own profession, that "success in life often depended more upon accident and certain physical advantages, than upon the most brilliant talents and the most profound erudition." Unfortunately, those physical advantages were wanting to Mr. Romilly at the commencement of his professional life. A nervous and diffident temperament deprived him in public of the free use of his powerful faculties, and prevented him from displaying the real extent of his skill and acquirements. For four or five years he continued to attend, with little practice or emolument, the courts of equity at Westminster, the midland circuit, and the Warwick sessions. In one of his speeches in the house of commons he has alluded, in answer to the charge of being a mere theorist, to the practice which he had seen in courts of law: "Whatever may be the opinion entertained of my labours, I can scarcely think that my honourable friend is serious in his opinion that all practical legislative wisdom has quitted this great city, and that we in the court of chancery are a sort of easy speculative dilettanti lawyers, wholly incompetent to form any sound opinion upon criminal legislation. That I may be mistaken I am very ready to admit; but if I am really as ignorant as my honourable friend supposes, my ignorance must be most unpardonable. The subject of criminal law has always been most interesting to me: it has more or less through life been my particular study. For fifteen years I constantly attended our courts of criminal law; and although my researches may not have been very successful, I am in possession of notes by which my honourable friend may be convinced I was not wanting in diligence, and that my endeavours to collect information were not confined to the collection of a few scattered remarks in our superior courts upon the circuit, but extended to the courts of quarter-sessions, where I had the honour for many years to practise." At length the assiduity of Mr. Romilly was rewarded by a moderate share of encouragement, and by the gradual subsiding of those * Speeches, vol. i. p. 341.

nervous feelings with which he had been harassed. In 1791, he had acquired considerable practice as a junior counsel; and in 1797 he began to be known as a leader.

The late Marquis of Lansdowne, to whose friendship and patronage, thirty years earlier, Mr. Dunning had been so much indebted, had the acuteness to discover, and the kindness to encourage, the rising talents of Mr. Romilly. He was a frequent guest and visitor at the mansions of Lord Lansdowne in London and in Wiltshire, where he attracted the notice and won the friendship of many of the most distinguished persons of his day. Here, too, he first became acquainted with a lady, the eldest daughter of Francis Garbett, Esq., of KnillCourt, in the county of Hereford, to whom he was afterwards married.

The promotion of Sir John Scott, the attorney-general, to the chief justiceship of the common pleas, in the year 1799, added greatly to the practice of Mr. Romilly, who, in the following year, was appointed one of his majesty's counsel. From this period he took that distinguished station in the court of chancery, which he held for nearly twenty years.

But as yet he had never ventured into political life. The cares of his profession, and the securing of his own independence, had hitherto wisely claimed all his attention. At length, however, that noble field of exertion, which public life in this country offers, was opened to him, and ample means were afforded him of carrying into effect the great and useful designs which he had so long and so fondly cherished. On the formation of the new ministry, in 1806, he was appointed his majesty's solicitor-general, and was immediately returned to parliament as one of the members for Queenborough. accepting office, he received the customary honour of knighthood. Soon after having taken his seat, Sir Samuel was appointed one of the managers on the impeachment of Lord Melville; a duty which he performed with extraordinary ability.

On

No one ever entered the house of commons better

prepared to perform the high duties incumbent on him than Sir Samuel Romilly. His habits of reflection, his extensive acquirements, his acquaintance with the laws and constitution of his country, his indefatigable industry, his clear philosophical intellect, his high personal character, and, lastly, but chiefly, the purity of his ambition, all qualified him to act a most distinguished part in public life. In entering upon the duties of his new station, Sir Samuel Romilly well knew that, in order to give effect to the great and useful designs which he contemplated, it was necessary for him to select some particular object, to the attainment of which his efforts might be principally directed. He felt that, however numerous might be the claims upon his patriotism or his humanity, it was necessary to make some one great question the principal end of his exertions, leaving it to others to pursue with the same diligence the various other objects, to the acquisition of which he could only hope to extend occasional assistance. In making this selection, Sir Samuel Romilly was fortunately induced to devote himself to the amelioration of our criminal code; a subject which had, from an early period of his life, interested his feelings and occupied a considerable portion of his attention. It has been sometimes objected to him, that he did not rather apply himself to the correction of those abuses, which had so long cast a discredit upon the court in which he practised; but it ought surely never to be regretted that he preferred the nobler labour of reforming a code, the impolitic severity of which had for centuries disgraced the institutions of our country. That portion of the community which is affected by our civil polity are never without the means of making their complaints heard; but the poor, the destitute, the uninformed, and the misled, the objects upon whom our criminal jurisprudence operates, have no voice to protest against the severities which the legislature may please to denounce. To watch over the interests of this wretched and degraded portion of society; to become the friend of those against whom every other hand was raised, and the protector

of those who were abandoned, even by themselves, seemed to Sir Samuel Romilly a duty which claimed a decided pre-eminence.

Some time, however, elapsed before he found himself prepared to bring forward the various measures which he had contemplated for the reform of the criminal laws. In the mean while he distinguished himself by the part he took in some important questions, with which the interests of freedom and of humanity were closely connected. In the debates on the abolition of the slave trade, and on the alteration of the mutiny bill, he spoke at some length, and he introduced, during the same session, a bill, which subsequently passed into a law (46 G. 3. c.135.), for the amendment of the bankrupt laws; and also a bill, which was lost, for making freehold estates assets for the payment of simple contract debts. In the spring of 1807, on the dissolution of the Whig administration, he retired from office.

On the 18th of May, 1808, Sir Samuel Romilly introduced a bill to repeal the statute of 8 Eliz. c. 4. by which the punishment of death was inflicted for the offence of privately stealing from the person. With some amendments, this bill passed into a law. His next legislative effort was, a further improvement of the bankrupt law, by introducing the provisions of the statute 49 G. 3. c. 121. In the course of the same session, he took a considerable interest in the discussions which followed the disclosure of the conduct of the Duke of York.

In the session of 1810, Sir Samuel Romilly, in the prosecution of his humane design to soften the severity of the penal code, introduced three bills, to repeal the statutes 10 and 11 W. 3., 12 Ann., and 24 G. 2., making the privately stealing in a shop goods of the value of five shillings, or in a dwelling-house, or on board a vessel in a navigable river, property of the value of forty shillings, capital felonies. His speech on this occasion he afterwards published, with some additions, under the title of "Observations on the Criminal Law of England."

Notwithstanding the able arguments with which Sir Samuel Romilly supported the principle of these bills, and the industry with which he collected, and the clearness with which he expounded, a vast body of facts in confirmation of his arguments, all the bills were lost, the first in the lords, and the second in the commons, the third being postponed, and at length withdrawn. In the following year, however, Sir Samuel Romilly had the satisfaction of carrying through two bills, to abolish the punishment of death for stealing from bleaching grounds; and in 1812 he succeeded in procuring a repeal of the act of Elizabeth, making it capital in soldiers and mariners to be found wandering about the without a pass. realm

On the dissolution of parliament, in the year 1812, Sir Samuel Romilly was invited by a number of respectable gentlemen to become a candidate for the representation of Bristol. This invitation he accepted, and though defeated by a coalition between the forces of two of his opponents, he counted nearly seventeen hundred votes. He was subsequently returned to the new parliament for the borough of Arundel.

It is impossible, within the limits of this brief memoir, to detail the various efforts made by Sir Samuel Romilly to advance the great interests of freedom and humanity. No opportunity was neglected by him of introducing and recommending to the legislature the amendment of the criminal law; and upon many other important questions of foreign and domestic policy he was not silent. The alien act, the persecutions of the French protestants, the game laws, the suspension of the habeas corpus act, the seditious meetings bill, the state of Ireland, the subject of lotteries, Lord Sidmouth's famous circular, the employment of spies and informers, the state trials in Scotland, the imprisonments for libel, the state of slavery in our colonies: all these important topics in turn engaged his attention. In many instances, during the debates which arose on these subjects, it was his misfortune to witness the triumph of