MEMOIR OF LORD BROUGHAM. LORD BROUGHAM is without doubt one of the most remarkable, as he is one of the greatest men of the time. At an age long beyond that at which the most active men, who have had no such strain as he has had upon their physical energies and intellectual powers, seek quietude and repose, Lord Brougham is still working away as vigorously as in his youth for the good of his fellowcreatures. And when we find him coming face to face with one of those great subjects which used to call forth all the powers of his prime, we find that the old war-horse has lost little or none of that fire and magnificent action which carried the younger charger triumphantly through so many sternly-fought battles in the days. gone by. Look, for instance, at his vindication of himself on Wednesday night, (Oct. 14, 1863,) from the imputation in American newspapers, that he undervalued the emancipation of the slave. "I," exclaimed Lord Brougham, "undervalue the emancipation of the slave! Why, have all the advocates of slave emancipation done half so much for the liberation of the slave and the abolition of slavery as I myself have done? At the very beginning of my parliamentary life, it was signalised by the Act of 1811, the one which, of all the many Acts I have had a hand in passing, gave me the most real satisfaction-namely, the Act abolishing the slave trade. Before that Act the slave trade was considered a mere act of contraband, and was punished as contraband; and my Act raised, or rather sunk it to its real denomination of a crime, and a bad crime, punishable by fourteen years' transportation. And that Act effectually extinguished the slave trade in so far as British subjects were engaged in it. Then, in 1836 or 1837, I shortened the period of negro apprenticeship, and occasioned the complete liberation of the slaves three or four years before it otherwise would have taken place. Then I may add—though it is a trifle as compared with these exertions-I may add a very great personal sacrifice. I gave up a very considerable estate in Barbadoes, and a large estate in the county of Durham, which a very kind-hearted gentleman had left me by a will which he afterwards revoked and cancelled on my refusing to abstain from my proceedings for the liberation of the slavesthough he said in his letter in which he called on me to take that part-'I assure you that your peasantry on your Barbadoes estate are better off than your peasantry on your Durham property.' It was enough to make one's mouth water to hear of having a good property in the county of Durham. I should not have valued the Barbadoes estate so much. But I declined proceeding as he desired, and sent him a copy of a report of my friend the Duke of Richmond's committee of the House of Lords on slavery, after which I ceased to have any correspondence with that excellent proprietor, and a few years afterwards he died, and no doubt his will was cancelled. I only state these things to shew that for anybody to suppose that I am slow, or unwilling, or hesitating on the question of the abolition of negro slavery, is really a most monstrous delusion. All my efforts were towards emancipation without violence, emancipation by change of law and change of system, and never did I lend the slightest countenance to such acts of violence against the slaveholder. Much as I detest slavery, and much as I pitied those who were its victims-and I pitied among its victims the masters as well as the slaves themselves -never did I raise my finger or raise my voice for an instant in support of any violent proceeding to effect their emancipation. Consequently, when I heard of North America issuing a proclamation to emancipate the slaves, I knew very well before they confessed it that it was not for the sake of emancipating the slaves, but for the sake of beating the whites. It was a measure of hostility, not an act of emancipation, and a measure of hostility of the most detestable kind, by raising an insurrection of the slaves against their masters, which only the much-enduring nature of the negro prevented from succeeding, so that the great mischief that was intended against the whites did not take place. But I must beg your pardon for having defended myself from this ridiculous charge, which could only have arisen from utter delusion, the parties who made it being under the influence of that delusion. Now they themselves call out for the extermination of the whites, not in order to liberate the blacks, but to restore the Union. The Union and not the negro is the object of the Emancipation Act, and to that Act therefore I could not give any kind of support. It is a most unhappy contest, most miserable in all respects, but I hope we shall continue on the principle on which we have hitherto proceeded-of interfering with neither party. The Federals are angry with us because we don't join with them, and the Confederates are angry with us because we do not acknowledge them; but if we were to acknowledge them we should only prolong this horrible and miserable contest. We have nothing to do with either one party or the other. We are bound to maintain our own independence of them, and leave them to fight it out among themselves, only heartily praying that their fight may be as short as possible." There is the ring of the old metal here, as clear and sonorous as half a century ago, when Brougham was but thirty-two, instead of, as he is now, eighty-four, The space at our disposal will only admit of our telling in the briefest, in fact, baldest, possible way, the leading facts of Lord Brougham's life. It would require many volumes to do anything like justice to it; for he is indeed one who removes from the category of hyperbole the poet's lines "A man so various, that he seems to be For the facts in the following sketch we are chiefly indebted to one of the Messrs Chambers's excellent Papers for the People, and to the article in their still more valuable, and marvellously cheap, Encyclopædia. Henry Lord Brougham and Vaux, although essentially the archi tect of his own fortunes and position, claims to be descended from a very ancient family. The genealogists trace his descent from the De Burghams, an English territorial family settled in Cumberland and Westmoreland long before the Slys and others came in with the Conqueror. Where Brougham Hall now stands, Walter de Burgham in the time of Edward, Saint and Confessor, was possessed of the manor of De Burgham. It appears certain that one Henry Burgham or Brougham married, towards the close of the seventeenth century, "the fair Miss Slee, daughter of Mr Slee, of Carlisle, a jovial gentleman of three hundred a-year." It is also sufficiently clear that the Broughams were high sheriffs of Cumberland in the reigns of George I. and II. This ancient stock intermarried by its representative, Henry Brougham, of Scales Hall, in Cumberland, and Brougham Hall, Westmoreland, with a highly-respectable Scotch family, 22d August 1777, viz., Eleanor, only child of the Rev. James Syme, by Mary, sister of Dr Robertson, the historian of Charles V. and America. This marriage had numerous issue, the eldest of whom was Henry, afterwards Lord Brougham and Vaux, and Lord High Chancellor. He claims also to be heir-general and representative of the ancient and noble House of Vaux. His motto, discovered by the Heralds' Office to be the ancient one of his house, is "Pro rege, lege, grege ;" and his crest is a hand and arm in armour holding a luce, argent on the elbow a rose, gules. Lord Brougham was born in St Andrew Square, Edinburgh, on the 19th September 1779, and received his preliminary education at the High School of that city. When only fifteen years of age he entered the university. An insatiable thirst after and love of knowledge, a singular power and aptitude for acquiring it, appear to have characterised him from the first dawn of his discursive, ambitious, and splendid career. He was little more than sixteen when he transmitted to the Royal Society a paper describing a series of experiments in optics, and an exposition of the principles which govern that science. The Royal Society thought sufficiently well of the paper to print it in the "Philosophical Transactions" of 1796. They conferred the same honour in 1798 upon a dissertation he sent them on "Certain Principles in Geometry." European travel, such as then could be obtained, was not wanting to the development of his lively intellect. He made a tour through the northern countries of the Continent in company with Mr Stuart, afterwards Lord Stuart de Rothesay, and on his return was duly called to the Scottish bar, in 1800, where he practised with fair success till the year 1807, when he finally took up his abode in London. Many and various were the modes by which, in addition to the study and illustration of Scots and civil law, he kept his restless energies in full activity. He was a distinguished member of the Speculative Society of Edinburgh-the leading spirits of which, in 1802, started the world-famous Edinburgh Review; to which Brougham was from the first a copious contributor, writing fourteen articles in the first three numbers. Nay-and it is certainly a curious particular in the history of our literature-one entire number was written by Henry Brougham. The smart review of Lord Byron's "Hours of Idleness," which called forth in reply the bitter sarcasm of the "English Bards and Scotch Reviewers," was from Brougham's pen. In 1803 he published a treatise in two volumes, on the "Colonial Policy of the European Powers," which attracted a good deal of attention. In this work the most careless eye will readily discern the germ of those peculiarities of temperament, thought, and style, which afterwards developed themselves into such luxuriance. Vigour and facility of expression, bitter sarcasm, and singular brilliancy of illustration, run through volumes intended to elucidate and enforce his theory of colonial policy-viz., that the European powers should put down the slave trade. Whilst thus writing and reviewing, Mr Brougham continued to practise at the Scottish bar, and gradually acquired a reputation, which was very well deserved, as a bold and able speaker. On one occasion he appeared before the House of Lords as one of the counsel in the case of Lady Essex Ker, involving the title and estates of the dukedom of Roxburgh. At last, impatient b |