tion than himself. Of all the branches of human knowledge to which Brougham directed his attention, and in which he attained to more or less proficiency, the study of the law was the least congenial to him. He speaks of it in early life as " the cursedest of all cursed pro fessions," and even in 1808, when he had come to England and acquired a certain degree of fame, he writes to Lord Grey : " Odious as that profession is (as God knows there are few things so hateful), I am quite clear that it would be folly in me to neglect so certain a pro spect." He added that he was setting out on the Northern Circuit with too slender a provision of law, his stock of practice being so small that he had never yet seen a nisi jjrius trial, but thought he might push through the thing with a little presence of mind and quickness. Fortunately for his future career, he had followed for two years the lectures of the professor of civil law in the university of Edinburgh ; and, as Lord Campbell admits, so far legalized his mind that he had gained a considerable insight into both Roman and feudal jurisprudence. These seeds of law, implanted in a powerful intellect, gave him a breadth of view not always combined with the techni
calities of the English bar.On the 23d May 1800 he was admitted to the Faculty of Advocates. It does not appear that he ever held a brief in the Court of Session, but he went a circuit or two, where he defended or prosecuted a few prisoners, and played a series of tricks on the presiding judge, Lord Esk- grove, which almost drove that learned person to distrac tion. The Scottish bar, however, as he soon perceived, offered no field sufficiently ample for his talents and his ambition. He resolved to transfer himself to London. He had already appeared as junior counsel in a Scotch appeal to the House of Lords. In 1803 he was entered at Lincoln s Inn, and on the 22d November 1808 he was called to the English bar by that learned society. It is a curious indication of the importance already attached to him as a party man, that the Tory attorney-general and the solicitor-general of the day thought it worth while to come down to Lincoln s Inn to endeavour to oppose his special call, which had been asked for, but was defeated by a single vote. He was called in the ordinary course in the ensuing term.
In this interval of time, however, he had struck a fresh vein which ensured to him power, popularity, celebrity, and for the time a subsistence. The Edin burgh Review was founded in the autumn of 1802, under circumstances which have often been related, by the young and aspiring lights of the northern metropolis. The polished style and judgment of Jeffrey, the wit of Sydney Smith, the wisdom of Homer, were suddenly brought to bear on the literature and politics of the day, and amongst them all Brougham was the most ready, the most versatile, the most satirical, and eager to fly at any game which might be on foot. To the first four numbers of the Review Brougham contributed twenty-one articles; to the first twenty numbers eighty articles, wandering through every imaginable subject science, politics, colonial policy, literature, poetry, surgery, mathematics, and the fine arts. The article on Lord Byron s Hours of Idleness, which stung the poet into a satirist, and gave the world English Jlarch and Scotch Reviewers, was attributed to his pen ; and Lord Cock burn used to relate that on one occasion Brougham wrote off an entire number, including one article on the operation of lithotomy and another on the music of the Chinese. What, however, was of more importance to the youthful author and to the world, was that Brougham stood henceforth itidissolubly pledged to the cause of the Liberal party, and to those principles of progress and reform to which he was destined to render so many signal services. The Edinburgh Review is the standard of that cause, and Brougham never rested until he had planted it on the loftiest battlements of the fortress. The prodigious success of the Review, and the power he was known to wield in it, made him a man of mark from his first arrival in London. He was welcomed at Holland House. He obtained the friendship of Lord Grey and the leading Whig politicians. His wit and gaiety made him an ornament of society, and he sought to extend his literary reputation by the publication of an elaborate work on the colonial policy of the empire. But his hopes of obtaining a seat in Parliament were not yet realized. He was still eating his commons at Lincoln s Inn. He was still in search of a career. Thus it fell out that, in 1806, Mr Fox being then Secretary of State, he was appointed secretary to a mission of Lord Rosslyn and Lord St Vincent to the court of Lisbon, with a view to counteract the anticipated French invasion of Portugal. The mission lasted two or three months ; it led to no results. Brougham came home out of humour and out of pocket ; and meantime the death of Mr Fox put an end to the hopes of the Whigs and to the broad-bottomed administration. The party to which Brougham had attached himself remained out of office for three-and-twenty years.
Brougham was disappointed by the abrupt fall of the ministry, and piqued that his Whig friends had not provided him with a seat in Parliament, the more so as some of his early friends and rivals were already launched on their political career. Nevertheless, he exerted his pen with prodigious activity during the election of 1809 ; and Lord Holland declared that he had filled the booksellers shops with articles and pamphlets. The result was small. No seat was placed at his own disposal. He was too poor to contest a borough ; and Perceval and Eldon obtained a majority greater than the majorities of Addington or Pitt. Fortunately for Brougham two questions at this time arose, which gave him a strong hold on the feelings and com mercial interests of the country ; and he was not slow to take advantage of them and lend them all the support of his energy and genius. When he entered public life the abolition of the slave-trade was well-nigh carried by the untiring exertions of Wilberforce, Thornton, Clarkson, Macaulay, and others. An immense organization had been formed, more especially by the Quakers and other non conformists, to bring the whole force of public opinion, awakened by the call of humanity and justice, to bear upon the horrors of a system which was still defended by the West India interest and the Government. Brougham allied himself to the leaders of this movement, and he remained through life not only faithful, but passionately attached to the cause. He combated, in and out of Parliament, every attempt to elude the restrictions on the trade in man. One of the first measures he carried in the House of Commons was a bill to make the slave-trade felony. He laboured incessantly to induce foreign countries to abolish the abhorred traffic, and he had at length the happiness, as Chancellor of England, to take a part in the final measure of negro emancipation throughout the British colonies. These services endeared him to a class of highly conscientious and influential persons, with whom he might not otherwise havebeen closely connected, and their support was of no small effect on the greatest triumph of his life, his election for the county of York in 1830.
English bar, he had argued some Scotch appeals in the House of Lords and some prize cases at the " Cock-pit." He had acquired some knowledge of international law, and some experience of the prize courts. This circumstance probably led to his being retained as counsel for the
Liverpool merchants who had petitioned both Houses of Parliament against the Orders in Council, framed in retalia-