for
an opportunity to show that I had any talent for the bar; and when it
occurred I should not have pleaded with such effect, depressed and
mortified as I might have been by long expectation, and its attendant
evils, instead of seizing it with all the energy and confidence of youth
elated with hope." I record this to show how little he was actuated by
arrogance or presumption; I by no means assent to his opinion, on the
contrary, I think he would have waited a very short time for occasion to
exert his prominent talents. He slipt from high ground into the
profession. His rank would have drawn notice upon him, and he had
friends full of eagerness, and not altogether without power. No more is
the partiality which, it is said, was manifestly shown him by Lord
Mansfield, to be deemed a main cause of his success. On the contrary I
am so little inclined to attribute such an effect to it, that I believe
even the hostility of the bench could not have kept Erskine from rising.
His mind was not of the ordinary mould,--he was excited by obstacles.
Such was his temperament, that the damp slight of discouragement which
would have quenched common spirits, by the ardour of his mind would have
been converted into fuel, and have increased the splendour with which he
burst forth at once at the English bar. How was the delay of
opportunity, or the frown of the judge to suppress the eloquence whose
first essay excelled, both in matter and delivery, the latest efforts of
the most experienced speakers in our courts? when he rose Dunning,
Bearcroft, Wallace and others, were in the height of their reputation as
speakers in Westminster Hall. They were even eloquent, according to the
judgment of the day gazed at as the luminaries of the profession; but,
brilliant as they were, they were combust in the splendour of Erskine, on
his first appearance as an orator. This considered, it is in vain to
pretend, that, but for favourable conjunctions which have happened to him
and not to others, the prosperous and devious career on which he
immediately entered, could have been prevented or even long
delayed.--[Alas, no more!]

BRIDGE STREET BANDITTI, _v._ THE PRESS.

REPORT OF THE TRIAL
OF
MARY-ANNE CARLILE,
FOR PUBLISHING A NEW YEAR'S ADDRESS
TO THE
REFORMERS OF GREAT BRITAIN;
WRITTEN BY
RICHARD CARLILE;
AT THE INSTANCE OF THE CONSTITUTIONAL ASSOCIATION:
BEFORE
MR. JUSTICE BEST, AND A SPECIAL JURY,
AT THE
_Court of King's Bench_, _Guild