Lord Shelburne. With these noblemen he continued to act in concert till the spring of the year 1782, when the minister losing the confidence of the house as well as the public, retired from power in the beginning of March, and on the 27th of that month, a new ministry was formed under the auspices of the marquess of Rockingham, constituted first lord of the treasury. Lord Camden was appointed lord-president of the council.

In May, 1786, his majesty, in consideration of Lord Camden's long and faithful services, raised his lordship from the rank of baron to that of earl, by the title of Earl Camden, Viscount Bayham. At this period his lordship, now at the advanced age of seventy-three, had some thoughts of retiring from public business; but his majesty graciously interceded against this resolution, and as his lordship's health and spirits were still competent to his duty, he submitted to the royal pleasure, and continued in office.

The last public act of his lordship corresponded to the first, and the whole tenor of his life was in support of the constitutional liberties of the subject. The bill respecting trial in cases of libel,' came before the house of lords on the 18th of May, 1792. His lordship through age and infirmities had not attended the house for some time; but as this bill was intended to give the power to a British jury to determine on the matter of law as well as fact in the case of a libel-a point which his lordship had unremittingly contended for-he felt it his duty to give it his last support. He therefore attended in his place upon this occasion; and when the order of the day for the farther consideration of the report of this bill was moved, spoke in support of it at considerable length. He began with declaring that he had never intended to trouble their lordships on a public question again, since age had laid its hand upon him, and he had no longer that vigour left that was necessary to maintain a contest of argument, but that he held it to be his indispensable duty, as long as he had sentiments upon the subject, and a tongue to utter them, to stand up and defend his opinion respecting the rights of juries to decide upon the law as well as the fact,—an opinion which was by no means new to their lordships, since it was upon record. The judges, he observed, in stating their opinions, had avoided coming to the point, and had not given any thing like a satisfactory answer to the main question which created all the difficulty. Their opinion seemed to be worded with a careful attention to escape the notice of the only matter that created any thing like a difference of sentiment. The doctrine that all matters of law lay within the province of the judges, and matters of fact only with the juries, was a modern doctrine, and a practice unheard-of in ancient times, arising from a perverse application of that well-known maxim, "In quæstionem legis respondent judices sed in quæstionem facti respondent juratores." Here his lordship explained in what cases the maxim applied, and where it did not; and contended that it had no reference whatever to a trial of a criminal case in the first instance, but must appertain only to questions which come judicially before a court subsequent to a verdict. His lordship then entered into a discussion of the difference between a general verdict and a special verdict, declaring that nothing could be more opposite than the one to the other. In a special verdict the jury found the facts, but referred the law that resulted from them to the judges or

court to decide upon. After stating a direction of Chief-justice Jefferies, his lordship related from memory what had occurred on the trial of Owen the bookseller, before Lord-chief-justice Lee, when he had himself been counsel for the defendant. At that time he said the jury took upon themselves to take the whole of the case, the law as well as the fact, into their own hands, and they acquitted the defendant. From memory, he said he absolutely denied that he ever held a practice dif. ferent from the doctrine that he was then maintaining: if any noble lord was in possession of any notes for that trial which contradicted what he said, he must give way to their authority. In the case of Dr Shebbeare he had turned his back to the court, and directed all he had to say to the jury. His lordship next mentioned the case where the verdict on a trial for a libel had been, "guilty of printing and publishing only," which the court could not get over; and therefore said, if the attorney-general chose it, he might begin de novo. But no new trial ever was instituted, because it was pretty clear from the verdict on the first trial, what the sense of the country was upon the paper in question. His lordship contended that they must destroy the corner-stone of the constitution who denied the jury the right to decide upon both the law and the fact. Those who argued differently might say, "How would they guard against the ill consequences ?" Why, by a new trial, if there should be any legal ground for one. Formerly a jury was liable to be attainted for a false verdict; but the practice of attaint had been long out of use, and the customary mode of correcting the errors of a jury was by a new trial; and a new trial, their lordships would recollect, would carry the matter again before a jury for decision. It was the conscience of a jury that must pronounce the prisoner guilty or not guilty. And why, he asked, were not a jury to be trusted in cases of libel as well as in other concerns? Did they not trust them in all that concerned property and liberty, nay, even life and limb? A libel, his lordship said, must obviously have a seditious tendency,-a tendency to disturb the king's peace, and was not any man of common sense upon a jury as competent as a judge to say, whether a paper charged as a libel had that tendency or not? Another, and a most material point in trials for libel, was the intention, the quo animo with which the person accused published the libel. The intention must be proved, and how could they prove it but by facts? The moment the intention produces the action, it mixes with it, and becomes part of that action; and Judge Jefferies himself had declared, "That no man could judge of another man's intentions but by his words and actions." His lordship, after accurately defining what was the proper proof of a man's criminal intentions, stated the inestimable value of the liberty of the press, and asked, who should be the regulator of the liberty of the press in this country, judges or jurors? Judges, he said, might, as they all knew, be corrupt; but juries never could. He concluded with declaring his intention for moving to strike out such words in the preamble of the bill as in the least degree tended to divide the power of a jury in matters of law as well as fact in cases of libel.

The debate on this bill being interrupted by the sudden illness of Lord Stormont, the house adjourned to the Monday following, when, after a long discussion, the question of commitment was carried by a considerable majority. On the commitment of the bill, the debates

were renewed with additional force of eloquence on both sides. The Lord-chancellor Thurlow" wished to submit to their lordships the necessity of so amending the bill as to make it conformable to what its principle-if any principle it had pretended to be." His lordship then went into a long argument, in which he elaborately contended for the doctrines he had stated in the former debate on the second reading of the bill, justified the learned judges for the opinion they had deliv ered, and asserted that the bill would go out of the house a parliamentary condemnation of the opinions and rule of practice which they had entertained and acted upon in pursuance of the example of their ancestors. Lord Kenyon spoke on the same side. Lord Camden replied to both, and again contended with a spirit and zeal extraordinary in one of his age, that a jury had an undoubted right to form their verdict themselves according to their consciences, applying the law to the fact; if it were otherwise, he said, the first principle of the law of England would be defeated and overthrown. If the twelve judges were to assert the contrary again and again, his lordship declared he would deny it utterly, because every Englishman was to be tried by his country; and who was his country but his twelve peers, sworn to condemn or acquit according to their consciences? If the case were otherwise, and the opposite doctrine was to obtain, trial by jury would be a nominal trial,-a mere form; for in fact the judge, and not the jury, would try the man; and for the truth of this argument, his lordship said he would contend for it to the latest hour of his life,' Manibus pedibusque.' The amendment moved by the lord-chancellor was rejected, and the rest of the bill gone through and agreed to without further amendment.

From the moment that the libel bill received the royal sanction, Camden never afterwards appeared in the house of lords. It was the climax of his political life, and he was contented himself with performing his duty as president of the council, which he regularly attended whenever his growing infirmities would permit him. About a year before his death he again solicited his sovereign for leave to resign; but as his lordship's mind was fully competent to the discharge of that high office, his majesty was graciously pleased to acquaint him, "That he claimed a continuation of his services whilst he was so well able to perform them." In this interval to the time of his death, every indulgence was shown him that was possible. Councils were often previously held at his house, and draughts of deliberations sent him down into the country, where he for the most part resided in the domestic enjoyments of his family, for whom he always manifested a truly parental and affectionate attachment. Finding his health visibly declining about the beginning of the year 1794, he removed from Camden-place in Kent -his country-seat--to his town residence in Hill-street, Berkeleysquare, where, more through the pressure of old age than any immediate disorder, he died at the advanced age of eighty-one, on Friday the 18th of April, 1794.

Lord Camden's character as a judge is utterly without impeachment. In his equal administration of justice, with his spirited and effectual condemnation of general warrants,-his efforts in favour of the rights of election, his unceasing exertions in support of the rights of juries in cases of libel, particularly the last splendid exertion of his eloquence

on this subject, together with his uniform attachment to the constitution upon all occasions, every Englishman must acknowledge him the faithful guardian of their rights and liberties.

"His lordship's parliamentary abilities," says one of his contemporaries, " are unquestionable. In point of contrast to the last noble lord, he is by no means so great an orator in the strict sense of the word; but he is infinitely his superior in depth of reasoning, in logical definition, in the philosophical arrangement and separation of his ideas, and in his knowledge of the fundamental laws of this constitution. He never leaves those openings to his antagonists which eternally recur in the harangues of his learned and noble brother. He seldom addresses himself merely to the passions; and if he does, he always almost addresses them through the medium of true argument and sound logic. In fact, if he was to speak in an audience composed of men of talents and experience only, there is no man in either house would stand the least chance to contend with him for victory; but in merely driving or leading a herd, Lord Mansfield, Lord Chatham, and even Lord Lyttleton, are confessedly his superiors. In respect of delineation, Lord Camden is cool, deliberative, argumentative, and persuasive. He is fond of first principles; he argues closely, and never lets them out of his view; his volubility, choice of language, flowing of ideas, and of words to express them, are inexhaustible. The natural rights of the colonists, the privileges and immunities granted by charter,—and their representative rights as native subjects of the British empire,— are the substrata on which he erects all his arguments, and from whence he draws all his conclusions. His judgment is, if possible, still greater in debate than his mere powers of oratory as a public speaker. He either takes a part early in it, decides the question, or embarrasses his adversaries, or he waits till they have spent all their force, and rests his attack upon some latent or neglected point, overlooked or little attended to in the course of the debate. In fine, as Lord Mansfield is the greatest orator, so we do not hesitate to pronounce Camden by much the most able reasoner in either house of parliament. On the other hand, his lordship deals too much in first principles, denied or controverted by his adversaries, and seems more eager to convince the people of America, though at three thousand miles' distance, that they are right, than to persuade his noble auditory that they are wrong. Many of his speeches bear an inflammatory appearance.'

In the circle of his friends, Lord Camden was pleasant, easy, and communicative, carefully avoiding the lawyer or the statesman. He was the intimate friend of Garrick, and frequently badinaged with that great actor. The following observation has been attributed to him:"Lord Mansfield has a way of saying 'It is a rule with me—an inviolable rule-never to hear a syllable said out of court about any cause, that either is, or is not, in the smallest degree likely to come before me.' Now I, for my part, could hear as many people as choose to talk to me about their causes; it would never make the slightest impression upon me."

The punishment of the stocks having been spoken lightly of by a barrister, on a trial at which he was presiding, he said, leaning over

'Lord Mansfield.

the bench to the counsel," Brother, were you ever in the stocks?" Being answered in the negative, he whispered, " Then I have; and can assure you it is by no means such a trifle as you have represented it." His lordship, it appears, when on a visit at Lord Dacre's, was walking near Alveley in Essex, with a gentleman, whom he requested to open the parish-stocks for him, that he might be enabled to judge of the nature of the punishment. Having done so, his companion, who was remarkable for absence of mind, walked on, occupied with a book, and the earl being unable to extricate himself, asked a countryman to release him. "No, no, old gentleman," quoth the rustic; "you were not set there for nothing."

Sir Edward Hughes.

DIED A. D. 1794.

THIS officer entered the navy at an early age, and served as a midshipman at the capture of Porto Bello with so much credit, that he was promoted to the rank of lieutenant on the 25th August, 1740. In 1747 he obtained the command of the Lark. In 1756 he was nominated to the Deal Castle, of twenty-four guns, and in 1757 became captain of the Somerset, a seventy-four, in which ship he continued until near the termination of the war. In 1758 he served in the successful expedition against Louisburg, under the direction of Admiral Boscawen, and afterwards in that against Quebec, under Sir Charles Saunders.

In 1770 Hughes was reappointed to the Somerset, and three years after proceeded in the Salisbury, of fifty guns, with the rank of commodore, to the East India station, where he remained until 1777. On the 23d of January, 1778, he was promoted to the rank of rear-admiral of the blue, and soon after received the insignia of a knight of the bath. Early in 1779 he became commander-in-chief on the East India station, and in his way out effected the reduction of the French settlement of Goree, on the coast of Africa. On the 7th of March, 1779, he was made rear-admiral of the red, and on the 26th of September, 1780, vice-admiral of the blue. In December, 1780, he attacked and destroyed the squadrons of Hyder Ali, in the ports of Calicut and Mangalore.

M. de Suffrein, one of the ablest naval officers in the French service, soon after arrived in India, for the purpose of opposing the force ander Admiral Hughes. On the 15th of February, 1781, the French admiral was seen off Madras, having with him five or six prizes, which had been taken on his passage. On the 16th five of these, and one of the enemy's vessels with 300 soldiers, besides cannon, military stores, and ammunition on board, fell into the hands of the British. The two fleets neared each other on the succeeding day; but the English van not being able to tack and get into action for the want of wind, an unequal contest of three hours' duration ensued, between eight of the enemy's best ships and four of the British squadron, among which was the admiral's ship, the Superbe. Notwithstanding their superiority the French fleet sustained considerable damage, and, taking advantage of a favourable breeze, hauled their wind and stood away.