Page:Select Essays in Anglo-American Legal History, Volume 1.djvu/518

 504 IV. THE NINETEENTH CENTURY gest the remedies required. He destroyed with his own force the professional and general superstition that the law was perfect, and by his labors and writings he was the means of at length awakening the public mind from its stupor and inertia on this subject. His merits as a critic and censor of the law as he found it in his day and in his country, it is difficult to overvalue. Blackstone, the type of the profes- sional mind of his age, regarded the English law as almost perfection itself; and he found his pleasurable function to be to defend, to exalt, to glorify it.^ Bentham held pre- cisely opposite views. To him the English law, instead of a model of excellence, was a system full of delays, frauds, snares, and uncertainties; and the lawyers were its unthink- ing or interested defenders. His remedy was not to stop leaks in the roof, put in new panes of glass, and otherwise repair the rotten and dilapidated structure, but to demolish it and rebuild anew. By many he was regarded for the greater part of his life as an iconoclast, and by others as a dreamer who labored under the harmless delusion that he was justice against the entanglements and technicalities of our English law proceedings." I do not know that Brougham ever heard of this con- temptuous opinion, although of course he knew that his proposed reme- dies utterly failed to meet Bentham's views of what the case demanded. In 1838 Brougham edited an edition of his own speeches (namely, the one above cited, printed by the Messrs. Black), himself preparing his- torical introductions to the various subjects, and among others to the speech on Law Reform. In tracing the history of this movement, he gives many pages to a consideration of Bentham's personal and intel- lectual qualities, and to a critical estimate of his writings upon law, jurisprudence, and legislation. Brougham excels in biographical sketches and descriptions of this kind, and this seems to me to be one of his best. It will well reward full perusal, but I have space only for the few sentences given in the text. Mr. John Stuart Mill in a note to his article on Bentham (" Dissertations and Discussions," Am. Ed., vol. i., p. 417), commends Brougham's view of Bentham, and explains and extenuates Bentham's " unreasonable attacks on individuals, and in particular on Lord Brougham on the subject of Law Reforms; they were no more the effect of envy or malice, or any really unamiable qual- ity, than the freaks of a pettish child, and are scarcely a fitter sub- ject of censure or criticism." The late eminent law teacher. Professor Theodore "W. Dwight, wrote me, October 24, 1890, in regard to Bentham, thus: "I am astonished at his legal genius, revere him for his kindly disposition even towards brutes, am delighted with his wit and playful repartee, and enjoy his sarcasm, of which, however, he never made use except when the occa- sion required it."
 * See ante Lecture XI.