CHAPTER XV.

OUT OF OFFICE.

A.D. 1834-1848.

Brougham's "Inconsistency "-His willingness to work for the State -Infant Schools-County Courts-Scene with Lord MelbourneThe Canadian Rebellion; Great Speech-His Popularity returns -Legal Reforms-Criminal Statistics.

LORD BROUGHAM's public life naturally divides itself into three epochs: the period of his membership of the House of Commons, his three years of office, and the remainder of his days as an un-official member of the House of Lords. We now enter upon

the last of the three. No longer, except on rare occasions, shall we find any of those elements of dramatic interest which have so thickly abounded in our previous narrative. But while the events of his life from 1835 do not present those features of interest which characterised his every public appearance throughout the whole preceding quarter of a century, it was a great mistake to set them down as unimportant. Whatever was saved from the strife of party and the agitation of great questions of politics and social progress, was given to the not less worthy task of the reform, the cheapening, and the simplification of the law. In the words of Sir Eardley Wilmot (to whom we are largely indebted for those portions of our biography which relate to Brougham's achievements

as a Law Reformer), "the Statute Book from this date becomes the silent but durable monument of his fame.” Not that Brougham retired from those larger questions about which human passion and sentiment are more directly concerned. There was no great political or social question agitated in his day upon which Brougham did not give his opinions, and the reasons by which he supported them. But he is presented to us no longer as a political leader; his self-chosen function was critical and judicial, and party ties had no longer even the merely apparent hold on him which had hitherto seemed to prevail. We shall see his oratorical flail, whenever in his judgment and conscience the need arose, descending as vigorously on his old allies as on his former opponents. So impartial, indeed, was he in the distribution of his censure, that he was freely charged with political tergiversation. This charge, after careful study of the facts, we cannot endorse; possibly there is a somewhat stronger justification for the allegation that some element of pique and annoyance at exclusion from the Whig counsels, when the party again returned to power, may have been imported into his dealings with the Whigs of the second Melbourne Administration. But, even after the fullest. allowance is made for this very natural, and not very inexcusable, alloy of human error, we are disposed fully to sustain Brougham's own assertion that he was ever consistent to his principles; and if there was inconsistency anywhere, it was shown by the partisans who charge him with departure from his early tenets. Charged with being a cold Reformer, he fairly retorts that he was the first of the colleagues of Lord Grey to give up "finality." Those who point to his

eulogiums upon an hereditary aristocracy as an essential and valuable element in the composite structure of a free state, are unable to contrast with them any contradictory utterance given forth by him in the most fervid days of his popular tribuneship. Such charges spring from the far from unprevalent delusion that Brougham was at any period of his life a demagogue. He was from the first the advocate of constitutional, limited, and balanced freedom, with reciprocal guarantees and checks provided by the three Estates defined by the English Constitution; this he proved himself to the last. Accused of censuring the agitation of the Corn Law Leaguers, he replied that he was as early an advocate of the total abolition of the tax on food as Mr. Villiers himself-converted to Free Trade many years before either Peel or the Whigs. But he condemned the systematic League agitation, in certain of its features, as he had condemned certain acts of the political unions organised to carry the Reform Bill, to the passing of which he so largely contributed. Accused of condemning the revolutionary movements of 1848, though he had eulogised the European risings against the Holy Alliance, and a Revolution which substituted a King of the French for a King of France, he replied that the former were the manifestations of a regular international conspiracy, and that they aimed at Republicanism strongly tinged with communism; that for this reason he was consistent in condemning them, though he had so warmly applauded earlier endeavours limited to the attainment of constitutional freedom under monarchies which there was no desire to disturb. These charges form the counts of the indictment brought for

The

ward to support the charge of "inconsistency." defence we believe to be conclusive. We have not ourselves discovered any change of opinion on any important question, save in his views on the deterrent efficacy of the punishment of death.

Peel was Premier in 1835 for less than half a year. The Opposition exerted its power on the first occasion of the re-assembling of Parliament. Among other defeats sustained by the Ministry, was the carrying against them, by Brougham and his coadjutors, of a bill granting a charter to the London University. In April Ministers resigned. Early in May, Melbourne, who had undertaken the Premiership after the King had failed in inducing Earl Grey to return to public life, had formed. his second Administration. No Chancellor was appointed, the Ministers professing that the King had expressly stipulated that Brougham should not return to office. William had been deeply offended by an expression attributed to Brougham when the Reform Ministry was dismissed-"The Queen has done it all." It was generally believed that the Whigs were by no means sorry to avail themselves of this pretext for the exclusion of their former Chancellor. The Great Seal was entrusted to a Commission, Brougham being appointed "Lord Keeper and Chairman of the House of Lords." This office he held, and he discharged its duties from May, 1835, until January, 1836, when Sir Samuel Pepys was appointed Lord Chancellor, and ennobled under the title of Lord Cottenham. When Brougham found himself of no more official consequence in the State than a pensioned peer and ex-Chancellor, his first desire had been to render some judicial service to the country in return for the

income he received. When Lyndhurst returned to the woolsack under the short Administration of Peel, in 1835, Brougham wrote to him offering to undertake the duties of Chief Baron of the Exchequer, which office Lyndhurst had vacated. The offer, however, was not accepted. At a subsequent period, Brougham discharged the presidential and judicial duties of Lord Cottenham in the House of Lords, during the long illness of that nobleman, which preceded his retirement, and the appointment of Lord Truro. For a long time, too, he regularly presided over the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council. In fact, he sedulously sought every occasion of onerous judicial duty, and than he no law lord was more regular and painstaking an attendant in the House during its sittings as a judicature.

During their former régime the Whigs had been able to do but little for the cause of education. As it was, they had undertaken too much, and when Lord John Russell became the leader of the House of Commons in 1835, he stated that no Government measures of importance would be introduced, save municipal reform, and an adjustment of the Irish tithe question. The former measure received the warm support of Brougham, and he gave a general support to the Irish policy of Ministers. Education was an open question. As might have been expected, Brougham returned to the important subject with unquenched zeal. In this Session he brought forward resolutions, pledging the House to greater exertions for national education, dwelling especially upon its advantages as a preventive of crime, and referring with much satisfaction to the recent establishment of infant schools, whose foundation he had done so much to