A Great Chancellor and Other Papers

This historic book may have numerous typos, missing text or index. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. 1901. Not illustrated. Excerpt: ... A great advocate The story I have to tell is of a great advocate; the greatest, indeed, who has ever adorned our profession; who in a time of imminent national peril did more to preserve the liberty of the citizen and the freedom of the press than any other one man in England; whose earlier career was marked by privation, poverty, and suffering, followed by a professional success so instantaneous, so dazzling, and so complete that even now, after the lapse of more than a century, it reads more like romance than reality. It is the story of Thomas, Lord Erskine, who from the humble rank of a midshipman in the English navy rose by force of his unaided genius to be the foremost figure at the bar of England, and to be Lord High Chancellor of Great Britain. As you pass down the High Street of the old town of Edinburgh, which leads from the castle to Holyrood palace, midway between the two stands a dingy and venerable stone house of four or five stories in height. A tablet set into the wall just over the doorway records the fact that in this house Thomas Erskine was born on the 1oth day of January, 1750. He was the third and youngest son of the tenth Earl of Buchan, a family singularly prolific in talented men, not a few of its representatives having attained distinction in the learned professions. His education was begun at the high school of Edinburgh, where he spent several years. The family being obliged, through pecuniary difficulties, to leave Edinburgh and remove to St. Andrews, he was sent to the grammar school at that place, where he obtained a somewhat meager store of classical learning. He afterward pursued a select course at the University of St. Andrews, although he was never regularly matriculated as a member of the University. While at St. Andrews, young...