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Demades among the ancients possibly equalled him. I, of course, always except Demosthenes, the perfect, the unapproachable in every branch of eloquence.

But how wordy seem Cicero's invectives by the side of Chatham's; how mean and weak those of Eschines! As for Curran, Erskine, Burke, &c. &c., Chatham flashes more on the soul in one sentence, than they convey in pages.

The lines in which Aristophanes describes the eloquence of Pericles seem well to image that of Chatham :

«Ἐντεῦθεν ὀργῇ Περικλέης οὑλύμπιος

ἤστραπτεν, ἐβρόντα, ξυνεκύκα τὴν Ἑλλάδα.”

I ought also to have excepted Pericles in placing the orators of old below Chatham. Unfortunately we only possess Pericles in Thucydides and I think the historian has dimmed the brightness, though he may have added to the weight, of the speeches which he has fused into his great work.

What we miss in Chatham's speeches is calmness:-the calmness of majestic self-conscious strength. Pericles and Demosthenes possessed this. They could thunder: but they were, like the heavens, sublime in other moods besides their thunderstorms. -(Life by Thackeray.-Lord Mahon's History.-Lord Brougham's Historical Sketches of Statesmen.)

LORD CAMDEN.

LORD CAMPBELL, in his "Lives of the Chancellors," speaks of the pleasure he felt in entering on the memoir of Charles Pratt, afterwards Lord Chancellor of England and Earl Camden. It is with pleasure that I echo Lord Campbell's words respecting "one of the brightest ornaments of my profession." And Eton may well be proud of ranking him among her sons; for Lord Camden "was a profound jurist, and an enlightened statesman-his character was stainless in public and in private life-when raised to elevated station he continued true to the principles which he had early avowed-when transferred to the House of Peers, he enhanced his fame as an asserter of popular privileges-when an Ex-Chancellor, by a steady co-operation with his former political associates, he conferred greater benefits on his country, and had a still greater

share of public admiration and esteem than when he presided on the woolsack-when the prejudices of the Sovereign and of the people of England produced civil war, his advice would have preserved the integrity of the empire-when America, by wanton oppression, was for ever lost to us, his efforts mainly contributed to the pacification with the new republic-and Englishmen to the latest generation will honour his name for having secured personal freedom, by putting an end to arbitrary arrests under general warrants-for having established the constitutional right of juries, and for having placed on an imperishable basis the liberty of the press."

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He was a gentleman by birth, and his family had long been settled at Careswell Priory, near Colhampton, in Devonshire, a county which has truly been said to have always been, and still to be, fertile in illustrious lawyers. Lord Camden's father, Sir John Pratt, was Chief Justice of the King's Bench in George the First's reign; but he died when his fifth son Charles, the subject of the present memoir, was only ten years old; so that the future Chancellor rose fairly through the ranks of the profession; nor could any one apply to him the bitter sarcasm, which exhibitions of parental partiality on the Bench have sometimes provoked, that "the ermine of the father was made a begging bag for the son's briefs."

Charles Pratt was sent to Eton, and was elected on the foundation, soon after his father's death. While very young, he was warned that the slender patrimony which fell to his share as a younger child would do no more than educate him; and that he must look to that education and his own exertions as his means for rising in the world. Young Pratt understood his position, and applied himself cheerfully to its duties. During the years which he passed at Eton he acquired an unusual amount of classical learning; and, without doubt, the rough atmosphere of a public school did much in fostering the manly independence of character which marked him in after life.

There is, probably, no other place in the world at which so many and so permanent friendships have been formed as at Eton; and, among the "Amicitiæ Etonenses" of four centuries, few have been more sincere or more valuable in their consequences than the friendship which sprang up at Eton between Charles Pratt, afterwards Earl Camden, and William Pitt, afterwards Earl Chatham. The former

4 Lord Campbell's Lives of the Chancellors, vol. v.

owed to it his first legal promotion, his introduction to political life, and his Chancellorship. Nor were the benefits all on one side. Lord Camden's unfailing, uncompromising support, was a tower of strength to the elder Pitt in all his constitutional campaigns; and the younger great minister of that name derived important aid in the chief crisis of his early career, from the ready aid which Lord Camden gave his old friend's son against the coalesced parties of Fox and Lord North.

In 1731, Charles Pratt left Eton for King's. There he continued his classical studies, being, as his nephew George Hardinge informs us, not a plodding methodical reader, but by no means a superficial one. "He read with genius," says Hardinge. And at King Henry the Sixth's two royal colleges he formed the classical taste which he never lost, and which is to be traced in all he wrote and in all his speeches. Livy and Claudian are said to have been his favourite authors. Having been while a little child destined for the bar by his father, Pratt had been entered at the Inner Temple even before he went to Cambridge; and during his residence at the university he commenced the surest foundation for professional excellence, by studying the English history and constitution, and the science of jurisprudence, as well as the literary masterpieces of Greece and Rome.

It is recorded of him that he found King's divided into the parties of Whigs and Tories, with the former of which he instantly allied himself, and that he stood forward as a College Hampden in resisting the attempted encroachments of some of the collegiate authorities on the general rights of the whole body.

Having taken his degree in due course, Pratt, in 1735, left Cambridge for London, and began to keep his terms in the Inner Temple, where he was called to the bar in Trinity Term, 1738.

Orders do not necessarily give a living; a diploma does not involve patients; a wig and gown have no inseparable connection with clients; and in each and all of the three learned professions, learning alone availeth little. Pratt was long that standard mark for commonplace gibers, a briefless barrister. Lord Campbell well contrasts his position with the early forensic career of Philip Yorke, Lord Hardwicke.

"Very differently did young Pratt fare from the man whose rapid career had recently been crowned by his elevation to the woolsack. Yorke, the son of an attorney, himself an attorney's

clerk, and intimate with many attornies, and attornies's clerks, overflowed with briefs, from the day he put on his robe, was in full business his first circuit, and was made Solicitor-General when he had been only four years at the bar. Pratt, the son of the Lord Chief Justice of England, bred at Eton and Cambridge, the associate of scholars and gentlemen, though equally well qualified for his profession, was for many years without a client. He attended daily in the Court of King's Bench, but it was only to make a silent bow, when called on 'to move.' He sate patiently at chambers, but no knock came to the door, except that of a dun, or of a companion, as briefless and more volatile. He chose the Western Circuit, which his father used to ride, and where it might have been expected that his name might be an introduction to him; but spring and summer, year after year, did he journey from Hampshire to Cornwall, without receiving fees to pay the tolls demanded of him at the turnpike-gates, which were then beginning to be erected.

"He persevered for eight or nine years, but, not inviting attornies to dine with him, and never dancing with their daughters, his practice did not improve, and his impecuniosity was aggravated.' At last he grew thoroughly dispirited, and made up his mind to give up his profession, and retire to his College. There he was sure of a home and a subsistence from the founder's bounty; and if he took holy orders, he might hope, in due course of time, to have one of the College livings conferred on him. Before, however, he put his plan into execution, he thought, that, as an act of courtesy, he would call on the leader of his circuit, and make his intention known to him. This was Henley, afterwards Lord Northington, who had formed a favourable opinion of young Pratt, and had uniformly treated him with courtesy and kindness. Henley first tried to jest Pratt out of his purpose, and then spoke to him with so much cheering kindness, about his abilities, and his ultimate certainty of success, that he succeeded in making the almost despairing young barrister promise to try one circuit more, before he deserted the law.

On this circuit it happened that Pratt had a brief; that he had Henley as his senior in the case, and that Henley was taken ill, just as the case came on, so that Pratt had to lead it. It also happened that the case was one precisely adapted for an advan

tageous display of Pratt's best qualities. Few were credulous enough to suppose that such a combination of favourable circumstances was altogether fortuitous; and there can be little doubt but that Henley followed the dictates of kindness more than those of professional etiquette, and contrived this opportunity for Pratt, to show what stuff he was made of. The opportunity was fully used by Pratt. He opened the case for the plaintiff in a clear and well-arranged address; examined his own witnesses with art and self-possession; and cross-examined those of his adversary with discretion as well as with force. Having the additional opportunity of replying on the whole case, he did so with animation and eloquence; was complimented by the judge; won his verdict, and established his reputation with the many who heard him, and with more who soon heard of him, as an advocate of trustworthy power and prudence.

This incident, which laid the foundation of Lord Camden's prosperity, may be called by some a piece of good luck. It should be remembered that such pieces of good luck are utterly thrown away on all, who have not trained themselves, by long and unremitting study, to be able to take advantage of them. Opportunity is useless to the hand that cannot grasp it. If Pratt had not diligently learned the principles of our laws, especially of the law of evidence; if he had not been in the assiduous habit of watching how causes were conducted, and reflecting on how they might be conducted; if he had not acquired, by exercise, the powers of analysing theories, and of grouping facts, his Winchester brief would only have exposed him to shame, instead of opening the path to wealth and honour. He would have made a flashy, foolish speech; he would have floundered with his first witness; he would have blundered and got bewildered at the first point of law that was started during the case; and, even if he had succeeded in gasping out a reply, he would have concluded the day amid the reproaches of his beaten client, the malicious compassion of his learned friends, and the audible jeers of the non-professional bystanders.

Pratt had deserved success, and he obtained it. proved to him

"The fruitful parent of a hundred more."

His first case

He rose rapidly into good practice on his circuit, and acquired a good share of business in Westminster Hall. The best men of the

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