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Updated: May 26, 2025
As soon as Erskine was mentioned as a likely person to be Lord Chancellor, rumors began to circulate concerning his total unfitness for the office; and no sooner had he mounted the woolsack than the wits declared him to be alone and in the dark.
He felt sure that, with her powers of development, after a little private training in the social forms of London under his supervision, and a little help from a governess if necessary, she would make as good a professional man's wife as could be desired, even if he should rise to the woolsack.
I therefore advised him to reserve all he had to say upon the subject for the noble lord upon the woolsack; nay, I very graciously added, that upon this condition I would go to the house myself to give his arguments and eloquence a fair hearing, and that I would do my best to keep myself awake.
I heard the noble and learned Lord on the Woolsack, in a speech of admirable eloquence and knowledge, propose a new judicial system at the commencement of the Session; but I tell him, that it is impossible for the Government ultimately to decide on that question; and that if a Parliament be constructed on the new plan, it will be too strong for Government on that question.
He looks round him; he sees the Church leading nowhere, with much greater certainty of expense than income, and demanding a huge sum for what is irreverently termed 'gate money; he sees the Bar, with its high road leading indeed to the woolsack, but with a hundred by-ways leading nowhere in particular, and full of turnpikes legal tutors, legal fees, rents of chambers, etc. which he has to defray; he sees Physic, at which Materfamilias sniffs and turns her nose up.
I have worn my knees by writing on them on the old back row of the old gallery in the old House of Commons; and I have worn my feet by standing to write in a preposterous pen in the old House of Lords, where we used to be huddled together like so many sheep, kept in waiting, say, until the woolsack might want re-stuffing.
Murray, we are told, might have been an Ovid, but he preferred to be Lord Chief Justice, and to wear ermine instead of bays. Perhaps Mr. Warrington might have risen to a peerage and the woolsack, had he studied very long and assiduously, had he been a dexterous courtier, and a favourite of attorneys: had he been other than he was, in a word.
But then, there must be no marriage with a penniless governess. If he would only marry his cousin one might say that the woolsack was won. Then came Lucy's letter; the pretty, dear, joking letter about the "duchess," and broken hearts. "I would break my heart, only only only " Yes, he knew very well what she meant.
It is recorded that as he limped from the woolsack to the bar of the House of Lords, he once muttered to a young peer, who watched his distress with evident sympathy "Ah, my young friend, if I had known that these legs would one day carry a Chancellor, I would have taken better care of them when I was at your age."
It seems a much finer thing to be a Lord Chancellor in England than a Chief Justice in Massachusetts; yet the same abilities which carried the chance-transplanted Boston boy, Lyndhurst, to the woolsack, might, perhaps, had he remained in the land of his birth, have found no higher goal than the bench of the Supreme Court. Mr.
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