142 CAMDEN COUNTY. 



last hour, taxation and representation are inseparable. The 

 position is founded on the laws of nature. For whatever is a 

 man's own, it is absolutely his own. No man has a right to 

 take it away from him without his consent. Whoever attempts 

 to do it, attempts an injury. Whoever does it commits a rob- 

 bery." Sentiments like these delivered by a legislator of Great 

 Britain, were calculated to inspire the struggling colonies 

 with confidence ; and the Earl of Camden was regarded by the 

 friends of liberty as their most able champion. The colony of 

 Massachusetts sent to him an address, acknowledging in grate- 

 ful terms their profound sense of his patriotic and intrepid de- 

 fence of the rights of His Majesty's subjects. America rung 

 with his praises. Counties, towns, and villages were named 

 after him. Georgia, to perpetuate the remembrance of his ser- 

 vices, attached his name to one of her divisions. We will 

 give a short memoir of this distinguished friend of American 

 liberty. 



Charles Pratt, afterwards Lord Chancellor and Earl of Cam- 

 den, was born in 1713, and was descended from an ancient and 

 respectable family that had been settled at Careswell Priory, 

 near CoUumpton in Devonshire. His father was an eminent 

 barrister in the reign of William III. and Queen Anne, and 

 in the reign of George I. Lord Chief Justice of England. Af- 

 ter having received his education at Eton and Cambridge, he 

 entered upon the study of law, and was admitted to the bar in 

 1738. Many obstacles prevented his rapid advancement. For 

 years he was without a single client, and he was about to aban- 

 don his profession, but was dissuaded from doing so by his friend 

 Lord Northington. Having conducted a case with great abil- 

 ity in one of the western circuits of England, he soon became 

 known, and business crowded upon him. In parliamentary law 

 he was well read, and was a favourite in all cases of political 

 aspect. In July, 1757, through the influence of Mr. Pitt, he 

 was made Attorney General, and soon after was elected to 

 Parliament from the borough of Downton, which he continued 

 to represent until he became Chief Justice of the Court of 

 Common Pleas, which office he took January 23, 1762. Whilst 

 holding this high dignity, the celebrated John Wilkes was com- 

 mitted to prison upon the charge of making severe animadver- 

 sions upon the government, through the columns of a paper call- 



