Obituary Notices. 
IX 
energy and fair success to liis profession. He used to go to the 
circuit at Glasgow, and was engaged in several criminal trials of 
importance ; and before he had been two years at the Bar he rendered 
a great service to the profession in initiating a system of Reports of 
Criminal Trials. This department of law reporting had fallen into 
decay, and, in fact, had not been systematically pursued for many 
years before. These reports continued under his superintendence 
for several years, and those which are published periodically now 
are substantially a continuation of the original work. I look upon 
this achievement as a very great boon to the science of criminal law ; 
and if he had done nothing else in his career, Swinton would have 
deserved to be honoured and remembered in the profession. He 
continued to conduct these reports down to the end of 1841. He 
also edited and published separate reports of two celebrated criminal 
trials before the High Court of Justiciary — that of the Cotton- 
spinners in 1839, who were tried for conspiracy, and of the Claimant 
of the Stirling peerage, in 1839. 
He had many qualifications for his profession, even apart from 
his great power of eloquence and reasoning. He had great 
assiduity, was rapid in his conceptions, had a clear brain, and 
a lucid power of expression, and, in short, had the prospect, at 
this time, of rising to distinction as a pleader. Rate, however, 
I do not say maliciously, but unfortunately for his opportunities 
of practice, interposed two obstacles. The first was that in 1842, 
on a vacancy occurring in the Civil Law professorship in the 
University, he was induced to offer himself as a candidate, and 
was successful. From 1842 to 1862 he held that important office, 
coming to it at a very early age. I believe that a more efficient 
professor never sat in a legal Chair ; and the many brilliant pupils 
who came from his class to practise at the Bar, remembered with 
uniform satisfaction the clear, lucid, powerful expositions which 
they heard from him in his lectures. It is not easy to be an effective 
professor of law. The subject is one so entirely different from any- 
thing to which the audience have been accustomed in their previous 
studies, that a professor must sympathise very thoroughly with the 
prevalent cast of thought on the part of the students, before he can 
command their attention on such a theme. In this Mr Campbell 
Swinton was more successful than most; but, then, professorships 
