Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 17.djvu/444

 eye brilliant and captivating, his movements rapid, his voice sharp and clear, and without a trace of Scotch accent. At first his arguments and authorities were laboriously prepared, and read from a manuscript volume. Till his day there were few classical allusions or graces of rhetoric in the king's bench. His oratory, never overloaded with ornament, but always strictly relevant and adapted to the needs of the particular case, set a new example, as his courtesy and good humour considerably mitigated the previous asperities of nisi prius practice. He never bullied a witness as Garrow did, though he fell short of Garrow in the subtlety with which he put his questions. At his busiest — and the preparation of his cases was chiefly done early in the morning before the trial — he never lost his vivacity or high spirits, and no doubt this, his presence, and his rank assisted not a little in his success. 'Even the great luminaries of the law,' says Wraxall (Posthumous Memoirs, i. 82), 'when arrayed in their ermine bent under his ascendency, and seemed to be half subdued by his intelligence, or awed by his vehemence, pertinacity, and undaunted character' (see 'My Contemporaries,' by a retired barrister, in Fraser's Magazine, vii. 178; Lord Abinger's Life, p. 64; Lond. Mag. March 1826, probably by Serjeant Talfourd;, Diary, i. 24).

Like his family Erskine was a whig. He was the intimate friend of Sheridan and Fox. On the formation of the coalition government he was, though at the cost of losing his lucrative parliamentary practice, brought into parliament for Portsmouth, Sir William Gordon, the sitting member, making way for him, and he was promised the attorney-generalship on the first opportunity. He was a favourite of the Prince of Wales, and was appointed his attorney-general in 1783. Only his youth prevented his appointment to the chancellorship of the duchy of Cornwall. This post, which had been in abeyance from the time of its last holder, Lord Bacon, the prince always designed for him; he even during their estrangement after Paine's trial kept it vacant for him, and eventually appointed him to it in 1802. He held the office until he became lord chancellor. Had the king not recovered from his insanity in 1789, Erskine would have been attorney-general in the regent's administration. He was, however, more the prince's friend and companion than his political adviser. His first speech in the House of Commons was on Fox's India bill. So anxious was he to succeed that he asked Fox on the day before what cut and colour of coat he should wear. Fox advised a black one (, Diary, iv. 136). But his speech was a failure. Pitt sat paper and pen in hand ready to take notes for a reply, then, as the speech went on, lost interest, and finally threw away the pen. This byplay crushed Erskine, who feared Pitt. As Sheridan said to him, 'You are afraid of Pitt, and that is the flabby part of your character.' Even in 1805, as the Duke of Wellington told Lord Stanhope, such was the 'ascendency of terror' that Pitt exercised over him, that a word and a gesture from Pitt completely checked and altered a speech of Erskine's at the Guildhall banquet. 'He was awed like a schoolboy at school.' Pitt, who had been once or twice with Erskine in a cause, disliked him, and spoke of him as following Fox in debate and 'weakening his argument as he went along.' He never succeeded in the House of Commons or caught its tone. As he himself said, in parliament he missed the hope of convincing his audience and leading them to the determination he desired. Like Curran he was so great in defending a political prisoner that he seemed tame by comparison on any other occasion. Indeed on 30 Dec. 1796, in answer to Pitt's great speech upon the rupture of the negotiations with France, he actually broke down in moving an amendment to Pitt's motion for an address to the king praying for a vigorous prosecution of the war, and Fox was obliged to take up the thread and speak instead of him. For years after this Erskine hardly spoke. When the coalition government went out and Pitt came in, Erskine went into active opposition. He moved and carried by a majority of seventy-three a resolution that the house would consider as an enemy of the country any one who advised the king to dissolve parliament; he supported Fox's motion for going into committee to consider the state of the nation on 12 Jan., and denounced Pitt's India Bill on 23 Jan. 1784. On 18 Feb. he made his last speech for many years in the House of Commons, in support of the motion to stop supplies, the king having disregarded the house's address praying for the dismissal of ministers. A dissolution followed, and the public indignation at the coalition government destroyed the whigs. Erskine was one of 'Fox's Martyrs' and lost his seat. He returned to parliamentary practice. He appeared for Fox before the House of Commons in July 1784 on the 'Westminster scrutiny,' on which occasion he used great license of speech, and on 3 March 1788, appearing as counsel for the East India Company, 'delivered,' as Lord Mornington wrote to the Marquis of Buckingham, 'the most stupid, gross, and indecent libel against Pitt that ever was imagined. The abuse was so monstrous that the house hissed him at his