Ibid. pp. 538-9.

It would have been fortunate for the memory of Clarendon, if the same good sense and benevolence which guided his civil policy had governed his religious opinions. But in these prejudice triumphed over his better judgment; and we find him breathing sentiments, which, in a darker age, would have led him to promote the most cruel persecution. From his early youth he had imbibed the maxim of No Bishop, no King, as an infallible truth; and had conscientiously instilled into the mind of his sovereign the doctrine that Episcopacy is the only form of Church Government compatible with Monarchy.

It is sad to think, how dangerous a poison the tone. and general spirit of our modern historians instil into the public mind, and (still worse) into the souls of the young men, whose talents, rank, or connections destine them to a public life: a poison, slow indeed and lurking, and thereforethe fittest to undermine the moral constitution. What an effect must not [be produced by] the mere attachment of the honours of virtue to wicked statesmen only because they were much less wicked than others! 66 Conscientiously!" What? was Hyde a poor simple recluse? must not the knowledge, that this tenet was despised as absurd, and detested as base and ruinous by Falkland, Southampton, and a majority of the great and good men who lived and died for the monarchy, have at least so far influenced an honest mind as to prevent him from persecuting with remorseless cruelty thousands, nay, myriads, of men whose only charge was that of holding the same opinion respecting the prelates (for the quarrel was not concerning Episcopacy, such as Archbishop Usher supported, but Prelacy), as Falkland? If a conscience sered by party-passions, and the assumption of infallibility, is to be the sufficient

reason for calling actions conscientious, for Heaven's sake, say not an unkind word against the Massacre on St. Bartholomew's Day, or the horrors of Bonuer and Gardner!

The plausibility of the sophism, No Bishop, no King! rests wholly on the circumstance, that there is some truth in the converse, viz.: No King, no Prelate.

NOTES WRITTEN IN THE “LAW MAGAZINE,” FOR JANUARY AND APRIL, 1830. VOL. III.

Life of Lord Hardwicke. P. 97.

In framing his judgments, Lord Hardwicke appears always to have been anxious to bring the case within the scope of some broad general principle. effected by means of forced analogies.

This, however, he never interpretations or fanciful

I am too well aware of my incompetence to set any value on my own opinion; but in reading, some years back, Atkyn's and Vesey's Reports (23 Vol.) and afterwards, Sir James Burrows, and (while I was at Malta) Robinson's Admiralty Reports, I was exceedingly impressed with the measureless superiority of Lords Hardwicke and Mansfield and of Sir W. Scott to Lord Eldon, on the score of solid and comprehensive principle.

Ibid. p. 102.

It is to no purpose to argue that none but weak and plastic minds suffer themselves to be influenced by habit.

Better thus-none but soft and fictile minds yield

to the impressions of habit. Influences excite, modify, temper, contemper, &c., but can rarely be said to mould.

66

Is there any authority for the use of this word ["plastic"] in a passive sense? Qu. fictile! Soft" would have been better than

66

weak."

Ibid. p. 108.

Some obloquy has been cast upon Lord Hardwicke, because he disposed of the Church patronage belonging to his office with a view rather to increase his own political influence, than to forward obscure merit or to further the interests of religion. This accusation is undoubtedly just; but whether the fault be a very venial, or a highly criminal one, is a question likely to be decided by different persons in very different ways; no one, at all events, will deny that it is a very common one.

-by the Venialists, I presume, in Change-Alley, or in the Hells, or at Windsor. The denizens of Newgate would be ashamed of such a sentiment. But Lawyers are sorry moralists, and both they and the men in office are in whimsical wise contemptuously jealous of literary men.

Ibid. p. 112.

But unhappily his cupidity led him to regard the increase of his fortune as a primary object of ambition; and though to accomplish it he never descended to employ means inconsistent with the strictest integrity, there cannot be a doubt that he sacrificed to it a species of fame which it was in his power to earn, and which it was incumbent on him to deserve. Had he not been deterred by avarice from effecting the reform of the Court of Chancery, he might have left behind him a smaller inheritance to his children, but he

would have transmitted to them the glory of being descended from a disinterested benefactor of his country.

The Devil! What? an infamous prostitution of his immense patronage to his own dirty interests, "not inconsistent," &c. I will even risk the scorn of the Biographer by asking him, in what chapter of the New Testament he found Avarice, a foible: or base breach of a sacred trust, a very venial fault!

NOTES WRITTEN IN THE ENCYCLOPEDIA LONDINENSIS.

ERASMUS.

In conformity with the pedantic taste then prevailing among men of letters, of assuming names of Greek or Latin etymology, he translated his family name of Gerard, signifying amiable, into the equivalent ones of Desiderius in Latin, and Erasmus in Greek.

And why pedantic? What man of the least taste would have preferred Mynheer Groot to Grotius, Reuchlin to Caprio, or Schwartzercht to Melancthon? While the Latin was the lingua communis of Europe such translations were fit and graceful.

Ibid.

He first lodged with Sir Thomas More, and amused himself with writing his "Moria Encomium," or Praise of Folly, a facetious and satirical composition which became popular.

And is that all that can be said of the (perhaps)

most exquisite work of wit and wisdom extant! In its kind certainly the most exquisite.

LIBERTY.

It were endless to enumerate all the affirmative acts of parliament wherein justice is directed to be done according to the law of the land; and what that law is, every subject knows or may know if he pleases; for it depends not upon the arbitrary will of any judge, but is permanent, fixed, and unchangeable, unless by authority of parliament.

Mere declamation! In a rich and populous, a commercial and manufacturing people, the practical Law exists in precedents, far more than in statutes, and every new judge furnishes new precedents. Hence the "glorious uncertainty of the Law." How can it be truly affirmed that every man may know [the law], when it requires the study and practice of a life to be qualified even to give an opinion; and when nothing is more common than for two men equally qualified to give opposite opinions? Not to mention the ruinous expenses of a law-suit to all but rich men ; so that the power of appeal from lower to higher courts, instead of protecting the poor man, enables a rich tyrant, such as the late Lord L. to ruin whom he chooses.

I wrote this, not in complaint, for the evil is inevitable, and results from the very nature of Property in the present state of human nature; but because the strongest arguments of Jacobinism are drawn from these rash assertions, and the actual state of things so opposite to them.

These positions should be treated as the declared Ideal and ultimate object of Legislature, which every man is bound to hold in view in his administration of Law, not as the actual result of Law; and men should