house in Cornwall, and intending to compliment him on his ancestry, said, "I hope soon to see you in the same situation."

A PLURALIST IN OFFICE.

Hutchinson's rapacity for office was insatiate. He was in possession of many posts, some sinecures, and all lucrative, when he applied to the Lord Lieutenant Townshend for more. Townshend laughed, and said he had nothing but a Majorship of Dragoons, which Hely is reported to have accepted, employing a deputy to fulfil the duty for a small emolument. When Hutchinson first appeared at the English Court, George III. asked Lord North who he was; a query to which his lordship gave a well-known reply. "He is the Secretary of State for Ireland; a man on whom if your Majesty was pleased to bestow the United Kingdom, he would ask for the Isle of Man as a potato-garden."

LORD CHANCELLOR THURLOW.

The

Thurlow was the son of a Norfolk clergyman, from whom he received the rudiments of his education. He was then sent to the Grammar-school at Canterbury, at the suggestion of Dr. Donne (according to Sir Egerton Brydges) to gratify a malignant feeling towards the head-master, by placing under his care "a daring, refractory, clever boy, who would be sure to torment him." motive ascribed to Donne seems improbable; and Thurlow remained at the Canterbury school several years, until he removed to Caius College, Cambridge, where he gained no academical honours, and was compelled to leave Cambridge abruptly, in consequence of turbulent and indecorous behaviour towards the dean of his college. Soon after he was entered a member of the Society of the Inner Temple.

To Nando's, a coffee-house in Fleet-street, at the east corner of Inner-Temple-lane, Thurlow used to resort at this early period of his life. It was here, when only a young man, that his skill in argument obtained for him, from a stranger, the appointment of a junior counsel in the great cause of Douglas v. the Duke of Hamilton, which had the effect of bringing his talents, industry, and legal acquirements under the immediate notice of persons of power and influence, and of thus opening the way to subsequent elevation. Yet, in 1782, when Lord North was removed from power, and the Rockingham Ministry was formed, Thurlow remained in possession of the great seal, by express command of the King; thus furnishing an instance without a parallel in the history of English party of a

Lord Chancellor retaining office under an Administration to the leading features of whose policy he was resolutely opposed.

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Lord Thurlow over-estimated his personal influence with the king, in treating Mr. Pitt with hauteur; and Lord North foretold that whenever Pitt said to the king, Sire, the Great Seal must be in other hands," the king would take the seal from Lord Thurlow, and never think any more about him. It turned out exactly as Lord North had said: the king took the Great Seal from Lord Thurlow, and never concerned himself about him afterwards. This mortified Thurlow severely, and he is known to have said, "No man has a right to treat another in the way in which the king has treated me: we cannot meet again in the same room." He now became so incensed with Mr. Pitt and his Ministry as to accuse them of having imposed upon the king in advising a measure for the encouragement of the growth of timber in the New Forest.

About the year 1790, when Thurlow was supposed to be on no very friendly terms with the Minister (Mr. Pitt), a friend asked the latter how Thurlow drew with them? "I don't know," said the Premier, "how he draws, but he has not refused his oats yet."

After the Cabinet to which he belonged was broken up, and he was made a baron, and laid on the shelf, in the hope of regaining his ascendancy, he took an uncomfortable villa, which had only the recommendation of being in the vicinity of Windsor Castle; and here, for three years, he was to be seen dancing attendance upon royalty, unnoticed and neglected by the king, who, when he heard of his late chancellor's death after an illness of a few hours, having cautiously inquired of the messenger if he were really dead, coldly observed, "Then he has not left a worse man behind him;" though the phrase which the king actually used was, says Lord Brougham, less decorous and more unfeeling than the above.

LORD THURLOW'S THUNder.

The celebrated reply of Lord Thurlow to the Duke of Grafton, who had reproached him with his plebeian extraction, and his recent elevation to the peerage, is described as superlatively great. He rose from the woolsack, and advanced slowly to the place from which the Chancellor generally addressed the House: then, fixing on the Duke the look of Jove when he grasps the thunder;-"I am amazed," he said, in a civil tone of voice," at the attack which the noble, Duke has made upon me. Yes, my lords," considerably raising his voice, "I am amazed at his Grace's speech. The noble Duke cannot look before him, behind him, or on either side of him, without seeing some noble peer, who owes his seat in this house to

his successful exertions in the profession to which I belong. Does he not feel it is as honourable to owe it to these as to being the accident of an accident?—To all these noble lords, the language of the noble Duke is as applicable and as insulting as it is to myself. But I don't fear to meet it single and alone. No one venerates the. peerage more than I do,-but, my lords, I must say, that the peerage solicited me-not I the peerage. Nay more,-I can say and will say, that, as a peer of parliament, -as Speaker of this right honourable House,-as Keeper of the Great Seal,-as guardian of his Majesty's conscience, as Lord High Chancellor of England,— nay, even in that character alone in which the noble Duke would think it an affront to be considered,—but which character none can deny me;—as A MAN, I am at this moment as respectable,-I beg leave to add, I am at this time as much respected as the proudest peer I now look down upon." The effect of this speech, both within the walls of parliament and out of them was prodigious. It gave Lord Thurlow an ascendancy in the House which no chancellor had ever possessed; it invested him in public opinion with a character of independence and honour; and this, although he was ever on the unpopular side of politics, made him always popular with the people.-Charles Butler

LORD THURLOW AND LORD LOUGHBOROUGH.

Lord Thurlow disliked and made light of Lord Loughborough, as attested in some good stories. Once, when the latter Lord was making a considerable impression in the House of Lords, on a subject which Lord Thurlow had not studied in detail, the latter was heard to mutter, "If I was not as lazy as a toad at the bottom of a well, I could kick that fellow Loughborough heels over head any day in the week." It was this ceaseless antagonism between Thurlow and Loughborough which led George III. to say, in a letter to Lord Eldon, just after he had been raised to the woolsack, "The King felt some pleasure at hearing that the Lord Chancellor sat the other day on the woolsack between Rosslyn (formerly Loughborough) and Thurlow, who ever used to require an intermediate power to keep them from quarrelling."

Lord Thurlow told the Prince of Wales (who repeated it to Lord Eldon) that "the fellow (Lord L.) had the gift of the gab in a marvellous degree, but that he was no lawyer"-adding, "In the House of Lords I get Kenyon, or somebody, to start some law doctrine, in such a manner that that fellow must get up to answer it, and then I leave the woolsack, and give him such a thump in his bread-basket, that he cannot recover himself." Dr. Johnson, in

comparing the two, says: "I never heard anything from him (Loughborough) that was at all striking; and depend upon it, sir, it is when you come close to a man in conversation, that you discover what his real abilities are. To make a speech in a public assembly is a knack. Now, I honour Thurlow, sir; Thurlow is a fine fellow; he fairly puts his mind to yours."

The struggle between the two law lords was kept up throughout the arrangements for the Regency Sheridan entered actively into a negotiation with Lord Thurlow, to secure his co-operation in consideration of his being allowed to retain the office of Chancellor; while Fox had promised to bestow the Great Seal, in the event of a change, upon Lord Loughborough, who, on the other hand, kept a watch upon the mysterious movements of Thurlow. Suddenly, he broke off his negotiation with the Prince's party, and declared for the King and Mr. Pitt; it is thought from his having speculated upon the King's recovery.

Thurlow's intrigues were masterpieces of slyness. On one occasion, during the Regency communications at Windsor, he let his colleagues go to Salt-hill, while he contrived to dine at the Castle. On another occasion, during these manoeuvres of the Chancellor at Windsor, he betrayed, to the no small amusement of his colleagues, the secret of an interview which he had just had with the Prince, by coming to the Council with His Royal Highness's hat in his hand, instead of his own!

A manoeuvre of another description is related of Lord Thurlow, during the debate on the Regency. Dr. Watson, Bishop of Llandaff, in a speech supporting the claims of the Prince of Wales, incidentally cited a passage from Grotius, with regard to the definition of the word right. The Chancellor, in his reply," says the Bishop in his Memoirs, boldly asserted that he perfectly well remembered the passage I had quoted from Grotius, and that it solely respected natural, but was inapplicable to civil, rights. Lord Loughborough, the first time I saw him after the debate, assured me that before he went to sleep that night, he looked into Grotius, and was astonished to find that the Chancellor, in contradicting me, had presumed on the ignorance of the House, and that my quotation was perfectly correct. What miserable shifts do great men submit to in supporting their parties! The Chancellor Thurlow," continues the Bishop, 66 was an able and upright judge, but as the Speaker of the House of Lords, he was domineering and insincere. It is said of him, that in the Cabinet he opposed everything, proposed nothing, and was ready to support anything. I remember Lord Camden saying to me one night, when the Chancellor was speaking, contrary, as he thought, to his own

conviction, "There, now, I could not do that: he is supporting what he does not believe a word of.""

LORD THURLOW AT WARREN HASTINGS' TRIAL.

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On one occasion, during the progress of the trial of Warren Hastings, Mr. Fox, struck by the solemnity of Lord Thurlow's appearance, said to the Speaker, "I wonder whether any one ever was so wise as Thurlow looks." Lord Brougham describes Fox's remark with a difference: "it was more solemn and imposing than almost any other person's in public life; so much so, that it proved dishonest, since no man could be so wise as he looked." Nor," says Lord Brougham, " did Thurlow neglect any of the external circumstances, how trifling soever, by which attention and deference could be secured on the part of his audience. Not only were his periods well rounded, and the connecting matter or continuing phrases well flung in, but the tongue was so hung as to make the sonorous voice peal through the hall, and appear to convey things which it would be awful to examine too near, and perilous to question. Nay, to the more trivial circumstances of his place, when addressing the House of Lords, he scrupulously attended. He rose slowly from his seat; he left the woolsack with deliberation; but he went not to the nearest place, like ordinary chancellors, the sons of mortal men; he drew back by a pace or two, and, standing, as it were, askance, and partly behind the huge bale he had quitted for a season, he began to pour out, first in a growl, and then in a clearer and louder roll, the matter which he had to deliver; and which, for the most part, consisted in some positive assertions, some personal vituperation, some sarcasms at classes, some sentences pronounced upon individuals, as if they were standing before him for judgment; some vague mysterious threats of things purposely not expressed, and abundant protestations of conscience and duty, in which they who keep the consciences of kings are apt to indulge."

Lord Campbell has described from recollection the appearance of the great Chancellor "bent with age, dressed in an old-fashioned grey coat, with breeches and gaiters of the same stuff, a brown scratch wig, tremendous white bushy eyebrows, eyes still sparkling with intelligence, dreadful crowsfeet round them, very deep lines in his countenance, and shrivelled complexion of a shallow hue."

They who had never seen Lord Thurlow might well imagine they heard him, if they had access to such excellent imitators as George the Fourth and Lord Holland.