Bury for making him a judge. The Speaker produces, as vouchers, Bury's book of accounts, in which the minute and entry were found after his death. How strange does the accusation sound in the ears of those, who in the present day properly deem it profanation to suspect the judicial bench of corruption, that, at the beginning of the last century, a Lord Keeper Wright, a Lord Chancellor Macclesfield, a Master of the Rolls (Trevor) should each have had an itching palm, and each been polluted with gifts! If our judges are not more wise or learned, they are, at least, more irreproachable than their predecessors, far purer than of yore.

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CHAPTER XI.

THE revelation of corrupt practices, which ensued on the impeachment of Lord Macclesfield, may raise a cynical laugh in those who sneer at the existence of public virtue, but must be read with sorrow and indignation by the better patriots, who regard the character of their country's great men as a portion of their vested inheritance. The tale of shame was clear neither concealed nor veiled in mystery.

and open,

Shortly after the lamentable and ruinous catastrophe of the South Sea frauds, whispers had begun to circulate of deficiencies in the funds belonging to the suitors in the hands of the Masters in Chancery. One of them, Mr. Dormer, had speculated in that stock to a desperate extent, and had applied, as it afterwards appeared, the suitors' money in payment of losses, to the amount of more than thirty thousand pounds. It was not for some time that these rumours assumed any distinct shape of accusation, or involved the Chancellor himself in any suspicion of corrupt and irregular practices. "Sed vires acquirit eundo.' The rumour became at length so loud and general as to convince

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Lord Macclesfield (after several vain attempts to solder the grievance or disguise its extent) of the impossibility of his retaining office. Accordingly, in the beginning of the year 1724-5, he surrendered the great seal into the reluctant hands of the king, who transferred it to the custody of Sir Joseph Jekyll, the Master of the Rolls, Mr. Baron Gilbert, and Mr. Justice Raymond, with a special injunction to take into their immediate consideration the accounts of the Masters in default, and the means of making restitution to the despoiled suitors.

Lord Macclesfield's resignation of the seals took place on the 4th of January. On the 23d, the presentation to the House of Commons of a petition from the Earl of Oxford and Lord Morpeth, as guardians of the person and estates of the Duchess Dowager of Montagu, a lunatic, complaining of a heavy deficiency in moneys belonging to her estate in the hands of one of the Masters in Chancery, gave occasion to a long debate, in the course of which much severe animadversion was cast on the conduct of the ex-chancellor." The discussion was adjourned, for further and still more serious consideration, to the 12th of February, that the friends of the Prince of Wales might concert the plan of some proceeding directly criminating the corrupt earl. On that day, after reading certain reports from a committee of the privy council, which had been appointed to examine into the subject, Sir George Oxendon, an influential member of the Prince's party, concluded a severe accusatory speech, the charges in which he founded upon the statements of the reports, by moving to impeach the earl of high crimes and misdemeanors in his office of Chancellor.

Parliamentary History, vol. viii.

His delinquencies, Sir George said, were many and of various natures, but might be resolved into three heads; first, that he had taken into his own hands the estates and effects of many widows, orphans, and lunatics, and either had disposed of part of them arbitrarily to his own profit, or connived at the officers under him making advantage of them; secondly, that he had raised to an exorbitant price the offices and places of the Masters in Chancery, and, in order to enable them to pay him those high prices and gratui ties for their admission, had entrusted in their hands large sums of money belonging to suitors in Chancery; and, thirdly, that in several cases he had made divers irregular orders :-"So that," the orator concluded, "in his opinion, this first magistrate in the kingdom was fallen from the height of the dignities and honours to which he had been raised by the king's royal bounty and favour to the depth of infamy and disgrace."

The motion having been warmly supported by several members of the same party (among whom was that mirror of political purity, Doddington, then one of the lords of the treasury), the government not venturing, in the temper of the House, to give it their unqualified resistance, made a half show of opposition in a proposal to refer the whole subject anew to a select committee. Pulteney, who then filled the office of cofferer of the household, pretended that it was derogatory to the dignity and prerogative of the House to found an impeachment upon the reports, without a previous examination into the proofs that were to support it. His motion was opposed even by several subordinate members of the government, and the impeachment carried by a majority of 273 votes to 164.

Sir George Oxendon, on the following day, solemnly impeached the earl at the bar of the House of Lords. The tide of public opinion ran strongly against him; for his was not a crime to enlist popular sympathy in his favour. Staffordshire, it was said, had produced three of the greatest rogues that ever existed-Jack Sheppard, Jonathan Wild, and Lord Chancellor Macclesfield. The same exalted fate, which had requited the public labours of the two former worthies, was not very obscurely glanced at, as the fitting recompense of the doomed peer :

The articles of impeachment were twenty-one in number, prefaced by a preamble, invidiously setting forth the favours and dignities which had been heaped upon the accused, in full measure and running over, and the oath he had taken duly to administer his office, and well and truly to serve the king and his people, poor and rich, after the law and usages of the realm. These articles were reducible to five distinct heads of accusation. The first ten charged the impeached earl with specific acts of corruption in the admission to their offices of several Masters in Chancery, from one of whom he was alleged to have extorted, as the price of his appointment, no less a sum than £6000; from two others the sum of 5000 guineas each, and from the rest different sums, varying in amount from eight to fifteen hundred guineas, aggravated in one instance by the circumstance that the Master, in whose room the corrupt appointment was made, had died insolvent, deeply in debt to the suitors of the court, and that the office was trafficked for without any provision for securing the satisfaction of those debts. The eleventh and twelfth articles charged Lord Macclesfield with admitting to the office of Master, for

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