JOHN SCOTT, EARL OF ELDON, LORD CHANCELLOR.
Lord Eldon's good humour gained him the affection of all counsel who practised before him, but there is one story—apocryphal it may be, coming from Lord Campbell—of a prejudice he had against Lord Brougham, who, in Scottish cases, frequently appeared before him in the House of Lords. Lord Eldon persisted in addressing the advocate as Mr. Bruffam. This was too much for Brougham, who was rather proud of the form and antiquity of his name, and who at last, in exasperation, sent a note to the Chancellor, intimating that his name was pronounced "Broom." At the conclusion of the argument the Chancellor stated, "Every authority upon the question has been brought before us: new Brooms sweep clean."
As Lord Chancellor, Lord Eldon's great foible was an apparent inability to arrive at an early decision on any question: it was really a desire to weigh carefully all sides of a question before expressing his opinion. This hesitancy was expressed in the formula "I doubt," which became the subject of frequent jests among the members of the Bar.
Sir George Rose, in absence of the regular reporter of Lord Eldon's decisions, was requested to take a note of any decision which should be given. As a full record of all that was material, which had occurred during the day, Sir George made the following entry in the reporter's notebook:
"Mr. Leach made a speech,
Angry, neat, but wrong;
Mr. Hart, on the other part,
Was heavy, dull, and long;
Mr. Parker made the case darker,
Which was dark enough without;
Mr. Cooke cited his book;
And the Chancellor said—I doubt."
This jeu d'esprit, flying about Westminster Hall, reached the Chancellor, who was very much amused with it, notwithstanding the allusion to his doubting propensity. Soon after, Sir George Rose having to argue before him a very untenable proposition, he gave his opinion very gravely, and with infinite grace and felicity thus concluded: "For these reasons the judgment must be against your clients; and here, Sir George, the Chancellor does not doubt."
The following was Lord Eldon's answer to an application for a piece of preferment from his old friend Dr. Fisher, of the Charter House:
"Dear Fisher,—I cannot, to-day, give you the preferment for which you ask.—I remain, your sincere friend, Eldon." Then, on the other side, "I gave it to you yesterday."
According to his biographer, Lord Eldon caused a loud laugh while the old Duke of Norfolk was fast asleep in the House of Lords, and amusing their lordships with "that tuneful nightingale, his nose," by announcing from the woolsack, with solemn emphasis, that the Commons had sent up a bill for "enclosing and dividing Great Snoring in the county of Norfolk!"
Like Lord Thurlow, Lord Eldon was in close intimacy with George III in the days when his Majesty's mind was supposed to be not very strong. "I took down to Kew," relates his lordship, "some Bills for his assent, and I placed on a paper the titles and the effect of them. The king, being perhaps suspicious that my coming down might be to judge of his competence for public business, as I was reading over the titles of the different Acts of Parliament he interrupted me and said: 'You are not acting correctly, you should do one of two things; either bring me down the Acts for my perusal, or say, as Thurlow once said to me on a like occasion, having read several he stopped and said, "It is all d—d nonsense trying to make you understand them, and you had better consent to them at once."'"