anxious to inquire how he and they support themselves under this heavy affliction. I know how vain every topic of consolation must be in the first impression of so much just sorrow, but I trust he will gradually find the relief, which even the sympathy and affection of his friends cannot administer, in the resignation and fortitude of his own mind. You will, I am sure, pardon my giving you this trouble, and will oblige me much by any account you can give me. I much wish he may be induced to try for a time the benefit of change of scene, and of a place of quiet.

"Believe me, my dear Sir,

"With great truth and regard,

"Most faithfully and sincerely yours,
"W. PITT."

Lord Eldon was necessarily recalled to the discharge of his public duties by the very embarrassed state of public affairs. [A. D. 1806.] Parliament was to meet on the 21st of January, and when that day approached, Mr. Pitt, broken-hearted, having returned from Bath to his house at Putney, was known to be dying. In the midst of the deepest gloom, the session was opened by a speech which Lord Eldon delivered to the two Houses as Lord Commissioner, and a generous forbearance was exhibited by the Opposition. On the 23d of January, the proud spirit of the Premier took its flight to another sphere of existence; and there really seems to have been more solicitude to do honour to his memory by voting a public funeral for his remains, and money to pay his debts, than to struggle for the power which was in abeyance. All parties were now disposed to look upon him as a noble-hearted Englishman, who had ever been the champion of his country; and while the partialities of many dwelt upon his efforts against French conquest and French principles, others remembered his early struggle in the cause of reform, and, justly asserting that he had always been true to the principles of free-trade, and that if not thwarted by bigotry he would have united Ireland to England by the indissoluble bond of affection, they palliated his encroachments on the Constitution, and the persecution of his old associates, by the pressure to which he was subjected, and the unknown dangers arising out of the great revolutionary movement then in operation over the world.

But a ministry must be speedily formed. I do not find that at this crisis Lord Eldon at all moved in any intrigue to patch up a Tory Government, or to exclude Mr. Fox. Either unnerved by domestic sorrow, or submitting quietly to what appeared to be an inevitable misfortune, he seems passively to have looked on while Mr. Fox and Lord Grenville were forming their arrangements, and to have made no attempt to retain the Great Seal.

On the 3d of February he announced his resignation, and said that he should not sit in the Court of Chancery after the following day. In. rising to quit the chair on the 4th, he thus, in a tremulous voice and with real emotion, addressed the Bar:

"Before I take leave of this Court, I wish to address a few words to you, gentlemen, expressive of the feelings I entertain for the respectful attention I have on all occasions experienced from you. I had doubted whether the more dignified manner of parting would not be simply to make my bow to you, and retire; but observing that I have been represented, yesterday and the day before, to have addressed you on the subject, I shall not resist the impulse I feel to say a few words. I quit the office I hold without one painful reflection. Called to it by authority of those whom it was my duty to obey, I have executed it, not well, but to the extent of my humble abilities, and the time which I have been able to devote to it; and I enjoy the grateful feeling that there is no suitor of this Court who can say I have not executed it conscientiously. There is yet, however, one painful emotion by which I am assailed-it is the taking leave of you. In retiring into private life, I am upheld by the hope that I shall carry with me the continued esteem of a profession, for which I feel an attachment that will descend with me to the grave. For the great attention, respect, and kindness I have always received from you, accept, gentlemen, my sincerest thanks, accompanied by my best wishes for your long continued health and happiness, and uninterrupted prosperity."

In the evening of the same day he thus wrote to his wife, showing the high self-complacency which stuck by him to his last hour:

"DEAR BESSY,

"I took leave of the Court of Chancery this morning: I don't mean to go to the woolsack in the House of Lords to-morrow, or any more. I am to resign the Seal at two o'clock on Friday." "I cannot

describe my own situation in point of health and feeling otherwise than as excellent, as that which a man has a right to possess, who, having done his duty to God, his King, and to every individual upon earth, according to the best of his judgment, has a right to support himself under heavy afflictions by the consciousness of proud and dignified integrity."

me."

The transfer of the Great Seal took place at the Queen's house on the 7th of February. In a narrative which he wrote at the time, he merely said, "When his Majesty took the Seal from my hands, his Majesty's demeanour and assurances were in all respects satisfactory to But he afterwards stated, in his old age,-"The King appeared for a few moments to occupy himself with other things; looking up suddenly, he exclaimed, Lay them down on the sofa, for I cannot and I will not take them from you. Yet I admit you can't stay when all the rest have run away.'"

The ex-Chancellor certainly carried with him the respect of the Bar and of the public. For five years he had presided in the Court of Chancery with consummate ability. In spite of the doubts and delays by which his usefulness was so much marred, the business of the Court had been transacted very satisfactorily, and there was yet no such accumulation of arrears as called forth the complaints which disturbed his second Chancellorship. The appeals in the House of Lords he had with hardly

any assistance decided in a manner which pleased the English-and the Scotch still more.

He gained popularity by puffing himself (which he was never slow to do upon any subject) respecting the reform he introduced in considering the Recorder's Report of prisoners capitally convicted at the Old Bailey. "The first time I attended," he said, "I was exceedingly shocked at the careless manner in which the business was conducted. We were called upon to divide on sentences affecting no less than the lives of men, and yet there was nothing before us to enable us to judge whether there had or had not been any extraordinary circumstances; it was merely a recapitulation of the judge's opinion and the sentence. I resolved that I never would attend another report without having read and duly considered the whole of the evidence of each case; and I never did. It was a considerable labour in addition to my other duties, but it is a comfort to reflect that I did so, and that in consequence I saved the lives of several individuals." We know on undoubted authority that he did take great pains with this department of his duty, but he surely very unjustly disparages his predecessors and his colleagues, and there is no reason to suppose that such men as Lord Kenyon and Lord Ellenborough could be so grossly negligent and reckless as he describes them.

Erskine was now Chancellor. 60 All the Talents" were in their palmy state, and the old Tory party, which was soon to recover power and to retain it many years, seemed extinguished. Lord Eldon did not by any means relish his position. He had a pension of 4000l. a year, under the recent Act of Parliament;* but this was a poor consolation to him for the loss of the profits of the Great Seal, and he thought to himself that if he had continued at the Bar he should have been in possession of a much larger income.

CHAPTER CXCIX.

CONTINUATION OF THE LIFE OF LORD Eldon TILL HE WAS RESTORED TO THE WOOLSACK.

I COULD have wished to relate that our ex-Chancellor now eagerly resumed his classical studies, and tried to discover what

[A. D. 1806.] had been going on during the last thirty years in the literary world, but he spent his time in poring over the newspapers, and gossiping with attorneys, in whose society he ever took great delight. "The form of the ex-Chancellor was then often seen to haunt the Inns of Court, the scenes of his departed glory; and often would he drop in to the chambers of his old friends, and, in the enjoyment of his pleasing conversation, make others as idle as himself." He says that he now again read over "Coke upon Littleton;" but he certainly

did nothing more, while he remained out of office, to enlarge his mind or to improve his taste. He found no delight in leisure, even for a little month, and he was more and more eager for his return to office. At first he was sanguine,—from the King's known dislike to Mr. Fox; but he was dreadfully alarmed by reports, which from time to time reached him, that the new foreign secretary was rapidly doing away with the prejudices against him in the royal bosom, and was likely to become a favourite at court.

He did not speak often in Parliament from the Opposition bench; but he censured the appointment of Lord Ellen

borough to a seat in the Cabinet while at the head [MARCH 3, 1806.] of the criminal law. With mildness of manner and apparent candour, "that such an arrangement was not illegal, he admitted: and he would not say that it was unconstitutional; but he thought it inexpedient, because it tended to excite a suspicion of political partiality in the administration of justice. It was observable that Lord Mansfield, whose case formed the solitary precedent, had become extremely unpopular after his entrance into the councils of the government; and the jealousy which then arose in the minds of the people, however ill-founded, had been sufficient to weaken the confidence which ought ever to be reposed in a judge. Lord Eldon declared himself persuaded that a tenure of a seat in the Cabinet would not in the slightest degree affect the purity of Lord Ellenborough's judicial administration; but he thought, that, for the satisfaction of the country at large, it was undesirable to have the Lord Chief Justice in such a position; and he trusted that, on reflection, the learned Lord himself would not wish to retain it. It would not be proper that the same individual should act, first as a minister to institute prosecutions for treason and sedition, and afterwards as the judge to preside at the trials. A Lord Chief Justice, it was true, might, in such cases, absent himself from the Council, or delegate the trial at law to some other judge; but in either of these cases he abandoned some duty appertaining to one of his two appointments. There might occur prosecutions, not for offences affecting the general foundations of government, but for mere libels on the party in office; and the person accused, in any such case, would never be satisfied of the fairness of his trial, if the presiding judge were a member of the Cabinet directing the prosecution. Lord Eldon added, that he had himself been connected with Lord Ellenborough for nearly thirty years, by the sincerest friendship: and even if he could suppose that this personal regard could be at all weakened by any thing which he had then said, still he felt himself so strongly impelled by a sense of duty, that he could not refrain from expressing his opinion. He concluded by a suggestion that the best way of disposing of the matter would be to leave it to the consideration of Lord Ellenborough himself; and he was convinced that his noble friend would arrive at that result which would be satisfactory to the feelings of the public as well as to his own.

99*

6 Parl. Deb. 263.

During the trial of Lord Melville's impeachment, Lord Eldon did not take any active part in examining the witnesses, or arguing questions of evidence, Lord Chancellor Erskine here having a decided advantage over him. When it came to the verdict, he said NOT GUILTY, on all the charges, although on one or two of them he was in a narrow majority.

The session having passed off prosperously for the new Government, the hopes of the opposition were revived by the [SEPT. 13, 1806.] death of Mr. Fox; but the Whigs all rallied under Lord Grenville, and it seemed as if the King himself had gone over to them, for he consented to a dissolution of Parliament for the purpose of giving them strength. Although the existing House of Commons had been very quiescent, it was known to be of good Tory materials, and ready on the first opportunity to stand up for the restoration of Tory rule. The Tory leaders had not dreamed that the King, who had so reluctantly parted with them, would consent to Parliament being prematurely disbanded. It was only four years old; and, since the passing of the Septennial Act, nearly a century ago, there had not been an instance of a dissolution till the Parliament had completed its sixth session, with the exception of the precedent set by Mr. Pitt in 1784, considered necessary from the difference between the two Houses, and the rebellion of the House of Commons against the King and the people.

In the whole history of Lord Eldon's life there is nothing more extraordinary than the effect which the news of this measure produced upon him. Not only did he suspect that Canning and many Pittites were going over, but he thought and wrote most unkindly, and I must say most disrespectfully and irreverently, of his "dear old master, George III.," who, while favouring him, had been, and again became, the God of his idolatry. Thus he pours out his indignation to his brother, Sir William Scott :

"I am not in the least surprised at what you say about C. I have for some time thought that much less than a dissolution would serve him as a cause of separation, and I suspect that Lord G. has known him so well as by flattering his vanity on the one hand, by making him the person of consequence to be talked with, and alarming that vanity on the other, by disclaiming intercourse through any body with the Pittites as a body, to make him the instrument of shaking, among the Pittites, that mutual confidence which was essential to give them weight, and thus to keep them in the state of a rope of sand till a dis solution, when he won't care one fig for them all put together. The King's conduct does not astonish me, though I think it has destroyed him. His language to me led me to hope better things; and, in charity, I would suppose from it, that his heart does not go with his act. his years, his want of sight, the domestic falsehood and treachery which surround him, and some feeling, (just enough, I think) of resentment at our having deserted him on Mr. Pitt's death, and, as to myself particularly, the uneasiness, which, in his mind, the presence of a per

But