CONSIDERED AS A LAWYER BY JOHN HARVARD ELLIS OF THE SUFFOLK BAR BOSTON REPRINTED FROM THE AMERICAN LAW REVIEW For Private Circulation 1868 MADE HIS FIRST SPEECH IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS . MEMBER OF PARLIAMENT FOR WINCHELSEA LORD BROUGHAM. Two most eminent English lawyers, two ex-Chancellors, have died within the last few months, Lord Brougham and Lord Cranworth.1 The latter is known almost wholly as a lawyer, and his distinction was due to his thorough acquaintance with both common law and equity, aided by his political views and his personal address. Lord Brougham, however, was not solely, or principally, celebrated as a lawyer. He has been styled as "probably the hugest human phenomenon of our century," because he is alleged to have united in himself the energy and varied powers of a hundred different men; because he wrote on education, history, biography, international, constitutional, and common law, science, natural theology, every branch of politics, the oratory of Greece and Rome, and even composed a romance; because he was at once a man of science, a mathematician, a metaphysician, a biographer, a historian, a forcible and constant public speaker, a popular leader, a statesman, a lawyer, and a judge; and because, above all, in the exercise of the various qualities which such pursuits required, he maintained as many distinct personalities, and because the identity of the individual playing so many diverse parts scarcely ever appeared.2 Notwithstanding political economy and experience have alike shown that worldly greatness and worldly prosperity are best secured by an assiduous devotion to a single special pursuit, and 1 Lord Brougham died May 7, and Lord Cranworth, July 26. 2 See London Spectator, May 16, 1868. |