UKOUGHAM, LORD. 



iiitouaiuM, LORD. 



(inning, goaded oat of all power of self-control, started 

 up uiti criod " It i false ! * and the Speaker had to interpoM and 

 arrange tbo matter in parliamentary form by enforcing mutual 

 explanations. In the same seatioii Mr. Brougham ipoke on Colonial 

 Slarvry and on !My4 in Chancery. In 1824 his greatest effort wai 

 a sprrch on a motion censuring the Itomerara authurities for tlieir 

 imxaeiliiigi in the CM of the Rev. John Smith, an Independent 

 missionary, who, on lutpicion of baring incited the slaves to revolt, 

 was tried in a very illegal manner, and while under sentence of death 

 expired in prison. In 1825 the expulsion of a missionary from Bar- 

 bados* furnished a text of the lame kind ; and in that and the following 



session, Colonial Slavery, the Catholic claim*, Chancery Reform, and 

 the Cora Laws, were the chief topic* of Mr. Brougham's oratory. On 

 the accretion of the Coming ministry in 1827, he signalised hi* 

 independence in the Houn by defending the chief meuuree of that 

 ministry, declaring that, " aince Mr. Canning had established a system 

 of liberal and manly foreign policy," he should have his support. On 

 this occasion he even sat on the ministerial benches, though declaring 

 that be had bound himself not to take office under Mr. Canning. In 

 this peculiar position of independence ho continued his parliamentary 

 activity under the administrations of Lord Goderich and the Duke of 

 Wellington, after Canning's death ; taking part in the debates which 

 led to the famous passing of the Catholic Relief Hill by Wellington's 

 ministry (April, 1S29), but at the same time pressing questions of his 

 own. Among these was Law Reform, on which on February 7, 1828, 

 he delivered a speech of six hours' length, containing the germs of 

 many improvements in this important department of administration 

 which have since been cnrried into effect. In 1829 he had the satis- 

 faction of explaining to the House the proceedings of the great Charities 

 Commission, the appointment of which he had procured eleven years 

 before, and which during that interval had investigated into the 

 condition and history of no fewer than 19,000 of the charitable 

 foundations of Great Britain. 



During the period of Mr. Brougham's life embraced in the last 

 paragraph (1816-1830), his prodigious activity hod by no means been 

 confined to his duties in the House of Commons. Of bis numerous 

 pleadings before the law-courts during this time many of them on 

 questions of public and political interest we cannot take account ; 

 suffice it to say that, after having occupied the distinguished position 

 of attorney-general for the quten, which gave him for a time precedence 

 at the bar, and after having on the queen's death resigned thin prece- 

 dence, he was permanently invested with the silk gown in 1827. His 

 various literary contributions to the ' Edinburgh Review ' during the 

 same period would form a separate item in the account of his occu- 

 pations. More important in some respects are the services he rendered 

 out of parliament to the cause of popular education. We have seen 

 how in 1816 he stood forth in parliament in behalf of this cause by 

 procuring the appointment of a committee to examine into the state 

 of education in the metropolis. The result of that inquiry was that it 

 was found that 120,000 children in London were growing up without 

 any means of education whatever. This fact, acting on his ardent 

 mind, seems to bsve determined him to an unusual energy in all 

 matters connected with the education of the people. Associating 

 himself with Dr. Birkbeck, he was instrumental in founding in the 

 year 1828 the London Mechanics Institution ; and not long afterwards 

 be published bis ' Practical Observations on the Education of the 

 People, addressed to the Working Classes and their Employers,' 

 twenty editions of which were rapidly sold, and produced an extra- 

 ordinary effect all over the country. Partly on account of his exertions 

 in this cause, and partly on account of bis general celebrity, he was elected 

 in 1825 to the honorary post of Lord liector of Glasgow University ; 

 his opponent on this occasion being Sir Walter Scott, against whom 

 his lection was determined by the casting-vote of the previous rector, 

 Sir James Mackintosh. Tbo 'Address' which he delivered to the 

 students on his installation, and which has been often printed since, 

 was prepared amid the fatigues of the Northern Circuit. During his 

 visit to Scotland at this time he was entertained at a public dinner 

 on* of the largest ever held in Scotland by the citizens of Edinburgh ; 

 on which occasion his friend Mr., afterwards Lord Cockburn, occupied 

 the cbsir, and reviewed his history since the time when, as a young 

 barrister, be bad left Edinburgh for the English capital. In the same 

 year he introduced a bill into parliament for the incorporation of the 

 University of London, in the establishment of which as an institution 

 of UM higher education on principles which would admit all classes of 

 British subjects, irrespective of their religious opinions, and without 

 any religious tests, he had taken an active part Not the least of his 

 extra-parliamentary service* during the period in question were those 

 which be rendered in connection with the foundation in 1827 of the 

 Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge,' whose object, as 

 stated in its original prospectus, was " by the periodical publication of 

 triatisn, coder the direction and with the sanction of a superintending 

 roannrltso, to impart useful information to all clauses of the commu- 

 nity, particularly to such as are unable to avail themselves of expe- 

 riestosd teachers." That limited object was carried much farther during 

 UM labours of seventeen years. Mr. Brougham was appointed chairman 

 of this committee, and his discourse ' On tbo Objects, Pleasure*, and 

 Advantages of Science,' was the first publication of the society. 



The year 1630 was an eventful one in the life of Mr. Brougham, as 



well as in the political history of Great Britain. Early in that year 

 he resigned his seat for Winchelsea on the ground that he could not 

 go along with the Marquis of Cleveland, the patron of the borough, in 

 >up|>orting the Wellington Ministry, whose determination to oppose 

 Parliamentary Reform was inflexibly taken. He was immediately 

 returned for Knaresborough, and, as member for that borough, he 

 made speeches on colonial slavery and other topics, and introduced a 

 Bill for the Establishment experimentally in the three counties of 

 Kent, Durham, and Northumberland, of Local Courts of Justice, 

 somewhat on the model of the county courts which have since been 

 instituted. In the midst of these exertions, the death of George IV. 

 (June 1830), followed so speedily by the French Revolution of July, 

 induced a national crisis. At the general election on the accession of 

 William IV., Mr. Brougham stood for Yorkshire, and was returned 

 for that great county, free of expense, along with Lord Morpeth, the 

 Hon. William Duucombe, and Mr. Bethell. In the course of the 

 canvas for this county, he gave an extraordinary proof of his physical 

 and mental energy by attending and speaking at eight different 

 electoral meetings in one day, travelling that day 120 miles (it was 

 before the period of railroads), and appearing next morning at the 

 York assizes. As member for the great constituency of York which 

 had till then been accustomed to elect only some men aristocratically 

 connected with the county Mr. Brougham was in a position as 

 powerful as any British commoner could occupy. Backed by such a 

 constituency, be could regard himself as a tribune of the British 

 people, rather than as an ordinary member of parliammt It wns 

 with the consciousness of this that, when the new parliament i,. 

 stood forth in that parliament as the champion of ' Parliamentary 

 Reform' then the one thought of the nation. As an in lr]iul< nt 

 member, but also with the understood sanction of the Whigs, he 

 announced for the 16th of November a motion on this subject of a 

 very comprehensive character. According to the sketch givcu by Mr. 

 Roebuck in his ' History of the Whigs,' of the bill which Mr. Brougham 

 intended to introduce on this occasion, he was prepared to reduce 

 the number of representatives in the House of Commons from 658 

 to 500, allowing the representation of Scotland to stand numerically 

 as it was, but curtailing the Irish representation ; he was prepared 

 also to give the franchise to all copyholders and leaseholders, and to 

 all householders whatsoever; and ho was to enfranchise the large 

 commercial towns, and to mulct the rotten boroughs of one member 

 each, allowing them to retain one. On the eve of this motion bow- 

 ever there came a ministerial crisis. Tbo Duke of Wellington and 

 bis colleagues, defeated on a government measure on the 15th of 

 November, resigned on the following day ; and when the House met, 

 in which Mr. Brougham wag to propose his motion, negotiations wcru 

 going on between the king and Earl Grey for the formation of n \\ i,i.- 

 ministry. In these circumstances Mr. Brougham postponed his motion 

 for a few days, and, in doing no, used certain phrases which were 

 interpreted as an indication that he and the Whig leaders were not 

 in communication, that he was not to be in the new ministry, but was 

 to proceed as an independent member without reference to them. 

 Indeed the Whigs, having been out of office nearly a quarter of a 

 century, were iu the position of a body which had yet to organise 

 itself. A number of men hod been acting together in opposition, but 

 to adjust their places in a now ministry was not easy ; and Mr. 

 Brougham, in particular, though as largely identified as any man with 

 the course of Whig principles in the past, occupied ground K<> 

 liarly his own, and was eo formidable in bis peculiarities, that it was 

 thought the hereditary Whig leaders would be glad ' to throw him 

 overboard ' if they could. Great then, was the surprise of the nation 

 when, on the announcement of the new Whig ministry under the 

 premiership of Earl Grey on the 22nd of November, it was found 

 that Mr. Brougham bad a place in it, no longer as plain Mr. Brougham, 

 but as Baron Brougham and Vaux, Lord Chancellor of England. 

 The whole private history of the transaction, and indeed of in- 

 formation, of the ministry, is yet but obscurely known ; but Mr. Hoc- 

 buck, in his ' History of the Whigs,' gives the various rumours of the 

 day, and adopts as the true conclusion the supposition that Mr. 

 Brougham was offered the lord-chancellorship simply because Earl 

 Grey found it utterly impossible to construct a government leaving 

 him out, and that Mr. Brougham accepted it simply because to have 

 refused it would have paralysed the Whig party at the moment of 

 their first return to power, made an eternal separation between him 

 and the Whig", and ruined his own chances of further usefulness. As 

 the Lord-Chancellor of a Whig ministry, he had a new career opened 

 up to him, not so congenial perhaps as that of a great popular chief 

 in the Lower House, untrammeled by party, but utill promising 

 opportunities of great public service. 



During tho continuance of the Whig ministry from November 1830 

 to November 1834, Lord Brougham was identified perhaps more than 

 any other member with its policy and measures, sharing its first 

 extraordinary popularity aud its subsequent disfavour. To him and 

 Earl Grey in the Upper House fell tho difficult task of carrying against 

 the opposition of the peers the bill for Parliamentary Reform, sup 

 ported in the other house by Lord Althorp and Lord John Russell. 

 In the debates on the bill Lord Brougham's eloquence rang through 

 the House of Peers such peals as had long been unheard there ; and 

 his famous speech on the second reading of the bill, ou the 7th of 



