after some debate, appointed a Committee to forward the generous purpose.

Serjeant Hale had the honour of being nominated one of the Committee; and now, in the execution of this high trust, he exerted all the powers of his mind, and all the goodness of his heart, to terminate those evils which had too long and too necessarily prevailed. Prudence and humanity dictated, that the sooner the bill passed, the sooner the blessings of peace would be diffused. would be diffused. With an assiduity to be equalled only by his philanthropy, he framed, carried on, and supported the bill.

Within the space of a month after the Restoration, he was recalled to the degree of a Serjeant at Law by the royal writ, that of Cromwell being deemed illegal; and, upon settling the Courts of Westminster Hall in November, he was constituted Chief Baron of the Exchequer. When the Lord Chancellor Clarendon delivered to him his commission, he told him, 'that if the King could have found an honester and fitter man for that employment, he would not have advanced him to it; and that he had therefore preferred him, because he knew none who deserved it so well."* In this station he continued eleven years, and highly raised the reputation and practice of his court by his invariable impartiality,† his indefatiga

*This was, precisely, the compliment paid by Louis XIV. to one of his Generals on making him a Maréchal de France; and it is repeated by Mr. Edgeworth, in his Professional Education,' as highly enhancing the value of the new dignity. p. 423.

"I remember," says Dryden," a saying of King Charles II. on Sir Matthew Hale (who was, doubtless, an uncorrupt and upright man) that his servants were sure to be cast on a trial, which was heard before him;' not that he thought the Judge

ble diligence, and his great exactness in trials. The only complaint, indeed, which was made against

was possible to be bribed, but that his integrity might be too scrupulous, and that the causes of the Crown were always suspicious when the privileges of the subject were concerned."

The servility, insolence, and partiality (observes Thirlwall) to which Hale formed an honourable exception, of many of the Judges in this Monarch's reign present to the view a disgusting picture of the administration of public justice. What a striking contrast do they exhibit to the Judges, who grace the bench of the present day! The sobriety and gravity of their deportment, the patience and impartiality with which they poise the scales of justice between the rich and the poor, the King and the meanest of his subjects, cease to become the theme of admiration and applause, because they are now familiar and universally experienced.

They, however, who wish to appreciate the value and measure the extent of these political blessings, and calculate their importance to the security and preservation of the life, liberty, and property of the subject, ought to look back to the judicial proceedings of former times, and peruse the trials in which a Scroggs, a Howell, a Pemberton, and a Jeffreys presided.

The remark of Mr. Serjeant Rumington breathes such a spirit of constitutional liberty, so honourable to his profession as a lawyer, and to his feelings as an Englishman, that I am persuaded no apology is necessary for introducing it here.

To those who are acquainted with our history, it may seem strange, but it is not more so than true, that the Judges were formerly dependent on the caprice of the Crown. Prerogative, no doubt, thought it necessary; but the subject found it partial and oppressive. Before the close of the seventeenth century, and anterior to the glorious Revolution, men of pliant dispositions were raised to the bench, while those who distributed justice were removed: even-handed justice gave way to wicked policy; objects the most precious were by vicious constructions, without ceremony and without fear, sacrificed by those, whose duty it was to protect and preserve them. Sad and melancholy must have been the prospect; for when the channels of public justice are corrupted, where justice itself is corrupted into the means of revenge, political misery is arrived to it's height,

him was, that he did not despatch matters quick. enough:' but his delays generally proved decisive, as from his judgement there were seldom any appeals. It was usual for persons, in his high station, to have the honour of knighthood conferred upon them. This he was desirous to avoid, and therefore he did not go to court; which the Chancellor observing, sent for him to his house upon business, at a time

From the numerous instances, which might be adduced in support of the assertion, the following is sufficient to establish it beyond a doubt or contradiction: In the year 1683, on the trial of Lord Russell, Jeffreys in his speech to the jury turned the untimely fate of Essex into a proof of the conspiracy, in which he and Russell had been engaged. Pemberton was removed from the head of the King's Bench, and even from the Privy Council, and Jeffreys put in his place; in order by the fierceness of his manners to cope with a man, the vigour of whose spirit was known throughout Europe.

In the year 1691, a bill passed both Houses to confirm the salaries and offices of the Judges for life; but the King, even at that great æra of liberty, refused his assent, leaving room for a succeeding Monarch to give unasked to the wishes of the people, what William refused to their prayers. However, to maintain the dignity and independence of those functionaries, it was soon afterward enacted that their commissions should be made not as formerly, Durante benè placito, but Quamdiu benè se gesserint. Their salaries were also ascertained and established, and their removal declared lawful, on the address of both Houses of Parliament. This law has been since improved. His present Majesty in the beginning of his reign declared from the throne, that he looked upon the independence and uprightness of the Judges as essential to the impartial administration of justice, as one of the best securities of the rights and liberties of his subjects, and as most conducive to the honour of the Crown; and therefore earnestly recommended to parliament, that they might be continued during their good behaviour, notwithstanding any demise of the Crown.' This the parliament immediately took into consideration, and with all possible despatch passed a law in every respect conformable with the recommendation.

when he knew the King would be there, and introduced him to his Sovereign as his modest Chief Baron;' upon which, his Majesty insisted on making him a Knight.

It is recorded of this great man, that he manifested such a dislike of the very appearance of bribery, as was construed into affectation; and of this his scrupulous disposition some remarkable instances are recorded. The following will sufficiently mark his character: Upon one of his circuits, a gentleman, who had a cause to be determined at the Assizes, sent him a buck for his table. When the trial came on, he told the donor,' he could not suffer it to proceed, till he had paid him for his venison;' and though the gentleman protested, that he had done no more to him, than to every Judge who had gone the circuit,' he strenuously persisted in his refusal. The record was withdrawn.

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He was particularly delicate in avoiding every suspicion of having been previously influenced in his decisions. Being once visited in his chamber by a nobleman of the first rank, who had a suit before him, he absolutely refused hearing from him any statement of the case; saying, that he never received information upon causes except in the open court, where both parties might be heard alike.' Conceiving himself affronted, the Peer complained to the King: but Charles, who understood propriety, bid him be contented; for he verily believed Judge Hale would use himself no better, should he make a similar attempt.'

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Sir Matthew, agreeably to one of the maxims of his favourite Atticus, now began to incline to the dissen

ters,* thinking that they were oppressed in this reign. Many of them, he thought, had merited highly in the business of the King's restoration, and at least deserved that the terms of conformity should not have been made stricter than they were before the war. But what afflicted him most was, that he saw the heats and contentions which followed upon those different parties and interests, took people off from the indispensable things of religion, † and slack

The Hon. Roger North indeed, who in his Life of Lord Guildford' has studiously laboured to depress the character of Hale, represents him as biassed in favour not only of dissenters, but of the popular party in general; a leaning, surely not undesirable in a Judge, in the reign of Charles II.: but he acknowledges, that he did the Crown more justice in the Court of Exchequer than any of his predecessors had done, since he well knew what was law, and always decided accordingly.' His vanity and fondness for subtile distinctions, criminated by this writer, though unfortunate foibles, did not detract from his substantial merits of being a sincere lover of justice, and it's undaunted assertor.

He was of great service, it may here be added, to the city of London after the fire, by sitting in Clifford's Inn to assist in compromising differences between landlord and tenants: so that the sudden and quiet building of the city, which is justly to be reckoned one of the wonders of the age, is in no small measure due to Sir Orlando Bridgeman (then Lord Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, and subsequently Lord Keeper) and himself; since, without the rules then laid down, there might have otherwise followed such a train of vexatious suits, as would perhaps have been little less chargeable than the fire itself had been. Those rules were, more particularly, contrived by Hale; and, in their construction, he found his readiness at arithmetic and his skill in architecture eminently useful.

The example of Sir Matthew Hale, observes the respectable editor of his Moral and Religious Works,' the Rev. T. Thirlwall, will be found in an eminent degree to inculcate the