Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume XI.djvu/131

MANSFIELD 123 is now produced. Mansfield is the seat of the state soldiers' orphans' home, and contains 7 post offices, 16 schools, and 4 churches. MANSFIELD, a city and the capital of Rich- land co., Ohio, situated near the centre of the county, 65 m. N. by E. of Columbus ; pop. in 1850, 3,557 ; in 1860, 4,581 ; in 1870, 8,029. It is compactly built on a beautiful and com- manding elevation in the midst of a fertile and populous region. It has a number of hand- some public buildings, including several of the churches and school houses, and the court house, which cost $227,000. Many of the residences are elegant and surrounded by spa- cious grounds. Four railroads intersect here : the Sandusky, Mansfield, and Newark; the Pittsburgh, Fort Wayne, and Chicago ; the At- lantic and Great Western ; and the Mansfield, Coldwater, and Lake Michigan. The whole- sale trade is important, amounting to about $5,000,000 a year. The annual value of manu- factures is about $3,000,000, the principal arti- cles being threshing machines, saw mill and f oundery products, machinery, woollens, paper, boilers, carriages, furniture, flour, &c. There are three national banks, a state bank, an in- surance company, water works on the Holly system, five public school houses, four weekly newspapers (one German), a library of 3,500 volumes, and 15 churches. MANSFIELD, William Murray, earl of, a British jurist, born at Scone, Perthshire, March 2, 1705, died in London, March 20, 1793. He was the third son of Viscount Stormont, a Scottish peer of Jacobite tendencies, several of whose family became deeply involved in the rebellion of 1745. Removed to London at an early age, he was educated at Westminster school, and at Christchurch college, Oxford. In 1731 he was called to the bar, and being of a vivacious tem- perament, with the advantages of aristocratic connections and signal personal graces, he be- came a companion of wits and men of letters, and in particular gained the friendship of Pope. Almost at the outset of his career a new class of business, that of appeals from the court of session in Scotland to the house of lords, fell into his hands, and his emoluments were very large. His advance was rapid, and in 1743 he was appointed solicitor general, having the year previous entered parliament for Borough- bridge, for which place he was afterward re- turned in 1747 and again in 1754. As a legis- lator he displayed an eloquence " of which the clear, placid, and mellow splendor was never for an instant overclouded," and a depth and variety of knowledge which brought him into great prominence, while at the same time his peculiar political views exposed him to the at- tacks of Pitt, who frequently taunted his rival with his Jacobite connections and presumed sympathies. In 1747 he was one of the man- agers for the impeachment of Lord Lovat, and performed his part in so generous a spirit as to elicit praise from the prisoner himself. In 1754 Mr. Murray was appointed attorney gen- eral, and in 1756 succeeded Sir Dudley Ryder as chief justice of the king's bench, and was created Baron Mansfield of Mansfield in the county of Nottingham. So important were his parliamentary services to his party, that ex- traordinary efforts were made by the duke of Newcastle to retain him in the house of com- mons, as a government leader. He was offered various sinecure offices with large salaries, and finally a pension of 6,000 a year, but steadily refused them all, regarding the situation of chief justice as preferable to the responsibilities and labors which the chancellorship, the pre- miership, or any other merely political office involved. Contrary to general usage, though not to precedent, he became when appointed chief justice a member of the cabinet ; and in 1757, while temporarily holding the office of chancellor of the exchequer, at the request of the king he effected the coalition between New- castle, Pitt, and Fox, which resulted in the cel- ebrated first administration of Chatham. He participated on important occasions in the pro- ceedings of the house of lords, where Lord Camden and subsequently Chatham became his chief antagonists. On questions affecting pop- ular privileges or influence he showed a decided leaning toward an arbitrary government. The stamp act, which he aided in preparing, found in him an earnest and able advocate, and the doctrine of taxation without representation was by no one more persistently defended. In ref- erence to the agitation in the North American colonies which preceded the repeal of the act, he held that the Americans must first be com- pelled to submit to the power of parliament, and must exhibit "the most entire obedience" before an inquiry could be had into their griev- ances. The utterance of opinions like these marked him out as an object of popular dislike and party violence, and for many years he was attacked with a vindictiveness which found its fullest expression in the letters of Junius, by whom "all the resources of the English lan- guage were exhausted in desolating and unpun- ished party libels on the chief justice of Eng- land." He nevertheless performed his judicial duties with dignity and courage; and on the occasion of the application of Wilkes in 1768 for the reversal of his outlawry, when public excitement had reached an almost unprece- dented height, and the chief justice had been repeatedly threatened in anonymous letters, he announced to the .partisans of Wilkes, who crowded Westminster hall, his contempt for the means that had been taken to deter the court from its duty. His unpopularity was still further increased by his direction to the jury in the trial-of Woodfall, the- publisher of Junius, "that the printing and sense of^the paper were alone what they had to consider of." This attempt to restrict the right claimed by juries, in criminal prosecutions for libel, of determining whether a paper was a libel or not, brought upon Lord Mansfield the charge of arrogating to himself the functions of a le-