International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1,: No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850Various
Science
International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1,: No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850
Various
Art -- Periodicals; Literature -- Periodicals; Science -- Periodicals
"Wherever commerce shall extend its social influences, wherever justice
shall be administered by enlightened and liberal rules, wherever
contracts shall be expounded upon the eternal principles of right and
wrong, wherever moral delicacy and judicial refinement shall be infused
into the municipal code, at once to persuade men to be honest and to keep
them so; wherever the intercourse of mankind shall aim at something more
elevating than that groveling spirit of barter in which meanness, and
avarice, and fraud strive for the mastery over ignorance, credulity, and
folly, the name of Lord Mansfield will be reverenced, not only for
adapting the inefficient system which he found to the exigencies of his
own age in his own country, but for furnishing forever the great laws
founded upon everlasting truth and justice to the whole family of man."
In 1760 George III. ascended the throne, and Mansfield became a member of
the Cabinet, of which Bute was at the head. Ten years afterward the Chief
Justice prudently withdrew from the intimate connection with the
Government, into which he ought never to have entered, and seven years
Before his retirement the brief, though magnificent authority of Bute,
had been shattered to pieces, and the Minister himself disgraced. But,
although Cabinet Councils were henceforward held without the Chief
Justice, Lord Mansfield in his place in Parliament stood by the
Government, and vigorously defended them against a virulent Opposition.
Pitt, "blasting his character," according to Horace Walpole, "for the
sake of a paltry annuity and a long-necked peeress," had followed his
ancient rival into the House of Lords, and by this suicidal act given
Mansfield an immense advantage. Chatham, eager enough to tie his victim
to the stake, was doomed to bitter disappointment in an arena utterly
unfitted for the exercise of his peculiar powers. The atmosphere of the
House of Peers, admirably suited to the calm dignity and sublime
moderation of Mansfield, proved too often nipping frost to the burning
declamation of the man whose very look could rouse a more popular
assembly, and whose words oftener than once had inspired it with the
noblest sentiments. It was not in the House of Lords that at this period
of his history Lord Mansfield found his most dangerous opponent. A secret
enemy had arisen in the outside world amongst the people, one even more
unscrupulous than Chatham in his animosity: one who reveled in his
questionable privilege of striking in the dark, and who justified abuse
that knew no mercy, and acknowledged no law, by reiterated and fervid
appeals to God and his country. The moral courage of Murray had once
given way in the House of Commons, when Pitt, speaking daggers to him,
and suddenly exclaiming, "Judge Festus trembles, he shall hear me another
day," quietly sat down. But his sufferings were nothing compared with the
torture his weakness underwent beneath the repeated inflictions of the
unsparing Junius.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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