William Murray, Earl of Mansfield (1705-1793) and Henry
Brougham, Lord Brougham and Vaux (1778–1868) were both distinguished lawyers,
respectively, though Scots, Lord Chief Justice of England and Lord Chancellor
of Great Britain. Quite different in their political allegiances, they both
were ardent reformers of the law and notable opponents of the firmly entrenched
yet evil vested interest of Slavery.
Murray was a scion of the Scottish aristocracy, fourth son
of Lord Stormont and born in Scone (pronounced “Scoon”) Palace outside Perth.
His father had Jacobite sympathies but young Murray prudently distanced himself
from such ideals and later sought Hanoverian preferment. He was well educated
at Perth Grammar School and in 1718 moved to the leading public school of
Westminster, becoming a scholar and then on to Christ Church, Oxford
University. He became a barrister at Lincoln’s Inn in 1726 and specialised in
pleading Scots cases at the House of Lords, making his reputation defending
Edinburgh from disfranchisement after the infamous Porteus riots.
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| William Murray, Lord Mansfield |
He entered politics in 1742, really as a stepping-stone to
judicial promotion, soon becoming Solicitor-General and proving a highly
effective Commons spokesman for the governments of Pelham and Newcastle, later
as Attorney-General. He was described as “beyond comparison the finest orator
in the House of Commons”. In 1754 the sudden death of the Lord Chief Justice
created a vacancy and a reluctant government, loth to lose Murray’s services,
appointed him LCJ and raised him to the peerage as Lord Mansfield. Mansfield
held this office until 1788, although he ceased to sit as a judge in 1786.
His legal reforms were very wide-ranging. Reorganisation of
procedures made the Law less expensive and speedier. The Kings Bench Division
became the busiest court displacing the archaic Court of Common Pleas. The
medieval commercial law was completely overhauled following European patterns.
Judgements on copyright, uberrima fides
(utmost good faith) in insurance contracts and commercial consideration
galvanised other legal developments. The slavish following of precedent was
modified by the recognition of equity. A US academic praised him as "not
only the greatest common law judge but the greatest judge in Anglo-American
legal history".
Mansfield’s most famous judgement was handed down in 1772 in
fugitive slave Somersett’s Case, “[Slavery]
is so odious, that nothing can be suffered to support it, but positive law.
Whatever inconveniences, therefore, may follow from the decision, I cannot say
this case is allowed or approved by the law of England; and therefore the black
must be discharged.”
The judgement was on quite narrow grounds and Mansfield was
cautious about the economic consequences of the abolition of slavery. But his
judgement was understood to mean that slavery was unlawful in England and some
15,000 slaves were immediately freed. The abolitionists were encouraged
mightily, although the slave trade and slavery itself persisted many years more
in the British Empire overseas. Yet a vital cornerstone had been broken in the
dam of Slavery.
Mansfield held high office, even presiding in the Lords on
the Woolsack in the absence of a Lord Chancellor, but he was too logical to
become politically adept. He was an enemy of William Pitt the Elder, Earl of
Chatham and when the popular hero Chatham collapsed dramatically with a
soon-to- be fatal fit in the Lords in 1778, a famous painting by the American
J.S.Copley depicts Mansfield with his back turned in indifference as the other
Lords crowd around the stricken statesman.
Mansfield finally retired in 1788 and lived out his last
years at his exquisite house and lovely park at Kenwood, between Hampstead and
Highgate in North London, which the distinguished Scots architect Robert Adam
had renovated. The Library at Kenwood is a delight, an oasis of civilisation, a
wholly appropriate place of repose for a man of Mansfield’s great gifts.
The Library at Kenwood,
built for Lord Mansfield by Robert Adam
The merits of Henry Brougham, later Lord Brougham and Vaux
(pronounced "Broom and Vokes") were of a different kind. The Brougham family
hailed from Westmorland in the North of England but had moved to Edinburgh
where Henry was born. He was an admired pupil at the Royal High School and was
accepted at Edinburgh University at the age of 14. He principally read Natural
Sciences, but also Law, becoming a Fellow of the Royal Society at the age of
25. He was admitted to the Scottish Bar in 1800 and to the English Bar at
Lincoln’s Inn in 1808.
Brougham was not a rich man and he co-founded The Edinburgh Review, a quarterly
literary magazine supporting the Whigs, to supplement his income and he was
initially its most energetic contributor. His scientific pieces were often
ill-informed and he attacked Wordsworth and the Lakeland poets, but he was a
tireless promoter of political causes including popular education and the
abolition of the slave trade. The Edinburgh Review became an influential
publication and Brougham was a well-known figure by the time he moved to London
in 1804.
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| The Young Brougham |
Brougham mixed with the Radical supporters of the Whigs but
had to wait until 1810 until he entered Parliament. He soon made his mark as a
frequent and persuasive speaker, criticising Lord Liverpool’s government for
its repressive measures against organised labour and parliamentary reform, culminating in the “Peterloo
Massacre” in Manchester in 1819. Brougham was not a supporter of universal
suffrage but pressed for an extension of the franchise and was considered a Radical
leader.
He leapt to national prominence as the advocate defending
Princess Caroline of Brunswick, wife of the dissolute and unpopular George, Prince
Regent. Their marriage had long been unhappy and she had lived rather
scandalously on the Continent. George wished to divorce her and set up an
investigatory commission to examine her behaviour. The commission found against
Caroline and a Bill of Pains and Penalties was presented to Parliament.
Brougham defended her brilliantly and although the Bill scraped through the
Commons, Lord Liverpool decided to drop it in the light of strongly
pro-Caroline public opinion. Brougham was the hero of the hour. Caroline
subsequently tried to gate-crash George IV’s coronation ceremony in 1821 and
was repulsed in humiliating and undignified circumstances; later bought off by
the Government, she died soon after. This ill-favoured lady was certainly an
adulteress, but her faults were nothing to those of George IV.
Brougham, allied with Lord Grey, campaigned in the 1820s for
parliamentary reform, the abolition of slavery and for improvements in
education with ragged schools and mechanics’ institutes for “the great
unwashed”, a phrase attributed to Brougham. He was also one of the founders of
University College, London in 1828. He had a few scrapes; he was blackmailed by
the strumpet Harriette Wilson, whose client he had been, to pay to avoid
mention in her memoirs. Unlike the robust Duke of Wellington – “Publish and be
damned” – Brougham quietly paid up and his name was not disclosed. He was also
one of the many lovers of Lady Caroline Lamb, wife of Lord Melbourne, future
Whig Prime Minister.
In 1830 the Whigs at last took power and Grey appointed
Brougham Lord Chancellor raising him to the peerage as Lord Brougham. The great
Reform Bill of 1832 was guided through Parliament with Brougham, somewhat the
worse for drink, making an impassioned plea for support in a 3-hour speech in
the Lords. The Bill passed to great popular enthusiasm. It was followed in 1833
by the Abolition of Slavery Act, ending slavery in the British Empire, a cause
for which Brougham had campaigned for many years. Brougham was Lord Chancellor
for only 4 years and most of his concerns then were political; he did speed up
court procedures and oversaw the creation of the Central Criminal Court.
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| Brougham as Lord Chancellor |
Brougham never held office again but he functioned as a voluble
member of the House of Lords on judicial matters making proposals on the court
system, real property law, municipal reform, marriage and divorce. This
colourful politician remained popular and became vice-chancellor of Edinburgh
University in 1860, making a speech on the merits of a classical education. He
kept up his scientific interests and found time to design the 4-wheeled, one
horse carriage, always known as the “brougham”. In 1835 he was delayed on a
journey in the South of France and discovered the fishing village of Cannes.
Entranced by the place, he built a house there and it eventually became a very fashionable resort. His statue dominates the sea-front and the famous Promenade de la Croisette. He died there in 1868, aged 89.
Thus two Scots lawyers were at the centre of great events in
the 18th and 19th centuries. Mansfield the calculating
man of parts rising effortlessly to high office, Brougham the dynamic
risk-taker and aspiring polymath; both united by the humanity towards their
fellow-men so typical of their native country.
SMD
25.07.13
Text Copyright © Sidney Donald 2013
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