second year at the bar, and the dropping in of occasional fees, must have raised his hopes; and he now abandoned the scheme of becoming a provincial barrister. A year or two of dull drudgery and few fees followed, and he began to be much depressed. But in 1780 we find his prospects suddenly improved, by his appearance in the case of Ackroyd v. Smithson, which became a leading case settling a rule of law; and young Scott, having lost his point in the inferior court, insisted on arguing it, on appeal, against the opinion of his clients, and carried it before Lord Thurlow, whose favourable consideration he won by his able argument. The same year Bowes again retained him in an election petition; and in the year following Scott greatly increased his reputation by his appearance as leading counsel in the Clitheroe election petition. From this time his success was certain. In 1782 he obtained a silk gown, and was so far cured of his early modesty that he declined accepting the king’s counselship if precedence over him were given to his junior, Thomas (afterwards Lord) Erskine, though the latter was the son of a peer and a most accomplished orator. He was now on the high way to fortune. His health, which had hitherto been but indifferent, strengthened with the demands made upon it; his talents, his power of endurance, and his ambition all expanded together. He enjoyed a considerable practice in the northern part of his circuit, before parliamentary committees and at the chancery bar. By 1787 his practice at the equity bar had so far increased that he was obliged to give up the eastern half of his circuit (which embraced six counties) and attend it only at Lancaster.
In 1782 he entered parliament for Lord Weymouth’s close borough of Weobley, which Lord Thurlow obtained for him without solicitation. In parliament he gave a general and independent support to Pitt. His first parliamentary speeches were directed against Fox’s India Bill. They were unsuccessful. In one he aimed at being brilliant; and becoming merely laboured and pedantic, he was covered with ridicule by Sheridan, from whom he received a lesson which he did not fail to turn to account. In 1788 he was appointed solicitor-general, and was knighted, and at the close of this year he attracted attention by his speeches in support of Pitt’s resolutions on the state of the king (George III., who then laboured under a mental malady) and the delegation of his authority. It is said that he drew the Regency Bill, which was introduced in 1789. In 1793 Sir John Scott was promoted to the office of attorney-general, in which it fell to him to conduct the memorable prosecutions for high treason against British sympathizers with French republicanism,—amongst others, against the celebrated Horne Tooke. These prosecutions, in most cases, were no doubt instigated by Sir John Scott, and were the most important proceedings in which he was ever professionally engaged. He has left on record, in his Anecdote Book, a defence of his conduct in regard to them. A full account of the principal trials, and of the various legislative measures for repressing the expressions of popular opinion for which he was more or less responsible, will be found in Twiss’s Public and Private Life of the Lord Chancellor Eldon, and in the Lives of the Lord Chancellors, by Lord Campbell.
In 1799 the office of chief justice of the Court of Common Pleas falling vacant, Sir John Scott’s claim to it was not overlooked; and after seventeen years’ service in the Lower House, he entered the House of Peers as Baron Eldon. In February 1801 the ministry of Pitt was succeeded by that of Addington, and the chief justice now ascended the woolsack. The chancellorship was given to him professedly on account of his notorious anti-Catholic zeal. From the peace of Amiens (1802) till 1804 Lord Eldon appears to have interfered little in politics. In the latter year we find him conducting the negotiations which resulted in the dismissal of Addington and the recall of Pitt to office as prime minister. Lord Eldon was continued in office as chancellor under Pitt; but the new administration was of short duration, for on the 23rd of January 1806 Pitt died, worn out with the anxieties of office, and his ministry was succeeded by a coalition, under Lord Grenville. The death of Fox, who became foreign secretary and leader of the House of Commons, soon, however, broke up the Grenville administration; and in the spring of 1807 Lord Eldon once more, under Lord Liverpool’s administration, returned to the woolsack, which, from that time, he continued to occupy for about twenty years, swaying the cabinet, and being in all but name prime minister of England. It was not till April 1827, when the premiership, vacant through the paralysis of Lord Liverpool, fell to Canning, the chief advocate of Roman Catholic emancipation, that Lord Eldon, in the seventy-sixth year of his age, finally resigned the chancellorship. When, after the two short administrations of Canning and Goderich, it fell to the duke of Wellington to construct a cabinet, Lord Eldon expected to be included, if not as chancellor, at least in some important office, but he was overlooked, at which he was much chagrined. Notwithstanding his frequent protests that he did not covet power, but longed for retirement, we find him again, so late as 1835, within three years of his death, in hopes of office under Peel. He spoke in parliament for the last time in July 1834.
In 1821 Lord Eldon had been created Viscount Encombe and earl of Eldon by George IV., whom he managed to conciliate, partly, no doubt, by espousing his cause against his wife, whose advocate he had formerly been, and partly through his reputation for zeal against the Roman Catholics. In the same year his brother William, who from 1798 had filled the office of judge of the High Court of Admiralty, was raised to the peerage under the title of Lord Stowell.
Lord Eldon’s wife, his dear “Bessy,” his love for whom is a beautiful feature in his life, died before him, on the 28th of June 1831. By nature she was of simple character, and by habits acquired during the early portion of her husband’s career almost a recluse. Two of their sons reached maturity—John, who died in 1805, and William Henry John, who died unmarried in 1832. Lord Eldon himself survived almost all his immediate relations. His brother William died in 1836. He himself died in London on the 13th of January 1838, leaving behind him two daughters, Lady Frances Bankes and Lady Elizabeth Repton, and a grandson John (1805–1854), who succeeded him as second earl, the title subsequently passing to the latter’s son John (b. 1846).
Lord Eldon was no legislator—his one aim in politics was to keep in office, and maintain things as he found them; and almost the only laws he helped to pass were laws for popular coercion. For nearly forty years he fought against every improvement in law, or in the constitution—calling God to witness, on the smallest proposal of reform, that he foresaw from it the downfall of his country. Without any political principles, properly so called, and without interest in or knowledge of foreign affairs, he maintained himself and his party in power for an unprecedented period by his great tact, and in virtue of his two great political properties—of zeal against every species of reform, and zeal against the Roman Catholics. To pass from his political to his judicial character is to shift to ground on which his greatness is universally acknowledged. His judgments, which have received as much praise for their accuracy as abuse for their clumsiness and uncouthness, fill a small library. But though intimately acquainted with every nook and cranny of the English law, he never carried his studies into foreign fields, from which to enrich our legal literature; and it must be added that against the excellence of his judgments, in too many cases, must be set off the hardships, worse than injustice, that arose from his protracted delays in pronouncing them. A consummate judge and the narrowest of politicians, he was doubt on the bench, and promptness itself in the political arena. For literature, as for art, he had no feeling. What intervals of leisure he enjoyed from the cares of office he filled up with newspapers and the gossip of old cronies. Nor were his intimate associates men of refinement and taste; they were rather good fellows who quietly enjoyed a good bottle and a joke; he uniformly avoided encounters of wit with his equals. He is said to have been parsimonious, and certainly he was quicker to receive than to reciprocate hospitalities; but his mean establishment and mode of life are explained by the retired habits of his wife, and her
