International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1. Various
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p>International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, / No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850
LORD BROUGHAM
It is generally understood that this most illustrious Englishman now living, will, in the course of the present year, visit the United States. Whatever may be the verdict of the future upon his qualities or his conduct as a statesman, it is scarcely to be doubted that for the variety and splendor of his abilities, the extent, diversity and usefulness of his labors, and that restless, impatient and feverish activity which has kept him so long and so eminently conspicuous in affairs, he will be regarded by the next ages as one of the most remarkable personages in the age now closing—the second golden age of England. Lord Brougham is of a Cumberland family, but was born in Edinburgh (where his father had married a niece of the historian Robertson), on the 19th of September, 1779. He was educated at the University of his native city, and we first hear of him as a member of a celebrated debating society, where he trained himself to the use of logic. He was not yet sixteen years of age when he communicated a paper on Light to the Royal Society of London, which was printed in their transactions; and before he was twenty he had written discussions of the higher geometry, which, appearing in the same repository of the best learning, attracted the general attention of European scholars. In 1802, with his friends Jeffrey, Francis Homer, and Sidney Smith, he established the Edinburgh Review. In 1806 he published his celebrated "Inquiry into the Colonial Policy of the European Powers," and soon after was called to the English bar, and settled in London, where he rapidly rose to the highest eminence as a counselor and an advocate. On the 16th of March, 1808, he appeared in behalf of the merchants of London, Liverpool, Manchester, &c., before the House of Commons, in the matter of the Orders in Council restricting trade with America, and greatly increased his fame by one of the most masterly arguments he ever delivered. In 1810 he became a member of Parliament, and he soon distinguished himself here by his speeches on the slave trade and against the Orders in Council, which, mainly through his means, were rescinded. Venturing, at the general election of 1812, to contest the seat for Liverpool with Mr. Canning, he was defeated, and for four years he devoted himself chiefly to his profession. In this period he made many of his most famous law arguments, and acquired the enmity of the Prince Regent by his defense of Leigh Hunt, and his brother, in the case of their famous libel in "The Examiner." In 1816 he commenced those powerful and indefatigable efforts in behalf of education, by which he is perhaps best entitled to the gratitude of mankind. As chairman of the educational committee of forty, he drew up the two voluminous and masterly reports which disclosed the exact condition of British civilization, and induced such action on the part of government as advanced it in ten years more than it had been previously advanced in a century. In 1820 he displayed in their perfection those amazing powers of knowledge, reason, invective, sarcasm, and elocution, on the trial of Queen Caroline, which more than anything else have made that trial so memorable among legal and forensic conflicts. In 1822 he made his unparalleled speech in the case of the Dean and Chapter of Durham against Williams, and in the following year was elected Lord Rector of the University of Glasgow. On the downfall of the Wellington administration, in 1830, and the consequent general election, he was returned to Parliament as one of the members for Yorkshire, and a few weeks afterward was made Lord High. Chancellor, and elevated to the peerage under the title of Lord Brougham and Vaux. He continued in the office of Lord Chancellor until the dissolution of the Melbourne cabinet, in 1834. In 1823 he wrote his "Practical Observations on the Education of the People," and was engaged with Dr. Birkbeck in the formation of the first Mechanics' Institution. In 1827 he was one of the originators of the London University, and in the same year he founded the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, of which he was the first president, and for which he wrote its first publication, the admirable "Treatise on the Objects, Pleasures, and Advantages of Science." In 1830 he was elected a member of the Institute of France, and about the time of his resignation of the chancellorship he published his "Discourse on Natural Theology." In 1840 he published his "Historical Sketches of the Statesmen who flourished in the Time of George the Third;" in 1845-6, "Lives of Men of Letters and Science who flourished in the Time of George the Third;" and he has since given to the world works on "The French Revolution," on "Instinct," "Demosthenes' Oration on the Crown," &c., &c. Collections of his Speeches and Forensic Arguments, and of his Critical Essays, as well as the other works above referred to, have been republished in Philadelphia, by Lea and Blanchard.
In the language of the Editor of his "Opinions", Lord Brougham is remarkable for uniting, in a high degree of perfection, three things which are not often found to be compatible. His learning is all but universal: his reason is cultivated to the perfection of the argumentative powers; and he possesses in a rare and eminent degree the gift of eloquence.
Of his learning it may be said that there is scarcely a subject, on which ingenuity or intellect has been exercised, that he has not probed to its principles, or entered into with the spirit of a philosopher. That he is a classical scholar of a high order, is shown by his criticisms on the internal peculiarities of the works of the ancients and their styles of composition. They evince an intimate acquaintance with the great master pieces of antiquity. The book-worms of Universities—those scholastic giants who are great on small questions of quantity and etymology,—who buckle on the ponderous armor of the commentators in the contest with more subtle wits, on the interesting doubt of a wrong reading; such men, in the spirit of pedantry, have refused to Lord Brougham the merit of profundity, while they allow that he possesses a sort of superficial knowledge of the classics; they say that he can gracefully skim the surface of the stream, but that its depths would overwhelm him. Now, while this may be true as regards the fact, we dissent from it as regards the inference. It is a question to be decided between the learned drones of a by-gone school and the quicker intellects of a ripening age, which is the better thing,—criticism on words—on accidental peculiarities of style—or a just and sympathizing conception of the feelings of the poet or the wisdom of the philosopher. Men are beginning to disregard the former, while they set a high value upon the latter: so much laboriously-earned learning is at a discount, and allowance should be made for the petty spite, the depreciating superciliousness, of disappointment. Lord Brougham's classical knowledge partakes more of that intimate regard and appreciation which we accord to the great writers, than of this pedantry of the schools. Hence the cry of want of depth, that has been raised against him. Like many other great men of his age, he has read the authors of Greece and Rome in a spirit that has identified him with their thoughts and feelings, by taking into account the circumstances of their times; and the result has been, that he has exchanged the formalities and critical sharp-sightedness of acquaintance for the intimacy of friendship.
In point of general political knowledge, and particularly of that branch called political economy, Lord Brougham stands prominently among his contemporaries. In his speeches and writings will be found the first principles of every new view of these subjects that has been taken by the moderns. Of not a few he has himself been the originator. In the party history of the last century he is well versed, as many of his speeches show; and no public man of the present day is so well acquainted with the theory and practice of the constitution, whether as regards the broad principles of liberty on which it is based, or its gradual formation during the different periods of our history. It may not be amiss here to observe, that notwithstanding his long connection with the movement party, and the countenance he has from time to time given to measures of a decidedly liberal cast, he never was, and is still as far from being, a Democrat. Throughout his career he has been a consistent Liberal: always advocating such measures of reform as were calculated to remove abuses, while they in no way affected the stability and integrity of the institutions of the country. While, on the one hand, he has declared his most unequivocal opposition to the ballot and universal suffrage, on the other he has advocated popular education, as the ultimate panacea for all the evils to be feared from the extension of popular influence.
The legal knowledge of Lord Brougham has been questioned by the members of the profession whose abuses he desired to reform. It was even said, that while his elevation to the Chancellorship was the unjustifiable act of a party to serve party purposes, it was at the same time desirable to Mr. Brougham in a pecuniary point of view, from a falling off in his professional practice, caused by his hostility to those abuses. Now, although this is a question really of more interest to lawyers, than to the public in general, and one which might, therefore, be left to their decision, yet there was an animus