106 LOUD ELDON. 



In 1788 he was appointed Solicitor-General, and received the 

 honor of knighthood. In 1793 he was raised to the office of Attorney- 

 General, and in six years afterwards he was elevated to the Chief 

 Justiceship of the Common Pleas, and created a peer. During the 

 time that his lordship was in the lower House, his votes and speeches 

 were in unison with his party, and he was only celebrated as being 

 famous for the covert and insidious mode in which he conducted his 

 political warfare. We cannot better illustrate this, than by selecting 

 an instance, which is more interesting than many others that we 

 could adduce, as it occurred on the passage of Fox's celebrated Jury 

 Bill. On that occasion his lordship expressed a wish to preserve 

 distinct and separate the respective rights of judges and jurors. He 

 admitted that there was a defect in the law praised Mr. Fox for his 

 exertions declined offering an opposition, but doubted whether the 

 bill would be effective. But when the bill came before the Committee 

 he suggested several apparently trifling alterations, and among them 

 moved that the preamble should be less general. This roused the in- 

 dolence of Fox, who had for some time allowed the Solicitor-General 

 to suggest, and insinuate to such an extent, that the bill had nearly 

 become a mass of senseless deformity. Mr. Fox complimented him 

 on his tact, acuteness, and friendly disposition towards the bill, and 

 pointed out the danger of limiting the preamble maintaining that 

 in proportion as the preamble of the bill was general, the utility and 

 importance of the measure became obvious, and the intentions of its 

 authors more directly secured. Other well known instances could be 

 mentioned, but time and space will not permit of their enumeration. 

 In 1790 he took part in opposing all inquiry into the murder of 

 Mustapha Cawn ; and in 1792, in the same spirit, he objected to any 

 inquiry into the deeds of the magistrates of Birmingham, for their 

 disgraceful conduct during the riots. This refusal was the more 

 shameful, as it was actually proved that the magistrates in person 

 directed the fury of that most horrid and sanguinary spirit of bigotry 

 and superstition, which revelled in the destruction of the property of 

 a philosopher, and panted for the blood of the liberal and enlightened 

 few who were gifted with reason. 



On the question of the Regency he took a prominent part. The 

 circumstance was one of political magnitude one that engrossed 

 much public and private attention; and which even now is a subject 

 of deep and painful interest. At a period when treaties of the great- 

 est importance were forming, when negociations of the utmost con- 

 sequence were pending, an awful and melancholy event, unprece- 

 dented m the annals of the country, arrested the progress of ministers, 

 and appeared for a time to cause, almost, the annihilation of govern- 

 ment. It pleased the Almighty to visit George the Third with an 

 affliction which has no parallel in human sufferings, with a calamity 

 of the most humiliating and affecting character, which incapacitated 

 him from performing his regal functions, or personally exercising the 

 slightest authority. Thus arose a defect in the constitution; and, 

 during the continuance of the king's malady, it became necessary to 

 supply the deficiency. How this object was accomplished must be 

 familiar to every one, and also the part taken by the Solicitor-Gene- 



