entertained by no means an unfriendly opin ion of him. As a judge, Thurlow has usually been rated very high; but the tendency of mod ern opinion has been to estimate him some what lower. Mr. Butler has described his decrees as strongly marked by depth of legal knowledge and force of expression, and by the overwhelming power with which he propounded the result; but they were, he adds, too often involved in obscurity, and sometimes reason was rather silenced than convinced. This method, as it has been remarked, is precisely that which we might expect in a judge who is indebted to the learning of others for the judgments which he delivers, and who is not himself familiar with the chain of reasoning the conclusion of which constitutes his decree. It is well known that most of his judgments were framed by Mr. Hargrave. Thurlow has been charged with allowing the causes in his court to accumulate; but we doubt if this accumulation was not rather due to the imperfect constitution of the court than im putable to the Chancellor himself. When on the bench, he is said to have restrained with difficulty those forms of expression which, though habitual to him, would hardly have suited the dignity of his office. He disliked, and always checked in his court, any tendency to what is sometimes called eloquence. He once cut short a flowery advocate in the middle of a metaphor and bade him read his brief. His behavior to wards the bar was rough and uncouth, but not overbearing. He was probably too con scious of his deficiencies in knowledge of law to have attempted such conduct. On the day before the court rose for the long vacation, the Chancellor was leaving without making the then customary valedictory ad dress to the bar; he had nearly reached the door of his room when a young barrister said to a friend in a loud whisper : " He might at
least have said, D—n you! " Whether Thur low overheard this remark, or whether until that moment the matter had escaped him, we cannot tell; but he returned to his chair and made the usual complimentary speech. At the Council-board Thurlow was both wayward and timid. Pitt used to declare that he proposed nothing, opposed every thing, and agreed in nothing; a character like that which a Spanish historian gave the unfortunate Prince Don Carlos. He was, he said, " Non homo, sed discordia," — not a man, but the spirit of discord personi fied. Very often matters of state were dis cussed at the Cabinet dinners; and Thurlow, when the cloth was cleared, refusing to join his colleagues in their deliberations, would get up, quit the table, and stretching him self at full length on three chairs, go to sleep or at least affect to do so. With such a colleague as this it cannot be supposed that Pitt could have much community of feeling. The dislike, however, seems to have been mutual. Thurlow very freely expressed his opinion on Pitt's conduct in supporting the Opposition in the impeach ment of Warren Hastings. The grounds on which Mr. Pitt supported the impeachment differed substantially from those on which the Opposition proceeded. Pitt grounded his support on the fact that the conduct which Hastings pursued towards CheytSing (whom he considered as a criminal, but whom the Whigs regarded as an oppressed Prince) showed an intention of punishing him too severely. This intention, Pitt con tended, was criminal; and for this intention he should vote for the impeachment. When Lord Thurlow heard of Pitt's reason for supporting Mr. Burke's motion, he repro bated with vehemency the injustice of grounding an impeachment on a mere in tention. " If a girl," he said in his growling style, " had talked law in these terms, it might have been excusable."
