Wilberforce had written to Lord Ellenborough on the evils of his having a seat in the Cabinet, Lord Ellenborough being at that time Lord Chief Justice of the King's Bench, and the next letter contains Lord Ellenborough's defence of his conduct, which does not err on the side of brevity and which Wilberforce describes as "a very handsome answer." _Lord Ellenborough to Mr. Wilberforce._ "BLOOMSBURY SQUARE, "_February 4, 1806_. "MY DEAR SIR,--I sit down to thank you for the favour of your letter in the very instant in which I have received it. I regret very much that I have no opportunity of personal communication with you on the subject of it: if I had I could explain more perfectly and unreservedly than I can do by letter all the motives which have induced my reluctant acquiescence in a nomination of myself to a place in the Cabinet. The situation has not only not been sought by me, but I appeal to every member of the Government about to be formed who is acquainted with the transaction, whether it was not accepted by me with extreme reluctance, and after objections raised by myself which nothing but a superior sense of the present duty and a prospect of present usefulness to the public would have surmounted. If I had felt that a situation in the Cabinet would have placed me under circumstances inconsistent with the due and impartial discharge of my judicial functions, no consideration on earth would have induced me to accept it. A member of the Cabinet is only a member of a Select Committee of the Privy Council, of which Privy Council at large every justice of the K.B. is of course a member. In that larger Privy Council his Majesty may and frequently does take the opinion of its members on matters which may come in question judicially before some of them. But I think that no man can correctly act in both capacities, and therefore when a question of a high criminal nature was about a year ago under discussion at a Privy Council at which I was particularly desired by the Chancellor to attend, I stipulated expressly with my Lord Chancellor that I should not be included in a Special Commission to try the offence then under consideration. I think both my Lord C. J. Holt, and very lately my Lord C. J. Eyre would have done better to have forborne being present at the preliminary inquiries before the Privy Council, the subjects of which in the result might be, and afterwards in fact were, tried before them; but the objection is not so much in my opinion that I might be led to participate in the counsels of the Executive Government upon questions connected with the criminal jurisdiction which I am to exercise elsewhere (because from these I should of course invariably withdraw myself) but because it might give a political cast and bias to a judicial mind, might generate views of ambition, and destroy that indifference and impartiality on all questions which is the proper characteristic of a British judge, and even if it had not that