CHAP. LIV. 'Political Register,' was tried and convicted for libelling the Lord Lieutenant (Earl of Hardwicke) and the Lord Chancellor, whom he called a strong-built Chancery Cobbett pleader from Lincoln's Inn.' These libels were signed for libel in convicted the Lord Juverna,' and on the letters being given up after convic- A.D. 1804. tion, the startling result appeared that they were written by Mr. Justice Johnson, one of the Judges of the Common Pleas in Ireland. In one of these letters 'Juverna' drew a powerful contrast between Lord Kenyon and the then Chancellor of Ireland. Had it pleased his Majesty to Libel on appoint Lord Kenyon Chancellor over the warm-hearted Chancellor principality, I can well conceive what, in such a situation, he would have done, and also what he would not have done. From a rare modesty of nature, or from a rare precision of self-knowledge, Lord Kenyon would have acted with reserve and circumspection on his arrival in a country, with the moral qualities of the inhabitants of which, and with their persons, manners, and individual characters and connections, he must have been utterly unacquainted. In such a country, torn with domestic sedition and treason, threatened with foreign invasion, and acting since the Union under an untried Constitution, if Lord Haddington had required that Lord Kenyon should direct a Cambridgeshire Earl in all his councils, Lord Kenyon would as soon, at the desire of Lord St. Vincent, have undertaken to pilot a line-of-battle ship through the Needles. Particularly the integrity of Lord Kenyon would have shrunk from such an undertaking if a condition had been added to it, that no one nobleman or gentleman who possessed any estate, rank, or connection in the country, should on any account be consulted; his pride would have spurned at the undertaking. It was said of Lord Kenyon that he loved money, if so, he loved his own money only, and not the money of any other man. Lord 1 In point of fact they were not in Judge Johnson's handwriting, but in that of his daughter.-Personal Recollections of Lord Cloncurry. 2 In a former letter he called the Earl of Hardwicke a very eminent sheepfeeder from Cambridgeshire.' CHAP. The authorship of the libel traced to Judge Johnson. Kenyon, therefore, as Chancellor, never would have made any rule or order, by the effect of which the Secretary of a Master of the Rolls would be deprived of all fees, for the purpose of throwing all those fees into the hands of the Secretary to the Chancellor, the better to enable that Secretary to discharge the pension of some unknown annuitant on his official profits.' The professional pride and the inborn honour of Lord Kenyon would never have suffered him to enter into a combination to sap by underhand means the independence of his brethren on the bench. He would never have suffered the Great Seal in his hands to be used for the purpose of garbling the bench, in order to gratify those who might be contented publicly to eulogise the Government which privately they must have despised; nor would he have employed any of his leisure in searching into offices for precedents by which he might harass the domestic arrangements of others whose pride and integrity could not bend to his views; and thus double the vigour of his attack by practising upon the hopes of some, and endeavouring to work upon the fears of others." This violent attack upon the character of the Chiei Minister of the Crown in Ireland next to the Viceroy created great excitement, and that excitement was increased when it was ascertained to have been written by a Judge. A Bill of Indictment having been found against the writer by the Grand Jury at Westminster, Lord Ellenborough, Chief Justice of England, signed a warrant for the apprehension of Judge Johnson, and he was arrested by virtue of 44 George III. at his house at Miltown, near Dublin. A writ of Habeas Corpus, returnable before the Chief Justice, was argued in the Court of King's Bench, when two of the Judges were for remanding, and one for discharging the prisoner. A new writ of Habeas Corpus, returnable into the Court of Exchequer, was argued there 1 There was for many years considerable dissatisfaction at the Lord Chancellors of Ireland preventing the Masters of the Rolls appointing a secretary. This will more fully appear in the Lives of Sir Anthony Hart and Lord Plunket. 2 State Trials. LIV. for three days, when the majority of the Barons were CHAP. in support of the conviction, Sir William Cusac-Smith being the only Baron who denied the legality of the proceedings. The Judge was tried at the bar in the King's The Judge Bench, Westminster, on November 23, 1805. The then Attorney-General Perceval' stated the case very ably. He regretted being compelled by his duty, as law officer to the King, to charge a learned Judge with being an anonymous libeller against the Government of his Sovereign-an offence the most foreign that could be imagined from every sentiment of a liberal mind, from every honourable feeling, from every principle which should guide the defendant's high and dignified station.' The case for the prosecution being proved, so far as handwriting not written in the presence of witnesses can be proved, Mr. Adam and Mr. Garrow, Counsel for Judge Johnson, made the best defence they could by trying to show the witnesses were mistaken, and that the Judge was not the guilty party. The Jury, after a quarter of an hour's deliberation, thought he was, and said so.2 tried. The Jury find the Judge corre with the While avowing sentiments of toleration, Lord Redesdale guilty. was a bitter and unrelenting opponent to Catholic emancipation. He was the avowed supporter of Protestant ascendency in Church and State. The publication of his The Chancorrespondence with the Earl of Fingal naturally inflamed cellor's the minds of the Irish people against him. This unfor- spondence tunate letter, written on the occasion of his appointing Earl of the Earl of Fingal to the Commission of the Peace, was Fingal. so offensive to his Lordship, as well as to the clergy of his Church and the Irish people, that Lord Fingal wrote a very severe reply, which soon got into circulation, and showed the imprudence of the Chancellor's letter. It was with reference to this correspondence Fox made the caustic 1 Lord Redesdale was married to his sister. 2 The Judge got off the Bench in 1806, only a few days before the summary displacement of the Chancellor he so bitterly attacked. He obtained a retiring pension of 1,2007. a-year, and his younger brother, William Johnson, was appointed a Judge of the Common Pleas in his place. LIV. Fox's remark. CHAP. remark, The people of Ireland have never been famous for discretion. It must no doubt then have been very gratifying to find that a grave English Chancellor, sent over to them, had been guilty of an indiscretion, to which indeed. nothing could be second, for it was of that sort that nothing simile aut secundum could exist.'1 Townsend's Eminent Judges, vol. ii. p. 171. CHAPTER LV. LIFE OF LORD REDESDALE, LORD CHANCELLOR-CONTINUED. СНАР. LV. cellor's corre LORD REDESDALE had a very troublesome correspondence respecting the magistracy. When Valentine, Lord Cloncurry, returned to Ireland in 1806, he was desirous to The Chanbecome a useful country gentleman, and his Lordship's friend, Mr. Burne, a member of the Bar, and of the rank spondence of King's Counsel, addressed a note to Mr. Dwyer, the Cloncurry. Chancellor's secretary, on the subject. No reply reaching him, he wrote to the Lord Chancellor as follows:-1 January 13, 1806. with Lord from Mr. Burne to the Chan cellor. 'My Lord,-Not having received any answer to a note Letter which I sent to Mr. Dwyer some time since, I take the liberty of troubling your Lordship with a few lines on the same subject. Lord Cloncurry, who has lately returned to Ireland, informs me that in those parts of the counties of Kildare and Dublin in which his estates are situate, there are at present from various causes but few resident magistrates. He, therefore, thinks that by his becoming a magistrate, he could be useful to the country. But though I have reason to know that he entertains a very high respect for your Lordship's character, yet not having the honour of a personal acquaintance, delicacy has prevented him from addressing your Lordship on the subject, and he has requested that I should apply on his behalf. Permit me to assure your Lordship that I should not interfere were I not convinced that no person is more anxious, and few more interested, than Lord Cloncurry to preserve the peace and good order of the country. "I have the honour to be, &c., 'JOHN BURNE.' Personal Recollections of Lord Cloncurry, p. 222. |