The most formidable rival and opponent of Lord Chatham was William
Murray, known in history as Lord Mansfield. In point of native talent
it would not be easy to determine which had the advantage; but it
is generally conceded that Mansfield’s mind was the more carefully
trained, and that his memory was the more fully enriched with the
stores of knowledge. He was preëminently a lawyer and a lover of the
classics; but Lord Campbell speaks of his familiarity with modern
history as “astounding and even _appalling_, for it produces a painful
consciousness of inferiority, and creates remorse for time misspent.”
His career is one of the most extraordinary examples in English history
of an unquestioning acceptance of the stern conditions of the highest
success.
Mansfield’s education was characterized by a phenominal devotion to
some of the severer kinds of intellectual drudgery. Though he was
fourth son of Lord Stormont and brother of Lord Dunbar, the Secretary
of the Pretender, he seems from the first to have been fully conscious
that he must rely for distinction upon his own efforts alone. When he
was but fourteen he had become so familiar with the Latin language
that he wrote and spoke it “with accuracy and ease,” and in after-life
he declared that there was not one of the orations of Cicero which he
had not, while at Oxford, written into English, and after an interval,
according to the best of his ability, re-translated into Latin. Leaving
Oxford at the age of twenty-two he was entered as a student of law at
Lincoln’s Inn in 1727. Lord Campbell says of him: “When he was admitted
to the bar in 1730, he had made himself acquainted not only with
the international law, but with the codes of all the most civilized
nations, ancient and modern; he was an elegant classical scholar; he
was thoroughly imbued with the literature of his own country; he had
profoundly studied our mixed constitution; he had a sincere desire to
be of service to his country; and he was animated by a noble aspiration
after honorable fame.”
The family of Murray was one of those Scotch families upon whom a
peerage was bestowed by James I. It is not very singular therefore that
Lord Stormont, the representative of the family, in the eighteenth
century, should, like his predecessors, remain true to the Stuarts and
the Pretender. William, the fourth son, grew up in the traditional
political beliefs of his ancestors. While Pitt, therefore, was a
Whig, Murray was a High Tory. In manner they were as different as
in politics. Pitt was ardent and imperious, Murray was cool and
circumspect. Pitt strove to overwhelm, but Murray strove to convince.
Though Pitt was the great master of declamatory invective, Murray
was vastly his superior in all the qualities that go to make up a
great debater. The immediate influence of Pitt’s speeches was far
more overwhelming, but the qualities of Murray’s argument were more
persuasive and more permanent in their influence. Pitt entered the
House of Commons in 1735 at twenty-six; Murray in 1742 at thirty-seven.
During fourteen years therefore, before 1756 they were each the
great exponents of the political parties to which they respectively
belonged. Murray entered the House of Lords as Chief Justice and with
the title of Baron Mansfield in the same year in which Pitt began his
great career as Prime Minister. The power of Pitt was in the House
of Commons, while that of Murray was in the House of Lords. Pitt’s
influence was over the masses, whose devotion was such that “they
hugged his footmen and even kissed his horses.” Murray’s power was over
the more thoughtful few who in the end directed public opinion and
moulded public action.
The character of Murray, like that of his great rival, was not only
above reproach, but was remarkable for its stern rejection of every
thing that tried to turn him aside from his great purpose. When the
Duchess of Marlborough strove to put him under obligations by sending
him a retainer of a thousand guineas, he returned nine hundred and
ninety-five, with the remark that a retaining fee was never more nor
less than five guineas. When Newcastle offered him a pension of £6,000
a year, if he would remain in the House of Commons, instead of taking
the Bench, he put the offer aside without a moment’s hesitation,
saying: “What merit have I, that you should lay on this country, for
which so little is done with spirit, the additional burden of £6,000 a
year?” He was Lord Chief Justice for nearly thirty-two years. Though he
probably did more to strengthen the cause of the mother country against
the colonies than any other one man, yet his great services have been
no less generously acknowledged in America than in England. It was Mr.
Justice Story who said: “England and America, and the civilized world,
lie under the deepest obligations to him. Wherever commerce shall
extend its social influences; wherever justice shall be administered
by enlightened and liberal rules; wherever contracts shall be expounded
upon the eternal principles of right and wrong; wherever moral delicacy
and judicial refinement shall be infused into the municipal code, at
once to persuade men to be honest and to keep them so; wherever the
intercourse of mankind shall aim at something more elevated than that
grovelling spirit of barter, in which meanness, and avarice, and fraud
strive for the mastery over ignorance, credulity, and folly, the name
of Lord Mansfield will be held in reverence by the good and the wise,
by the honest merchant, the enlightened lawyer, the just statesman,
and the conscientious judge. The proudest monument of his fame is in
the volumes of Burrow, and Cowper, and Douglas, which we may fondly
hope will endure as long as the language in which they are written
shall continue to instruct mankind. His judgments should not be merely
referred to and read on the spur of particular occasions, but should be
studied as models of juridical reasoning and eloquence.”
When the matter of repealing the Stamp Act came before Parliament, the
question turned, as we have already observed, chiefly on the subject
of the clause declaring the _right_ of Parliament to levy the tax.
While Chatham arrayed all his powers against the right, Mansfield was
its most strenuous supporter. His speech on the subject is of great
importance to the American student, because it is by far the most able
and plausible ever delivered in support of the British policy. It is
avowedly directed to the question of right, not at all to the question
of expediency. Lord Campbell, although inclined to the doctrines of the
Whigs, refers to the speech as one of arguments to which he “has never
been able to find an answer.” The position of Mansfield undoubtedly had
a very great influence in determining and strengthening the policy of
the King and of the ministry. The speech was corrected for the press by
the orator’s own hand, and may be regarded as authentic.