The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 70, August, 1863. Various
was never more apparent, and never exacted nor received more willing worship. Through the kindness of a friendly barrister I was introduced to one of the juniors of the Attorney-General,—a stripling of about fifty years of age. While we were conversing about the case, Sir Richard turned and made some comment upon the conduct of the trial; but my friend would no more have thought of introducing me to the leader of the bar than he would have ventured to stop the carriage of the Queen in Hyde Park and present me then and there to Her Majesty.
I remember as well as if it were but yesterday how attorneys and junior counsel listened with the utmost deference to every suggestion which he condescended to address to them, how narrowly the law-students watched him, as if some legal principle were to be read in his cold, hard countenance, and, as he at last rose slowly and solemnly to make his long-expected argument, how court, bar, and by-standers composed themselves to hear. He spoke with great deliberation and distinctness, with singular precision and propriety of language, without any parade of rhetoric or attempt at eloquence. After a very short and appropriate exordium, he proceeded directly to the merits of the case. His words were well-weighed, and his manner was earnest and impressive. It was, in short, the perfection of reason confidently addressed to a competent tribunal.
And yet his manner was by no means that of a man seeking to persuade a superior, but rather that of one comparing opinions with an equal, if not an inferior mind, elevated by some accident to a position of factitious importance. One could not but feel that here was a power behind the throne greater than the throne itself.
It cannot be doubted that this consciousness of mental and professional preëminence, sustained by the unanimous verdict of public opinion, has given to Lord Westbury a defiant, if not an insolent bearing. The story is current at the English bar, that, some years ago, when offered a seat on the Bench, with a salary of five thousand pounds, he promptly declined, saying, "I would rather earn ten thousand pounds a year by talking sense than five thousand pounds a year by hearing other men talk nonsense." Anecdotes are frequent in illustration of his supercilious treatment of attorneys and clients while he was a barrister. And since his elevation to the wool-sack there has been no abatement or modification of his offensive manner. His demeanor toward counsel appearing before him has been the subject of constant and indignant complaint. It will be remembered by some of my readers, that, not long since, during a session of the House of Lords, he gave the lie direct to one of the peers,—an occurrence almost without precedent in that decorous body. Far different from this was the tone in which Lord Thurlow, while Lord-Chancellor, asserted his independence and vindicated his title to respect in his memorable rebuke addressed to the Duke of Grafton. If the testimony of English travellers in this country is to be believed, the legislative assemblies of our own land have hitherto enjoyed the unenviable monopoly of this species of retort.
The House of Lords contains other peers of marked ability and protracted Parliamentary experience, among whom are Earl Granville, the Earl of Ellenborough, the Duke of Somerset, and the Earl of Shaftesbury; but we cannot dwell in detail upon their individual characteristics as speakers, or upon the share they have severally taken in the public councils, without extending this article beyond its legitimate limits.
As genius is not necessarily or usually transmitted from generation to generation, while a seat in the House of Lords is an inheritable privilege, it will be readily believed that there is a considerable number of peers with no natural or acquired fitness for legislative duties,—men whose dullness in debate, and whose utter incapacity to comprehend any question of public interest or importance, cannot be adequately described. They speak occasionally, from a certain ill-defined sense of what may be due to their position, yet are obviously aware that what they say is entitled to no weight, and are greatly relieved when the unwelcome and disagreeable duty has been discharged. They are the men who hesitate and stammer, whose hats and canes are always in their way, and who have no very clear notions about what should be done with their hands. A visitor who chances to spend an evening in the House of Lords for the first and last time, while noblemen of this stamp are quieting their tender consciences by a statement of their views upon the subject under discussion, will be sure to retire with a very unfavorable and wholly incorrect estimate of the speaking talent of English peers.
It would hardly seem necessary to devote time or space to those members of the House of Lords who are rarely, if ever, present at the debates. As has been already stated, the whole number of peers is about four hundred and sixty, of whom less than twenty-five are minors, while the average attendance is less than fifty. The right to vote by proxy is a peculiar and exclusive privilege of the Upper House, and vicarious voting to a great extent is common on all important issues. Macaulay, many years ago, pronounced the House of Lords "a small and torpid audience"; and certainly, since the expression of this opinion, there has been no increase of average attendance. A considerable proportion of the absentees will be found among the "fast noblemen" of the kingdom,—the men who prostitute their exalted social position to the basest purposes, squandering their substance and wasting their time in degrading dissipation, the easy prey of accomplished sharpers, and a burning disgrace to their order. Sometimes, indeed, they pause on the brink of utter ruin, only to become in their turn apostles of iniquity, and to lure others to a like destruction. The unblushing and successful audacity of these titled roués is beginning to attract the attention and awaken the fears of the better part of the English people. Their pernicious example is bearing most abundant and bitter fruit in the depraved morals of what are called the "lower classes" of society, and their misdeeds are repeated in less fashionable quarters, with less brilliant surroundings. Against this swelling tide of corrupting influence the press of England is now raising its warning voice, and the statements which are publicly and unreservedly made, and the predictions which are confidently given, are very far from being welcome to English eyes or grateful to English ears.
Another class of the House of Lords, and it is a large one, is most happily characterized by Sydney Smith in his review of "Granby." "Lord Chesterton we have often met with, and suffered a good deal from his lordship: a heavy, pompous, meddling peer, occupying a great share of the conversation, saying things in ten words which required only two, and evidently convinced that he is making a great impression; a large man, with a large head, and a very landed manner; knowing enough to torment his fellow-creatures, not to instruct them; the ridicule of young ladies, and the natural butt and target of wit. It is easy to talk of carnivorous animals and beasts of prey; but does such a man, who lays waste a whole civilized party of beings by prosing, reflect upon the joy he spoils and the misery he creates in the course of his life, and that any one who listens to him through politeness would prefer toothache or ear-ache to his conversation? Does he consider the great uneasiness which ensues, when the company has discovered a man to be an extremely absurd person, at the same time that it is absolutely impossible to convey by words or manner the most distant suspicion of the discovery?"
Now, most unfortunately, the noble House of Chesterton is still extant, and its numerous representatives cherish with jealous care every inherited absurdity of the family. Their favorite field of operations is the House of Lords, partly because the strict proprieties of the place protect them from rude and inconvenient interruption, and partly because they can be sure of a "fit audience found, though few,"—an audience of equals, whom it is no condescension to address. In the House of Commons they would be coughed down or groaned down before they had wasted ten minutes of the public time, and that they escape as swift suppression in the House of Lords is much more creditable to the courtesy of that body than to its just appreciation of the shortness of human life. There is rarely a debate of importance in the House of Lords during which some one of the Chesterton family does not contribute his morsel of pompous imbecility, or unfold his budget of obsolete and exploded prejudices, or add his mite of curious misinformation. That such painful exhibitions of callow and contracted bigotry should so frequently be made in a body claiming for itself the finest culture and the highest civilization in Christendom is certainly a most mortifying circumstance, and serves to show that narrow views and unstatesmanlike opinions are not confined to democratic deliberative assemblies, and that the choicest advantages of education, literary and political, are not at all inconsistent with ignorance and arrogance.
But we will allow his lordship to tell his own story. Here is his set speech, only slightly modified from evening to evening, as may be demanded by the difference in the questions under debate.
"My lords,