he proposed a great leading principle to which all his efforts were referable and subsidiary. As the rills and streams of a valley meet and mingle into one torrent, so the arguments, facts, and illustrations in one of his speeches were made to rush together into a common channel, and strike with tremendous impact on the mind."

Not only did Erskine possess a splendid style, but the greatest force of his oratory lay in his powerful delivery. In personal appearance he was of medium height, slender, and finely proportioned. He combined elegance of figure with fascinating manners, and was the kindest and most genial of men. Though of a nervous temperament and rapid in his movements, he was dignified and graceful in his bearing and gesture. His features were regular and handsome. The most striking part of his countenance was his eye, which, when he was speaking, illumined with the glow of his genius. He studied his jury intently, man by man, to note the effect of his every word. According to Lord Brougham, "Juries have declared that they felt it impossible to remove their looks from him when he had riveted and fascinated them by his first glance." His voice was clear and penetrating, at times verging on to sharpness and shrillness, but it was usually full and ample, far-reaching in quality, and often mellow and sweet. Though not so powerful and resonant an organ as that of Chatham or Clay or O'Connell, yet it was agreeable, and capable of the most brilliant flights of eloquence.

The effect of his speaking was little short of marvelous. Lord Campbell calls his first speech in defense of Captain Bailey the "most wonderful forensic effort which we have in our annals." The immediate effect was not to clear Captain Bailey but to make his own fortune.

His demeanor toward the court was always considerate and respectful. He was uniformly courteous to the opposing

counsel, and his power over juries was unrivaled. He impressed and swayed the courts at will. His devotion to his client was complete, and he had great power of application to the mastery of the case in hand. His intensity of purpose, his lively statement of the facts and the law, his great earnestness, his nimble wit and repartee, combined to make him the most fascinating of advocates. When he rose to speak there was no emptying of benches, no yawning of judges, no going to sleep of jurymen; but, on the contrary, every available nook and corner was occupied by people eager to listen to the varied and fascinating periods, the touching language, and the fervid eloquence of the great lawyer.

Erskine's parliamentary career was by no means so brilliant as his work as a lawyer. His manner was better suited to the courts than to the legislature. At any other period than that which boasted of Pitt, Fox, and Burke, who outshone him in Parliament, Erskine would have made his mark; but he lacked political information. He was out of his element when not dealing with legal matters. Living in that period of great orators whose reputation had been made before he entered Parliament, and conscious of the fact that he must sustain his reputation as a great advocate, Erskine felt that he was overshadowed and out of his element. This feeling was heightened by Pitt's attitude toward him when Erskine rose to make his maiden speech in the House. Pitt sat with pen and paper in hand ready to take notes for reply. He wrote but little and gradually relaxed his attention. Finally, with the utmost contempt, he thrust the pen through the paper and threw them both to the floor. Erskine could not recover from this expression of disdain; "his voice faltered, he struggled through the remainder of his speech, and sank into his seat dispirited." But while Erskine was not acknowledged to be a leader in parliamentary affairs, no one denies him the

foremost rank among forensic orators. As Charles Kendall Adams has said: "He was identified with the establishment of certain great principles that lie at the foundation of modern social life—the rights of juries, the liberty of the press, and the law of treason." According to James L. High, "There have been profounder jurists, there have been abler judges, there have been wiser statesmen, but as a forensic orator he stands without a rival and without a peer."

The following are the most celebrated of his great speeches : the "Defense of Bailey," the "Defense of Hardy," the "Defense of Stockdale," the "Defense of Hadfield," the "Defense of Lord George Gordon," the "Defense of Paine," and the "Rights of Juries."

DEFENSE OF STOCKDALE

This speech was delivered before the Court of King's Bench, December 9, 1789. Stockdale was a London publisher, who issued a pamphlet regarding the trial of Warren Hastings, in which the author, a Scottish clergyman, reflects severely on the House of Commons. It was moved by a member of Commons that the attorney-general be directed to prosecute Stockdale for libel on the Commons.

I. DISTORTION OF THE CONTEXT

Gentlemen, to enable you to form a true judgment of the meaning of this book and of the intention of its author, and to expose the miserable juggle that is played off, out of one hundred and ten pages only forty or fifty lines are culled from different parts of it, and artfully put together so as to rear up a libel, out of a false context, by a supposed connection of sentences with one another, which are not only entirely independent, but which, when compared with their antecedents, bear a totally different construction. In this manner the greatest works upon government, the most excellent books of science, the sacred Scriptures themselves, might be

distorted into libels by forsaking the general context and hanging a meaning upon selected parts. Thus, "The fool hath said in his heart, there is no God"; the Attorney-General, on the principle of the present proceeding against this pamphlet, might indict the publisher of the Bible for blasphemously denying the existence of heaven, in printing "There is no God," for these words alone, without the context, would be selected by the informant; and the Bible, like this book, would be understood to meet it. Nor could the defendant, in such a case, have any possible defense, unless the jury were permitted to see, by the book itself, that the verse, instead of denying the existence of the Divinity, only imputed that imagination to a fool.

I mean to contend that if this book is read with only common attention, the whole scope of it will be discovered to be this: that, in the opinion of the author, Mr. Hastings had been accused of maladministration in India, from the heat and spleen of political divisions in Parliament, and not from any zeal for national honor or justice; that the impeachment did not originate from government, but from a faction banded against it, which, by misrepresentation and violence, had fastened it on an unwilling House of Commons; that, prepossessed with this sentiment, the author pursues the charges, article by article, and enters into a warm and animated vindication of Mr. Hastings, by regular answers to each of them; and that, as far as the mind and soul of a man can be visible, I might almost say embodied in his writings, his intention throughout the whole volume appears to have been to charge with injustice the private accusers of Mr. Hastings and not the House of Commons as a body. This will be found to be the palpable scope of the book; and no man who can read English, and who, at the same time, will have the candor and common sense to take up his impression from what is written in it, can possibly understand it otherwise.

Gentlemen, before I venture to lay the book before you it must be yet further remembered that the trial of Mr. Hastings at the bar of the Lords had actually commenced long before its publication.

There the most august and striking spectacle was daily exhibited which the world ever witnessed. A vast stage of justice was erected, awful from its high authority, splendid from its illustrious dignity, venerable from the learning and wisdom of its judges, captivating and affecting from the mighty concourse of all ranks and conditions which daily flocked into it, as into a theater of pleasure. There, when the whole public mind was at once awed and softened to the impression of every human affection, there appeared, day after day, one after another, men of the most powerful and exalted talents, eclipsed with their accusing eloquence the most boasted harangues of antiquity; rousing the pride of national resentment by the boldest invectives against broken faith and violated treaties, and shaking the bosom with alternate pity and horror by the most glowing pictures of insulted nature and humanity; ever animated and energetic, from the love of fame, which is the inherent passion of genius; firm and indefatigable, from a strong prepossession of the justice of their cause.

Gentlemen, the question you have, therefore, to try upon all this matter is extremely simple. It is neither more nor less than this: At a time when the charges against Mr. Hastings were, by the implied consent of the Commons, in every hand and on every table; when, by their managers, the lightning of eloquence was incessantly consuming him, and flashing in the eyes of the public; when every man was with perfect impunity saying, and writing, and publishing, just what he pleased of the supposed plunderer and devastator of nations, would it have been criminal in Mr. Hastings himself to have reminded the public that he was a native of this free land, entitled to the common protection of her justice? If Mr. Hastings himself could have stood justified or excused in your eyes for publishing this volume in his own defense, the author, if he wrote it to defend him, must stand equally excused and justified; and if the author be justified, the publisher cannot be criminal, unless you have evidence that it was published by him with a different spirit and intention from those in which it was written. Could Mr. Hastings have been condemned to infamy for writing this book?