Atrocious Judges : Lives of Judges Infamous as Tools of Tyrants and Instruments of Oppression

The Project Gutenberg eBook, Atrocious Judges, by John Campbell, Baron Campbell, Edited by Richard Hildreth
LIVES OF JUDGES INFAMOUS AS TOOLS OF TYRANTS AND INSTRUMENTS OF OPPRESSION.
COMPILED FROM THE JUDICIAL BIOGRAPHIES OF JOHN LORD CAMPBELL, LORD CHIEF JUSTICE OF ENGLAND.
WITH AN APPENDIX, CONTAINING THE CASE OF PASSMORE WILLIAMSON.
Edited, with an Introduction and Notes, BY RICHARD HILDRETH.
NEW YORK AND AUBURN: MILLER, ORTON & MULLIGAN. New York: 25 Park Row.—Auburn: 107 Genesee Street. 1856.
Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the Year 1855, by RICHARD HILDRETH, In the Clerk’s Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts.
STEREOTYPED AT THE BOSTON STEREOTYPE FOUNDRY.

Most biographers have been arrant flatterers. Lord Campbell is a distinguished member of that modern school, which holds that history is of no dignity nor use, except so far as it is true; and that the truth is to be told at all hazards and without reserve. Hitherto social and political position, obtained no matter by what means, has in general secured not only present but future reputation. It can hardly fail to be a serious check upon those who struggle for distinction to understand, that, however they may cheat or dazzle their contemporaries, they must expect to encounter from posterity a Rhadamantine judgment.
The object of the present work, prepared as it is in the interest of justice and freedom, and designed to hold up a mirror to magistrates now sitting on the American bench, in which “to show virtue her own feature, scorn her own image, and the very life and body of the time his form and pressure,” will, I hope, induce Lord Campbell to pardon the liberty I have ventured to take with his writings.
R. H.