LIFE OF LORD ERSKINE.

tion of the Prince Regent to adhere to Mr Spencer Percival and the Tories (1811), he appears, in common with his party, to have renounced all thoughts of public employment, and to have made up his mind to abstain from all further interference in the course of political affairs. He even paid very little attention to the judicial business of the House of Lords, and seems henceforth to have resolved to give himself up to a life of wit and pleasure in West-End society. He still lived at Hampstead, not far from Lord Mansfield's villa of Caen Wood, and would even occupy his leisure hours by taking in hand a spade or a rake. Shortly after this time he sold his house at Hampstead, and bought an estate near Crawley, in Sussex, where he thought, by an attention to the laws of agriculture, and by the practice of the strictest economy, that he should be able to turn a barren district into a smiling park. The latter, however, turned out a barren speculation, and the best crop it could produce was a supply of stunted birch-trees; and as he found himself approaching nearer to old age, without any great provision made against its arrival, he gave it up in despair. He would often enliven the dinner-table at Lincoln's Inn (of which he was a bencher) by anecdotes of his cotemporaries. The best of his mots, however (and they were many), was that which he made with respect to the Chancellorship and the Polar expedition. Captain Parry, the Arctic navigator, dining in the hall one day, complained that he and his crew, when frozen up in the Polar regions, had nothing to eat but seals. "And very good living too," replied Erskine, "if you can only keep them long enough!"

He was frequently present, and often the president, at the ceremony of laying the first stone of buildings of societies and institutions. Nothing pleased him better than to be present at fashionable balls and breakfasts of peculiar éclat. He also strove to divert ennui, and to recover his lost ground, by publishing his "Armata," an imitation of the "Utopia" of Sir Thomas More and of "Gulliver's Travels," and which was fairly successful in its day, though it is now forgotten.

In 1812 there was some idea that the Whigs would return to office; but Lord Erskine's views, especially with respect to Catholic Emancipation, were in advance of his age; and accordingly he gave up all thoughts of further employment, and continued to devote himself to the pleasures of West-End society.

For the next years of his life he rarely attended the House of Lords, and in spite of the fact that law reform was among the questions of the day, he turned a deaf ear to the subject. About this time he was made a Knight of the Thistle, an honour which he coveted the more, and appreciated the more highly, because it reflected honour on the land of his birth. He took an active and interested part in the Banbury Peerage case, protesting very strongly and vehemently against the decision arrived at by the Lords. In 1819 he supported Lord Grey's amendment to the address, condemning the Manchester massacre, and brought in a bill for the prevention of arrest of the suspected libeller before indictment found against the libeller. He took a strong and

active part in mitigation of all the strong measures taken against the multitude by the Regent's Administration, and also in the trial of Queen Caroline, by whom he thoroughly stood against her Royal Consort. His last speech in the House was delivered in her cause.

In 1820 he paid a visit to Scotland (the first since he had left Leith as a middy), wearing the order of the Thistle-an honour of which his fellow-countrymen were extremely proud. He now revisited his old haunts, the place of his birth, and the old familiar stairs up and down which he had trudged, some sixty years ago, a curly-haired stripling. He was well and kindly received by his countrymen, except by Sir Walter Scott, who, as a genuine Tory, stood aloof.

Having parted with his fine house in Lincoln's Inn Fields, and his villa at Hampstead, he spent the remainder of his days in a lodging in Arabella Row, Pimlico, moving occasionally to a cottage on his estate of Holmbush, near Crawley, in Sussex, which he called Buchan Hill. He also contracted a second marriage at Gretna Green, the lady of his choice being a Miss Sarah Buck. In the early part of 1823, by way of proof that to the last he was interested in all questions of the day, he published a pamphlet on the "Agricultural Distress." But it was obvious to his friends. that his career was drawing to its close. In the summer of that year he resolved to pay a visit to his brother, the Earl of Buchan, at Dryburgh Abbey, and (as there were no steamers or express trains in those days) he took ship at Blackwall for Edinburgh. On the voyage he was attacked by a serious illness; was landed at Leith, and reaching the residence of his sister-in-law, the Hon.

Mrs Henry Erskine, at Almondell, he died on the 17th of the November following, at the age of seventy-three. He was buried in a family vault at Uphall, in the county of Linlithgow. Had he died in London, it is more than probable that he would have been honoured by a funeral in Westminster Abbey: as it is, his remains repose in a quiet and peaceful country churchyard, far away from the din of law-courts and the busy haunts of men.

By his first wife he had a family of eight children-four sons and four daughters. Of the latter, Frances married the Rev. Dr Holland, precentor and prebendary of Chichester, and died in 1859 ; Elizabeth married the late Sir David Erskine, and died in 1800; Margaret died unmarried in 1857; and the youngest, Mary, married David Morris, Esq., and was left a widow in 1815. Of the sons, the first was David Montagu, second lord; the second, Henry David, some time Dean of Ripon, who married Lady Mary Harriet, third daughter of John, first Earl of Portarlington, and died in 1859; the third, the Right Hon. Thomas Erskine, one of the Judges of the Court of Common Pleas, married Henrietta Eliza, only daughter of Henry Traill, Esq., and died in 1864; and the youngest, Esme Stewart, a lieutenant-colonel in the army, and deputy-adjutant-general, who served as aide-de-camp to the Duke of Wellington at the battle of Waterloo, where he lost an arm, died in 1817.

In his title he was succeeded by his eldest son, David Montagu, some time British Minister at the court of Munich. He married Fanny, the daughter of General Cadwallader of Philadelphia, by whom he had a numerous family; and dying in 1855, was succeeded by his eldest son, Thomas Americus, the present and third Lord Erskine, who was born in 1802, and married in 1830, Louisa, daughter of George Newnham, Esq., of Newtimber Place, Sussex, and widow of Thomas Legh, Esq., of Adlington, Cheshire, which lady died in 1867.

There is no marble monument erected by the nation to Erskine's memory, nor any mural inscription to celebrate his genius and his public services; "but," to use the words of his biographer, Lord Chancellor Campbell, "the collection of his speeches will preserve his name as long as the English language endures;" and a simple narrative of his life will best show his claim to the gratitude of posterity as one who laboured, and not wholly in vain, in the cause

of human progress and freedom, and the advancement of enlightened legislation. "Let us imagine to ourselves," adds his biographer, "an advocate inspired by a generous love of fame, and desirous of honourably assisting in the administration of justice by obtaining redress for the injured and defending the innocent,-one who has liberally studied the science of jurisprudence, and has stored his mind and refined his taste by a general acquaintance with elegant literature, one who has an intuitive insight into human character, and into the workings of human passion,-one who is able not only by his powers of persuasion to give the best chances of success to every client whom he represents in every variety of public causes, but also to defeat conspiracies against the public liberty founded on a perversion of the criminal law,-and one who, by the victories which he gains and the principles which he establishes, helps to place the free constitution of his countrymen on an imperishable basis. Such an advocate was Erskine. . . . Such an advocate, in my opinion, stands quite as high in the scale of true greatness as the parliamentary leader who ably opens a budget, or who lucidly explains a new system of commercial policy, or who dexterously attacks the measures of the existing Government. . . . I will not here enter into a comparison of the respective merits of the different sorts of oratory handed down to us from antiquity; but I may be allowed to observe, that among ourselves, in the hundred and fifty volumes of "Hansard's Debates," there are no specimens of parliamentary harangues which, as literary compositions, are comparable to the speeches of Erskine at the bar, with the exception of Burke's, and these were delivered to empty benches. . . . There will probably again be a debater equal to the elder or the younger Pitt, to Fox or Sheridan, Burke or Grey, before there arises another advocate equal to Thomas Erskine.” *

* Campbell's Lives of the Chancellors, vol. ix.

SPEECHES OF LORD ERSKINE.

SPEECH for Captain BAILLIE, delivered in the Court of King's Bench, on the 24th of November 1778. Taken in shorthand, and published, with the rest of the proceedings, by Captain BAILLIE himself, in 1779.

THE SUBJECT.

CAPTAIN THOMAS BAILLIE, one of the oldest captains in the British Navy, having, in consideration of his age and services, been appointed Lieutenant-Governor of the Royal Hospital for Superannuated Seamen at Greenwich, saw (or thought he saw) great abuses in the administration of the charity; and prompted, as he said, by compassion for the seamen, as well as by a sense of public duty, had endeavoured by various means to effectuate a reform.

In pursuance of this object, he had at various times presented petitions and remonstrances to the Council of the Hospital, the Directors, and the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty, and he had at last recourse to a printed appeal addressed to the General Governors of the Hospital. These Governors consisted of all the great officers of state, privy councillors, judges, flag-officers, &c., &c.

Some of the alleged grievances in this publication were, that the health and comfort of the seamen in the Hospital were sacrificed to lucrative and corrupt contracts, under which the clothing, provisions, and all sorts of necessaries and stores were deficient; that the contractors themselves presided in the very offices appointed by the charter for the control of contracts, where, in the character of counsellors, they were enabled to dismiss all complaints, and carry on with impunity their own system of fraud and peculation.

But the chief subject of complaint (the public notice of which, as Captain Baillie alleged, drew down upon him the resentment of the Board of Admiralty) was, that landmen were admitted into the offices and places in the Hospital designed exclusively for seamen by the spirit, if not by the letter, of the institution. To these landmen Captain Baillie imputed all the abuses he complained of, and he more than in

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