Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 39.djvu/420

 bust by Nollekens is at Trinity Hall, Cambridge. Portraits of him by Allan Kamsay and Copley are in the National Portrait Gallery. His portrait by Reynolds, painted in 1785-6 and engraved in stipple by Bartolozzi, is in the possession of the present Earl of Mansfield. Another by David Martin hangs in the hall of Christ Church, Oxford.

Mansfield's fine person, elegant manners, and sprightly wit rendered him a great favourite with ladies. Pope celebrates his charms in 'Imitations of Horace,' Carm. iv. i. He married, on 20 Sept, 1738, Lady Elizabeth Finch, seventh daughter of Daniel, second earl of Nottingham, and sixth earl of "Winchilsea, by whom he had no issue. She died on 10 April 1784, and was also buried in the North Cross, Westminster Abbey.

As a parliamentary debater Mansfield was second, if second, only to Chatham, to whose stormy invective and theatrical tones and gestures, his 'silver-tongued' enunciation, graceful action, and cogent argument formed a singular contrast. 'In all debates of consequence,' wrote Lord Waldegrave in 1755 {Memoirs, p. 53), 'Murray, the attorney-general, had greatly the advantage over Pitt in point of argument ; and, abuse only excepted, was not much his inferior in any part of oratory : 'and Horace Walpole, one of his bitterest enemies, confessed, in reference to his speech on the Habeas Corpus Extension Bill of 1758, that he 'never heard so much argument, so much sense, so much oratory united' (Memoirs of the Reign of George II, ed. Lord Holland, iii. 120). On the other hand, he was conspicuously lacking in the 'præfervidum ingenium' usually characteristic of his countrymen, and was charged by his enemies with pusillanimity. His spiritless conduct in the debate on Wilkes's exclusion from the House of Commons (1 May 1770), and his subsequent evasion of Lord Camden's challenge in regard to the law of libel, severely damaged his reputation. At the bar his mere statement of a case, by its extreme lucidity, was supposed to be worth the argument of any other man. As a statesman his fame is tarnished by his blind adhesion to the policy of coercing America, nor is his name associated with any statute of first-rate importance. Macaulay terms him, however, 'the father of modern toryism, of toryism modified to suit an order of things in which the House of Commons is the most powerful body in the state.'

As a judge, by his perfect impartiality, inexhaustible patience, and the strength and acumen of his understanding, he ranks among the greatest who have ever administered justice. Such was his ascendency over his colleagues, that during the first twelve years of his tenure of office they invariably, though by no means insignificant lawyers, concurred in his judgment. The first case of a final and irreconcilable difference of opinion occurred in 1769, on the question whether literary copyright in published works existed at common law, or was a mere creation of statute. Mansfield held the former alternative, but the latter was eventually affirmed by the House of Lords (cf., Reports, iv. 2395 ; Pamphleteer, ii. 194 ; Part. Hist. xvii. 971 et seq.) A scholar and well read in the civil law, Mansfield was charged by Junius (Letter xli.) with the black offence of corrupting the ancient simplicity of the common law with principles drawn from the corpus juris, and his preference of reason to routine offended the pedants of Westminster Hall. The silly technicality which required a deed to be indented he abrogated by holding any deed an indenture which had not its edges mathematically straight. In the once famous case of Perrin v. Blake he startled the profession by deviating from the narrow way of the rule in Shelley's case (, Reports, i. 672). His decision, however, was reversed by the exchequer chamber, and sharply criticised by Charles Fearne [q. v.] in his classical treatise on 'Contingent Remainders.' By reversing the decision of the court of session in the case of Edmondstone v. Edmonstone (, Scotch Appeal Cases, ii. 255) he 'struck off,' says Lord Campbell, 'the fetters of half the entailed estates in Scotland.' At Guildhall, where he trained and attached to himself a select body of special jurors who were regularly impanelled for mercantile causes, and taught him the usages of trade, he did much, by the unerring instinct with which he grasped, and the lucidity with which he formulated, the general principle underlying each particular case, to forward the work, already begun by Sir John Holt [q. v.], of moulding the law into accordance with the needs of a rapidly expanding commerce and manufacture. He thus converted our mercantile law from something bordering upon chaos into what was almost equivalent to a code. He also improved the law of evidence and the procedure of the courts. His humorous maxim, 'No case, abuse plaintiffs attorney,' and his advice to a colonial governor ignorant of law, on no account to give reasons for his judgments, have often been quoted.

Mansfield was a sincere Christian, but so careless of times and seasons that he once proposed to try a case on Good Friday, and only abandoned the idea in deference to the protest of one of the leading counsel against