ve listened to a man of this class in his own
court, and who have witnessed the skill with which he analyzes and
digests a vast mass of evidence, or reconciles a crowd of precedents
which at first sight seem contradictory, scarcely know him again when, a
few hours later, they hear him speaking on the other side of Westminster
Hall in his capacity of legislator. They can scarcely believe that the
paltry quirks which are faintly heard through a storm of coughing, and
which do not impose on the plainest country gentleman, can proceed from
the same sharp and vigorous intellect which had excited their admiration
under the same roof, and on the same day." And to this keen distinction
between an English lawyer, and an English lawyer as a member of the
House of Commons, may be added the peculiar kind of sturdy manliness
which is demanded in any person who aims to take a leading part in
Parliamentary debates. Erskine, probably the greatest advocate who ever
appeared in the English courts of law, made but a comparatively poor
figure in the House of Commons, as a member of the Whig opposition. "The
truth is, Erskine," Sheridan once said to him, "you are afraid of Pitt,
and that is the flabby part of your character."

But Macaulay, in another article, makes a point against the leaders of
party themselves. His definition of Parliamentary government is
"government by speaking"; and he declares that the most effective
speakers are commonly ill-informed, shallow in thought, devoid of large
ideas of legislation, hazarding the loosest speculations with the utmost
intellectual impudence, and depending for success on volubility of
speech, rather than on accuracy of knowledge or penetration of
intelligence. "The tendency of institutions like those of England," he
adds, "is to encourage readiness in public men, at the expense both of
fulness and of exactness. The keenest and most vigorous minds of every
generation, minds often admirably fitted for the investigation of truth,
are habitually employed in producing arguments such as no man of sense
would ever put into a treatise intended for publication, arguments which
are just good enough to be used once, when aided by fluent delivery and
pointed language." And he despairingly closes with the remark, that he
"would sooner expect a great original work on political science, such a
work, for example, as the Wealth of Nations, from an apothecary in a
country town, or from a minister in the Hebrides