ADVERTISEMENT.

IT is scarcely requisite to observe to the intelligent reader of this work, that its object is to afford a collective view of the opinions and practical objects of one of the most eminent public men of his age, so far as these objects and opinions are manifested in his writings and speeches.

As it would be totally foreign to the ingenuousness of an honorable mind, to take any part in a publication so personally exhibiting himself, it must be quite unnecessary for the Editor to state, that Lord Brougham has no connection with this work, further than that he forms the subject of it.

This book will be found, not only to embody the most brilliant passages from his celebrated speeches and writings, but also to unfold to the reader the gradual development of his lordship's mind, on those great questions in politics, literature and science, in which learned men of all countries, and all ages, must ever take a lively in

teest.

The Editor has exercised great caution in the extracts which have been made, relying only on the most authentic

reports of Lord Brougham's parliamentary and legal speeches. He confidently trusts that the passages from the Edinburgh Review will be seen to offer such internal evidences as will render their authenticity a matter of no doubt with the reader.

In addition to the selections, the Editor has given a prefatory memoir, which, he feels assured, will be found more complete, accurate, and elaborate, than any that has hitherto appeared. It contains very ample particulars of his lordship's early, and also of his more advanced life, with a philosophical analysis of his mind and writings.

London, April, 1837.

MEMOIR

OF

LORD BROUGHAM.

To write the Biography of a certain class of public men is a task comparatively easy. Draw out a plain and prominent outline of their private personal history, throw in a bold background of the political events of the era in which they have moved, and you complete the picture.

Lord Brougham is eminent among these potentates of the world of mind. So completely is he identified with the interests of his countrymen, that it would be impossible to write his life without making the groundwork of it a history of the age in which he lived. The active part he has taken in the great questions of Reform; the unwearied energy and perseverance, and we may now add the success, of his efforts in the great national cause of the Education of the People; the peculiarity of the position.which he held, in the early part of his career, as regarded the Royal Family; and, lastly, (though it be by no means the last in importance,) his wonderful acquirements, and the power of mind by which he has been all along enabled to display them in such brilliancy;-all these causes have combined to attach to the name of Lord Brougham an interest of no ordinary kind. Indeed, he is deservedly the object of this interest; for although even his warmest admirers admit that he has defects, none, not even his political enemies, hesitate for one moment to accord the homage due to his great talents, and to testify to their conviction that he is a man of no common order.

HENRY BROUGHAM is the eldest son of Henry Brougham Esq., of Scales Hall, in Cumberland, and Brougham Hall, in Westmorland, by Eleanor, only child of James Syme, D. D., and niece of Dr. Robertson, the celebrated historian.

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He is the representative of one of the most ancient families in Cumberland and Westmorland. It was resident in the same spot before the Conquest; for we find that in the reign of Edward the Confessor, Walter de Burgham was in possession of the manor of Burgham; and that it was afterwards restored to him, though upon another tenure, in the reign of the Conqueror. In the 22d of Henry II., Odard de Burgham was Lord of the Manor, and was third in command of those officers who were fined for giving up Appleby Castle to the Scots. In the reigns of William III., George I., and George II., the heads of the family were High Sheriffs of Cumberland. Thus an aristocrat by birth, the strength of mind required for the reception and maintenance of opinions tending so much to the depreciation of the honors derived from birth alone, as those of Lord Brougham have done, was great.

Mr. Brougham had five other children besides the present Lord. JAMES, successively M. P. for Tregony, Downton, and Winchelsea; PETER, who died in 1800 at St. Salvador on his passage to the East Indies; JOHN, a wine merchant at Edinburgh, who died at Boulogne in 1829; WILLIAM, late fellow of Jesus College Cambridge, afterwards M. P. for Southwark, and now a Master in Chancery; and MARY. LORD BROUGHAM was born in St. Andrew's Square, Edinburgh, on the 19th of September 1779, and he received the rudiments of education at the High-school of the town, then under the direction of Dr. Adam. At the age of fifteen, he entered the University. Here he very soon became a member of a debating club, where he early exhibited proofs of those remarkable oratorical powers, which have since made him so distinguished in the world.

When little more than sixteen years of age his mental powers were sufficiently developed, and that too, in branches of knowledge seldom mastered in youth, to enable him to compose a paper containing a series of optical experiments, and an exposition of principles connected with that science. This remarkable production of precocious intellect was thought so worthy of attention, that it was printed in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society for 1796. In 1798, he sent another communication, having for its object the development of certain principles and views of geometry, which, also printed in the Philosophical Transactions, excited considerable interest in the scientific world; so much so that the vanity of the juvenile author was gratified by the publication of a reply by Professor Prevost of Geneva, as well as by favorable notices in several continental publications. In addition to these palpable evidences of early proficiency, he carried on a correspondence in Latin, on scientific subjects, with several of the most distinguished philosophers on the continent. One of the speedy consequences of these studies, and their fruits, was, that in March 1803 he was elected a fellow of the Royal Society, although his formal admission did not take place till the spring of 1804.

A characteristic anecdote is told of him while at college. It was a custom with himself and a few of his companions, to meet period

ically at the house of Professor Robison of Edinburgh, where, among other amusements, they all drew lots for subjects on which each was to have an essay prepared by the next day of meeting. This was done for practice, of course. It happened on one evening that Mr. Brougham did not arrive at the appointed time, so that his companions at last drew lots, leaving one unopened for him. When he arrived, he did not much like this unceremonious mode of disposing of his chance, and he showed symptoms of annoyance. His chagrin was not a little increased when he found, on opening the paper, that the subject allotted to him, was a very abstruse question in chemistry, to which science he had not at that time paid any attention. The Professor seeing him perplexed, encouraged him, "Come, come Brougham," said he, "I am quite sure you will do it if you try." The result was that he applied himself to study the subject, and notwithstanding that he was at the time actively engaged in other intellectual pursuits, he at the expiration of a few days produced a paper, the research, ability, and brilliancy of which, drew down the most hearty applause from the Professor, and placed it above all competition with the other essays.

While he was yet a young man, Mr. Brougham left Edinburgh, and accompanied Mr. Stuart, (now Lord Stuart de Rothsay,) on a tour through the northern countries of the continent. This was necessarily of essential service to him, contributing, as it did, to rub off the rust acquired during a scholastic life, while it tended to that expansion of the mind which foreign travel invariably produces.

His return from this tour was the time chosen for his call to the Scotch bar, where his peculiar talents and marked individuality soon distinguished him from the crowd, and rendered him an object of favorable speculation among his brother barristers, as well as to such of the public as had an opportunity of witnessing his exertions. His searching sarcasm, his withering irony, his grappling argumentative powers, all those qualities which, augmenting the volume of his vast learning, and the quickness of his legal aptitude, afterwards made him the most singular man of his age, were here first nursed into life and activity. Long, indeed, before his name had become familiar among his countrymen, and his fame had flown abroad into the world, his admiring friends, and the more deep-thinking observers among the public, had predicted for him a brilliant and a useful

career.

The vast store of knowledge, of men, in literature and in law, which he had amassed during the earlier years of his life, and that irrepressible desire of communicating his ideas of engaging in mental conflict, whether with men or with the principles of their knowledge-which seems to have all along been a necessity of the nature of the man, soon found a vent more open and appropriate than that which the Scotch courts of law presented; for it was about this time that he became a member of a literary society, since celebrated, called the Speculative Club. Of this fraternity, Dr. Southey, the late Mr. Francis Horner, Mr. Jeffrey, afterwards the able editor of the Edinburgh Review, and now a Scotch Judge, Mr. Murray,