Henry Lord Brougham--His Life, Services, and Character.
In connection with the passage of the Reform bill, it is proper to
notice one of the foremost Englishmen of this century--HENRY BROUGHAM.
Nothing strikes one more forcibly in the life of this extraordinary
person than the number and variety of the subjects upon which he has
exerted his powers. His published speeches and writings on either one of
several of the political measures he has advocated, if viewed merely as
intellectual efforts, might satisfy the ambition of an honorable
aspirant after forensic or literary fame. The aggregate constitutes
hardly a tithe of his achievements in the cognate departments of public
affairs. From his entrance into the House of Commons down to the present
time, his name glows on every page of England's parliamentary history;
and his posterity will permit but few of the myriad rays that encircle
it to be effaced or obscured. As an advocate and a jurist, many of his
speeches at the bar and opinions on the bench will live long after the
law of libel and the court of chancery cease to oppress and vex mankind.
His services in the cause of popular education, whether we regard the
time expended, the ability displayed, or the results attained, surpass
the labors of many persons who have been assigned to a foremost place
among the eminent benefactors of their age. His contributions to the
Edinburgh Review, covering its whole existence, and a large circle of
literary, scientific, political, social, legal, and historical subjects,
would class him with the highest rank of periodical essayists. His more
substantial works, as Sketches of Eminent Statesmen, History of the
French Revolution, Lives of Men of Letters and Science, Discourse on
Natural Theology, Political Philosophy, composed amidst the cares of
public official station, would suffice to give him an enduring name in
the republic of letters.
Great as are his mental achievements, it is as the early advocate of
social progress and political reform--the champion of liberty and peace,
the friend of man--that he is worthy of all his cotemporaneous fame, and
all the applause which coming generations will bestow on his memory.
Inconsistency, the common infirmity of mortals, has checkered his
course--eccentricity, "the twin brother of genius," has been his
frequent companion--independence, whose adjacent province is obstinacy,
he has largely exhibited; but, while the history of England, during the
first third of the nineteenth century, remains, it will display to the
impartial eye few names to excite more grateful admiration in every
lover of his race than that which, from the abolition of the slave trade
in 1806, to the abolition of slavery in 1834, was synonymous with
intelligent progress and useful reform.
I believe Brougham was born about the year 1779. We first hear of him,
when twenty years old, in Edinburgh, communicating some papers on
geometry to the Royal Society in London, which were highly applauded,
and translated into foreign tongues. In 1808, he appeared as counsel at
the bar of Parliament, in behalf of the commercial and manufacturing
interests, against the celebrated _Orders in Council_, which followed
the Berlin Decree of Napoleon, and preceded the American Embargo. His
examination of witnesses, extending through several weeks, and his
closing argument, gave him a high reputation in England, and a name both
in Europe and the United States. In 1809-10, he entered the theater
where, for forty years, he has displayed his extraordinary gifts. His
first published speech in Parliament, delivered in 1810, was a powerful
appeal in favor of addressing the Throne for more effectual measures to
suppress the slave trade. His next great effort was in 1812, when,
assisted by Mr. Baring, (Lord Ashburton,) he examined witnesses for
several weeks before the House of Commons, to prove that the still
unrescinded Orders were ruining the trade and manufactures of the
country, and provoking a war with the United States. At the close, he
supported an address to the Throne for their repeal, in a speech replete
with information, ably defending the policy of unrestricted commerce,
and eloquently vindicating the superiority of the arts of peace over the
glories of war. The motion prevailed--but too late to avert hostilities.
Congress declared war the very day the speech was delivered.
His services in the cause of the people from this time downward, have
been referred to in these chapters, as various subjects have passed
under consideration. During the long and almost hopeless struggle of
Liberty with Power, from 1810 to 1830, when he was removed from the
theater of his greatest fame, he led the forlorn hope in the House of
Commons. Unlike his great prototype, Fox, he never for a moment retired
from the field in disgust and despair, but was ever at his post,
stimulating the drooping spirits of his friends, hurling defiance at his
foes, and rising from every defeat with renewed courage and strength.
Though classified among the heads of the Opposition in the House, he
never was--he never would be, in the strict sense, a party "leader."
Nor, on the contrary, did he surround himself with a "clique" or
"interest," whose oracle he was. Supporting the measures of the Whigs,
he was ever in advance of them, cheering on the masses, as the Tribune
of the people, and fighting the partisan battles of Reform as the
guerrilla chief of Liberty.
In an evil hour, he was transplanted from his "native heath" to the
conservatory of the aristocracy. Though surrounded by uncongenial
spirits, and haunted with the nightmare of conservatism, the soul of
McGregor retained for years much of its original fire in a place whose
chilling atmosphere made the lion blood of a Chatham to stagnate and
curdle. Some of his mightiest efforts in the good cause were put forth
after he _descended_ to the upper House of Parliament.
Had Brougham coveted and obtained "leadership" in its party sense, in
either House, he must have failed. Too original, independent, wayward,
and dogmatical, to be implicitly trusted and obeyed by his equals; too
incautious and pushing; too impatient of dullness; too much of a genius,
to be always appreciated and confided in by his inferiors, though he
would have been applauded by the masses; yet his premiership, had he
accepted the offer of King William, could not have long survived the
passage of the Reform bill. With the exception of taking the great seal,
he has chosen to be what he is--a rare comet, created to move in no
orbit but its own--beautiful and lustrous in the distance, but grand and
terrible in proximity.
The public measures with which he is most closely identified are--the
advocacy of the manufacturing and commercial interests, as opposed to
Orders in Council and other restrictions on trade; hostility to the
continental combinations of the successors of Pitt, and their legitimate
offspring, exhausting wars and the Holy Alliance; the vindication of
Queen Caroline, in the struggle with her libertine husband; the freedom
of the press, attempted to be overawed by prosecutions for libels on the
Government and the church; the education of the middle and lower orders;
religious toleration for dissenters and Catholics; reform in the civil
and criminal law; parliamentary reform; municipal reform; poor laws
reform; the abolition of the slave trade and slavery; retrenchment in
Government expenditures; the independence of the Canadian Legislature,
and the repeal of the corn laws. What a catalogue have we here! Upon all
these measures, each of which was an era in British history, Brougham
has acted a leading, and upon many, a controlling part. His speeches
upon most of them surpassed those of any other of their advocates,
whether we consider the extent of the information displayed, the depth
and energy of the reasoning, the scope and vigor of the style, the
eloquence of the appeals to justice and humanity, or the majesty and
splendor of the higher passages.
Lord Brougham's fame, as an orator, has filled two hemispheres. We will
look at him in the two aspects of matter and manner.
The four volumes of his speeches, with others gleaned from the
Parliamentary reports, prove that his reputation is well founded. Their
leading characteristic is power--crushing power--as distinguished from
beauty and grace. They are not so gorgeous as Burke's, nor so compact as
Webster's. But they contain more information and argument, and less
philosophy and fancy, than the former's--more versatility and vigor, and
less staid grandeur and studied method, than the latter's. As
_speeches_, rather than _orations_, addressed to a deliberative body of
friends and foes, who are to _act_ upon the subject under discussion,
they are more practical and to the matter in hand than Burke's; more
hearty and soul-stirring than Webster's. Their style is a mixture of
Burke and Webster--less extravagant anywhere than some passages of the
former; frequently more slovenly than any passage of the latter; with
more of bitter personal taunt and lofty rebuke of fraud, meanness, and
oppression, than either. Viewed as literary productions, regardless of
the immediate fruits they produced, they will hardly stand the test of
posthumous fame like Burke's. Less universal in their application, less
penetrated with principles adapted alike to all times, they often betray
the advocate instead of the statesman, the partisan rather than the
philosopher, the leader and champion of cotemporaries rather than the
instructor and mentor of posterity. But it still remains a question,
whether they were not the more valuable on that very account. Their
immediate effect in moving masses of men, and molding public measures,
far surpassed that of Burke's. And though the _words_ of the latter may
outlive those of the former, we have the highest authority for saying,
blessed are those whose _works_ survive them.
Lord Brougham's speeches deal little in mere declamation, even of the
highest order, but are pregnant with apposite facts and arguments,
giving the reader or hearer an unusual amount of information upon the
matters under discussion. He excels, when he tries, in a plain, lucid
statement of his subject; as witness, his speech on law reform, in 1828,
when, for seven hours, he held the close attention of the unprofessional
House of Commons, while he sketched the absurdities and abuses of every
branch of the common law, and detailed the amendments he proposed in its
principles and administration. But this is not his _forte_, and for that
very reason his dexterity and self-control excite our admiration the
more. If you would see him in his greatest moods, you must give him a
person or a party to attack, which shall arouse his combative
propensities, and bring his invective and sarcasm into full play; or
some giant abuse to anathematize and demolish, which shall inflame his
indignation and abhorrence.
We gather from his own statements that the garb and colors in which he
attires the main body of a speech--the mere style and diction--are the
impulse of the occasion; as most of the sarcasms and rebukes are flung
out in the heat of delivery. But, where time for preparation is
afforded, no speaker is more careful in arranging the general drift of
the argument, and digesting the facts to illustrate and sustain it;
whilst certain passages, such as the exordium or peroration, are the
result of the most pains-taking labors of the closet. He has recorded
that the peroration of his speech in the Queen's case was written no
less than ten times before he thought it fit for so august an occasion.
The same is probably true of similar passages in Webster's speeches; it
is known to be so of Burke's.
No orator of our times is more successful in embalming phrases, full of
meaning, in the popular memory. The well-known talismanic sentiment,
"_The schoolmaster is abroad_," is an instance. In a speech on the
elevation of Wellington, a mere "military chieftain," to the
premiership, after the death of Canning, Brougham said: "Field Marshal
the Duke of Wellington may take the army--he may take the navy--he may
take the great seal--he may take the miter. I make him a present of them
all. Let him come on with his whole force, sword in hand, against the
Constitution, and the English people will not only beat him back, but
laugh at his assaults. In other times, the country may have heard with
dismay that 'the soldier was abroad.' It will not be so now. Let the
soldier be abroad if he will; he can do nothing in this age. There is
another personage abroad--a personage less imposing--in the eyes of
some, perhaps, insignificant. The schoolmaster is abroad; and I trust to
him, armed with his primer, against the soldier in full military array."
Turning from the matter to the manner of the orator, (if we have not
already passed the boundary,) Brougham stood unrivaled as a debater in
the House of Commons. For twenty years he swayed the intellect and
passions of the House, by his muscular and courageous eloquence, whilst
Castlereagh, Canning, and Peel controlled its majorities and dictated
its measures, by the wave of their official wand. Castlereagh was more
self-possessed and matter-of-fact than he; Canning more brilliant and
classical; Peel more dexterous and plausible. But, in weight of metal,
he surpassed them all. His oratory was not the brawl and foam of a
dashing mountain torrent, but the steady roar of the deep, broad
cataract. In ability to inflame friends and foes, and shake the House
till it quaked, he equaled either Chatham or Fox. When thoroughly
roused, with all his elements in full play, he thundered and lightened
till the knights of the shire clung to the Benches for support, the
Ministers cowered behind the Speaker's chair for shelter, and the voting
members started from their slumbers in the side galleries, as if the
last trump were ringing in their ears.
Chatham introduced the style of the House of Commons into the debates of
the House of Lords. Brougham's appearance there constituted almost as
new an era in its oratory as the advent of Chatham. It was my good
fortune to hear him two or three times in the Lords, several years
ago--once when his best powers were put in action for a brief hour.
We enter the House of Peers. The lions--Brougham, Grey, Wellington,
Lyndhurst, Melbourne--are in their places. An exciting debate is going
forward, which has taken rather a personal turn. Yonder is Brougham,
stretched out half his length on one of the Ministerial benches; now
listening to a clumsy Earl on the floor, whom he eyes with a portentous
scowl; anon whispering a hurried word to the Peer at his elbow. What an
ungainly figure! Those long legs and arms, loosely hung in their
sockets, give him a slouching air. Human face could hardly look more
ugly or intellectual. His iron-gray hair bristles over his forehead like
the quills of the fretful porcupine. His restless eye peers through
eyebrows that seem alive with nerves. He must be agitated with the
debate, for he writhes as though his red cushion were a sheet of hot
iron. He suddenly starts up, (who ever knew him to sit still five
minutes?) walks with long strides toward the door, and while chatting
with the ladies, his tormentor stops, and the ex-Chancellor cries, with
startling emphasis, (lest some one get the floor before him,) "My
Lords!" and slowly advances to the table in front of the woolsack. An
audible _hush_ runs round the chamber; for they had been anticipating a
reply from the mercurial lord. Every whisper ceases, and all eyes are
fixed on the towering intellect before them. The Peeresses leave their
damask chairs, and approach the bar, to get a better view of the orator.
Members of the House of Commons, till now chatting round the bar, lean
forward in silence. The loungers in the lobbies enter the Hall, the word
having passed out, "Brougham is up!" The untitled spectators rise from
their seats on the carpet, where fatigue had sunk them, and stand on
tiptoe, to catch every glance of the eye and wave of the hand of the
scholar and statesman, whilst the crowded galleries forget their
lassitude in listening to one whose name and fame are the property of
mankind.
But to the speech. Listen to that first sentence! How it plunges into
the very center of the subject. Every word is an argument--every period
a demonstration. The first blow knocks the keystone from his last
antagonist's speech, and tumbles the whole structure on his affrighted
head and shoulders. And the dandy young Lord, over in the corner, who,
in the puny oration he recited so prettily an hour ago, went out of his
way to sneer at Brougham--see the blood fly from his cheeks when his
nice little piece of rhetoric comes rattling in bits round his ears. As
the lion fixes his eye on him, he would give his coronet and his curls
if he could slink into a nutshell. A fiery glance or two having withered
him, the monarch of the debate grapples with worthier antagonists. What
a sweep does he give to the argument--what redundancy of facts--what
fertility of illustration. How large the field of his comprehension--how
exhaustless and varied its resources. What execution is done by those
long-drawn sentences, with parenthesis within parenthesis, each a
logical syllogism, or a home-thrust fact, or a blighting sarcasm, wound
round and round his victims, till they are crushed in their folds! Great
in matter, his speech is equally powerful in manner; violating every law
of rhetoric and oratory promulgated by the schools, he is a law unto
himself--original, commanding, majestic.
Brougham, having demolished his antagonists, took a seat at the clerk's
table, and began to write a letter, when the Chancellor (Cottenham) rose
and commenced a conciliatory speech. His calm, slow, cool manner
contrasted strongly with the tempest which had just passed over our
heads, reminding us of those dewy showers which follow smilingly in the
trail of a dark cloud, after its thunder and lightning and torrent have
raged and blazed and poured, and passed away.
This great man has been described so often, that not only his public
history and mental character, but his personal peculiarities--yea, the
nervous twitching of his eyebrows--are as familiar to Americans as to
the reporters in the gallery of the House of Lords. As an orator or
debater, he is sometimes compared to Webster. The very attempt is unjust
to both. You might as well compare the repose of Lake Erie to the
thunder of Niagara. Each has his own sphere of greatness. The Bostonian
rarely enters the arena of debate, unless clad in mail to his fingers'
ends--a safe and strong debater. Not so the Londoner. He sometimes
rushes, sword in hand, without scabbard or shield, into the thickest of
the fight, and gets sorely galled. Little arrows do not pierce Webster,
nor do ordinary occasions summon forth his heaviest weapons. But
Brougham, why, he will fight with anybody, and on any terms. The
smallest Lilliput in the House can sting him into paroxysms with his
needle-spear. But wo to the assailant! The bolt which annihilates the
Earl of Musketo is equally heavy with that which strikes down the Duke
of Wellington. As a whole, Brougham is unlike any of our public men.
Could we mix into one compound the several qualities of Webster, Clay,
Choate, Benton, and the late John Quincy Adams, and divide the mass into
four or five parts, we might, by adding a strong tincture of John C.
Calhoun, make four or five very good Henry Broughams.
I have spoken of the versatility of Brougham's talents and acquirements.
Sir E. B. Sugden was arguing a cause before him in chancery. The
Chancellor was not very attentive to the argument, employing part of the
time in writing letters. This greatly piqued Sugden; and on retiring
from the court, he drily said to a friend, "If Brougham only knew a
little of Chancery law, he would know a little of everything."
Undoubtedly he knows something about everything, and much about most
things. Somebody has compared him to a Scotch Encyclopedia, without
alphabetical arrangement. If he has not reached the highest place in any
department of knowledge, it is because, in traversing so vast a field,
he must here and there be necessarily only a gleaner. His success in so
many departments proves that had he cultivated but one or two, he might
have surpassed all cotemporary competition. Looking to the variety and
extent of his acquisitions and labors, posterity will regard him as one
of the most extraordinary men of his time. He reached his eminent
position by no royal road. He is among the most laborious and diligent
of men. Well known facts attest his wonderful activity.
His able work, "Practical Observations upon the Education of the
People," published in 1825, was composed, he says, during hours stolen
from sleep. Combe states of him, that he was once engaged in a court of
law all day, from which he went to the House of Commons, and mingled in
the debate till two o'clock in the morning; he then retired to his
house, and wrote upon an article for the Edinburgh Review till it was
time to go to the court, where he was actively employed till the hour
for the assembling of the Commons; thither he went, and participated in
the discussion as vigorously as usual till long after midnight--taking
no rest till the morning of the third day! The witty Hazlitt, alluding,
at the time, to his speeches on commercial and manufacturing distress,
said, "He is apprised of the exact state of our exports and imports, and
scarce a ship clears out its cargo from Liverpool or Hull, but he has a
copy of the bill of lading." It will be remembered, that while
performing his political and miscellaneous labors, he was surrounded by
a large circle of professional clients. His inaugural discourse, as Lord
Rector of the University of Glasgow, thickly strown with Greek and Latin
quotations, was, as the preface informs us, written during the business
of the Northern Circuit. Sydney Smith says, in one of his graphic Reform
speeches, "See the gigantic Brougham, sworn in at twelve o'clock, [as
Chancellor,] and before six, has a bill on the table abolishing the
abuses of a Court which has been the curse of the people of England for
centuries."
A full share of the preparation and defense of the measures of Earl
Grey's Administration devolved on him; while at the same time he did the
work of an ordinary man in writing rudimental articles for the Penny
Magazine, and scientific tracts for the Society for the Diffusion of
Useful Knowledge, lecturing to Mechanics' Institutes, and contributing
essays to the Edinburgh Review. An English friend informed me that
during one of the busiest periods of his official life, a fatal accident
happened to some laborers in excavating a deep well. Forthwith, out came
a tract from the Lord Chancellor, on the best and safest mode of digging
wells! Though his numerous publications and addresses on learned
subjects, and his participation in the proceedings of the Royal Society
and French Institute showed their author to be a scientific man, his
later Lives of Men of Letters and Science exhibited an acquaintance with
the sciences in his old age, for which his friends were hardly prepared.
In the particulars here mentioned, no public man of our country can be
compared with him, except the late John Quincy Adams, for whose
wonderful exploits in his declining years Lord Brougham expressed the
highest admiration.
The great political error of his life was his acceptance of the
Chancellorship, and consequent removal from the House of Commons. It may
be remarked, in passing, that it is a mistake to suppose he diminished
his reputation as a lawyer by his judicial administration. He was never
a first-rate technical lawyer. His mind was too broad, his ambition too
high, to be a _mere_ lawyer, tied down with red tape to _nisi prius_
precedents and the _dicta_ of cases. The profession to him was not an
end, as it was to Scarlett and his school, but a subsidiary means to
attain political eminence and influence. A great cause, like that of
Queen Caroline, or of Williams, indicted for a libel on the Durham
clergy, showed what he could accomplish when he bent his powers to
professional work. His speeches on Law Reform prove his minute
acquaintance with and utter contempt for the great body of the common
law, as administered by the courts; and when presiding in a tribunal
whose currents had been brought to a dead stand by the "everlasting
doubts" of Lord Eldon, the best service he could render suitors and the
country was to clear out the channels, and set the streams flowing, even
though he might make mistakes in acting on the expedient maxim, that "it
is better to have a case decided wrong, than not at all."
No man laments his removal to the upper House more keenly than himself.
Speaking of Chatham's removal, he says, "No one ever did it voluntarily
without bitterly rueing the step, when he found the price paid to be the
loss of all real power." Grey first offered him the gown of Attorney
General. Feeling it to be beneath his position in the Reform party, he
contemptuously rejected it. The great seal was then placed in his hand.
He should rather have taken the pen of one of the Secretaries of State,
and remained on his "native heath." There he would have been at home,
and there he would have been now. By superiority of intellect, or his
"managing" or "pushing" propensity, the chief defense of the ministry in
the Peers devolved on him instead of the Premier. He was in a false
position. His native element was opposition. He was unequaled at tearing
down--he had no skill for building up. The Reformers expected much from
the new Administration, and everything from Brougham. All went smoothly
till the Reform bill passed. Large quantities of ripe fruit were
expected thereupon to be immediately gathered. Sydney Smith foreshadowed
this, in his droll way. Said he, in a speech during the struggle, "All
young ladies will imagine, as soon as this bill is carried, that they
will be instantly married. Schoolboys believe that gerunds and supines
will be abolished, and that currant tarts must ultimately come down in
price; the corporal and sergeant are sure of double pay; bad poets will
expect a demand for their epics; fools will be disappointed, as they
always are; reasonable men, who know what to expect, will find that a
very serious good has been obtained."
Much was done for Reform by the Grey ministry, after the passage of the
bill. In less than two years, West India slavery was abolished--the East
India Company's monopoly destroyed--the poor laws amended--the criminal
code softened--the administration of the Courts essentially
improved--the Scotch municipal corporations totally reformed--and many
abuses corrected in the Irish Church Establishment. But young ladies,
bad poets, and fools of all sorts, clamored for more; and many
reasonable men were disappointed. The dead weights on advance movements
were the Melbournes, the Palmerstons, the Grants, who, having bitterly
opposed Reform all their days, were converted at the eleventh hour of
the recent struggle, and brought into the Cabinet. The fatal measure of
the Administration was an attempt to suppress agitation in Ireland, by a
Coercion bill, which excited a quarrel with O'Connell, and divisions in
the Cabinet, and finally led to the resignation of Grey. Glad to escape
from an uneasy position, Brougham soon followed. Would that he could
have got rid of his title, like Mirabeau, by opening a shop, and gone
back to the Commons! But it stuck to him like the tunic of Nessus.
Though consigned to perpetual membership in a body possessing no
original influence in the State, and hemmed in by the usages of a mere
revisional council, he has now and then shown himself "Harry Brougham"
still. His speeches in the Lords on Parliamentary, legal, municipal, and
poor laws Reform; on popular education; abolishing subscription in the
universities; retrenchment; abolition of negro apprenticeship, and the
African and Eastern slave trade; Canadian independence; repeal of the
corn laws; and other topics, exhibit no abatement of intellectual power,
or, so far as concerns those subjects, of regard for popular rights and
social improvement. Indeed, some of them rank among his greatest and
best forensic displays. The speech on the education of the people in
1835 contains as much valuable information, and that on negro
apprenticeship in 1838, as many eloquent passages, as any he ever
delivered.
The conflict with Melbourne in 1837-8, which threw him out of Court and
Whig favor, was a matter of course, if not premeditated. In a speech at
Liverpool, just after his resignation in 1835, he declared that "his
position of absolute political independence" would not be abandoned to
join or sustain any Ministry that did not stand by the people, and go
for large measures of reform. In 1837-8, on the Canada question, he
first assailed the Melbourne Cabinet; he being for restoring peace to
the colony, by granting the petition of its Legislature for an elective
council, they for crushing disaffection by a dictator and the sword. His
defense of the Canadian reformers was generous, bold, radical, and
eloquent; worthy of the times when the young Commoner shook the Tory
chiefs from the point of his lance, and fulminated living thunders at
the crowned despots of the Holy Alliance. Pointing his long finger at
the quailing Melbourne, he said, "Do the Ministers desire to know what
will restore me to their support, and make me once more fight zealously
in their ranks, as I once fought with them against the majority of your
lordships? I will tell them here! Let them retract their declaration
against Reform, delivered the first night of this session; and their
second declaration, by which, to use the noble Viscount's phrase, they
_exacerbated_ the first; or let them, without any retraction, only bring
forward liberal and constitutional measures, and they will have no more
zealous supporter than myself. But, in the mean time, I now hurl my
defiance at their heads!"
But, the truth of history requires that another view be taken of these
transactions of 1835-8, and a far less eulogistic strain be employed in
noticing the course of Lord Brougham for the last ten or twelve years.
Early taught to admire him as the gallant leader of English reformers,
it is painful to say, that during this period his conduct has been
frequently such as to forfeit the esteem and confidence of his friends
on both sides of the Atlantic, and to give currency to the charge that
his line of action has been caused by chagrin at being left out of the
Melbourne ministry, and to strengthen the suspicion that his
denunciations of that Administration for faltering in the work of reform
were dictated by mortified pride and thwarted ambition. For five or six
years subsequent to 1835, he frequently attacked men and principles
which he had won all his fame by previously advocating. But, it must not
be forgotten, that, though supported by neither party and assailed by
both, and set upon by Tory terriers and Whig whipsters, which betrayed
him into losses of temper and dignity, it was in these years that he
carried through Parliament several valuable reforms; whilst his
writings--those records for the perusal of posterity--exhibited no
marked change in his regard for liberal institutions.
On the return of the Tories to power, in 1841, he made a still wider
departure from his early path. He has since shown much acerbity of
temper, given his vote quite as often to the opponents as to the friends
of reform, and has succeeded in alienating the affections of many of
those who adhered to him during the Melbourne Administration. He has
been alternately wayward, sour, vindictive, bold, brilliant, noble;
exciting the contempt and fears of his enemies, and the disgust and
admiration of his friends; now cracking a joke on the Duke of
Wellington, that set the House in a roar, and then pounding the head of
Melbourne till its chambers rang again; playing off eccentricities on
some railway bill for the amusement of Punch, while sending to press a
work on Voltaire and Rousseau that astonished Paris; giving his cheering
voice to the repeal of the corn laws, and his growling "non-content"
against the repeal of the navigation laws; making himself ridiculous by
trying to force his way into the French National Convention, and being
received with loud plaudits as he entered the hall of the French
National Institute; now losing and then winning the favor of the people;
and ever and anon silencing the cry that "his powers were failing," by
pronouncing a speech that startled the walls of St. Stephen's, and made
every hilltop and valley in the land echo back the shout, "Brougham is
himself again!"
It was a remark of Madame de Stael, that "Foreigners are a kind of
cotemporaneous posterity." Americans may therefore pass an unbiased
judgment upon the character of Lord Brougham. When his imperfections are
forgotten in the grave, and the mists of prejudice and of party are
cleared away, Posterity, which generously throws a vail over the follies
and frailties of genius, will not willingly withhold from his tomb the
epitaph he coveted in one of his earliest speeches--"HERE LIES THE
DEFENDER OF LIBERTY, THE ADVOCATE OF PEACE, THE FRIEND OF THE PEOPLE!"