Thomas, Baron Erskine. Born at Edinburgh, Jan. 21, 1750: died at Almondell, near Edinburgh, Nov. 17, 1823. A British jurist and forensic orator. He was the youngest son of the tenth Earl of Buchan. He attained celebrity as a pleader in supporting charges of corruption advanced against Lord Sandwich, and subsequently distinguished himself especially in his defence of Stockdale (1789), Thomas Paine (1792), and Hardy, Horne Tooke, etc. (1794). He represented Portsmouth in the House of Commons from 1790 till raised to the peerage as Baron Erskine, of Restormel, on his being made lord chancellor in Lord Grenville’s administration (Feb., 1806–April, 1807.)

Personal

  ERSKINE.—Mr. Barrister Erskine is famous for taking opium in great quantities (I have often heard him speak in praise of it), and if he proceeds in this manner, it is apprehended that his political faculties will die of too large a dose, of which there are many symptoms already. But all my observations are confined to his political conduct and career. They are not extended to his professional character, which is great, or to his private life, which no man is inclined to respect more than myself. But his political doctrines are plunging and dangerous. Mr. Erskine has informed the publick, that He has not the talents of a statesman, which, in common with the kingdom at large, I readily admit as part of my political creed; though it is so very plain, as hardly to be an article of faith.

  Although the new administration has been formed in general of the public men of the greatest talents and highest character of any in the country, yet there are some few appointments which have been received by the public with such dissatisfaction, and none the more than that of Erskine to be Lord Chancellor. The truth undoubtedly is, that he is totally unfit for the situation. His practice has never led him into courts of equity; and the doctrines which prevail in them are to him almost like the law of a foreign country. It is true that he has a great deal of quickness and is capable of much application; but, at his time of life, with the continual occupations which the duties of his office will give him, and the immense arrear of business left him by his tardy and doubting predecessor, it is quite impossible that he should find the means of making himself master of that extensive and complicated system of law, which he will have to administer.

  The House of Commons was not his theatre of glory; he was perpetually losing there the fame he won in Westminster Hall.

  Erskine, too! Erskine was there; good, but intolerable. He jested, he talked, he did every thing admirably, but then he would be applauded for the same thing twice over. He would read his own verses, his own paragraph, and tell his own story, again and again.

  He was a most zealous and efficient labourer in the cause of the Greeks, not that he had much knowledge or judgment—for what he wrote on the subject was vague and declamatory—but there was a charm about his name which was transferred to the cause, and the master-string of his mind, vanity, had been touched, its vibrations trembling to the very end of his existence.

  At such a moment, Tom Sheridan came up to me, and asked me, whether I had a mind for a high treat? “I won’t keep you long,” said he, “you may rely upon THAT.” He then led a few of us, among whom was George Gordon, the brother of Pryse Lockhart, a fellow of “infinite jest and most excellent fancy,” to the opposite end of the building; where, standing in an arm chair, with the back foremost, we saw THOMAS ERSKINE, the prince of pleaders, but the most unfortunate of politicians, with an audience of about a dozen dry Scotch Whigs, delivering, with almost insane expression, a whole ARMATA of political oratory. The thing was irresistible. We honoured the orator with the “Hear! hear!” very exactly imitated, of several well-known voices in the House of Commons; and effected our retreat, undiscovered by the learned and honourable gentlemen.

  Latterly Erskine was very poor; and no wonder, for he always contrived to sell out of the funds when they were very low, and to buy in when they were very high. “By heaven,” he would say, “I am a perfect kite, all paper; the boys might fly me.” Yet, poor as he was he still kept the best society.

  In singular contrast to Sir S. Romilly came Lord Erskine; of whom indeed I saw much less, and at a time, when his faculties had undergone a decay more obvious to others than to himself. He was still eager and eloquent in speech; but with a certain restless irritability, augmented, as I believe, by narrow worldly circumstances, and by what he deemed the neglect of his former political friends. His mind too, when I knew him, was clouded by little foibles and superstitions. I well recollect a dinner at Sir S. Romilly’s, where his agitation was curiously shown in his reluctance to sit down as one of thirteen at table, and by the relief he expressed when the fourteenth guest came in. His life had been one of meteoric kind throughout, vanishing in mist as such lives are prone to do.

  Erskine was a man of undoubted genius, and yet was a great spendthrift of the personal pronoun, so much so that Cobbett, who was printing one of his speeches, stopped in the middle, stating that the remainder would be published when they got a new font with sufficient I’s, and that it was proposed Erskine should take “the title of Baron Ego of Eye, in the county of Suffolk.”

  At first his arguments and authorities were laboriously prepared, and read from a manuscript volume. Till his day there were few classical allusions or graces of rhetoric in the king’s bench. His oratory, never overloaded with ornament, but always strictly relevant and adapted to the needs of the particular case, set a new example, as his courtesy and good humour considerably mitigated the previous asperities of nisi prius practice.

  The life of Lord Erskine should exercise a salutary influence on the younger members of the legal profession. It should constantly remind them of the noble objects of that noble profession, and impress indelibly upon their minds the great truth, that its highest rewards can only be attained by the advocate who is honest and strictly faithful to the interests of clients. He should be, as Erskine was, imbued, deeply, with the principles of patriotism and a passionate love of his highly honourable profession. He should ever be, too, keenly alive to human suffering, and reflect that it often becomes his duty to remember the forgotten, to attend the neglected, and visit the forsaken.

General

  The style of Lord Erskine’s speeches may be regarded as a model for serious forensic oratory: it is clear, animated, forcible, and polished; never loaded with meretricious ornament, never debased by colloquial vulgarisms. It is throughout sustained in a due and dignified elevation. The illustrations which it exhibits are borrowed rather from the intellectual than the material world; and its ornaments are rather those of sentiment than of diction. It receives little assistance from the quaintness of similes or the brilliancy of metaphors; and is addressed rather to the reason and to the passions than to the taste and imagination of the hearer. It seldom displays any attempt at wit, or even at humour; though occasional instances of the latter quality are to be found in the Speeches. Although the speeches of Lord Erskine cannot be compared with those of Mr. Burke, for the varied exposition of philosophical principles in which those extraordinary productions abound; yet they not unfrequently display a profound acquaintance with human nature, and with the springs of human action.

  Erskine’s rapidity and lightness of wing made him often take the first hasty view of his own mind, than search in books for technical knowledge and arbitrary authority. His arguments, therefore, are commonly addressed rather to the general condition of men’s understandings than to professional auditors. All these distinctions may be exemplified and illustrated, by a comparison of his speeches with those of the other law lords in the Banbury case, as reported by Le Marchant.

  In considering the characteristics of his eloquence, it is observable that he not only was free from measured sententiousness and tiresome attempts at antithesis, but that he was not indebted for his success to riches of ornament, to felicity of illustration, to wit, to humour, or to sarcasm. His first great excellence was his devotion to his client, and in the whole compass of his orations, there is not a single instance of the business in hand,—the great work of persuading,—being sacrificed to raise a laugh or to excite admiration of his own powers. He utterly forgot himself in the character he represented. Through life he was often ridiculed for vanity and egotism,—but not from anything he ever said or did in conducting a cause in a court of justice. There, from the moment the jury were sworn, he thought of nothing but the verdict, till it was recorded in his favour. Earnestness and energy were ever present throughout his speeches—impressing his argument on the mind of his hearer with a force which seemed to compel conviction. He never spoke at a tiresome length; and throughout all his speeches no weakness, no dulness, no flagging is discoverable; and we have ever a lively statement of facts,—or reasoning pointed, logical, and triumphant.

  Though not a poet in the highest sense of the term, Mr. Erskine was wont to indite stanzas with more success than usually inspires the gentle tinklings of orators and statesmen. From the date of his residence in college—when he wrote the clever parody to his barber upon Gray’s ode, “Ruin seize thee, ruthless king,” to the octo-syllabic stanzas by which he would fain in old age have whiled away farmers from the cruel sport of shooting rooks—he was never wholly innocent of rhyme.

  The published Speeches of Thomas, Lord Erskine are among the finest specimens we have of English forensic oratory.

  In the long roll of names which have shed lustre on the British bar, there is no one about which clusters more of romance and undying interest than about that of Thomas Erskine…. A profound lawyer he was not, nor was he well equipped with the learning of the schools. It was not to its rhetorical qualities, to its beauty of diction, its richness of ornament or illustration, its wit, humor, or sarcasm, that his oratory owed its power and charm, but to its matchless strength and vigor. His first great excellence was his devotion to his client, to which all other considerations were made secondary. Self was forgotten in the character he personated. From the moment the jury were sworn he thought of nothing but the verdict till it was recorded in his favor. The earnestness, the vehemence, the energy of the advocate were ever present throughout his speeches, impressing the arguments upon the mind of the hearer with a force which seemed to compel conviction. He resisted every temptation to mere declamation which his luxuriant fancy cast in his path, and won his verdicts not more by what he said than by what he refrained from saying. Even in the longest of his speeches there is no weakness, no flagging; but the same earnestness of manner, the same lively statement of facts, the same luminous exposition of argument, from beginning to close…. Of all the lawyers that ever lived, Erskine seems to have made the closest approach to the ideal of a forensic advocate.