LORD BROUGHAM.

Southland Times, Issue 990, 22 July 1868, Page 3

LORD BROUGHAM.

[FBOM MBIf OF THE TIMES.] Henry Brougham, F.R.S., Lord Brougham and Vaux, is the eldest son of the late Henry Brougham, Esq., of Scales Hall, Cumberland, and Brougham Hall, Westmorland, by Eleanor, daughter of the Rev. James Syme, maternal niece of the historian Robertson, and was born in St. Andrews-square, Edinburgh, 19th September, 1779. He received the first seeds of his education at the High School, Edinburgh, under Mr Luke Eraser, and afterwards under Dr Adam, author of the celebrated treatise on " Roman Antiquities ;" and from the High Bchool he passed, in due course of time, to the University of Edinburgh, where he was a pupil of Dugald Stewart, Black, Itobinson, and several other wellknown professors. It was by his aptness for mathematical and physical science that he first made himself distinguished, his earliest published production being a paper on the refraction and reflection of light, which was printed in the Transactions of the Eoyal Society for 1798. This he followed up by another paper on the same subject, published in the succeeding year in the Transactions, and by a third paper, printed in the same place in 1798, entitled " General Theorems, being chiefly Porisms in the higher geometry." Still the early bent of his taste was for the bar, and accordingly, after a lengthened tour in Prussia and Holland (in which he was accompanied by the late Lord Stuart de Eothesay), he was admitted an Advocate at the Scottish Bar in 1800. Residing at Edinburgh, he took a prominent part in the debates of the Speculative Society of that metropolis, and was one of the chief writers in the " Edinburgh Review " while that periodical was still in its infancy. Even down to the year 1828 he continued to write regularly for its pages, and his pen, up to that time, had been the most frequent and the most versatile of all that were employed upon it. In 1803, when only twenty-four years of age, he published bis " Inquiry into the Colonial Policy of the European Powers," in 2 vols. Bvo., a work of vase research, and of great breadth and comprehensiveness of view for so young a man. In 1804 Mr Brougham determined to exchange the Scottish for the English Bar, and with this view took up his residence in London. In the year 1808 he was called to the Bar at Lincolns Inn, and entered upon practice as a barrister in the King's Bench and on the Northern Circuit. The first occasion which made his eloquence familiar to the ears of the British public was his advocacy of the merchants of Liverpool, London, and Manchester, who complained of the injury done to their trade by the operations of the famous Orders in Council, by which, the Government tbought to retaliate on the decrees of Napoleon. Though unsuccessful in obtaining the repeal of the obnoxious Orders, he added considerably to his reputation aa an advocate, and soon afterwards was returned to Parliament as member for Camelford, a pocket borough in the patronage of the late Duke of Cleyeland, then Earl of Darlington. He made his first speech in the House of Commons on sth March, 1810, in the debate on Mr Whitbread's motion of censure on the Earl of Chatham for privately transmitting to the King hia narrative of the expedition to the Scheldt. The speech was good, and even eloquent, but it gave little promise of the forensic offorts of Mr Brougham during the next few years, when the House of Commons became conscious that in his presence it possesed an orator such as had not sat within the walls of St Stepen's since the days of Burke, Pitt and Eox. Of all his contemporaries Canning was.the only one who could in any degree contend with

c him on equal terms. It would be im s possible, within the space of this notici c to give anything like a complete accoum c of the political career of Mr Broughan c whilst he held a seat in the House o: y Commons. It will be sufficient to saj c that, after the close of the war in 1815 - the attention of the Government and the i people alike was turned to domestk ? affairs and matters of internal regulation: ) and that to che discussion of these subs jects Mr Brougham brought a well-in--3 formed and versatile mind, and enligthened philanthropy, liberal opinions 3 and a burning zeal against tyranny, s wrong, and oppression. His efforts on ■ behalf of the abolition of flogging in the F army, the repeal of Catholic disabilities, ■ reform in the government of India, the i spread of education, the improvement of i prison management, the abolition of slavery, law reform, and the independv ence of the public press, will never be forgotten by a grateful people.