e[16] as any layman who before or since his time has
held the seals, Thomas Parker raised himself to the woolsack by great
talents and honorable industry. As an advocate he won the respect of
society and his profession; as a judge he ranks with the first
expositors of English law. Although for imputed corruption he was hurled
with ignominy from his high place, no one has ventured to charge him
with venality on the bench. That he was a spotless character, or that
his career was marked by grandeur of purpose, it would be difficult to
establish; but few Englishmen could at the present time be found to deny
that he was in the main an upright peer, who was not wittingly
neglectful of his duty to the country which had loaded him with wealth
and honors.

Amongst the many persons ruined by the bursting of the South Sea Bubble
were certain Masters of Chancery, who had thrown away on that wild
speculation large sums of which they were the official guardians. Lord
Macclesfield was one of the victims on whom the nation wreaked its wrath
at a crisis when universal folly had produced universal disaster. To
punish the masters for their delinquencies was not enough; greater
sacrifices than a few comparatively obscure placemen were demanded by
the suitors and wards whose money had been squandered by the fraudulent
trustees. The Lord Chancellor should be made responsible for the
Chancery defalcations. That was the will of the country. No one
pretended that Lord Macclesfield had originated the practice which
permitted Masters in Chancery to speculate with funds placed under their
care; attorneys and merchants were well aware that in the days of
Harcourt, Cowper, Wright, and Somers, it had been usual for masters to
pocket interest accruing from suitors' money; notorious also was it
that, though the Chancellor was theoretically the trustee of the money
confided to his court, the masters were its actual custodians. Had the
Chancellor known that the masters were trafficking in dangerous
investments to the probable loss of the public, duty would have required
him to examine their accounts and place all trust-moneys beyond their
reach; but until the crash came, Lord Macclesfield knew neither the
actual worthlessness of the South Sea Stock, nor the embarrassed
circumstances of the defaulting masters, nor the peril of the persons
committed to his care. The system which permitted the masters to
speculate with money not their own was execrable, but