CHAPTER CLI. CONCLUSION OF THE LIFE OF LORD CHANCELLOR CHARLES YORKE. THE first public duty cast upon Charles Yorke, after his promotion, was to make a complimentary speech on the elevation of a rival. Murray, the Chief-Justice-elect, was to take leave of the Society of Lincoln's Inn previous to going through the preliminary form of being made a Serjeant at Law, that he might thereby be qualified to become a Judge. Mr. Solicitor, being then the Treasurer or head of the Inn, according to ancient usage presented the departing member with a purse of gold as a retaining fee, and addressed him in a flowing oration, extolling his eloquence, his learning, and his qualifications for the high judicial office which he was about to fill. The very words of the answer are preserved, from which we may judge of the talent and the courtesy exhibited on both sides : "I am too sensible, Sir, of my being undeserving of the praises which you have so elegantly bestowed upon me, to suffer commendations so delicate as yours to insinuate themselves into my mind; but I have pleasure in that kind partiality which is the occasion of them. To deserve such praises is a worthy object of ambition; and from such a tongue, flattery itself is pleasing. If I have had If I have had in any measure success in my profession, it is owing to the great man who has presided in our highest Court of judicature the whole time I attended the bar. It was impossible daily to come into his presence without catching some beams from his light. The disciples of Socrates, whom I will take the liberty to call the great lawyer of antiquity, since the first principles of law are derived from his philosophy, owe their reputation to their having been the reporters of the sayings of their master. If we can arrogate nothing to ourselves, we may boast the school we were brought up in; the scholar may glory in his master, and we may challenge past ages to show us his equal. My Lord Bacon had the same extent of thought, and the same strength of language and expression, but his life had a stain. My Lord Clarendon had the same abilities, and the same zeal for the constitution of his country; but the civil war prevented his laying deep the foundations of law, and the avocations of politics interrupted the business of the Chancellor. My Lord Somers came the nearest to his character; but his time was short, and envy and faction sullied the lustre of his glory. It is the peculiar felicity of the great man I am speaking of, to have presided near twenty years, and to have shone with a splendour that has risen superior to faction, and that has subdued envy. I did not intend to have said so much upon this occasion; but with all that hear me, what I say must carry the weight of testimony rather than appear the voice of panegyric. For you, Sir, you have given great pledges to your VOL. V. 21 country, and large are the expectations of the public concerning you. I dare to say you will answer them." For us Lincoln's Inn men, this was, indeed, a proud day. The greatest of Common Law Judges, on his own inauguration, spoke so eloquently of the greatest of Equity Judges now in retirement, after a judicial career of unequalled length and brilliancy,-and held out seemingly well-founded anticipations that the son who was addressed would rival his father's glory. All three were members of Lincoln's Inn, and the scene was acted in Lincoln's Inn Hall, amidst a crowd of barristers and students, many of whom, if fortune had been propitious to a display of their talents, would have been hardly less distinguished. In the following year, the Solicitor General expected further promotion, but was doomed to a severe disappointment. After some months of anarchy which followed the resignation of the Duke of Newcastle and Lord Hardwicke, during which the Great Seal was in commission, and there was a perpetual shifting of the principal offices of state, the Court was obliged to surrender at discretion to Mr. Pitt, who [JULY, 1757.] then formed his famous Administration. He bore no good will to the House of Yorke, and, although he would not dismiss Charles from the office held by him, he insisted on making his old schoolfellow, Pratt, Attorney General. This was most highly distasteful to Mr. Solicitor; but after consulting his father and his friends, he consented to swallow the bitter pill presented to him. Pratt was his senior at the bar, and had now risen into high reputation, so that it was no degradation to serve under him. They acted with apparent cordiality, though it was said that Yorke never forgot the affront, and was actuated by the recollection of it in his intrigue against Lord Camden, when he was himself to have become Chancellor under Charles Townshend, and in the negotiation which closed his own career, when, in an evil hour, he actually received the Great Seal, that Lord Camden might be cashiered. Opposition being now annihilated, the Attorney and Solicitor General had very light work in the House of Commons, and their official duty chiefly consisted in advising the Government (which they did most admirably), upon numerous questions of international law, arising during the prosecution of the war. The first great occasion when they appeared together in public was on the trial of Dr. Hensey, at the King's Bench bar, [JUNE 12, 1758.] for high treason, in carrying on a correspondence with the French, and inviting' them to invade the realm. It was the part of the Solicitor General to sum up the evidence for the crown, but he declined to do so, reserving himself for the general reply on the whole case, a course which Lord Mansfield and the whole Court held he was entitled to pursue. His reply was distinguished by extreme moderation and mildness of tone, as well as perspicuity and force of reasoning. The prisoner was convicted, but, on account of attenuating circumstances, he was afterwards pardoned.* *19 St. Tr. 1342-1382. The only other state prosecution in which Pratt and Charles Yorke were jointly engaged was that of Lord Ferrers, before the House of Peers, for the murder of his steward, of which I have given an account in the Life of Lord Northington, who then presided as Lord High Steward.* The Solicitor General's reply on this occasion is one of the finest forensic displays in our language, containing, along with touching eloquence, fine philosophical reasoning on mental disease and moral responsibility : "In some sense," said he, "every violation of duty proceeds from insanity. All cruelty, all brutality, all revenge, all injustice, is insanity. There were philosophers in ancient times who held this opinion as a strict maxim of their sect; and, my Lords, the opinion is right in philosophy, but dangerous in judicature. It may have a useful and a noble influence to regulate the conduct of men ;-to control their impotent passions ;to teach them that virtue is the perfection of reason, as reason itself is the perfection of human nature;-but not to extenuate crimes, nor to excuse those punishments which the law adjudges to be their due." Every Peer present said, "Guilty, upon my honour;" and when the unhappy culprit had expiated his offence at Tyburn, homage was done throughout the world to the pure and enlightened administration of criminal justice in England. About this time Charles Yorke sustained a blow which long rendered tasteless all the applause with which his efforts were crowned. He lost the chosen partner of his fate, whose participation of his good fortune gave it all its value. When a little recovered, he described his anguish, and the sacred source of his consolation, in a letter to his friend Warburton, which has unfortunately perished: it might have been equal to the letter written on a similar sad occasion by Sir James Mackintosh to Dr. Parr, one of the most beautiful of mortal compositions.† We may judge of its tone from the language of Warburton in transmitting it to Hurd: "This morning I received the enclosed. It will give you a true idea of Yorke's inestimable loss, and his excellent frame of mind. He has read, you will see, your Dialogues. And was he accustomed to speak * Ib. 945; ante, p. 174. Perhaps it contained sentiments such as these:-"My only consolation is in that Being under whose severe but paternal chastisement I am bent down to the ground. The philosophy which I have learned only teaches me that virtue and friendship are the greatest of human blessings, and that their loss is irreparable. It aggravates my calamity, instead of consoling me under it. My wounded heart seeks another consolation. Governed by these feelings, which have in every age and region of the world actuated the human mind, I seek relief, and I find it in the soothing hope and consolatory opinion that a Benevolent Wisdom inflicts the chastisement as well as bestows the enjoyments of human life; that superintending goodness will one day enlighten the darkness which surrounds our nature and hangs over our prospects; that this dreary and wretched life is not the whole of man; that an animal so sagacious and provident, and capable of such proficiency in science and virtue, is not like the beasts that perish; that there is a dwelling-place prepared for the spirits of the just, and that the ways of God will yet be vindicated to man."-Life of Mackintosh, i. 97. what he does not think (which he is not), at this juncture he would tell his mind, when labouring with grief. 'Nam veræ voces tum demum pectore ab imo Upon the accession of George III. Charles Yorke was continued in his office of Solicitor General, and, from feeling rather a [OCT. 25, 1760.] dislike to Mr. Pitt, he seems early to have attached himself to Lord Bute. He saw without regret the resignation of the "Great Commoner;"† and when Pratt was "shelved," as was supposed, in the Court of Common Pleas, the Attorney General[JAN. 25, 1762.] ship was joyfully conferred upon the Solicitor, who was expected unscrupulously to go all lengths against Wilkes. He derived little satisfaction from this elevation. It was soon seen that Lord Bute's Administration could not stand, and he was involved in disagreeable intrigues for the recall of the Duke of Newcastle or Mr. Pitt to office. On one occasion, Lord Lyttleton came to him as the emissary of the Court to tempt him, by an offer of the Great Seal, to influence his father and his family to support the "favourite." In an account which he sent of this interview to his father, he says, "I added with respect to the thing itself, that if I could suppose the King would ever do me the honour hinted, I should not be afraid to accept it, though I should think it too early and in many respects not eligible at this time. I inquired how Lord Mansfield stood, and whether he might not be thought of? He answered that Lord M. would feel nothing personally as to me, because he would see that it was impossible for him to have the Great Seal rebus sic stantibus. Lord Lyttleton said that if such an offer came I could not with honour refuse it; he thought Lord B.'s prudence, with absolute favour, might weather the conjuncture, and that the D. of N. ought to reflect he never could be a minister in power as he had been in the late reign; and that it would be, above all, absurd for him to make himself the instrument of Mr. Pitt's power, which would be the consequence of opposition." After enlarging on the difficulties of his situation, and his reluctance to be associated with the Duke of Newcastle, he thus concludes: If it is a measure to resign, and I am to go ad latus of Mr. Pitt, I shall incline strongly to attend Warb. Corr. 292. Warburton, in a letter to Mr. Pitt, written soon after, tries to remove from his mind the impression made by some of Yorke's manifestations of satisfaction on this occasion: "Prior Park, Oct. 17, 1761. "The Solicitor General has just now left this place after a visit to me of a few days. I should be unjust to him on this occasion to omit saying that to me he ever appeared to hold you in the highest honour, and your measures (as soon as ever the effects appeared) in the highest esteem. I ought in justice to add further, that he deceived me greatly if, at that very time when your just resentments were about breaking out against the Duke of Newcastle, he did not use his best endeavours, both with the Duke and his father, to repair their treatment, and to procure you satisfaction. But he had not then that influence with them which he has had since."-Chat. Corresp. ii. 161. the bar no more, which I may now quit without loss of honour in the world, and might perhaps attend hereafter with some profit, but more vexation." Lord Hardwicke wrote in answer,-"There is no great ground at present for any public parliamentary opposition; the unpopularity of the Scotchman cannot in form be taken up in parliament till it breaks out and is exemplified in material instances of conduct which are not yet refused. From hence you may conclude it is scarce probable that you will be put under the difficulty you apprehend about resignation, and this brings me to the only point in which I differ from you. I mean your idea of quitting the bar in case you should think fit to quit your office, which last I do by no means foresee. But if it should so happen, my opinion upon consideration is, that it would be unadvisable in the highest degree for you to leave the bar. It will be giving up the most independent and I think the most advantageous profession in England without any occasion; for you would not find your prospects much lessened by the loss of your office; but you would find your own consideration and importance much diminished by the loss of your profession. My Lord Granville used to say, that the first man at the bar in opposition was equal to the first man upon the bench. I don't carry it so far; but I really think that the first man at the bar in opposition is, cœterus paribus, equal to the first man at the bar in place.' Meanwhile Mr. Pitt tried to gain him over by lures which are described in a letter of Lord Hardwicke: "As to Mr. Attorney General, he said he had the greatest esteem and friendship for him, which had increased as their acquaintance had proceeded, which was of long standing: that he had never done any thing to forfeit his reciprocal friendship, however he had been misunderstood. He owned that he had a great regard for Lord C. J. Pratt, but never in prejudice to him, and wished Charles to live upon good terms and in confidence with his Lordship; that the only competition which could arise between them was in case of a change of the Great Seal, either by the disability of the present possessor or any other contingency: that he should give or avow his opinion to the King, and the public would be well served by either, but his original acquaintance was with Mr. Attorney, and it would be unbecoming in him and he should be ashamed to attempt anything to his prejudice."* But all the attempts which were made on the death of Lord Egremont to bring back the Whig ministers of George II. having failed, Charles Yorke thought that it was full time for him to resign. He has been too severely blamed for his proceedings while first law officer of the Crown. He did file the criminal informations for "No. 45, of the [OCT. 1761] North Briton," and for the "Essay on Woman ;" but few will deny that the one publication was seditious, or that the other was obscene. He was not consulted by Lord Halifax about issuing “general warrants," and he might have been pardoned for saying that they were prima facie legal, as they had been issued by all Secretaries of State * June, 1763. |