945 



BROUGHAM, LORD. 



BROUGHAM, LORD. 



October 1831, takes its place as one of the most extraordinary 

 specimens of oratory in modern times. When the peers stood firm in 

 rejecting the bill, and the throne and the government were felt to lie 

 over a mine of popular wrath which might any day burst into civil 

 war, Lord Brougham and. Earl Grey conducted the memorable 

 negociations with the king, with a view to induce him to avoid the 

 catastrophe by a new creation of peers, on purpose to turn the votes 

 in the Upper House ; and some very curious particulars showing his 

 boldness in the crisis are related in Mr. Roebuck's ' History.' When, 

 at length, the discretion of the Duke of Wellington, himself convinced 

 of the impossibility of forming a Tory ministry, or resisting the 

 bill any longer, induced the lords to yield, and the bill became law 

 (June 1832), Lord Brougham and his colleagues were free to go on 

 to new measures. " The abolition of slavery in all our colonies ; the 

 opening of the East India trade, and destruction of the company's 

 monopoly ; the Amendment of the Criminal Laws ; vast improve- 

 ments in the whole Municipal Jurisprudence, both as regards Law 

 and Equity ; the settlement of the Bank Charter ; the total Reform 

 of the Scotch Municipal Corporations ; the entire alteration of the 

 Poor Laws ; an ample commencement made in reforming the Irish 

 Church by the abolition of ten bishoprics " such is Lord Brougham's 

 own enumeration of the series of measures carried by the first Reform 

 Parliament from 1832 to 1834, and in the preparation and passing of 

 which he had his full share. His speeches in the Lords on these 

 topics form a considerable proportion of the published collection. It 

 is to be remembered, too, that all this time he was discharging his 

 onerous judicial duties as Lord Chancellor. In this capacity also his pro- 

 digious activity was manifest ; all the more so when it was contrasted 

 with the dilatoriness of his predecessor Lord Eldon. In the first 

 year of his chancellorship he eat two days longer than Lord Eldon had 

 done, and " by devoting more hours each day to the business of bis 

 court, be was enabled in the course of a few months to decide no less 

 than 120 appeals and, instead of leaving, as his predecessor had done, 

 a large arrear of causes, he had the gratification of saying that he had 

 not left a single appeal unheard, nor one letter unanswered." There 

 have been various opinions as to Lord Brougham's accuracy as a 

 lawyer; but his astonishing power of getting through work rendered 

 the term of his supremacy a memorable one in the annals of Chancery, 

 and liis judgments, always carefully prepared, have shown the injustice 

 of many of the attacks on his legal reputation. His manner of 

 exercising bis patronage as chancellor both in church and state, has 

 also been a subject of general praise. 



In 1834 there was a new ministerial crisis. What had been done in 

 the first two sessions of the Reform Parliament, was " by some san- 

 guine and impatient spirits," says Lord Brougham, "held quite as 

 nothing compared with the vast change which they had expected." 

 In other words, Radicalism as distinct from Whiggism had assumed 

 shape and organisation out of doors, aud the Whigs were accused of 

 not going far or fast enough. Some of their later measures toj, par- 

 ticularly their Irish coercive policy, were largely unpopular. In the 

 ministry itself differences arose. In May 1834, Mr. Stanley, Sir 

 James Graham, Lord Ripon, and the Duke of Richmond, seceded 

 from the ministry ; and in July Lord Grey himself and Lord Althorp 

 resigned office on a point connected with Irish Coercion. Lord 

 Althorp wan prevailed upon to resume office, and the Whig ministry 

 continued in existence till November, when the death of Lord 

 Althorp's father, calling him to the Upper House as Earl Spencer, 

 gave the king an opportunity for carrying out the intention he had for 

 some time entertained, and changing the ministry entirely. Sir 

 Robert Peel, who had in the meantime been organising the modern 

 Conservative party, came into office. His ministry however lasted 

 only till April 1835, when a second Whig ministry was formed under 

 the premiership of Lord Melbourne, with Lord John Russell as 

 Home-Secretary. From this reconstructed Whig cabinet Lord 

 Brougham was excluded. The exact grounds of his exclusion have 

 probably yet to be revealed, along with the rest of the secret political 

 history of the time. April 1835 is the date of Lord Brougham's 

 rupture of his connections with the Whig party. Since that time he 

 has simply been an ex-chancellor with a pension of 500(M. a-year, but 

 always ready for public duties of a legal nature ; and a peer of the 

 realm, criticising in a perfectly independent manner the measures 

 brought forward by successive governments, whethtr Whig or Tory, 

 and occasionally proposing measures of his own. 



The political life of Lord Brougham since his rupture with the 

 Whim's in 1835 till the present time has consisted in what may be called 

 an energetic isolation, manifested in a series of independent inter- 

 ferences, either in the House of Lords or through the press, with the 

 current Whig and Tory politics of the country. During the first two 

 years, indeed, of the Melbourne administration, he was comparatively 

 inactive ; his only important appearance at this time being in a speech 

 in the House of Lords in May 1835, proposing a series of comprehen- 

 sive resolutions on the subject of national education. The year 1837 

 however in the June of which year William IV. was succeeded by 

 Queen Victoria saw him again remarkably active. In February in 

 that year, lie introduced two bills one for the establishment of local 

 courts, and the other for the abolition of pluralities ; in April he spoke 

 at large on the subject of Irish emigration and land-improvement in 

 Ireland ; in May he was attacking the government policy with respect 



MOO. DIV. VOL. I. 



to Canada ; and in June he moved for a select committee to inquire 

 into " the state of business " in the House of Peers. All tins was 

 before the death of William IV. ; but in the latter part of the same 

 year he took an active part in measures then before parliament for 

 amending the law supporting the forgery bill, aud other alterations 

 in the criminal code (hinting while doing so at the possibility of 

 abolishing death-punishment entirely), and also supporting a bill for 

 abolishing imprisonment for debt, except under peculiar circumstances. 

 In December 1837 he again brought the subject of national education 

 before the House at large in a formal bill. The year 1838 was marked 

 by liis violent opposition to the Melbourne government, on the subject 

 of Canada ; and his three speeches on this subject, delivered January 18, 

 February 2, and February 8, and republished under the title of 

 ' Speeches on the Maltreatment of the North American Colonies,' pro- 

 duced immense effect, and led to the extraordinary episode that year 

 of Lord Durham's sudden return from Canada in anger with the 

 Whigs. Among his public appearances in 1839 were a' Speech moving 

 a Committee of the Whole House on the Corn Laws;' 'A Letter on 

 National Education to the Duke of Bedford;' and 'A Reply to Lord 

 John Russell's letter to the electors of Stroud on the principles of the 

 Reform Act.' In the years that followed, he pursued a somewhat 

 singular course in connection with the great anti-corn law agitation 

 which then occupied the country on the whole contributing by his 

 declarations of opinion and votes to the final repeal of the corn laws 

 in 1846, but at the same time denouncing the league as unconstitu- 

 tional. During the Conservative ministry of Sir Robert Peel, indeed, 

 from 1841 to 1846, Lord Brougham seemed on the whole to co-operate 

 more amicably with the government than he had done with their Whig 

 predecessors. He still however pushed on measures of his own, and, 

 in particular, his favourite measures of law-reform. In 1843 he pub- 

 lished 'Letters on Law-Reform, addressed to the Right Hon. Sir 

 James Graham;' in 1844 he delivered in the House and afterwards 

 published a 'Speech on the Criminal Code;' and in May 1845 he made 

 another great speech on ' Law-Reform.' During the early part of 

 Lord John Russell's ministry (1846-52), Lord Brougham was still 

 chiefly occupied with law reform ; but the extraordinary events of 

 1848 roused him to new displays of his still youthful spirit. After 

 the downfall of Louis Philippe, he proposed to the revolutionary 

 government of France to complete his connection with that country 

 (he had already a certain connection with it as owner of au estate near 

 Cannes, where he generally resided a considerable part of every year), 

 by becoming in regular form a French citizen ; a proposition to which 

 M. Marrast replied on the part of the government, by informing him 

 that if he became a French citizen he must cease to be an English 

 peer. Lord Brougham's opinion on the revolution, its principles, and 

 its consequences, were expressed iu various speeches in the House of 

 Lords in 1848 and 1849 as, for example, his 'Speech on Italian and 

 French Affairs' on April 11, 1848, and his ' Speech on Foreign Affairs' 

 on July 20, 1849 ; but more at large in his ' Letter to the Marquis of 

 Lansdowne on the Late Revolution in France,' which run through five 

 or six editions. Far more generally acceptable have been his recent 

 persevering services in law reform represented, for example, in 1850, 

 by his 'Inaugural Address on the Establishment of a Law-School;' 

 his ' Letter to Lord Chancellor Cotteuham upon the Bill, to give 

 primary jurisdiction to the masters in ordinary of the High Court of 

 Chancery in certain cases ;' and his ' Letter to Lord Denmau on the 

 Legislation of 1850 as regards the Amendment of the Law;' in 1851 

 by his 'Speech on the Law of Evidence Bill;' and in 1853 by his 

 ' Speeches ou County Courts and Law Amendment.' Indeed even now 

 Lord Brougham is the still active patriarch of law reform ; and labours 

 assiduously iu this great duty, often in connection with ' The Law 

 Amendment Society." 



Such is a simple statement of the facts of Lord Brougham's political 

 life, as divided into the three distinct periods of his early activity, as 

 Mr. Brougham the Reform chief and orator (1810-1830), his Lord 

 Chancellorship in connection with a Whig ministry (1830-1834), and 

 his later career of isolation and independence. There are some who 

 criticise the last period of bis career in an unfriendly spirit, and main- 

 tain that the Lord Brougham of 1835-56 is a totally different man 

 from the Henry Brougham of 1810-30, or even from the Lord Chan- 

 cellor Brougham of 1830-34. More than once Lord Brougham has 

 replied to these charges of inconsistency founded on his conduct since 

 1835, maintaining, that in reality he has always been true to the 

 principles he professed at first, and the appearance of inconsistency is 

 caused by changed circumstances and conditions. It probably remains 

 however for his future biographer to determine this point more exactly, 

 by ascertaining, if possible, the real ' formula ' of his whole political 

 life. Meanwhile, this may be said, that at the age of seventy-seven 

 Lord Brougham can look back upon a political past more active and 

 more full of changes than perhaps any other man in Europe. 



In addition to the juvenile work ou the 'Colonial Policy of the 

 European Powers,' mentioned above, and to the miscellaneous pam- 

 phlets and articles in the ' Edinburgh Review,' which have also been 

 mentioned, Lord Brougham has, since his release from the cares of 

 office in 1834, given various literary works to the world, proving his 

 powers in authorship. The ' Collected Edition of his Speeches,' iu 

 four volumes, was published in 1838, and includes his chief orations up 

 to that date, with historical notes and introduction: 1 , and a 'Discourse 



