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COLCHESTER, LORD. 



COLCHESTER, LORD. 



311 



portion became a check on the other, and the utmost accuracy was 

 arrived at, although the number of persons employed .exceeded two 

 thousand, mostly from the native peasantry. A change was also made 

 in the publication : the sheets were engraved on a scale of six inches 

 to the mile, all the principal farms, fields, and inclosures being repre- 

 sented, so that the maps have ever since been regarded by the govern- 

 ment, land-proprietors, and surveyors, as authentic plans of all the 

 estates in the country. Poor-law boundaries, townlands, land- 

 improvements, engineering works, and the Irish census, have all been 

 based upon them. They are comprised in 1939 sheets. 



In 1825 Major Colby became lieutenant-colonel, and in that year 

 he obtained the Duke of Wellington's sanction for raising and training 

 three companies of sappera and miners to aid in the Irish survey, as 

 the want of really efficient assistants was felt at first as a serious 

 hindrance to the progress of the work. In the course of the operations 

 Colby measured a base-line of eight miles, on the soutli shore of Lough 

 Foyle, with 'compensation-bars' which he had himself invented. He 

 had carried on a series of experiments on the heating and cooling of 

 metal rods, and he succeeded in constructing a bar of brass and iron 

 in combination, the extremities of which remained always the same 

 distance apart whatever might be the temperature. Such is the 

 exactitude obtained with this apparatus that it has since been used in 

 measuring a base of eight miles at the Cape of Good Hope, in the 

 re-measurement of the English bases, and in those required for the 

 great arc of the meridian in India. 



In 1838 Colonel Colby resumed the triangulatioa of Scotland, which 

 had been suspended; and from this date up to his promotion to the 

 grade of major-general in 1846, when by the regulations of the service 

 his connection with the survey ceased, he continued his usual active 

 and energetic superintendence of tlie various operations. He brought 

 the engraving of the English maps to an excellence never before 

 achieved. The seconds of latitude and longitude were marked on the 

 margin*, and he co-operated with Sir Henry De la Beche in introducing 

 the geological facts and features which have since become so important 

 a part of the surrey. He took the necessary measures for a series of 

 tidal observations round the coast of Ireland, for the purpose of 

 establishing a true datum level : " the most important series of tide- 

 observations," says the astronomer-royal, " that has ever been made." 



Through all his scientific career General Colby never sacrificed duty 

 to selfish considerations ; and his rare administrative abilities, and 

 sound judgment combined with high principle, enabled him to 

 accomplish well all that be undertook. He had resources ready for 

 every emergency, and the hardy perseverance that triumphed over all 

 obstacles. He died at Liverpool on the 9th of October 1852, leaving 

 a widow and seven children. He was a fellow of the chief scientific 

 societies of London, Edinburgh, and Dublin ; LL.D. of Aberdeen, and 

 a knight of Denmark. 



(Prof. Papers Roy. Eng. ; Proc. Roy. Soc. ; Monthly Not. Attron. Soc.) 



COLCHESTER, CHARLES ABBOT, LORD, was born at Abingdon, 

 on the 14th of October 1757, and was the younger son of the Rav. 

 John Abbot, D.D., rector of All Saints, Colchester, who died about 

 three years after the birth of his son. Mrs. Abbot, who was daughter 

 of Jonathan Farr, Esq., of Long \Vhittenham, in Berkshire, married, 

 in 1765, Mr. Jeremy Bentham, solicitor, of London, the father, by a 

 former wife, of the distinguished writer on jurisprudence of the 

 same names, and survived to the year 1809. 



Abbot was educated at Westminster School, from which he was 

 elected a student of Christ Church, Oxford, 1775. In 1777 he gained 

 the chancellor's medal for Latin verse ; in 1783 he took his degree of 

 B.C.L., and became Vinerian scholar; and soon after he was called to 

 the bar. In 1795 he published a work on 'The Jurisdiction and 

 Practice of the Court of Great Sessions of Wales upon the Chester 

 Circuit,' in the preface to which he urged the abolition of the separate 

 Welsh judicature, a reform which was at last carried into effect in 

 1830. This same year however he retired from the bar, on succeeding 

 his elder brother, John Farr Abbot, as clerk of the rules in the court 

 of King's Bench. This appointment produced his next publication, 

 entitled ' Rules and Orders of the King's Bench.' 



In June 1 795 Abbot was returned to parliament for the borough of 

 Helston, in the interest of the Duke of Leeds. He sat for the same 

 place in the next two parliaments, and he spoke on the ministerial 

 side on several occasions during the first session with much effect. 

 In the same session, on the 12th of April 1796, Abbot moved and 

 obtained the appointment of a select committee to consider the subject 

 of temporary and expiring laws ; and the report of this committee, 

 which he laid on the table of the House on that day month, led to a 

 great improvement of the practice previously followed in regard to 

 that kind of legislation. In the next session, on the 2nd of November 

 1796, he obtained the appointment of another committee to consider 

 the most expedient mode of promulgating the statutes ; and the plan 

 that is now followed, of sending copies of all new acts as soon as 

 printed to all the municipal bodies and benches of county magistrates 

 throughout the kingdom, wag adopted on the recommendation of this 

 committee, and of another, also appointed on his motion, in 1801. 

 The activity, clearness of head, and general talent for business, as well 

 a the spirit of practical improvement, for which he had established a 

 character, led to his being chosen chairman of the committee on the 

 public finances, which was appointed on the motion of Mr. Pitt, on 



BIOO. DIV. VOL. it 



the 10th of March 1797; and of the thirty-six reports presented by 

 this committee in the course of that and subsequent sessions, three of 

 the most elaborate, namely, those respecting the revenue, the exche- 

 quer, and the law courts, were prepared by Abbot. His next labours 

 were connected with the public records, the state of which he brought 

 before the House on the 18th of February 1800, on moving the 

 appointment of a committee to consider what should be done for their 

 better management, preservation, and more convenient use. The 

 committee was appointed accordingly, and, with Abbot for its chair- 

 man, immediately set to work and prosecuted its task with so much 

 diligence, that in the course of the same session it produced, in two 

 successive reports, one of the most complete and masterly surveys of 

 any subject ever laid before parliament. From the recommendation 

 of this committee of the House of Commons originated the royal 

 record commission, the proceedings of which continued to be superin- 

 tended by Abbot till the year 1817. Meanwhile, on the 19th of May 

 1800, he called the attention of the House to the abuse which then 

 prevailed of allowing the proceeds of the taxes and other moneys to 

 lie, often for a considerable time, in the hands of the public accountants 

 without payment of interest, and obtained leave to bring in a bill, 

 establishing a few simple regulations, which he explained, founded 

 substantially on the principle of assimilating the method of accounting 

 between the crown and those of its servants entrusted with the collec- 

 tion or disbursement of the public money, to that generally followed 

 in accounts between private parties, and sanctioned by all courts of 

 justice. This scheme of reform was received with unqualified approval 

 by both sides of the House, Mr. Tierney, the chief opposition financial 

 authority, joining the attorney-general in expressing his commendation 

 of it in strong terms ; and the bill which Abbot obtained leave to 

 bring in passed through all its stages in both Houses without further 

 discussion. On the 19th of November of the same year, a few days 

 after the commencement of the next session, he introduced to the 

 House perhaps the most important of all the measures with which his 

 name is connected, in a motion for leave to bring in a bill for taking a 

 census of the population of the kingdom. The enumeration taken in 

 the following year, which has been since decennially repeated, arose 

 out of this proposition, being the first enumeration of the people 

 which had ever been effected in England by public authority, at least 

 in modern times. Abbot's motion was seconded by Mr. Wilberforce, 

 and the bill encountered no opposition in either House. 



On the retirement of Mr. Pitt, Abbot became a member of the new 

 administration, with the offices of chief secretary for Ireland, and 

 keeper of the Irish privy seal. Upon receiving these appointments, 

 and being made a privy councillor, he resigned his place of clerk of 

 the rules in the Court of King's Bench. It seems to have been about 

 this time also that he was chosen recorder of Oxford. His official life 

 lasted scarcely a twelvemonth. On the appointment of Mr. Mitford 

 (afterwards Lord Kedesdale), who had succeeded Addington as speaker, 

 to the place of lord chancellor of Ireland, Abbot was, on the 10th of 

 February 1802, elected to the vacant chair of the House of Commons. 

 He continued to serve as speaker throughout the next three parlia- 

 ments, and the greater part of the succeeding one; having been 

 returned to that which met in November, 1802, both for Woodstock and 

 Heytesbury, when he chose to represent the former place, and for the 

 University of Oxford in 1806, again in 1807, and a third time in 1812. 

 He filled the office of speaker to the satisfaction both of the House 

 and of the public ; and, although his demeanour is perhaps rather to 

 be described as correct and graceful than as imposing or dignified, his 

 qualifications for the place were on the whole of a very superior order, 

 and in the performance of some of its duties he acquitted himself in 

 a highly distinguished manner. His addresses in communicating the 

 thanks of the House to the various naval and military officers who 

 received that honour in the course of the war with France, aiford 

 many happy examples of rhetorical talent. These speeches were 

 delivered on thirteen different occasions ; and they commemorate all 

 the principal victories of the war from Roleia and Vimiera to Waterloo 

 and the capture of Paris : that in which he communicated the thanks 

 of the House, on the great day of the 1st of July 1814 to the Duke of 

 Wellington, was particularly felicitous. 



It ought also to be noted to the honour of Abbot, that however 

 strong and steady were his party prejudices and attachments, he did 

 not hesitate to make them give way, when upon any occasion they 

 came into competition either with the rights and privileges of the 

 House, or with what he conceived to be his duty aa its speaker. A 

 memorable example of this was the course he took on the 8th of April 

 1805, when the House having divided on Mr. Whi thread's motion for 

 the impeachment of Lord Melville, and the numbers having been found 

 equal (210 on each side), he gave his casting vote for the impeachment, 

 on the principle that, whatever he might think of the charges, he was 

 not entitled, in a case such as this, in which there was evidently a 

 contest between the popular feeling and the influence of the govern- 

 ment, to give his aid to the latter, or to make use of his official 

 privilege to prevent a case from being sent to trial upon which the real 

 judgment of the House had been so distinctly pronounced. 



The principal subject as to which Abbot took any prominent part 

 in the debates of the House after his elevation to the chair, was the 

 question of the emancipation of the Roman Catholics, to which he 

 continued to offer a steady opposition. 



