145 



ROMILLY, SIR SAMUEL. 



146 



Office at the expiration of his articles, and the intended retirement o 

 his master was likely to offer a favourable opportunity for the attain 

 ment of this object ; but Rornilly's dislike to the business, and hi 

 disinclination to embarrass his father by withdrawing from his hand 

 the amount of the bequest above mentioned, which would have been 

 necessary in order to purchase the seat, determined him to renounc 

 his prospects in the Six Clerks' Office entirely, and to qualify himsel 

 for the bar. Accordingly, in May 1778, having served his clerkship 

 and completed his twenty-first year, he entered himself at Gray's-inn 

 placed himself iu the chamber of an equity draughtsman, and com 

 menced with great ardour the study of the law. He still howeve 

 pursued his literary studies and exercises, employing much of his tim 

 in reading and translating the Latin historians and orators, occasionally 

 writing political essays for the newspapers, and sometimes attendinj 

 the houses of parliament for the purpose of exercising his own power 

 of abstraction, argument, and expression, by composing imaginar; 

 answers to the speeches which he had, heard there. 



Not long after he commenced his legal reading, he was attacked by 

 serious illness, which compelled him to lay aside all severe studies 

 and threatened wholly to interrupt his professional prospects. For 

 tunately a family incident induced him to undertake a journey to 

 Switzerland, where he remained several weeks in the society of his 

 brother-in-law and most intimate friend the Rev. John Roget, and 

 returning by way of Paris, he became acquainted in that capital witl 

 D'Alembert and Diderot, and formed intimate friendships with severa 

 of the most eminent political philosophers of that day, whose conver 

 satioii and correspondence produced a marked effect upon his character 

 and opinions. He arrived in London after an absence of several months 

 with his health entirely restored. 



In Easter term, 1783, Romilly was called to the bar; but his 

 entrance upon the practice of the profession was postponed for severa. 

 months in consequence of a second journey to Switzerland, which he 

 undertook for the purpose of attending his sister to England, upon 

 the death of Mr. Roget. In Michaelmas term, 1783, however, he began 

 his attendance upon the courts, and opened his practice with a very 

 inconsiderable amount of employment in drawing chancery pleadings 

 In the following spring he joined the Midland circuit; but being 

 unknown and without connections of any kind, no encouraging 

 prospect of business appeared for several years. Success at sessions 

 however led to employment on the circuit ; and though his progress 

 was by no means rapid, we have his own authority for stating that 

 when the extent of his practice in the Court of Chancery compelled 

 him to restrict himself to London, he had attained to a larger amounl 

 of leading ' nisi prius ' business than was possessed by any other counsel 

 upon the circuit. (' Memoirs of Sir Samuel Romilly,' .vol. i., p. 94.) 



In the year after that in which he was called to the bar, Romilly, 

 through his connections in Paris, became acquainted with Mirabeau. 

 By his means he was introduced to the late Marquis of Lansdowne, 

 who had become desirous of his acquaintance upon learning that he 

 was the writer of an anonymous tract, entitled ' A Fragment on the 

 Constitutional Power and Duties of Juries ;' and who, having from the 

 first conceived a high opinion of Romilly's talents, continued to be 

 for many years his steady friend and patron. So high was Lord 

 Lansdowne's estimate of his character, and his anticipation of his 

 eventual success, that in the first years of their acquaintance he was 

 twice offered a seat in parliament by that nobleman, which he declined 

 from a feeling of independence. Soon after his first inti-oduction to 

 Lord Lansdowne, his attention was directed by that nobleman to 

 Madan's ' Thoughts on Executive Justice,' a tract which about that 

 time excited much notice. The author of this tract relied upon the 

 well-known principle, that as the object of judicial punishment is to 

 deter from crime, the effect of penal laws is in a great measure lost 

 unless execution follows the sentence with certainty. The principle is 

 true in the abstract; but it was absurd to attempt to apply it in 

 practice to laws so severe as at that time existed in England. In 

 answer to Madan's tract, Romilly published some sensible observations 

 in an anonymous pamphlet, his composition of which was probably 

 the first occasion on which he was induced to consider with attention 

 the principles of criminal law. 



_Romilly's practice, both on the circuit and in the Court of Chancery, 

 within ten years after he was called to the bar, became considerable. 

 The precise period at which he quitted the circuit is not mentioned in 

 any published account of his life ; but it must have been subsequent 

 to 1797, in which year he successfully defended at Warwick a delegate 

 of the London Corresponding Society, prosecuted by the government 

 for sedition (' Howell's State Trials,' vol. xxvi., p. 595), and was 

 probably previous to the summer of the year 1800, when he was made 

 king's counsel. After obtaining rank in the profession as king's 

 counsel, his business in the Court of Chancery rapidly increased ; and 

 by 1805, he had the most practice of any of the barristers who attended 

 the Court of Chancery. About this time the Bishop of Durham gave 

 him the office of Chancellor of the County Palatine of Durham, which 

 he held for many years. In the autumn of the year 1805 he was 

 offered a seat in parliament by the Prince of Wales (afterwards 

 George IV.), who at that time adhered to the Whig party, and whose 

 attention had been particularly drawn to Romilly from the circumstance 

 of his being retained in a cause in Chancery, in which the prince was 

 much interested. This offer was declined from the same independent 



BIOG. DIV. VOL. V. 



feeling which had induced him to decline two offers of a similar kind 

 previously made by Lord Lansdowne. 



Romilly's early association with some of the most distinguished 

 persons interested in the French revolution, and, above all, perhaps 

 his intimacy with Mirabeau, had given him in the outset of life a 

 decided bias towards what are termed popular or liberal opinions hi 

 politics. In consistency with his general principles, he became a 

 decided adherent of the Whigs, and, long before he obtained a seat in 

 the House of Commons, was in the habit of confidential communi- 

 cation with the leaders of that party. On the formation of the 

 Grenville administration, at the commencement of the year 1806, he 

 received the appointment of solicitor-general, and the honour of 

 knighthood, and was brought into parliament by the government 

 for the borough of Queenborough. He was appointed one of the 

 managers for the Commons on the trial and impeachment of Lord 

 Melville, and summed up the evidence in support of the charge. In 

 the course of his first session in parliament he introduced a bill for 

 the amendment of the bankrupt laws (46 Geo. III., c. 135), which 

 passed both houses with very little objection or observation, and con- 

 stituted a material improvement of that which was then an extremely 

 defective branch of the law of England. After the dissolution of 

 parliament, which took place at the close of the year 1806, he was 

 re-elected for the government borough of Queenborough ; and in the 

 early part of 1807, and while in office as solicitor-general, he intro- 

 duced a bill for the purpose of making real property in all cases assets 

 for the payment of simple contract debts. This just and reasonable 

 measure, although approved by Lord Ellenborough, was strongly 

 opposed in the House of Commons by the Master of the Rolls, Sir 

 William Grant, and rejected by a considerable majority. The oppo- 

 sition offered to this measure by the Master of the Rolls was personally 

 resented by Sir Samuel Romilly with a degree of acrimony scarcely 

 justified by the occasion. A measure founded upon a more limited 

 application of the same principle, by confining it to the freehold pro- 

 perty of traders, was, during the next session of parliament, proposed 

 by Romilly and carried (stat. 47 Geo. III., c. 74). At subsequent 

 periods he made several attempts to carry his proposition into exe- 

 cution to its full extent, but without success. His reply to the Master 

 of the Rolls in the first debate on this bill, and his speech about the 

 same time in favour of the abolition of the slave-trade, established 

 his reputation as a parliamentary speaker of the highest character. 



In March 1807 the Whig ministers were displaced, and with their 

 removal ended the short official employment of Romilly. He retained 

 however his seat in parliament, and continued until the end of his 

 life a zealous and leading member of the opposition party. On the 

 dissolution of parliament, which took place after the change of minis- 

 ters, he purchased his return for the borough of Horsham from the 

 Duke of Norfolk a mode of entering the House of Commons which 

 he characterised as " detestable " (' Memoirs,' vol. ii., p. 201), but 

 which he justified in his own case as being at that time the only mode 

 by which he could hope to obtain a seat in parliament consistently 

 with that entire independence of action which alone made it valuable 

 to him. In the session of 1807 he opposed the several harsh measures 

 which were passed for the suppression of disturbances in Ireland, and 

 warmly supported Mr. Whitbread's bill for establishing parochial 

 schools ; and besides the measures respecting the freehold estates of 

 traders above alluded to, he introduced an important practical improve- 

 ment in the administration of justice, by abolishing an unfair and use- 

 less privilege of members of the House of Commons as defendants in 

 equity. 



In the early part of the session of 1808, Sir Samuel Romilly lost his 

 seat in parliament for Horsham upon a petition ; but after the interval 

 of about a month, he was returned for the borough of Wareham, 

 having purchased his election for 3000J. 



In the autumn vacation of 1807, Romilly had applied himself to the 

 consideration of the criminal law of England, with a view to remove 

 some of its glaring evils and defects. His attention had been called to 

 the subject at an earlier period, when he composed his observations 

 on Madan's treatise ; and he now found himself in a situation, with 

 respect to influence and authority, which justified the hope that he 

 might be enabled to carry into practical operation the doctrines 

 which experience and reflection, together with his acquaintance 

 with foreign laws and the writings of foreign jurists, had long 

 before impressed upon his mind. At the time when Sir Samuel 

 Romilly began to apply his mind to the subject, the penal laws of 

 England were far more severe than those of any other European 

 ountry nearly three hundred crimes of various degrees and qualities 

 of moral guilt being then indiscriminately punishable with death. 

 The necessary consequence was a great uncertainty in the execution 

 of criminal justice, proportionately impairing its effectiveness ; for, as 

 -iord Coke long ago observed, " too severe laws are never duly 

 executed" (3 ' Inst.,' 163). To the removal or mitigation of this great 

 evil Sir Samuel Romilly devoted himself with uncommon energy and 

 >erseverance during the last ten years of his life. At first his views 

 >f practical improvement were limited, and the only measures which 

 le originally contemplated were, first, a provision by which acquitted 

 riminals should be allowed compensation out of some public fund ; 

 ud, secondly, an enactment raising the amount of the value of pro- 

 ierty to the stealing of which capital punishment should be annexed. 



