CHAPTER XVI.
Henry Lord Brougham—His Life, Services, and Character.
In connection with the passage of the Reform bill, it is proper to notice one of the foremost Englishmen of this century—Henry Brougham. Nothing strikes one more forcibly in the life of this extraordinary person than the number and variety of the subjects upon which he has exerted his powers. His published speeches and writings on either one of several of the political measures he has advocated, if viewed merely as intellectual efforts, might satisfy the ambition of an honorable aspirant after forensic or literary fame. The aggregate constitutes hardly a tithe of his achievements in the cognate departments of public affairs. From his entrance into the House of Commons down to the present time, his name glows on every page of England's parliamentary history; and his posterity will permit but few of the myriad rays that encircle it to be effaced or obscured. As an advocate and a jurist, many of his speeches at the bar and opinions on the bench will live long after the law of libel and the court of chancery cease to oppress and vex mankind. His services in the cause of popular education, whether we regard the time expended, the ability displayed, or the results attained, surpass the labors of many persons who have been assigned to a foremost place among the eminent benefactors of their age. His contributions to the Edinburgh Review, covering its whole existence, and a large circle of literary, scientific, political, social, legal, and historical subjects, would class him with the highest rank of periodical essayists. His more substantial works, as Sketches of Eminent Statesmen, History of the French Revolution, Lives of Men of Letters and Science, Discourse on Natural Theology, Political Philosophy, composed amidst the cares of public official station, would suffice to give him an enduring name in the republic of letters.
Great as are his mental achievements, it is as the early advocate of social progress and political reform—the champion of liberty and peace, the friend of man—that he is worthy of all his cotemporaneous fame, and all the applause which coming generations will bestow on his memory. Inconsistency, the common infirmity of mortals, has checkered his course—eccentricity, "the twin brother of genius," has been his frequent companion—independence, whose adjacent province is obstinacy, he has largely exhibited; but, while the history of England, during the first third of the nineteenth century, remains, it will display to the impartial eye few names to excite more grateful admiration in every lover of his race than that which, from the abolition of the slave trade in 1806, to the abolition of slavery in 1834, was synonymous with intelligent progress and useful reform.
I believe Brougham was born about the year 1779. We first hear of him, when twenty years old, in Edinburgh, communicating some papers on geometry to the Royal Society in London, which were highly applauded, and translated into foreign tongues. In 1808, he appeared as counsel at the bar of Parliament, in behalf of the commercial and manufacturing interests, against the celebrated Orders in Council, which followed the Berlin Decree of Napoleon, and preceded the American Embargo. His examination of witnesses, extending through several weeks, and his closing argument, gave him a high reputation in England, and a name both in Europe and the United States. In 1809-10, he entered the theater where, for forty years, he has displayed his extraordinary gifts. His first published speech in Parliament, delivered in 1810, was a powerful appeal in favor of addressing the Throne for more effectual measures to suppress the slave trade. His next great effort was in 1812, when, assisted by Mr. Baring, (Lord Ashburton,) he examined witnesses for several weeks before the House of Commons, to prove that the still unrescinded Orders were ruining the trade and manufactures of the country, and provoking a war with the United States. At the close, he supported an address to the Throne for their repeal, in a speech replete with information, ably defending the policy of unrestricted commerce, and eloquently vindicating the superiority of the arts of peace over the glories of war. The motion prevailed—but too late to avert hostilities. Congress declared war the very day the speech was delivered.
His services in the cause of the people from this time downward, have been referred to in these chapters, as various subjects have passed under consideration. During the long and almost hopeless struggle of Liberty with Power, from 1810 to 1830, when he was removed from the theater of his greatest fame, he led the forlorn hope in the House of Commons. Unlike his great prototype, Fox, he never for a moment retired from the field in disgust and despair, but was ever at his post, stimulating the drooping spirits of his friends, hurling defiance at his foes, and rising from every defeat with renewed courage and strength. Though classified among the heads of the Opposition in the House, he never was—he never would be, in the strict sense, a party "leader." Nor, on the contrary, did he surround himself with a "clique" or "interest," whose oracle he was. Supporting the measures of the Whigs, he was ever in advance of them, cheering on the masses, as the Tribune of the people, and fighting the partisan battles of Reform as the guerrilla chief of Liberty.
In an evil hour, he was transplanted from his "native heath" to the conservatory of the aristocracy. Though surrounded by uncongenial spirits, and haunted with the nightmare of conservatism, the soul of McGregor retained for years much of its original fire in a place whose chilling atmosphere made the lion blood of a Chatham to stagnate and curdle. Some of his mightiest efforts in the good cause were put forth after he descended to the upper House of Parliament.
Had Brougham coveted and obtained "leadership" in its party sense, in either House, he must have failed. Too original, independent, wayward, and dogmatical, to be implicitly trusted and obeyed by his equals; too incautious and pushing; too impatient of dullness; too much of a genius, to be always appreciated and confided in by his inferiors, though he would have been applauded by the masses; yet his premiership, had he accepted the offer of King William, could not have long survived the passage of the Reform bill. With the exception of taking the great seal, he has chosen to be what he is—a rare comet, created to move in no orbit but its own—beautiful and lustrous in the distance, but grand and terrible in proximity.
The public measures with which he is most closely identified are—the advocacy of the manufacturing and commercial interests, as opposed to Orders in Council and other restrictions on trade; hostility to the continental combinations of the successors of Pitt, and their legitimate offspring, exhausting wars and the Holy Alliance; the vindication of Queen Caroline, in the struggle with her libertine husband; the freedom of the press, attempted to be overawed by prosecutions for libels on the Government and the church; the education of the middle and lower orders; religious toleration for dissenters and Catholics; reform in the civil and criminal law; parliamentary reform; municipal reform; poor laws reform; the abolition of the slave trade and slavery; retrenchment in Government expenditures; the independence of the Canadian Legislature, and the repeal of the corn laws. What a catalogue have we here! Upon all these measures, each of which was an era in British history, Brougham has acted a leading, and upon many, a controlling part. His speeches upon most of them surpassed those of any other of their advocates, whether we consider the extent of the information displayed, the depth and energy of the reasoning, the scope and vigor of the style, the eloquence of the appeals to justice and humanity, or the majesty and splendor of the higher passages.
Lord Brougham's fame, as an orator, has filled two hemispheres. We will look at him in the two aspects of matter and manner.
The four volumes of his speeches, with others gleaned from the Parliamentary reports, prove that his reputation is well founded. Their leading characteristic is power—crushing power—as distinguished from beauty and grace. They are not so gorgeous as Burke's, nor so compact as Webster's. But they contain more information and argument, and less philosophy and fancy, than the former's—more versatility and vigor, and less staid grandeur and studied method, than the latter's. As speeches, rather than orations, addressed to a deliberative body of friends and foes, who are to act upon the subject under discussion, they are more practical and to the matter in hand than Burke's; more hearty and soul-stirring than Webster's. Their style is a mixture of Burke and Webster—less extravagant anywhere than some passages of the former; frequently more slovenly than any passage of the latter; with more of bitter personal taunt and lofty rebuke of fraud, meanness, and oppression, than either. Viewed as literary productions, regardless of the immediate fruits they produced, they will hardly stand the test of posthumous fame like Burke's. Less universal in their application, less penetrated with principles adapted alike to all times, they often betray the advocate instead of the statesman, the partisan rather than the philosopher, the leader and champion of cotemporaries rather than the instructor and mentor of posterity. But it still remains a question, whether they were not the more valuable on that very account. Their immediate effect in moving masses of men, and molding public measures, far surpassed that of Burke's. And though the words of the latter may outlive those of the former, we have the highest authority for saying, blessed are those whose works survive them.
Lord Brougham's speeches deal little in mere declamation, even of the highest order, but are pregnant with apposite facts and arguments, giving the reader or hearer an unusual amount of information upon the matters under discussion. He excels, when he tries, in a plain, lucid statement of his subject; as witness, his speech on law reform, in 1828, when, for seven hours, he held the close attention of the unprofessional House of Commons, while he sketched the absurdities and abuses of every branch of the common law, and detailed the amendments he proposed in its principles and administration. But this is not his forte, and for that very reason his dexterity and self-control excite our admiration the more. If you would see him in his greatest moods, you must give him a person or a party to attack, which shall arouse his combative propensities, and bring his invective and sarcasm into full play; or some giant abuse to anathematize and demolish, which shall inflame his indignation and abhorrence.
We gather from his own statements that the garb and colors in which he attires the main body of a speech—the mere style and diction—are the impulse of the occasion; as most of the sarcasms and rebukes are flung out in the heat of delivery. But, where time for preparation is afforded, no speaker is more careful in arranging the general drift of the argument, and digesting the facts to illustrate and sustain it; whilst certain passages, such as the exordium or peroration, are the result of the most pains-taking labors of the closet. He has recorded that the peroration of his speech in the Queen's case was written no less than ten times before he thought it fit for so august an occasion. The same is probably true of similar passages in Webster's speeches; it is known to be so of Burke's.
No orator of our times is more successful in embalming phrases, full of meaning, in the popular memory. The well-known talismanic sentiment, "The schoolmaster is abroad," is an instance. In a speech on the elevation of Wellington, a mere "military chieftain," to the premiership, after the death of Canning, Brougham said: "Field Marshal the Duke of Wellington may take the army—he may take the navy—he may take the great seal—he may take the miter. I make him a present of them all. Let him come on with his whole force, sword in hand, against the Constitution, and the English people will not only beat him back, but laugh at his assaults. In other times, the country may have heard with dismay that 'the soldier was abroad.' It will not be so now. Let the soldier be abroad if he will; he can do nothing in this age. There is another personage abroad—a personage less imposing—in the eyes of some, perhaps, insignificant. The schoolmaster is abroad; and I trust to him, armed with his primer, against the soldier in full military array."
Turning from the matter to the manner of the orator, (if we have not already passed the boundary,) Brougham stood unrivaled as a debater in the House of Commons. For twenty years he swayed the intellect and passions of the House, by his muscular and courageous eloquence, whilst Castlereagh, Canning, and Peel controlled its majorities and dictated its measures, by the wave of their official wand. Castlereagh was more self-possessed and matter-of-fact than he; Canning more brilliant and classical; Peel more dexterous and plausible. But, in weight of metal, he surpassed them all. His oratory was not the brawl and foam of a dashing mountain torrent, but the steady roar of the deep, broad cataract. In ability to inflame friends and foes, and shake the House till it quaked, he equaled either Chatham or Fox. When thoroughly roused, with all his elements in full play, he thundered and lightened till the knights of the shire clung to the Benches for support, the Ministers cowered behind the Speaker's chair for shelter, and the voting members started from their slumbers in the side galleries, as if the last trump were ringing in their ears.
Chatham introduced the style of the House of Commons into the debates of the House of Lords. Brougham's appearance there constituted almost as new an era in its oratory as the advent of Chatham. It was my good fortune to hear him two or three times in the Lords, several years ago—once when his best powers were put in action for a brief hour.
We enter the House of Peers. The lions—Brougham, Grey, Wellington, Lyndhurst, Melbourne—are in their places. An exciting debate is going forward, which has taken rather a personal turn. Yonder is Brougham, stretched out half his length on one of the Ministerial benches; now listening to a clumsy Earl on the floor, whom he eyes with a portentous scowl; anon whispering a hurried word to the Peer at his elbow. What an ungainly figure! Those long legs and arms, loosely hung in their sockets, give him a slouching air. Human face could hardly look more ugly or intellectual. His iron-gray hair bristles over his forehead like the quills of the fretful porcupine. His restless eye peers through eyebrows that seem alive with nerves. He must be agitated with the debate, for he writhes as though his red cushion were a sheet of hot iron. He suddenly starts up, (who ever knew him to sit still five minutes?) walks with long strides toward the door, and while chatting with the ladies, his tormentor stops, and the ex-Chancellor cries, with startling emphasis, (lest some one get the floor before him,) "My Lords!" and slowly advances to the table in front of the woolsack. An audible hush runs round the chamber; for they had been anticipating a reply from the mercurial lord. Every whisper ceases, and all eyes are fixed on the towering intellect before them. The Peeresses leave their damask chairs, and approach the bar, to get a better view of the orator. Members of the House of Commons, till now chatting round the bar, lean forward in silence. The loungers in the lobbies enter the Hall, the word having passed out, "Brougham is up!" The untitled spectators rise from their seats on the carpet, where fatigue had sunk them, and stand on tiptoe, to catch every glance of the eye and wave of the hand of the scholar and statesman, whilst the crowded galleries forget their lassitude in listening to one whose name and fame are the property of mankind.
But to the speech. Listen to that first sentence! How it plunges into the very center of the subject. Every word is an argument—every period a demonstration. The first blow knocks the keystone from his last antagonist's speech, and tumbles the whole structure on his affrighted head and shoulders. And the dandy young Lord, over in the corner, who, in the puny oration he recited so prettily an hour ago, went out of his way to sneer at Brougham—see the blood fly from his cheeks when his nice little piece of rhetoric comes rattling in bits round his ears. As the lion fixes his eye on him, he would give his coronet and his curls if he could slink into a nutshell. A fiery glance or two having withered him, the monarch of the debate grapples with worthier antagonists. What a sweep does he give to the argument—what redundancy of facts—what fertility of illustration. How large the field of his comprehension—how exhaustless and varied its resources. What execution is done by those long-drawn sentences, with parenthesis within parenthesis, each a logical syllogism, or a home-thrust fact, or a blighting sarcasm, wound round and round his victims, till they are crushed in their folds! Great in matter, his speech is equally powerful in manner; violating every law of rhetoric and oratory promulgated by the schools, he is a law unto himself—original, commanding, majestic.
Brougham, having demolished his antagonists, took a seat at the clerk's table, and began to write a letter, when the Chancellor (Cottenham) rose and commenced a conciliatory speech. His calm, slow, cool manner contrasted strongly with the tempest which had just passed over our heads, reminding us of those dewy showers which follow smilingly in the trail of a dark cloud, after its thunder and lightning and torrent have raged and blazed and poured, and passed away.
This great man has been described so often, that not only his public history and mental character, but his personal peculiarities—yea, the nervous twitching of his eyebrows—are as familiar to Americans as to the reporters in the gallery of the House of Lords. As an orator or debater, he is sometimes compared to Webster. The very attempt is unjust to both. You might as well compare the repose of Lake Erie to the thunder of Niagara. Each has his own sphere of greatness. The Bostonian rarely enters the arena of debate, unless clad in mail to his fingers' ends—a safe and strong debater. Not so the Londoner. He sometimes rushes, sword in hand, without scabbard or shield, into the thickest of the fight, and gets sorely galled. Little arrows do not pierce Webster, nor do ordinary occasions summon forth his heaviest weapons. But Brougham, why, he will fight with anybody, and on any terms. The smallest Lilliput in the House can sting him into paroxysms with his needle-spear. But wo to the assailant! The bolt which annihilates the Earl of Musketo is equally heavy with that which strikes down the Duke of Wellington. As a whole, Brougham is unlike any of our public men. Could we mix into one compound the several qualities of Webster, Clay, Choate, Benton, and the late John Quincy Adams, and divide the mass into four or five parts, we might, by adding a strong tincture of John C. Calhoun, make four or five very good Henry Broughams.
I have spoken of the versatility of Brougham's talents and acquirements. Sir E. B. Sugden was arguing a cause before him in chancery. The Chancellor was not very attentive to the argument, employing part of the time in writing letters. This greatly piqued Sugden; and on retiring from the court, he drily said to a friend, "If Brougham only knew a little of Chancery law, he would know a little of everything." Undoubtedly he knows something about everything, and much about most things. Somebody has compared him to a Scotch Encyclopedia, without alphabetical arrangement. If he has not reached the highest place in any department of knowledge, it is because, in traversing so vast a field, he must here and there be necessarily only a gleaner. His success in so many departments proves that had he cultivated but one or two, he might have surpassed all cotemporary competition. Looking to the variety and extent of his acquisitions and labors, posterity will regard him as one of the most extraordinary men of his time. He reached his eminent position by no royal road. He is among the most laborious and diligent of men. Well known facts attest his wonderful activity.
His able work, "Practical Observations upon the Education of the People," published in 1825, was composed, he says, during hours stolen from sleep. Combe states of him, that he was once engaged in a court of law all day, from which he went to the House of Commons, and mingled in the debate till two o'clock in the morning; he then retired to his house, and wrote upon an article for the Edinburgh Review till it was time to go to the court, where he was actively employed till the hour for the assembling of the Commons; thither he went, and participated in the discussion as vigorously as usual till long after midnight—taking no rest till the morning of the third day! The witty Hazlitt, alluding, at the time, to his speeches on commercial and manufacturing distress, said, "He is apprised of the exact state of our exports and imports, and scarce a ship clears out its cargo from Liverpool or Hull, but he has a copy of the bill of lading." It will be remembered, that while performing his political and miscellaneous labors, he was surrounded by a large circle of professional clients. His inaugural discourse, as Lord Rector of the University of Glasgow, thickly strown with Greek and Latin quotations, was, as the preface informs us, written during the business of the Northern Circuit. Sydney Smith says, in one of his graphic Reform speeches, "See the gigantic Brougham, sworn in at twelve o'clock, [as Chancellor,] and before six, has a bill on the table abolishing the abuses of a Court which has been the curse of the people of England for centuries."
A full share of the preparation and defense of the measures of Earl Grey's Administration devolved on him; while at the same time he did the work of an ordinary man in writing rudimental articles for the Penny Magazine, and scientific tracts for the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, lecturing to Mechanics' Institutes, and contributing essays to the Edinburgh Review. An English friend informed me that during one of the busiest periods of his official life, a fatal accident happened to some laborers in excavating a deep well. Forthwith, out came a tract from the Lord Chancellor, on the best and safest mode of digging wells! Though his numerous publications and addresses on learned subjects, and his participation in the proceedings of the Royal Society and French Institute showed their author to be a scientific man, his later Lives of Men of Letters and Science exhibited an acquaintance with the sciences in his old age, for which his friends were hardly prepared. In the particulars here mentioned, no public man of our country can be compared with him, except the late John Quincy Adams, for whose wonderful exploits in his declining years Lord Brougham expressed the highest admiration.
The great political error of his life was his acceptance of the Chancellorship, and consequent removal from the House of Commons. It may be remarked, in passing, that it is a mistake to suppose he diminished his reputation as a lawyer by his judicial administration. He was never a first-rate technical lawyer. His mind was too broad, his ambition too high, to be a mere lawyer, tied down with red tape to nisi prius precedents and the dicta of cases. The profession to him was not an end, as it was to Scarlett and his school, but a subsidiary means to attain political eminence and influence. A great cause, like that of Queen Caroline, or of Williams, indicted for a libel on the Durham clergy, showed what he could accomplish when he bent his powers to professional work. His speeches on Law Reform prove his minute acquaintance with and utter contempt for the great body of the common law, as administered by the courts; and when presiding in a tribunal whose currents had been brought to a dead stand by the "everlasting doubts" of Lord Eldon, the best service he could render suitors and the country was to clear out the channels, and set the streams flowing, even though he might make mistakes in acting on the expedient maxim, that "it is better to have a case decided wrong, than not at all."
No man laments his removal to the upper House more keenly than himself. Speaking of Chatham's removal, he says, "No one ever did it voluntarily without bitterly rueing the step, when he found the price paid to be the loss of all real power." Grey first offered him the gown of Attorney General. Feeling it to be beneath his position in the Reform party, he contemptuously rejected it. The great seal was then placed in his hand. He should rather have taken the pen of one of the Secretaries of State, and remained on his "native heath." There he would have been at home, and there he would have been now. By superiority of intellect, or his "managing" or "pushing" propensity, the chief defense of the ministry in the Peers devolved on him instead of the Premier. He was in a false position. His native element was opposition. He was unequaled at tearing down—he had no skill for building up. The Reformers expected much from the new Administration, and everything from Brougham. All went smoothly till the Reform bill passed. Large quantities of ripe fruit were expected thereupon to be immediately gathered. Sydney Smith foreshadowed this, in his droll way. Said he, in a speech during the struggle, "All young ladies will imagine, as soon as this bill is carried, that they will be instantly married. Schoolboys believe that gerunds and supines will be abolished, and that currant tarts must ultimately come down in price; the corporal and sergeant are sure of double pay; bad poets will expect a demand for their epics; fools will be disappointed, as they always are; reasonable men, who know what to expect, will find that a very serious good has been obtained."
Much was done for Reform by the Grey ministry, after the passage of the bill. In less than two years, West India slavery was abolished—the East India Company's monopoly destroyed—the poor laws amended—the criminal code softened—the administration of the Courts essentially improved—the Scotch municipal corporations totally reformed—and many abuses corrected in the Irish Church Establishment. But young ladies, bad poets, and fools of all sorts, clamored for more; and many reasonable men were disappointed. The dead weights on advance movements were the Melbournes, the Palmerstons, the Grants, who, having bitterly opposed Reform all their days, were converted at the eleventh hour of the recent struggle, and brought into the Cabinet. The fatal measure of the Administration was an attempt to suppress agitation in Ireland, by a Coercion bill, which excited a quarrel with O'Connell, and divisions in the Cabinet, and finally led to the resignation of Grey. Glad to escape from an uneasy position, Brougham soon followed. Would that he could have got rid of his title, like Mirabeau, by opening a shop, and gone back to the Commons! But it stuck to him like the tunic of Nessus. Though consigned to perpetual membership in a body possessing no original influence in the State, and hemmed in by the usages of a mere revisional council, he has now and then shown himself "Harry Brougham" still. His speeches in the Lords on Parliamentary, legal, municipal, and poor laws Reform; on popular education; abolishing subscription in the universities; retrenchment; abolition of negro apprenticeship, and the African and Eastern slave trade; Canadian independence; repeal of the corn laws; and other topics, exhibit no abatement of intellectual power, or, so far as concerns those subjects, of regard for popular rights and social improvement. Indeed, some of them rank among his greatest and best forensic displays. The speech on the education of the people in 1835 contains as much valuable information, and that on negro apprenticeship in 1838, as many eloquent passages, as any he ever delivered.
The conflict with Melbourne in 1837-8, which threw him out of Court and Whig favor, was a matter of course, if not premeditated. In a speech at Liverpool, just after his resignation in 1835, he declared that "his position of absolute political independence" would not be abandoned to join or sustain any Ministry that did not stand by the people, and go for large measures of reform. In 1837-8, on the Canada question, he first assailed the Melbourne Cabinet; he being for restoring peace to the colony, by granting the petition of its Legislature for an elective council, they for crushing disaffection by a dictator and the sword. His defense of the Canadian reformers was generous, bold, radical, and eloquent; worthy of the times when the young Commoner shook the Tory chiefs from the point of his lance, and fulminated living thunders at the crowned despots of the Holy Alliance. Pointing his long finger at the quailing Melbourne, he said, "Do the Ministers desire to know what will restore me to their support, and make me once more fight zealously in their ranks, as I once fought with them against the majority of your lordships? I will tell them here! Let them retract their declaration against Reform, delivered the first night of this session; and their second declaration, by which, to use the noble Viscount's phrase, they exacerbated the first; or let them, without any retraction, only bring forward liberal and constitutional measures, and they will have no more zealous supporter than myself. But, in the mean time, I now hurl my defiance at their heads!"
But, the truth of history requires that another view be taken of these transactions of 1835-8, and a far less eulogistic strain be employed in noticing the course of Lord Brougham for the last ten or twelve years. Early taught to admire him as the gallant leader of English reformers, it is painful to say, that during this period his conduct has been frequently such as to forfeit the esteem and confidence of his friends on both sides of the Atlantic, and to give currency to the charge that his line of action has been caused by chagrin at being left out of the Melbourne ministry, and to strengthen the suspicion that his denunciations of that Administration for faltering in the work of reform were dictated by mortified pride and thwarted ambition. For five or six years subsequent to 1835, he frequently attacked men and principles which he had won all his fame by previously advocating. But, it must not be forgotten, that, though supported by neither party and assailed by both, and set upon by Tory terriers and Whig whipsters, which betrayed him into losses of temper and dignity, it was in these years that he carried through Parliament several valuable reforms; whilst his writings—those records for the perusal of posterity—exhibited no marked change in his regard for liberal institutions.
On the return of the Tories to power, in 1841, he made a still wider departure from his early path. He has since shown much acerbity of temper, given his vote quite as often to the opponents as to the friends of reform, and has succeeded in alienating the affections of many of those who adhered to him during the Melbourne Administration. He has been alternately wayward, sour, vindictive, bold, brilliant, noble; exciting the contempt and fears of his enemies, and the disgust and admiration of his friends; now cracking a joke on the Duke of Wellington, that set the House in a roar, and then pounding the head of Melbourne till its chambers rang again; playing off eccentricities on some railway bill for the amusement of Punch, while sending to press a work on Voltaire and Rousseau that astonished Paris; giving his cheering voice to the repeal of the corn laws, and his growling "non-content" against the repeal of the navigation laws; making himself ridiculous by trying to force his way into the French National Convention, and being received with loud plaudits as he entered the hall of the French National Institute; now losing and then winning the favor of the people; and ever and anon silencing the cry that "his powers were failing," by pronouncing a speech that startled the walls of St. Stephen's, and made every hilltop and valley in the land echo back the shout, "Brougham is himself again!"
It was a remark of Madame de Stael, that "Foreigners are a kind of cotemporaneous posterity." Americans may therefore pass an unbiased judgment upon the character of Lord Brougham. When his imperfections are forgotten in the grave, and the mists of prejudice and of party are cleared away, Posterity, which generously throws a vail over the follies and frailties of genius, will not willingly withhold from his tomb the epitaph he coveted in one of his earliest speeches—"Here lies the Defender of Liberty, the Advocate of Peace, the Friend of the People!"