towards the close of the year he presented himself once more before his constituents,* as a candidate for the honour of representing them in the first Reformed Parliament. The rival candidate was Sir Horace St. Paul, whom he defeated by a majority of ninety votes. He challenged inquiry into his parliamentary conduct: he defied his opponents to detect a single sentiment expressed, or a single vote given, against the rights or liberties of his country; and plainly told the electors that if they, on that occasion, returned an avowed Tory, “They would be for ever memorable in the annals of infamy." This taunt or menace was not, it would appear, forgotten by the men of Dudley, and ere long the connexion between their representative and themselves was dissolved. This circum stance, too, had been treasured up for future use by his political adversaries; for his opponent in the radical interest at Edinburgh, a Mr. Ayton, took care to remind the electors of the northern capital that "Even the paltry town of Dudley itself had rejected Sir John Campbell because he was a placeman." The elevation, however, to official dignity and influence, which, as it had been alleged, acted as a repeller among the sensitive purists of Worcestershire, proved extremely attractive to the common sense and foresight of a generation living somewhere nearer the Pole. Sir John Campbell was now in the very zenith of his public career. The rough and most laborious part of the ascent had been passed, and the summit of the mount now brightly shone in view.‡ We may at this stage, however, seasonably retire for a *December 10, 1832. Vide Worcester Herald for 14th December, 1832. He sat for Stafford during the years 1830, 1831; he represented Dudley from the month of December, 1832, down to the month of February, 1834; and he was returned for Edinburgh in the month of June, 1834, which city he continued to represent down to the year 1841; he held the office of Solicitor-General from the month of November, 1832, to February, 1834, when he was appointed Attorney-General. In November of that year he resigned office, and having been reappointed in April, 1835, he continued in the active and able discharge of the duties of first law officer of the Crown down to the month of June, 1844, when he was appointed, as we shall immediately see, Lord Chancellor of Ireland. moment, from electioneering strife and the din of political debate, to throw a transient glance at his labours and his triumphs within his strictly professional sphere. We might refer to the various Common Law Reports for abundant evidence of his skill and success while at the Bar. Always wary in selecting the line of action or of argument to be pursued by him, he advanced towards his object with unerring precision and indefatigable energy; but on no occasion has he risen to a strain of fervid eloquence, nor have his lightest and most playful sallies ever smacked of genuine wit. He fenced not with the polished Spanish blade, no sharply pointed arrow left his quiver; he has uniformly fought with his native heavy claymore, and employed back-handed blows as well as orthodox cut-and-thrust. Constitutionally calm and calculating, frigid and unassailable by any temporary excitement, his understanding was ever awake to detect the weakest point both in his own case and in that of his adversary, and sufficiently subtle to weave a veil for concealment of the one or seize an instrument wherewith to lay bare the other. The main risk which he ran was, either that the juries should observe his cunning and suspect trickery; or that the court, doubting his candour, should deal with him as one of that class of counsel whom it is a duty to distrust. For the general truth of these remarks we may refer to the authenticated specimens of his forensic powers.* Among other important cases which we may enumerate as having evinced Campbell's ability, are-Norton v. Melbourne, (June 23, 1836); the trial of James Hastings Medhurst, (April 13, 1839); The Queen v. Lawson, (20th Dec., 1818). Again, the speech which he delivered for the Crown, before the House of Lords, on the trial of James Thomas, Earl of Cardigan, who was charged with the offence of firing with a loaded pistol at Henry Garnett Phipps Tuckett, with intent to murder him, is remarkablet only for having been the occasion out of which * "Speeches of Lord Campbell at the Bar," &c., Edinb., 1842. sprang some ill-judged and we believe unfounded insinuations, that Sir John Campbell had been guilty of joining in a premeditated scheme to ensure the acquittal of the prisoner; as well as an allegation, that the line of argument pursued by the Attorney-General amounted to a defence of duelling. This charge he solemnly repelled; and viewing the matter practically as a man of the world, he subsequently vindicated the right of every member of the Bar to shape, in defiance of misconception on the part of others, his argument in such a way as may best promote the interest of his client; and maintained that there is "a great difference between a general approbation of duelling, and an admission that an officer in the army may find himself under the necessity of fighting a duel to preserve his reputation in society, and to prevent disaster from being brought upon himself and his family.* The exertions of Sir John Campbell, while conducting the prosecutions before the special commission at Monmouth, in the month of January, 1840, were of great public value and eminently successful in their results. A formidable insurrection was met, not by a suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act, or any infraction upon public liberty by the enactment of new laws, but simply by the vigorous administration of justice, in strict accordance with the ancient constitutional laws of the kingdom. And as his speech on that occasion presents a luminous outline of the law of treason, so towards the close of the same yearf in his speech for the Crown on the trial of J. Hetherington, for blasphemous libel, he vindicated the right and asserted the obligation of the civil magistrate to check the circulation of any publication which assailed the foundations of morality by vilifying the Christian religion.‡ · : * "Speeches," pp. 480, 481, note. † December the 8th, 1840. Compare the few remarks which fell from Sir John Campbell in the House of Commons, on the 11th February, 1836. Among other defects in the state of the law of libel, he mentioned that of the consideration of the truth in criminal cases being excluded. He thought that the truth ought always to be admitted in evidence and allowed to go to the jury. Compare Hans. Parl. Deb., vol. viii. p. 6, 5th Oct. 1831. "It is utterly impossible," said Sir John Campbell, "that any govern Much prudence, he admitted, ought to be exercised in selecting cases of this description for prosecution; but "the law of England sanctioned not, and the administrators of the law could not tolerate, attacks upon the Christian religion;" attacks characterized, not by calm respectful reasoning, but by coarse invective and ribaldry. * It was on the 28th of May, 1834, that Sir John Campbell made, for the first time, his bow before an Edinburgh audience. He was, personally, a stranger to the electors of that city; but the adherents of the party to which he belonged had smoothed the path for his approach by rehearsing, if not exaggerating, his merits; and he felt that he, Attorney-General for England, might with good hope of success appear as a candidate to represent the capital of his native country. He was nominated by the Lord Provost of "Auld Reekie," and was strongly recommended to the electors by Sir T. Dick Lauder, who resided in the neighbourhood and was well known to the bulk of the electors. But the tact and electioneering experience of Sir John Campbell rendered all extraneous harangues on his behalf quite unnecessary. As he had flattered the ladies of Stafford, he knew well how to coax the men of the north. It was on this occasion that one or two expressions dropped from him which subsequently became themes of much goodnatured banter, as betraying on his part a certain degree of self-complacency in the contemplation of the delightful novelty of knighthood: "Gentlemen, electors of Edinburgh, and fellow-countrymen, here is plain John Campbell before you, as a candidate for the high honour of your suffrages. I must say that I think it rather hard on me to say, that if I had been merely plain John Campbell, I might have ment can tolerate such a scandalous outrage as the conduct of this unhappy man (Taylor) presents. He collected a multitude of people in a public theatre, and burlesqued the most solemn rites of our religion; he had thus insulted all the feelings which the community most reverences. It is absurd to suppose that such a man can excite sympathy." * Sir John Cam Hobhouse had been invited to stand on the Whig interest, but he declined being a candidate. been elected, and that all hopes of my ambition being crowned with success must be for ever extinguished by the eminence to which I have had the good fortune to attain”*—are sentiments which, however natural and proper to a creator of his own fortune, might have been prudently concealed; or, at all events, left to be avowed only by the partiality of friends. Throughout his appearance in Edinburgh, however, on this and subsequent occasions,† he strictly adhered to his religious and political creeds. He advocated, in the face of Scottish dissenters-a notoriously rabid race-the connexion between Church and State; he questioned the policy of vote by ballot; he abjured the notion of triennial parliaments, and bitterly rebuked Mr. Joseph Hume. His success was flattering; he was placed at the head of the poll. From that moment the connexion between Sir John Campbell and the constituency of Edinburgh became close, confidential, and perfectly satisfactory to both parties. Gradually feeling himself surer of the ground on which he trod, he was less scrupulous in the language which he employed. The address, for instance, which he delivered at Edinburgh, on the 3rd of January, 1835, was a bold, uncompromising party speech, in which he availed himself of every incident or suggestion which he conceived fitted to damage the ministry. We do not object to this in political warfare; we simply state the fact. Alluding to the royal proclamation for the dissolution of parliament, he exclaimed, "I doubted, until I had read the proclamation, whether the present ministry could have the folly I would almost say the wickedness-to dissolve the first Reformed Parliament that sat in Great Britain." He loudly rang the changes on the "dictatorship" of the Duke of Wellington, and scouted the popular notion of "Not men but measures, fortifying himself in abhorrence of the phrase by the opinion of Edmund Burke. While deprecating factious opposition to * Vide the Times for June 2nd, 1834, and the extracts there given from the Caledonian Mercury. + Vide "Speech of Sir John Campbell at Edinburgh, 3rd January, 1835, on the Present Crisis," 8vo. London, 1835. |