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Title: Atrocious Judges

Lives of Judges Infamous as Tools of Tyrants and Instruments of Oppression

Author: John Campbell, Baron Campbell

Editor: Richard Hildreth

Release Date: June 24, 2012 [eBook #40076]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1

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ATROCIOUS JUDGES.

LIVES OF JUDGES
INFAMOUS
AS
TOOLS OF TYRANTS AND INSTRUMENTS
OF OPPRESSION.

COMPILED FROM THE JUDICIAL BIOGRAPHIES OF
JOHN LORD CAMPBELL,
LORD CHIEF JUSTICE OF ENGLAND.

WITH AN APPENDIX,
CONTAINING THE
CASE OF PASSMORE WILLIAMSON.

Edited, with an Introduction and Notes,
BY
RICHARD HILDRETH.

NEW YORK AND AUBURN:
MILLER, ORTON & MULLIGAN.
New York: 25 Park Row.—Auburn: 107 Genesee Street.
1856.

Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the Year 1855, by
RICHARD HILDRETH,
In the Clerk’s Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts.

STEREOTYPED AT THE
BOSTON STEREOTYPE FOUNDRY.

ADVERTISEMENT.

The text of the following Book of Judges has been derived from Lord Campbell’s Lives of the Chief Justices, and Lives of the Chancellors, with only a few verbal alterations for the sake of connection, some transpositions, the omission of some details of less interest to the American reader, and the insertion of a few paragraphs, enclosed in brackets, thus [ ].

Most biographers have been arrant flatterers. Lord Campbell is a distinguished member of that modern school, which holds that history is of no dignity nor use, except so far as it is true; and that the truth is to be told at all hazards and without reserve. Hitherto social and political position, obtained no matter by what means, has in general secured not only present but future reputation. It can hardly fail to be a serious check upon those who struggle for distinction to understand, that, however they may cheat or dazzle their contemporaries, they must expect to encounter from posterity a Rhadamantine judgment.

The object of the present work, prepared as it is in the interest of justice and freedom, and designed to hold up a mirror to magistrates now sitting on the American bench, in which “to show virtue her own feature, scorn her own image, and the very life and body of the time his form and pressure,” will, I hope, induce Lord Campbell to pardon the liberty I have ventured to take with his writings.

R. H.

Boston, November 20, 1855.

CONTENTS.