[Born at Perth, in Scotland, 1704. Died in 1793. Aged 88.]
This great lawyer and upright man was the fourth son of David, Lord
Stormont. In 1718, being thirteen years old, he travelled to London on
the back of a pony, and went to Westminster school. In 1723, he
proceeded to Oxford. At both places of learning he was distinguished for
his industry and classical attainments. Afterwards entered at Lincoln’s
Inn, and in 1730 was called to the bar. He gradually made his way
upward. In 1742, Solicitor General; 1744, Chief Justice of the King’s
Bench; 1776, advanced to the dignity of an Earl. Other events are worthy
of record. During the Gordon Riots of 1780, the Protestant mob, thinking
him favourable to the Catholics, burned his house to the ground, and
cruelly destroyed a valuable collection of books and manuscripts. He was
the principal victim of the merciless assaults of Junius; and he is
remembered in the law books, as the chief justice who, in the celebrated
case of “Rex _v._ Almon,” arising out of one of Junius’s Philippics,
attempted in vain to withdraw the cognisance of the question of libel
from the jury, to vest it in the court. In politics Lord Mansfield was a
Tory; as a judge he recognised nothing but his duty to his sovereign and
his country; and he must always be regarded as one of the greatest men
that have adorned the judgment-seat in England. He possessed an amazing
clearness of apprehension, vast learning, and marvellous perspicuity of
exposition. His love of justice was the sole passion that absorbed his
otherwise calm nature, and his integrity was spotless. In law, as in
religion, the mind of Mansfield was essentially liberal. It was a saying
of Burke’s that Murray--superior to the technicalities of his
profession--still made the liberality of law keep pace with the demands
of justice and the actual concerns of the world, conforming our
jurisprudence to the growth of our commerce and of our empire. He was
thus the founder of the commercial law of England, which before his time
had no existence. Brave as a lion on the bench, Mansfield exhibited
unaccountable timidity as a statesman. He quailed before Lord Chatham,
whose schoolfellow he had been, and who mercilessly opposed him from the
school to the grave. The illustrious rivals now lie quietly side by side
in Westminster Abbey.
[From the statue in Westminster Abbey. Executed in 1801 by Flaxman.]