941 



BROUGHAM, LORD. 



BROUGHAM, LORD. 



extended it. Perhaps the most splendid display of his powers aa a 

 pleader at this period of his career was in his advocacy before parlia- 

 ment of the case of certain merchants of London, Liverpool, and 

 Manchester, who complained of the injury done to British commerce 

 by the operation of the famous ' Orders in Council," by which the 

 government sought to retaliate on Napoleon's Berlin decrees. He was 

 unsuccessful in his plea that the ' Orders ' should be rescinded ; but he 

 gained great popularity by his speech on the question. To place such 

 a man in parliament seemed the greatest service that could be rendered 

 to the Whig party; and, accordingly, in the same year he was returned 

 to the House of Commons for Camelford by the Earl of Darlington, 

 afterwards Marquis and Duke of Cleveland, the patron of the borough. 

 Brougham is thus one of the many eminent statesmen who, during 

 the first thirty years of this century, owed their introduction to parlia- 

 ment to the convenience of rotten boroughs. His maiden speech in 

 parliament, delivered on the 5th of March 1810, on the occasion, of 

 Mr. Whitbread's motion reprobating the conduct of the Earl of 

 Chatham in privately transmitting to the king his narrative of the 

 expedition to the Schelde, somewhat disappointed the anticipations 

 that had been formed from his forensic appearances. It was able and 

 appropriate, but nothing more. Very soon however he mastered his 

 new element. The House began to feel that they had got among them 

 a man of constitutional energy and daring, an orator such as had not 

 gat on those benches since the days of Fox and Pitt, and Burke, 

 and against whose passionate vehemence, unparalleled fluency, and 

 remorseless invective, when roused, the boldest adversary felt that 

 he waa powerless. Canning alone, during the time that Brougham 

 was in the House of Commons, could face him deliberately as an 

 antagonist ; and the difference of their styles of oratory rendered the 

 occasions on which they were matched against each other among the 

 most remarkable displays of gladiatorship known in the history of 

 parliament. 



When Mr. Brougham commenced his political career, Britain was in 

 a condition to furnish him with abundant matter on which to exercise 

 his oratory of denunciation and his passion for reform. It was the 

 period of confirmed Tory ascendancy. The Perceval administration 

 was struggling against Napoleon abroad, more especially in Spain, 

 where Wellington was for the first time teaching Britain how to wrestle 

 with the great conqueror on land. Out of this peculiar foreign policy 

 arose many questions on which the Whigs differed from the Tories ; 

 while in the domestic and colonial policy there were principles and 

 practices which the Tories of the present day would condemn as 

 strongly as the Whigs did then. From 1810 to 1812, Mr. Brougham 

 distinguished himself on the opposition side in all the great debates 

 on questions of home, foreign, and colonial policy, between the govern- 

 ment and the opposition. He delivered speeches against the ' Orders in 

 Council' (which, very much through his means, were rescinded in 1812, 

 as far as America was concerned), against flogging in the army, in 

 behalf of the Roman Catholic claims, and in behalf of reform in the 

 government of India. It was at thh period, too, that he began his 

 labours in some questions of general philanthropy, distinct from mere 

 politics. As early as 1810 he carried a unanimous address to the 

 king, praying him to take measures, both direct and diplomatic, for 

 the suppression of the slave-trade; and in 1812 be spoke on the 

 question of prison-management. Nor was it only in the House that 

 his energy on the liberal side of politics and general opinion was 

 manifested. In 1811, for example, he was counsel for Messrs. Hunt, 

 the proprietors of the ' Examiner' newspaper, in a prosecution for 

 libel on account of an article against government on the subject of 

 flogging in the army, and also for Mr. Drakard, proprietor of the 

 ' Stamford News,' in a similar action for libel on account of a repub- 

 lication of the same article. In the first case he obtained a verdict 

 for his clients ; in the second, he failed ; but his speeches on both 

 occasions were hailed as triumphant defences of the liberty of the 

 press. In December 1812 he was again counsel for the Messrs. Hunt, 

 in the famous trial for libel on account of an article offensive to the 

 Prince Regent; and the defence is said to have been as offensive to the 

 Prince as the article itself, and never to have been forgotten by him. 



At the time of this last forensic display, Mr. Brougham was not a 

 member of parliament. In October 1812 the administration of Lord 

 Liverpool and Lord Castlereagh having just succeeded that of Mr. 

 Perceval he was induced to contest the Liverpool election, in asso- 

 ciation with another Whig, against Mr. Canning and another minis- 

 terial candidate ; and, having lost this election, and also failed in a 

 subsequent canvas for the Inverkeithing Burghs, he remained ex- 

 cluded from parliament for four years. During these four years, the 

 Liverpool and Castlereagh administration carried on the final struggle 

 against Napoleon, which ended in the battle of Waterloo and the 

 treaty of Vienna; and during the same period were passed the Corn 

 Laws, the repeal of which was to cost so much effort at a subsequent 

 day. 



In 1816 Mr. Brougham was returned to parliament (this time also 

 through the influence of the Earl of Darlington) for the borough of 

 Winchelsea; and he continued to represent that borough till the year 

 1830. Three times indeed during this period he contested the county 

 of Westmoreland against the Tory and family influence then para- 

 mount in it namely, at the general elections of 1818, 1820, and 1826 

 but without success. 



The period between 1816 and 1830 was perhaps that of Mr. 

 Brougham's greatest celebrity. The war being over, all the energies 

 of the nation were free for the work of domestic and colonial inquiry 

 and reform, and such men as Brougham found larger scope for their 

 activity than ever. His biography at this time, so far as his political 

 activity is concerned, naturally divides itself into stages corresponding 

 with the successive ministers then in office. The Liverpool ministry 

 continued in office during the rest of the nominal reign of George III., 

 and us far into that of George IV. as April 1827, considerably modified 

 in its policy however by the admission into it in 1816 of Canning, and 

 farther by the accession of Canning to the Foreign Office in 1822, on 

 the death of the Marquis of Londonderry. Then followed the brief 

 administration of Canning (April to August 1827), succeeded by that 

 of Lord Goderich (August 1827 to January 1828), and next by that of 

 the Duke of Wellington (January 1828 to November 1830). Every 

 one knows that the history of Great Britain under theao successive 

 ministers consisted in a continuous battle between the Tories and the 

 opposition on a great variety of questions involving popular liberties 

 in opposition to prerogative ; and that the progress of victory was so 

 steadily on the side of the opposition that point after point was con- 

 ceded, and the views of the Tory party themselves in matters of 

 government became entirely changed from what they had been in 

 1815. Much of this progress was owing to the genius and liberality 

 of Canning, whose foreign policy in particular infused a new spirit 

 into the later years of the Liverpool administration ; but much of it 

 also was owing to the oratory and energy of Mr. Brougham. A list of 

 the topics of his principal speeches in the House during the period in 

 question will best indicate the course of his parliamentary career : 

 In 1816 (the year of his re-admission to parliament) he took a leading 

 part in the debates on the Reduction of the Army-Estimates, the 

 Repeal of the Property-Tax, the Distresses of the Agricultural Interest, 

 and other topics natural at a time of sudden transition from war to 

 peace ; and in the same session he commenced his long labours in the 

 cause of Popular Education, by moving and obtaining the appointment 

 of a committee to inquire into the education of the poor in the metro- 

 polis. In 1817 he made a speech on the Distresses of the Manufacturing 

 Classes, recurred to the question of the Education of the Poor in the 

 Metropolis, and attacked the foreign policy of the ministry. In 1818 

 he spoke on the Tithe Laws and Parliamentary Reform, recurred again 

 to the subject of Metropolitan Education, and succeeded in obtaining 

 the appointment of a commission, since so famous, for Inquiring into 

 the Abuses of the Public Charitable Foundations of the Kingdom 

 connected with Education. He was not himself nominated on this 

 commission, but he continued to watch its proceedings with the 

 greatest interest, and to keep public attention fixed on it. Thus, in 

 1818, he published 'A Letter to Sir Samuel Romilly, upon the Abuse 

 of Public Charities,' which was so popular that it ran through ten 

 editions in a few months. In 1819, besides his other appearances in 

 parliament, he defended the Education Committee against certain 

 charges of Sir Robert Peel. During the years 1820 and 1821 his time 

 was chiefly occupied in proceedings connected with the case of Queen 

 Caroline, whose differences with her husband had been a subject of 

 public scandal for some years, but now assumed all the dimensions of 

 a political convulsion, in consequence of her arrival in England to 

 claim the honours of Queen-Consort on her husband's accession to the 

 throne. Mr. Brougham's conduct of the whole case as her Majesty's 

 Attorney-General, and in particular his two great speeches in that 

 capacity the one before the House of Lords on the trial for her 

 Divorce, the other before the Privy Council in the argument for her 

 Coronation immensely increased his popularity; as did also his 

 subsequent defence at the Durham assizes of Mr. Williams, proprietor 

 of the ' Durham Chronicle,' in an action for libel brought against him 

 by the Durham clergy, for an article reflecting on their conduct for r^ot 

 permitting the city bells to be tolled on the queen's death. His attack 

 on the clergy on this occasion was terrific. All these displays of oratory 

 in the queen's case were forensic rather than parliamentary ; but the 

 gravity of the case gave them political importance, and affected Mr. 

 Brougham's position in the House of Commons. Here, whilst bur- 

 dened with business as the queen's attorney-general, he had not ceased 

 to take part in debates on Education, Admiralty Reform, the State of 

 Ireland, and other topics. In the session of 1823, when Canuing's 

 foreign ministry was beginning a new era in our relations with foreign 

 powers, Mr. Brougham, who had, in 1816, stood almost alone in the 

 House in denouncing the Holy Alliance, and calling on the British 

 government to pursue another policy in foreign affairs than that of the 

 Alliance, was able to return to the topic under much more favourable 

 auspices, in a speech attacking the alliance for their armed inter- 

 ference, through France, with the liberties of the Spanish nation. 

 Canning, though not going so far, may be supposed on this occasion 

 to have sympathised to some extent with his parliamentary rival; 

 but on another occasion, during the same session, the two orators 

 came to a personal quarrel. It was on a debate on Catholic Emanci- 

 pation, and the scene was one of the most memorable that ever occurred 

 in the house. Mr. Brougham, charging Canning with faithlessness to 

 his previous declarations in behalf of emancipation, pressed the charge 

 in a speech of extraordinary invective, which he wound up by pointing 

 to Canning as having been guilty " of the most monstrous truckling 

 for office that the whole history of political tergiversation could 



