cerned in ever-shifting variety—as in a camera | tion in saying, that they ought to do so in every obscura-and never were they refined by such country of the civilized world." elegance as when touched by Lord Stowell. Of his efforts during his period of advocacy, when his evenings were enjoyed in the brilliant society of which Dr. Johnson was the centre, the world knows little; but his judgments during the years when he presided over the High Court of Admiralty and the Consistory Court, exhibiting all the aspects of each case, enable us to guess at the dexterity with which he presented the favourable views of the causes committed to his charge, and the beauty with which he graced them.

Of Lord Stowell's decisions the following character is given by Mr. Twiss in language worthy of the subject:

But the more popular judicial essays of Lord Stowell—for so his judgments may be not improperly regarded-are those pronounced in the Consistory Court in questions of divorce, restitution of conjugal rights, and nullity of marriage. Partaking more of the tone of a mediator than a censor, they are models of practical wisdom for domestic use. The judgment in the case of Evans v. Evansa suit, by a lady, for divorce by reason of cruelty-presents a beautiful example of his enunciation of wise and just principles, of his skill in extracting from the exaggerations of passion and interest the essential truth, and of the amenity and grace with which he could soften his refusal to comply with a lady's prayer.* Thus he lays down the rule which should govern such unfortunate appeals:

"The humanity of the court has been loudly and repeatedly invoked. Humanity is the second virtue of courts, but undoubtedly the first is justice. If it were a question of humanity simply, and of humanity which confined its views merely to the happiness of the present parties, it would be a question easily decided upon first impressions. Everybody must feel a wish to sever those who wish to live separate from each other, who cannot live together with any degree of harmony, and consequently with any degree of happiness; but my situation does not allow me to indulge the feelings, much less the first feelings of an individual. The law has said that married persons shall not be legally separated upon the mere disinclination of one or both to cohabit together. The disin clination must be founded upon reasons which the law approves, and it is my duty to see whe ther these reasons exist in the present case.

"Lord Stowell had the good fortune to live in an age of which the events and circumstances were peculiarly qualified to exercise and exhibit the high faculties of his mind. The greatest maritime questions which had ever presented themselves for adjudicationquestions involving all the most important points both in the rights of belligerents and in those of neutrals-arose in his time out of that great war in which England became the sole occupant of the sea, and held at her girdle the keys of all the harbours upon the globe. Of these questions, most of them of first impression, a large portion could be determined only by a long and cautious process of reference to principle and induction from analogy. The genius of Lord Stowell, at once profound and expansive, vigorous and acute, impartial and decisive, penetrated, marshalled, and mastered all the difficulties of these complex inquiries; till, having "sounded all their depths and shoals," he framed and laid down that great comprehensive chart of maritime law which has become the rule of his successors "To vindicate the policy of the law is no and the admiration of the world. What he necessary part of the office of a judge; but, if thus achieved in the wide field of international it were, it would not be difficult to show that jurisprudence, he accomplished also with equal the law, in this respect, has acted with its success in the narrower spheres of ecclesias-usual wisdom and humanity-with that true tical, matrimonial, and testamentary law. And wisdom and that real humanity that regards though, where so many higher excellencies the general interests of mankind. For though, stand forth, that of style may seem comparatively immaterial, it is impossible not to notice that scholar-like finish of his judicial compositions, by which they delight the taste of the critic, as by their learning and their logic they satisfy the understanding of the lawyer."Life of Lord Eldon, vol. iii. pp. 255-6.

in particular cases, the repugnance of the law to dissolve the obligations of matrimonial cohabitation may operate with great severity upon individuals, yet it must be carefully remembered that the general happiness of the married life is secured by its indissolubility. When people understand that they must live together, except for a very few reasons known to the law, they learn to soften, by mutual accommodation, that yoke which they know they cannot shake off: they become good husbands and good wives from the necessity of remaining husbands and wives-for necessity is a powerful master in teaching the duties which it imposes. If it were once understood that, "In the excitement caused by the hostilities upon mutual disgust, married persons might raging between our countries, I frequently im- be legally separated, many couples who now pugned your judgments, and considered them pass through the world with mutual comfort, as severe and partial; but, on a calm review with attention to their common offspring, and of your decisions, after a lapse of years, I am to the moral order of civil society, might have bound to confess my entire conviction both of been at this moment living in a state of mutheir accuracy and equity. I have taken care tual unkindness-in a state of estrangement that they shall form the basis of the maritime law of the United States, and I have no hesita

The perspicuity of Lord Stowell's judgments in the Admiralty Court obtained for them not only the respect, but the reluctant accordance of the foreign powers who were most interested in impugning them. Having sent a copy of some of them, privately printed, to the Admiralty Judge of the United States, he received the following remarkable answer:

*1 Haggard, 35,

from their common offspring-and in a state | churchyard at the usual fees, when his last of the most licentious and unreserved immo- earthly mansion was composed of materials rality. In this case, as in many others, the so durable as to resist for an unusual number happiness of some individuals must be sacri- of years that decomposition which might enable the narrow space to receive a due succesficed to the greater and more general good." We wish we could follow the famous civi- sion of occupiers. This subject, so shocking lian through all the delicate windings of this in some of its attendant details, so mortifying "pretty quarrel" between Mr. and Mrs. Evans; to human pride in some of its aspects, bethe masterly analysis of the waiting-woman's comes in his hands suggestive of solemn but motives; the elegant etiquette of the lying-in gentle disquisition on the essence of the sentichamber; the prerogatives of the nurse, and ment which requires the reverent disposal of fantastical distresses of the mistress-and give the dead, and on the forms through which, in some specimens of Sir William Scott's gayer various nations and times, it has been breathed. style. But the embroidery of each case is so From the simplicity of patriarchal days, through equally woven, the effect so much depends the splendid varieties of that affected duration upon harmony of colour and exact proportion; at which the Egyptian monarchs aimed, down the sly humour is so nicely, and almost im- to the humble necessities of a pauper funeral perceptibly, mingled with the worldly wisdom, and brief sojourn of the untitled "dead in a that it would be unjust to tear away fragments domicile of their own, before being associated and exhibit them as specimens. If there is a directly with dust, he discourses-" turning all fault it lies in a tendency to attenuation of the to favour," if not to "prettiness," and giving a In his revital interest to ashes and the urn. matter in sentences searches he delights to measure stately wit with that prodigious master in the empire of the grave, Sir Thomas Browne; and though he falls far short of the embossed grandeur of the sepulchral essay on "Urn-Burial," which stands alone for fantastic solemnity in English prose, he diffuses a gentle atmosphere over the poor-crowded cemetery, and regulates the ceremonies and gradations in the world of death with the same Grandisonian air with which he had adjusted the contests of the fair and innocent and frail among the living. After discussing the modes of sepulture, and vindicating the authority of his court to arrange the differences, he thus sums up the matter in immediate dispute:

"With linked sweetness long drawn out;"

and yet it would be difficult to find a word we would change, or a sentence we would spare. Although the refinement of expression is almost undisturbed, the sense is always manly nothing affected, sickly, or sentimental-but common sense arrayed in the garb of fancy. The vivid exhibition of scenes in domestic life; the opposition of motives and passions; all invested with a certain air from the rank in society of the suitors, (for the poor rarely indulge in the luxuries of the Consistory Court,) reminds us more of the style of comedy which was fading from the stage before Sir William Scott retired from the bench, and which his dramatic tastes particularly fitted him to appreciate. He must have been indignant, even when Garrick performed Archer, at the impudent usurpation by the hero of the Beau's Stratagem of the civilian's office, when he sets up a rival court of his own for the dissolution of unhappy partnerships for life, audaciously declares

"Consent, if mutual, saves the lawyer's fee;" and consequently destroys the Judge's function. In each of his best civic developments, the curtain seems lifted on an elegant drama of manners: husbands and wives quarrel and recriminate in dialogue almost as graceful as Sheridan's; youths of fortune become the appropriate prey of rustic lasses, in spite of obdurate fathers; and a good moral, better enforced than most stage conclusions, dismisses the parties and charms the audience. He once said he could furnish a series of stories from the annals of Doctors' Commons which should rival the Waverley Novels in interest; and we wish he had tried it!

In Lord Stowell's latter days a cause came before him which afforded a strong contrast to the vivacity of those nuptial and connubial contests which had glowed and sparkled and loured so often before him; and if dull in the progress, grew beautiful in the judgment. It involved a question between the churchwardens of the parish of St. Andrew, Holborn, and the patentee of iron coffins, on the right of a parishioner to burial in the crowded

"It being assumed that the court is justified in holding this opinion upon the fact of a comparative duration; the pretensions of these coffins to an admission upon the same pecuniary terms as those of wood, must resort to the other proposition, which declares that the difference of duration ought to produce no difference in those terms. Accordingly, it has been argued that the ground once given to the body is appropriated to it for ever—it is literally in mortmain unalienably-it is not only the domus ultima, but the domus æterna of that tenant, who is never to be disturbed, be his condition what it may-the introduction of another body into that lodgment at any time, however distant, is an unwarrantable intrusion. If these positions be true, it certainly follows that the question of comparative duration sinks into utter insignificance.

"In support of them, it seems to be assumed that the tenant himself is imperishable; for surely there can be no inextinguishable title, no perpetuity of possession, belonging to a subject which itself is perishable-but the fact is, that man,' and 'for ever,' are terms quite incompatible in any state of his existence, dead or living, in this world. The time must come when 'ipsæ periere ruinæ,' when the posthumous remains must mingle with and compose a part of that soil in which they have been deposited. Precious embalments and costly monuments may preserve for a long time the remains of those who have filled the

N

who, while filling at the bar its first offices, and during his long possession of the most dignified of all civil positions under the crown, had cast upon him the duty of keeping alive the social spirit of the bar; encouraging its young and timid aspirants; disarming jealousies, and soothing the animosities which its contests may engender; and preserving its common conscience and feeling of honour, by enThese seem serious matters of disquisition couraging the association of its members in for advanced age; but Lord Stowell, like his convivial enjoyments under the highest ausbrother, was too vividly assured of the life be- pices. But Mr. Twiss gives the true excuseyond the grave to contemplate the close of this we can scarcely admit it as a perfect justifica life and the subsequent decay of his mortal tion-for a dereliction of that duty which for frame with anxiety; and though his faculties tune casts on her favourites-in the distaste of almost faded before he sunk into the tomb- Lady Eldon for society, and in the habits which gently as he had lived, and talked, and judged she acquired when obliged to practise rigid -his serenity of mind was undisturbed, and self-denial, and asserts, we believe truly, that his grace of manner even to the last lingered" his domestic arrangements, from the time of about him.

In closing this imperfect notice of the lives of Lord Eldon and Lord Stowell, we venture to express a hope that Mr. Twiss's work, minute

remembrance of the other, will fix the attention of his own profession on examples which have raised, and should help to sustain it. If so, the work will be in good season. Great as the influence of the profession of the law is in this country, many causes have tended of late to perplex the objects of its ambition, and to tempt its aspirants to lower means of success than steady industry and conduct free from stain. The number of inferior offices which suggest the appliances of patronage, and offer low stimuli to its hopes-the increase of numbers, which weakens the power of moral control, while it heightens the turmoil of competition-and a feeling which pervades a certain class of members of the House of Commons, that any measure which detracts from the resources of the bar tends to the public goodhave endangered the elevation of its character, in the maintenance of which the interests of order and justice are deeply involved. We can conceive of no more vivid proof of the im

bottle of port with his wife and children, and complain, as his family increased, of the diminution of his residue-but port only can harmonize with the noble simplicity of anciently tracing the course of one and reviving the law, or assuage the fervour of a great intellectual triumph. Each of the Scotts, to a very late period of his old age, was true to the generous liquor, and renewed in it the pastimes of youth and the crowding memories of life-long labour. It is related of Lord Stowell, that, a short time before his death, having, in the deepening twilight of his powers, submitted to a less genial regimen, on a visit from his brother he resumed his glass: and, as he quaffed, the light of early days flashed upon his overwrought brain-its inner chamber was irradiated with its ancient splendour-and he told old stories with all that exquisite felicity which had once charmed young and old, the care-worn and the fair-and talked of old friends and old times with more than the happiness of middle age. When Lord Eldon visited him in his season of decay at his seat near Reading, he sometimes slept at Maidenhead on his way; and on one occasion, having dined at the inn, and learned that the revising barristers were staying at the house, he desired his compli-portance of preserving a body which embraces ments to be presented to them, and requested the favour of their company to share his wine. He received the young gentlemen-very young compared with their host-with the kindest courtesy; talked of his early struggles and successes as much for their edification as delight--and finished at least his own bottle of port before they parted. Surely no lighter or airier liquor could befit such festal hours of honoured old age, or so well link long years together in the memory by its flavours!

within it alike the younger sons of our nobility and the aspirants of the middle classes, and offers to all the opportunity of achieving its highest and most lasting honours, than that which the history of the two sons of the good coal-fitter of Newcastle exhibits: nor any happier incitement to that industry which is power, and to that honour which is better than all gain, than the example it presents to those who may follow in their steps.

SPEECH FOR THE DEFENDANT,

IN THE PROSECUTION OF THE QUEEN v. MOXON, FOR THE PUBLICATION OF SHELLEY'S WORKS.

DELIVERED IN THE COURT OF QUEEN'S BENCH, JUNE 23, 1841.

PREFACE.

IN consenting to revise and publish the following Speech, I trust the circumstances attendant on the trial in which it was delivered will be found to justify an exception to the usual abstinence of Counsel from interfering with the publication of speeches delivered at the bar. The peculiarity of the occasion-the prosecution of an eminent publisher of unblemished character at the instance of a person who had been himself convicted of blasphemous libel, on a similar charge-and the nature of the question which that prosecution involved, between Literature and the Law of Libel-may render the attempt of the defendant's advocate, to defeat the former and to solve the latter, worthy of more consideration than it could command either by its power or its success. Observing that the case has been unavoidably deprived, by the urgency of political topics and electioneering details, of the notice it would have received from the press at a calmer season; and being anxious that the references necessarily made to matters of solemn interest and of delicate relation should not be subject to the misconception attendant on any imperfect reports, I have thought it right to take on myself the responsibility of presenting to the public, as correctly as I can, the substance of that which I addressed to the jury. The necessary brevity of the reports of the trial, which has partly induced this publication of the speech for the defendant, also renders it proper to give a short account of the circumstances which preceded it.

In the month of April, 1840, an indictment was preferred against Mr. Henry Hetherington, a bookseller in the Strand, at the instance of the Attorney-general, for selling certain numbers of a work entitled "Haslam's Letters to the Clergy of all Denominations," sold each at the price of one penny, and charging them as libels on the Old Testament. The cause came on to be tried before Lord Denman, in the Court of Queen's Bench, on 8th December, 1840, when the defence was conducted, with great propriety and talent, by the defendant himself, who rested it mainly on a claim of unqualified right to publish all matters of opinion, and on the argument, that the work charged as blasphemous came fairly within the operation of that principle. Mr. Hetherington was, however, convicted, and ultimately received judgment, under which he underwent an imprisonment of four months in the Queen's Bench prison.

While this prosecution was pending, Mr. Hetherington appears to have adopted the design of becoming in his turn the Prosecutor of several booksellers for the sale of the complete edition of Shelley's Works, which had been recently issued by Mr. Moxon in a form similar to that in which he had published the collected works of the greatest English poets. He accordingly commissioned a person named Holt, then a compositor in his employ, to apply for the work at the shops of several persons eminent in the trade, and thus succeeded in obtaining copies of Mr. Moxon, of Mr. Fraser, and of Mr. Otley, or rather of the persons in their employ. On the sales thus obtained, indictments were preferred at the Central Criminal Court against the several vendors, which, with a similar indictment against Mr. Marshall, doubtless preferred by the same Prosecutor, were removed by certiorari at the instance of the defendants, and set down for trial by special juries. Mr. Moxon felt that, as the original publisher of the edition, he ought to bear the first attack; and therefore, although some advantage might have been gained by placing the case of a mere vendor before his own, he declined to use it, and entered his own cause the first of the series which were to be tried in Middlesex. These causes were called on for trial at the sittings after Hilary term; but the prosecutor was not prepared with the Attorney-general's warrant to pray a tales to supply the default of the spe cial jury, and as the counsel for the defendant did not think it right to expedite his proceedings by doing so themselves, the cause went over, and ultimately came on for trial on Wednesday 23d June, when nine special jurymen appeared, and the panel was completed by a tales prayed for the prosecution.

The indictment against Mr. Moxon, which the others exactly resembled, charged that he, being an evil-disposed and wicked person, disregarding the laws and religion of this realm, and wickedly and profanely devising and intending to bring the Holy Scriptures and the Christian religion into disbelief and contempt, unlawfully and wickedly, did falsely and maliciously publish a scandalous, impious, profane, and malicious libel of and concerning the Christian religion, and of and concerning the Holy Scriptures, and of and concerning Almighty God," in which were contained certain passages charged as blasphemous and profane. It then set forth a passage in blank verse, beginning, "They have three words: well tyrants know their use,