William Brougham

“ It was obvious that Lord Melbourne, Lord Althorp, and Lord John Russell would be invited to take office, but there was a certain difficulty about Brougham. The difficulty, however, was not about offering a place to Brougham; the only trouble was to find the place which would suit him, and his acceptance of which would also suit his leaders and his colleagues. Nothing could be more certain than the fact that Brougham must be invited to a place in the new Administration. He was a strong man with the country, and he now had a distinct following of his own. ”

“ Brougham has great fearlessness, but not equal firmness; and after going too far on the forlorn hope, turns short round without due warning to others or respect for himself. He is adventurous, but easily panic-struck; and sacrifices the vanity of self-opinion to the necessity of self-preservation. He is too improvident for a leader, too petulant for a partisan; and does not sufficiently consult those with whom he is supposed to act in concert. He sometimes leaves them in the lurch, and is sometimes left in the lurch by them. He wants the principle of co-operation. ”

“ Desire to expose a 469ministry, and you will do it—if it be, like ours, vulnerable all over. Desire to make a display of yourself, and you will do it, if you have a decent stock of acquirements. Mr. Brougham has a great quantity of combustible materials constantly passing through his hands, but he has not the warmth in his own heart to ‘kindle them into a flame of sacred vehemence.’ He is not a good hater. He is not an impassioned lover of the popular cause. He is not a Radical orator: he is not a Back-bone debater. He wants nerve, he wants impetuosity. ”

“ Brougham speaks in a loud and unmitigated tone of voice, sometimes almost approaching to a scream. He is fluent, rapid, vehement, full of his subject, with evidently a great deal to say, and 323very regardless of the manner of saying it. As a lawyer, he has not hitherto been remarkably successful. He is not profound in cases and reports, nor does he take much interest in the peculiar features of a particular cause, or show much adroitness in the management of it. ”

“ Old as he now was, and notwithstanding the position he had achieved and the good work he had done, his constant thirst for admiration led him 'to desire to flourish away among silly and dissolute people of fashion.' Ever anxious to impress others with a sense of his superior ability, 'he had no idea how to converse or live at ease' (Greville Memoirs, 2nd ser. ii. 235) . When the French provisional government of 1848 summoned the National Assembly, Brougham was seized with a desire to be returned as a deputy, and applied to the minister of justice for a certificate of naturalisation. ”

“ With so many resources, with such variety and solidity of information, Mr. Brougham is rather a powerful and alarming, than an effectual debater. In so many details (which he himself goes through with unwearied and unshrinking resolution) the spirit of the question is lost to others who have not the same voluntary power of attention or the same interest in hearing that he has in speaking; the original impulse that urged him forward is forgotten in so wide a field, in so interminable a career. If he can, others cannot carry all he knows in their heads at the same time ”

“ Brougham is, in fact, a striking instance of the versatility and strength of the human mind, and also in one sense of the length of human life, if we make a good use of our time. There is room enough to crowd almost every art and science into it. If we pass ‘no day without a line,’ visit no place without the company of a book, we may with ease fill libraries or empty them of their contents. Those who complain of the shortness of life, let it slide by them without wishing to seize and make the most of its golden minutes. The more we do, the more we can do ”

“ While one thing is substantiating, another goes out of your mind. These little detached multifarious particulars, which require such industry and sagacity in the speaker to bring them forward, have no clue in the minds of the hearers to connect them together. There is no substratum of prejudice, no cement of interest. They do not grow out of the soil of common feeling and experience, but are set in it; nor do they bear the fruits of conviction. Mr. Brougham can follow the ramifications of an intricate subject, but he is not so well acquainted with the springs of the human mind. ”

“ The same disqualification attached to the oratory of Lord Brougham, whose speech at the bar of the House of Lords in defence of Queen Caroline had made so deep an impression. His extraordinary fierceness and even violence of nature pervaded his whole physical as well as intellectual being. When he spoke he was on springs and quicksilver, and poured forth sarcasm, invective, argument, and declamation in a promiscuous and headlong flood. ”

“ In the exciting scene in the House of Lords which followed the announcement of the king's arrival, the chancellor's self-importance caused him to lose his head (Grey Correspondence, i. 234-6; Greville Memoirs, 1st ser. ii. 135-7) . On 7 Oct. Brougham made a speech on the second reading of the Reform Bill that has been held to be his masterpiece: it is full of sarcasm on the tory lords. As in most of his great speeches, the peroration is studied and unnatural. Brougham ended with a prayer; he fell on his knees, and remained kneeling. ”

“ He excelled in fire, force, and passion. Lord Brougham finely described "that noble figure every look of whose countenance is expressive, every motion of whose form graceful; an eye that sparkles and pierces and almost assures victory, while it 'speaks audience ere the tongue.'" Yet, as is so often the case, the unequalled advocate found himself in the House of Commons less conspicuously successful than he had been at the Bar. The forensic manner of speech, in which he was a head and shoulders higher than any of his legal contemporaries, is, after all, distinct from parliamentary eloquence. ”

“ Brougham is from the North of England, but he was educated in Edinburgh, and represents that school of politics and political economy in the House. He differs from Sir James Mackintosh in this, that he deals less in abstract principles, and more in individual details. He makes less use of general topics, and more of immediate facts. Sir James is better acquainted with the balance of an argument in old authors; Mr. Brougham with the balance of power in Europe. If the first is better versed in the progress of history, no man excels the last in a knowledge of the course of exchange. ”

“ But {124} Brougham in the House of Commons might, at any time, be so far carried away by his own emotions, and his own eloquence, and his own masterful temperament as to bring his colleagues into many a difficulty, and force on them the unpleasant alternative of having to choose between going further than they had intended to go or failing to keep up with Brougham as the accredited and popular promoter of reform. ”

“ BROUGHAM, HENRY (1665–1698) , divine, was one of the twelve children of Henry Brougham of Scales Hall, Cumberland, sheriff for the county in the 6th of William III, by his marriage with 'fair Miss Slee, daughter of Mr. Slee of Carlisle, a jovial gentleman,' who was a merchant in that city. In Midsummer term, 1681, when sixteen years old, Henry Brougham 'became a poor serving-child of Queen's College,' Oxford. ”

“ Genial in society, with great power of enjoyment, a keen perception of what was ludicrous, and a ready wit, he was at the same time an unamiable man, a bitter enemy, and a jealous colleague. His temper was irritable, he was easily excited, and from whatever cause his excitement arose it led him to speak and act unadvisedly. Brougham was buried in the cemetery of Cannes. ”

“ He was again chosen president in 1860, and held the office during the five succeeding years. He was entertained at a public banquet at Edinburgh in October 1859, and two days afterwards was elected chancellor of the university. He delivered his installation address on 18 May 1860. In that year he received a second patent of peerage with remainder to his younger brother William and his heirs male, an honour conferred on him in recognition of his eminent services in the cause of education and in the suppression of slavery. Lady Brougham died at Brighton on 12 Jan. ”

“ He was one of the comparatively few men in our modern history who have made a mark in the Law Courts and in Parliament. As a Parliamentary orator he was the rival of Brougham, and the rivalry was all the more exciting to the observers because it was a rivalry of styles as well as of capacities. Lyndhurst was always polished, smooth, refined, endowed with a gift of argumentative eloquence, which appealed to the intellect rather than to the feelings, was seldom impassioned, and even when impassioned kept his passion well within conventional bounds. ”

“ BROUGHAM, William Brougham, 2 Baron (brother of the preceding) . b. 26 Sep. 1795; ed. at Edin. and Jesus coll. Cam., B.A. 1819, M.A. 1822; barrister L.I. 9 May 1823; master in chancery 29 March 1831 to 2 Nov. 1852, when granted pension of £3225 on abolition of his office by 15 and 16 Vict. cap. 80; M.P. for Southwark 29 April 1831 to 29 Dec. 1834; contested Leeds 9 Jany. 1835; succeeded 7 May 1868. d. Brougham hall near Penrith 3 Jany. 1886. Law Times lxxx, 175 (1886) . ”

“ But Brougham had at least started the question, and he never ceased to keep it moving during his long life. Other reformers, too, as well as Mackintosh and Brougham, were making their voices heard above, or at all events through, the din and clamor of the controversy between the friends of the King and the champions of the Queen. Lord John Russell may be said to have then begun his noble career as reformer of the system of parliamentary representation, and Mr. Lambton, afterwards to be better known as Lord Durham, made more than one bold effort in the same direction. ”

“ He took a large share in hearing appeals, and Lord-chancellor Truro left the administration of the appellate jurisdiction of the lords in his hands. This caused considerable dissatisfaction, and on 5 Aug. 1850 Brougham complained of the comments of the 'Daily News' as a breach of privilege and a libel on himself. The experiment of reinforcing the law lords by creating a peer for life brought him in haste from Cannes in 1856, and he greatly contributed to the defeat of Lord Wensleydale's claim. ”

“ Although on the defeat of Melbourne's ministry Brougham changed his seat to the opposition side of the house, he nevertheless gave Peel's government considerable support, and when the Ashburton treaty, concerning the Maine boundary, was attacked by his former colleagues, he brought forward a motion on 7 April 1843 expressing approval of it and thanking Lord Ashburton for his services. He was in favour of free trade, though at the same time he disliked the Anti-Corn-law League, for he looked with suspicion on all movements outside parliament. ”

“ Brougham's Life and Times of Henry, Lord Brougham, 3 vols., must be read with caution, and its statements compared with other authorities; it is chiefly valuable for the letters it contains; for notices of some curious misstatements in these volumes, besides those mentioned in the above article, see the Times for 12 Jan. 1871, and Notes and Queries, 4th ser. vii. 277; Brougham's Speeches, 4 vols.; Brougham's Letters to W. Forsyth, privately printed; Lord Campbell's Life of Brougham, in Lives of the Chancellors, viii. ”

“ Mr. Buxton proposed a resolution calling on the country to agitate for the total abolition of slavery in the colonies, and to be content with nothing else, and the resolution was carried by enthusiastic acclamation. Brougham at once became the champion of the great London meeting by a motion which he brought forward in the House of Commons. ”

“ Feb. 3rd.—The following speech made by a gentleman at tiffin amused me:—“Lord Brougham says, ‘Mankind are divided into two classes, those who have seen my house in Italy, and those who have not:’—now, I divide mankind into those who have seen my Moonāl pheasants, and those who have not. Lady William Bentinck gave them to me, and they are the most beautiful birds I ever saw.”
11th.—A steamer ran against a merchant vessel that was at anchor in the river; down she went headlong, all her crew with her, down in a moment. ”

“ He disliked the profession of law. With an extraordinarily wide range of knowledge, with an excellent memory, a ready wit, and unbounded self-confidence, he aimed at outshining others in everything. In 1802 he joined the small company engaged in setting on foot the 'Edinburgh Review.' He had already attained a high place in the literary society of Edinburgh, and it was expected he would shortly 'push his way into public life' (Cockburn, Life of Jeffrey, i. 138) . The first number of the 'Review' was published the following October, and Brougham contributed three of its twenty-nine articles. ”

“ As a statesman he has been thought wanting in purpose and firmness. But Lady Palmerston declared that earnestness was the essential element of his character, and he was certainly firm enough with Brougham and William IV. The truth seems to be that he was a genuine liberal on many points, notably that of religious equality, and a conscientious supporter of the programme bequeathed to him by Grey. ”