LII. cheapest-trusting all the rest to her. Their union was blessed CHAP. with four children-two sons and two daughters, and the whole household was ever remarkable for all that is excellent and A.D. 1802amiable. 1816. On the resignation of Mr. Justice Chambre, it was thought He is disthat Abbott's well-known desire to be made a Judge would appointed. have been gratified; but James Allan Park had been conducting very successfully some Government prosecutions on the Northern Circuit, to which much importance was attached, and his claims were pressed upon the Chancellor so importunately by Lord Sidmouth, that they could not be resisted. Abbott and his family were deeply disappointed, and his health then rapidly declining, there were serious apprehensions that he would not be able to stand the fatigue of bar practice any longer, and that he must retire upon the decent competence which he had acquired. It is said that he himself was deliberating between Canterbury and Oxford as his retreat, and that he had fixed upon the latter city, where he had always passed his time agreeably, whereas the recollections of the former were not the unmixed "pleasures of memory." CHAPTER LIII. LIII. A.D. 1816. CONTINUATION OF THE LIFE OF LORD TENTERDEN TILL HE WAS ELEVATED CHAP. OPPORTUNELY another vacancy in the Court of Common Pleas soon after arose from the sudden death of Mr. Justice Heath, who, considerably turned of eighty, made good his oft-declared resolution" to die in harness."* Abbott was named to succeed him, and being obliged to submit to the degree of Serjeant-atLaw, he took the same motto which he had modestly adopted for his shield when he first indulged his fancy in choosing armorial bearings-LABORE. He is a puisne in the Common Pleas. The following letter was written by him in answer to congratulations from his old school-fellow-but it cannot be trusted as disclosing the whole truth; for he was ever unwilling to breathe any complaint against Lord Eldon, even when he thought himself deeply aggrieved by the selfishness of his patron: "MY DEAR FRIEND, "Serjeants' Inn, Feb. 15th, 1816. "I have felt highly gratified by the receipt of your kind letter and the warmth of your congratulations on my promotion to the Bench. I can never forget how much my present station is owing to your early friendship. The great object of my desire and ambition is now attained: it has been attained at a time when I had begun to be solicitous about it, as well on account of my advancing age as of a complaint that has for some months affected my eye-lids and made reading by candle light very inconvenient. The comparative leisure I now enjoy has, I think, already been attended with some beneficial effect and an abatement of the complaint. If the offer had not come now, it might have come too late; if it had come much sooner, pecuniary considerations would not have allowed me to accept it. But, like Another peculiarity about him was, that he never would submit to be knighted; being likewise resolved to die, as he did, "JOHN HEATH, Esq." СНАР. LIII. all other men who have obtained the object of their pursuit, I am now beginning to feel the difficulties that belong to it—to tremble lest I should be found unequal to the discharge of the duties of A.D. 1816. my station from want of learning, or talents, or temper, or lest the res still angusta domi should not enable me to keep up the outward state that so high a rank in society requires, without injury to my family. These difficulties, small at a distance, like all others, now appear large to my view-the last of them larger, perhaps, than it ought, though the transition from an income exceeding present calls and daily flowing in, to one receivable at stated periods and of which the sufficiency is not quite certain, is attended with very unpleasant sensations. The employment of the mind, however, so far at least as my very short acquaintance with it enables me to judge, is far more agreeable. The search after truth is much more pleasant than the search after arguments. Some time may also be allowed to those studies which are the food of youth and the solace of age, but to which a man actively engaged in the profession of the law can only give an occasional and almost stolen glance. And some time may be allowed, too, for the discharge of the duties of domestic life, for the calls and the pleasures of friendship, and for that still more important task, the preparation for another world, to which we are all hastening. I have been told that some persons, on their promotion to the Bench, have found their time hang heavy on their hands; but I cannot think this will ever be my own case. "I have another subject of congratulation, for I am to go the Home Circuit, which I shall not have another opportunity of doing for many years. C. Willyams has promised to be at Maidstone during the assizes. I hope he will not be the only old friend I shall meet there.* "With best respects to Lady Brydges, "I remain, "My dear Sir Egerton, "Your very faithful and affectionate friend, "C. ABBOTT." * The vision of his fellow townsmen coming over from Canterbury to see him in the Crown Court, habited in scarlet and ermine, was about to be fulfilled. СНАР. He sat for a very short time as Judge in the Court of Common Pleas; but not a word which fell from him there has been reA.D. 1816. corded, and had he remained there we should probably have known little more of him than the dates of his appointment and of his death in 'Beatson's Political Index.' But he was unexpectedly transferred to another sphere, where he gained himself a brilliant and a lasting reputation. Of this change he gives an account in the following letter : He is trans ferred to the King's Bench. "MY DEAR SIR EGERTON, "Queen Square, May 5th, 1816. "You have probably been already informed that I have been removed from the Common Pleas to the King's Bench. The change was greatly against my personal wishes on account of the very great difference in the labour of the two situations, which I estimate at not less than 400 hours in a year. I had hoped to pass the remainder of my life in a situation of comparative ease and rest; but the change was pressed upon me in a way that I could not resist, though very unwilling to be flattered out of a comfortable seat. I hope you will not think I have done wrong. "I remain, "My dear Sir Egerton, "C. ABBOTT." In his DIARY, begun November 3rd, 1822, but taking a retrospect of his judicial life, he explains that the true reason of his removal was that Lord Eldon wished to make a Judge of Burrough, who, from age and other defects, was not producible in the King's Bench, but might pass muster in the Common Pleas. Having stated how he at first refused and how Lord Ellenborough pressed him to agree, he proceeds :— Upon this I went to Lord Chief Justice Gibbs, at his house at Hayes, in Kent, to consult him. I spoke of the state of my eyes. He said, 'If a higher situation were offered to you, would you refuse it on that account?' I answered, 'I should not think myself justified 66 LIII. A.D. 1816. toward my family in doing so, but my own ambition is quite CHAP. satisfied' (as in truth it was). He replied, "Then you must not let that excuse prevent your removal.' After some further conference, in the course of which he expressed himself with great kindness in regard to losing my assistance in the Common Pleas, it was resolved that I should remove, and upon my return from Hayes I communicated to the Lord Chancellor that I was willing to remove. This account of my removal to the King's Bench may serve as an example of the maxim that to do right is the greatest wisdom-even the greatest worldly wisdom. It was right that I should remove into the King's Bench, and I ought to have done so at the first proposal from the Lord Chancellor; but I preferred Gibbs, C. J., to Lord Ellenborough, as I had a right to do from long acquaintance and many acts of kindness. I preferred my ease to the wish of the Chancellor, for I might have understood his proposal to contain his wish, though he would not tell me so. This I had no right to do, for I owed everything to him and his kindness. As soon as I removed I felt satisfied with myself, though I may truly say I did not by any means expect the consequence that followed two years and a half afterwards. But if I had not removed into the King's Bench, think it certain that I should not have been placed at the head of that Court." On Friday, the 3rd of May, 1816, Mr. Justice Abbott took his seat in the Court of King's Bench along with Lord Ellenborough, Mr. Justice Bayley, and Mr. Justice Holroyd *—and he officiated there as a puisne Judge till Michaelmas Term, 1818. Never having led at Nisi Prius, and having been accustomed to attend to detached points as they arose, rather than to take a broad and comprehensive view of the merits of the cause, he at first occasioned considerable disappointment among those who were prepared to admire him; but he gradually and steadily improved, and before the expiration of the second year he gave * 6 Taunton, 516; 5 Maule and Selwyn, 2. |