of session under the title of lord Chesterhall, and descended from a race as ancient and noble as even a Scotchman could desire; Walter de Wedderburn, his ancestor, being one of the belted barons who, in 1296, swore fealty to king Edward the first, for the lands which he held in the county of Berwick. He was born in Edinburgh on the 13th of February, 1733, and educated at the university there, where he distinguished himself among the boy-students more for acumen than assiduity. To the humanities, as they are called Scoticè, and the study of the civil law-proofs of his proficiency in which may be traced in his decisions, he directed his chief attention; and was admitted a member of the faculty of advocates at the early age of twenty-one. Edinburgh was at this time renowned for its literary clubs. Wedderburn readily gained admittance to the most distinguished of these, queerly enough yclept the Poker Club, founded by Dr. Adam Ferguson, which ranked among its members men of such mark and likelihood as Hume, Robertson, Blair, Home, and Carlyle. This gay symposium of wits and literati was succeeded in 1756 by the Select Society, which had for its founder Allan Ramsay, son of the author of the Gentle Shepherd, and appears to have been instituted as well for philosophical inquiry as for the improvement of the members in the art of public speaking. Sir Alexander Dick, Wedderburn, Pringle, afterwards a lord of session, lord Kames, and lord Elibank, were the chief orators; Hume and Adam Smith among the silent members. The intercourse of young Wedderburn with these eminent scholars experienced, however, a sudden interruption. Shortly after commencing practice at the Scottish bar, it was his fortune to be opposed to Mr. Lockhart, at that time a leading counsel. In replying to an impassioned appeal of this powerful opponent, he summed up an ironical picture of Mr. Lockhart's eloquence in these sarcastic terms: "Nay, my lords, if tears could have moved your lordships, tears, sure I am, would not have been wanting." The lord president immediately interrupted the young counsel, and told him he was pursuing a very indecorous course of observation. Wedderburn maintained with spirit, that he had said nothing he was not well entitled to say, and would have no hesitation in saying again. The lord president, irritated probably at so bold an answer from a junior, rejoined in a manner, the personality of which provoked the advocate to tell his lordship that he had said that as a judge, which he dared not justify as a gentleman. The remark was hasty, and not to be brooked. The president threw himself on the protection of his brother justices, and Wedderburn was ordered by the unanimous voice of the court to make a most abject apology, on pain of deprivation. He refused, and threw off his gown. It is reported, we hope untruly, that Lockhart declined to hold a brief with the unlucky satirist; but whether this refusal hastened his abandonment of the profession or not, it is clear that he acted as a man of honor, and deserves applause for his spirited defence of that which is the vital principle of the pleader, full liberty of speech. The road from Edinburgh to London proved to him, as it has done to many of his countrymen, a path to fame and emolument. Aware that the Scotch accent would be a stumbling-block to his success at the English bar, he studied elocution with as much pains-taking diligence as the common law, under the elder Sheridan and Macklin. Mr. Croker, in his edition of Boswell's Life of Johnson, illustrates the passage where this circumstance is mentioned with the following quaint remark. "This is an odd coincidence. A Scotchman, who wishes to learn a pure English pronunciation, employs one preceptor who happens to be an Irishman, and afterwards another likewise an Irishman, and this Irish-taught Scot becomes (and mainly by his oratory) one of the chief ornaments of the English senate, and the first subject in the British empire." "Though it was too late in life," says Boswell, "for a Caledonian to acquire the genuine English cadence, yet so successful were his instructers and his own unabating endeavors, that he got rid of the coarse part of his Scotch accent, retaining only as much of the native wood-note wild as to mark his country, which, if any Scotchman should affect to forget, I should heartily despise him!" This honest burst of patriotism is worthy of the "canny Scot," yet at this very time the Select Society in Edinburgh were undertaking the hopeless task of refining their language from the vernacular idiom, and identifying it with English in purity and pronunciation. Sheridan was appointed lecturer; but he succeeded better as tutor of a young lawyer than of the nation. The stirrings of ambition were not yet strong enough within Wedderburn to feel "the spur that the clear spirit doth raise To shun delights, and live laborious days." The fondness for literary society, which Edinburgh had fostered, was enhanced by the wider circle of London, and his intimacy with Macklin and Sheridan introduced him to the green-room, whose society had a fascinating charm for a youth of wit and sprightliness. For dramatic performances he retained a vivid partiality to the close of life, and in maturer years might be nightly seen at the theatre, which then united attractions it would have argued insensibility to resist the noblest characters of Shakspeare personated by Kemble and Siddons. But unlike Murphy, Payne, and other professional friends, who suffered the drama to seduce them from the law, the future chancellor, as soon as his probationary course for the bar had expired, ceased to be the mere bon vivant and man of letters. He started on his professional career in the court of chancery, with the advantage of having some powerful friends and connexions. His sister had married sir Harry Erskine, an intimate friend of lord Bute, to whose patronage he thus gained an early introduction. Nor was he too proud to canvass for support from men of inferior rank. In that delightful book just referred to, Boswell's Life of Johnson, we find it related in conversation by the printer Strahan, that his countryman, when first making his way at the bar, solicited his influence to get him employed in city causes. The sturdy moralist, being asked his opinion on the propriety of such conduct, as a matter of professional etiquette, declared "I should not solicit employment as a lawyer, not because I should think it wrong, but because I should disdain it." There can be no doubt that any canvassing for business is alien from the sensitive spirit of professional delicacy. It procured however for Wedderburn the conduct of one or two causes, which displayed his facility of words and readiness, the nice tact and subtle judgment with which he could wind the mind of the court, in so favorable a light, that he became, after a few terms, the sued-for by retainers instead of the suer. With more discretion, and probably less law, than his rivals, who were too learned as equity draftsmen to regard elocution, he studied the art of becoming a graceful and fluent speaker; and had such success, that words were said to drop from his lips in unbroken periods like smooth streams. He had the excellent gift of saying just enough, and of appearing always to bear in mind what many an erudite pleader forgot, "caput artis est decere." His pronunciation was dis |