before the Exeter Literary Society in 1859. After speaking of Sir Thomas Wilde, he says:

"With Follett I had more familiar relations. I saw his whole course, standing near to it in its commencement and up to my quitting the Bar. I was deeply interested in observing it, and I early predicted his future eminence. No man, I suppose, ever had or desired to have success more complete in proportion to the time he was in the profession; had his health been continued to him, he would have entirely filled up the place at the Bar which Sir James Scarlett had left, and, I think, still leaves unfilled; he wanted his literature, his science, his variety of legal learning, and his great experience, not only in legal practice but in general life; but he was his equal in the ready appreciation of facts and in the soundness of his legal principles. He would, I think, have become even a better speaker, for he was equally natural and apparently free from artifice, and yet was more capable of earnest and sustained declamation: his voice was sweet, his action good." 1

One of the numerous stories told of him, of that class that injure rather than help a great advocate's reputation, is the following one, related by Lord Brougham:

"He had defended a gentleman of rank and fortune against a charge of an odious description. He had performed his part with even more than his accustomed zeal and skill. As soon as the judge had summed up, he tied up his papers deliberately, and with a face smiling and easy, but carefully turned towards the jury, he rose and said, loud enough to be generally heard, that he was engaged to dinner, and in so clear a case there was no occasion for him to wait what must be the certain event. He then retired deliberately, bowing to the court. The prosecuting counsel were astonished at the excess of confidence or of effrontery; nor was it lost upon the jury, who began their deliberations. But one of the juniors having occasion to leave the court, found that all this confidence and fearlessness had never crossed its threshold, - for behind the door stood Sir James Scarlett, trembling with anxiety, his face the color of his brief, and awaiting the result of the clearest case in the world' with breathless suspense."

1 Sir John Coleridge goes on to say of Follett, what is so true of other great lawyers, “that neither as a lawyer nor a legislator has he left any lasting monument behind him of his great abilities; the gainful business of the day swallowed him up. Like a well-graced actor,' the admired one of his day, he lives only in the recollections of one fleeting generation who saw him. We have a distinct idea of him as our fathers had of Garrick; henceforward a mere tradition of him will remain, tradition becoming every year more uncertain, obscure, indiscriminate." How true this is not only of Scarlett and of Follett, but of Samuel Dexter, of Pinkney, of Mason, and of Binney, and soon will be of Choate and of Curtis !

The lay magazines have been discussing the question of how far this was justifiable. To us it appears to be rather a question of taste than of morals. But there are great difficulties in the way of believing the story at all. The case, we take it, was The King v. Wall, tried in the King's Bench in 1833. The report, however, in the Annual Register says that the jury stopped the Lord Chief Justice in his summing up, and found the defendant not guilty without leaving the box.1

Like Erskine, Pinkney, and Webster, he had the weakness of vanity, which shows itself in his autobiography and correspondence, and sometimes showed itself by an overweening self-confidence at the Bar and in Parliament, greatly to his detriment. One amusing story Lord Brougham tells:

"It was a case of libel, and no justification had been pleaded. He was

1 A still more impossible anecdote is recorded by Mr. Campbell Scarlett, who says it was sent to him "by a lady," which perhaps accounts for its insertion:

Sir Walter Scott promised a friend that he would write a book for his benefit. The friend died before the promise was fulfilled, and his executors insisted that Sir Walter should write a book for the benefit of the widow and children of the deceased. This, Sir Walter refused to do. The executors sought the advice of Mr. Scarlett, who, having listened to their case, said: 'Let us suppose the position to be reversed; if Sir Walter Scott had died, should you have required his executors to write a book for the benefit of your clients?' Oh, no!' exclaimed the executors, convinced at once that they had no case against Sir Walter Scott."

Neither the law nor the logic of this is very apparent. Whether an executor could enforce such an agreement against an author would depend upon its terms. To assume that he could not, because if the author had died, his executor could not have compelled the acceptance of a work of his own, is a palpable non sequitur; and it is not necessary to tell lawyers that it is one of which no good lawyer could be guilty. But the origin of the story is undoubtedly found in Lord Abinger's dissenting judgment in the leading case of Gibson v. Carruthers, 8 M. & W. 343, 344, in which, in discussing the question of how far bankruptcy affected executory contracts, he put as an illustration a controversy between Sir Walter Scott and the assignees of his booksellers, who were to have published one of his novels, and to pay him for the privilege £4000. The assignees, after the bankruptcy, contended that they had succeeded to the bankrupts' rights under the contract and desired to undertake. the publication, but Sir Walter Scott objected that there were many qualities required in a publisher, credit, skill, reputation,-in order to push a new book in the market, and that the contract was a personal one, discharged by the booksellers' bankruptcy. "I must own," says Lord Abinger, "that his reasoning appeared satisfactory to me; but a more obvious illustration of the principle on which it rested would have been afforded by reversing the case, and supposing that Sir Walter Scott had been the bankrupt, and his booksellers solvent, would they have been content to pay their £4000, and take the risk of publishing a novel written by the assignees of the Novelist?" See Beckham v. Drake, 8 M. & W. 846; s. c. 2 H. L. Cas. 579.

for the plaintiff, and the defendant (who was conducting his own case) was throwing out assertions of the truth of the matter, which the judge interfered to check as wholly inadmissible in the state of the record. Mr. Scarlett, with his wonted smile of perfect, entire, and complacent confidence, said: 'Oh! my Lord, he is quite welcome to show what he cannotthat his slander was well founded.' The man went on and called a witness or two, nay, he was making much way in his proof, - when Mr. Scarlett appealed to the judge for protection. 'No' (or rather Baron Wood, 'I won't: it's your own fault. Why did you let him in?' The man proved his case and got a verdict, to the extreme annoyance of Mr. Scarlett."

Na'), said Mr.

In Parliament his success as a speaker was not so great, but we think it is partly accounted for by his not entering the House of Commons until he was near fifty, and by his being engrossed all the time he was there by the labors of an enormous practice. His speech on the allowance made to the Duke of York, as custodian of his father's person, was admitted to be extremely powerful. He himself says, in speaking of Erskine :

"I have heard him several times when he spoke second only to Pitt and Fox, and commanded the profoundest attention. What can be expected from a lawyer in great practice, who has not time for the exigencies of his own profession? Mr. Burke used to say, 'The best that the lawyers bring us in this House is but the rinsing of their empty bottles.'

"I can say for myself, that, though I received many compliments upon my first speech in Parliament, and though I was not conscious of any deficiency of talent for debate, I found it impossible to pursue my profession consistently with the application to Parliamentary subjects which was essential to my pretending to any lead in the House of Commons."

This strikes us as common sense; and the consequence of it is, that barristers so overworked are apt, in the House, to confine themselves to subjects upon which they can speak without giving much time to preparation; namely, legal subjects or the legal aspect of political subjects, - topics not very attractive to a lay audience.

And here, perhaps, a digression may be permitted us into an inquiry as to the truth of the oft-repeated assertion, that great lawyers generally have failed in Parliament, and of the usual inference that there is something incompatible between the training of the Bar and great eminence in a legislative assembly, especially when it is not largely made up of lawyers. With the

explanation we have above given, we deny the fact. It seems to us a bold generalization from the case of Erskine's asserted failure in the House of Commons. The thesis has been most positively supported by Macaulay, who had an extreme dislike of the profession he originally intended to follow. In his review of Croker's edition of Boswell, he says:

"It is the same with some eminent lawyers. Their legal arguments are intellectual prodigies, abounding with the happiest analogies and the most refined distinctions. The principles of their arbitrary science being once admitted, the statute-book and the reports being once assumed as the foundations of reasoning, these men must be allowed to be perfect masters of logic. But if a question arises as to the postulates on which their whole system rests, if they are called upon to vindicate the fundamental maxims of that system which they have passed their lives in studying, these very men often talk the language of savages or of children. Those who have listened to a man of this class in his own court, and who have witnessed the skill with which he analyzes and digests a vast mass of evidence or reconciles a crowd of precedents which, at first sight, seem contradictory, scarcely know him again when, a few hours later, they hear him speaking on the other side of Westminster Hall, in his capacity of legislator. They can scarcely believe that the paltry quirks, which are faintly heard through a storm of coughing, and which do not impose on the plainest country gentleman, can proceed from the same sharp and vigorous intellect which had excited their admiration under the same roof and on the same day."

We have no doubt there is foundation in the Parliamentary career of some great barristers for this, but we think it is a superficial treatment of the subject. The first fallacy is in assuming that it is peculiar to the bar. There are, as the present time has shown, many excellent clergymen, - learned, eloquent, laborious, distinguished as commentators, as preachers, and as pastors setting forth in their daily lives the religion which they teach-who make sorry figures when the whole foundations of that religion are attacked. And so it is in politics and in legislative assem

1 The explanation of the dislike which literary men, like Macaulay and Thackeray, who were educated for the Bar, are apt to have for the profession, perhaps is, that, while pursuing an unattractive study, they were surrounded by fellow-students who, widely different from them, were immersed in legal subjects, took hold of them with enthusiasm, and at table, in their walks, and at all times, could talk of nothing but law. A man who only regarded law as a disagreeable necessity, which he was determined to escape from if he could, would soon feel about the subject eternally dinned into him as a boy does about a dish which he was compelled to live on at school.

blies. What are called "practical" statesmen, like Walpole and Palmerston,men who have governed the country with admirable sagacity, and led the House of Commons with eminent success, would probably, in most cases, be unequal to a defence of the Constitution, "which they have passed their lives in studying." Imagine a discussion on the science of government between Sir Robert Walpole and Montesquieu! And yet Lord Macaulay would not, from these instances, draw a conclusion unfavorable either to theologians or politicians. There are lawyers who cannot reason except upon the principles of "the statute-book and the reports," and there are clergymen and statesmen who cannot reason in theology or politics, except upon the assumption of the truth and wisdom of the religion or government to which they have been accustomed. In this country where a government had to be formed and a system of constitutional law created, there is no difficulty in finding lawyers who can argue à priori on the principles of government or jurisprudence. It is a part of their training and daily occupation.

"Clive," says Macaulay again, "put himself into the hands of Wedderburn, afterwards Lord Loughborough, one of the few great advocates who have been also great in the House of Commons." The illustration is unfortunate. Wedderburn undoubtedly stands high in the second class of Parliamentary debaters, but he was not a great advocate. No barrister ever made a more signal failure in the House of Commons than did he in the Common-law courts. In the Court of Chancery his success was only ordinary. His promotion to the Solicitor and Attorney Generalship, and afterwards to the bench, was owing solely to Parliamentary and political services. But passing by this error, we deny the fact that Lord Macaulay assumes. When great lawyers have taken hold in earnest of the science of Parliamentary dialectics, they have succeeded as well as anybody else. Somers, Cowper, Murray, Dunning, Grant, Romilly, Plunket, Brougham, Follett, Cockburn, Palmer, and Cairns prove this.1 Lord Lyndhurst did

I We have purposely named only those lawyers to whom all the time, professional duties and success were the first objects in view. Many of the most eminent English statesmen and debaters, like Macaulay himself, began life at the Bar; and two of the most prominent at the beginning of the century, Dundas and Perceval, after being the one Lord Advocate, and the other Attorney-General, rose to the highest political offices in the State. But their careers are exceptional, and resemble those of American rather than of English statesmen.