The Sun.
London, England, 1868-05-11 00:00:00

THE SUN, LONDON, MONDAY EVENING, MAY 11, 1868.

SHARE LIST.

DEATH OF LORD BROUGHAM.

We
.have the painful duty of announcing the
death of Lord Brougham, which took place at his
teat at Cannes, in the south of France, suddenly,
on Thursday night.
The venerable peer, who would have reached his
90th year on his next birthday, had been in the en-
joyment of excellent health, and was in the habit of
taking carriage airings every day since the flue
weather set in, and even did so on Thursday after-
noon. lie returned at his usual dinner hour, -and
retired to rest between eight and nine o'clock.
When he retired he is stated to have been in his
usual health and spirits. As Was customary, some
pf the domestics before retiring went into his apart-
ment, and to their astonishment found him dead i❑
his bed. The answer to inquiries made late on
Saturday night at his town residence, 21, Berkeley-
square, was that the telegram which had been re-
ceived from Lord Brougham's brother, who was
staying with him at Cannes, stated him to have
" died in his sleep."

The following summary of the deceased noble-
man's long and distinguished career is from " Men
of the 'lime :"

Brougham and Vaux, Lord,' Henry Brougham,
&c., was the eldest son of the late henry
Brougham, Esq., of Scales llall, Cumberland, and
Brougham Hall, Westmoreland, by Eleanor,
daughter of the Rev-. James Syrne, maternal niece
of the historian Robertson, and was born in St.
Andrew's-square, Edinburgh, September 19, 1779.

Ile received the first seeds of his education at the
High School, Edinburgh, under Mr. Luke Fraser,
and afterwards . under Dr. Adam, author of the
celebrated treatise on "Roman Antiquities ;" and
from the High School he passed, in due course of
time, to the University of Edinburgh, where he was
a pupil of Dugald Stewart, Black, Robinson, and
several other well-known professors. It was by his
aptness for mathematical and physical science that
he first made himself distinguished, his earliest pub-
lished production being a paper on the refraction
and reflection of light, which was printed in the
" Transactions of the Royal Society for 1798." This
he followed up by another paper on the same subject,
published in the succeeding year in the " Transac
tier's," 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 ac-
cordingly, after- a lengthened tour in Prussia and
Holland (in which he was accompanied by the late
Lord Stuart de Rothesay), he was admitted an
advocate of the Scottish bar in 1800. Residing at
Edinburgh, he took a prominent part in the de-
bates 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 in-
fancy. Even down to the year 1828 he con-
tinued 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 24 years of age,
he published his "Inquiry into the Colonial Policy
of the European Powers," in two. vols, Bvo., a work
of vast research, and of great breadth and compre-
hensiveness of view for a young 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 Lincoln's luu, and entered
upon practice as a barrister in the King's Bench on
the Northern Circuit. The first occasion which
made his eloquence familiar to the ears of the
British public was his advocacy of the cause of the
t
merchants of Liverpool, London, and Manchester,
who complained of the injury done to their trade by
the operation of the famous Orders in Council, by
which the Government thought to retalate on the
decrees of Napoleon. Though unsuccessful in ob-
taining the repeal of the noxious orders, he added
pocket
boh inth
considerably to his reputation as an advocate, and
was returned e
to Parliamentroug as
e
g e of
soon afterwardsslawtie D rdu, kr ee
a of ur ed
f
os
Cleveland, then Earl
of Darlington. lie made his first speech in the
memberpatrona for
the eaoie
House of Commons on Nlarch 5, 1810, in the de-
bate on Mr. Whitbread's motion of censure on the
Earl of Chatham, for privately transmitting to the
King his narrative of the expedition to the Scheldt.
The speech was good and even eloquent, but in
gave little promise of the forensic efforts of Mr.
Brougham during the next few years, when the
House of Commons became conscious that in his
presence it possessed an orator such as hid not

- -
sat within the walls of St. Stephen's since the days
of Burke, Pitt,
and Fox. Of all his contemporaries
Canning was the:only one who could in any degree
contend with hire
on equal terms. It would be
impossible, within the space of this notice, to
give anything like a complete account of the poli-
tical career of Mr. Brougham whilst he held a seat
in the House of Commons. It will be sufficient to
say that, after the close of the war in 1815, the
attention of the
Government and the people
alike was turned to domestic affairs and matters of
internal regulation ; and that to the discussion of
these subjects Mr. Brougham brought a well-in-
formed and versatile mind, an enlightened philan-
thropy, liberal opinions, and a burning zeal against
tyranny, wrong, and
oppression. Ilis efforts on
behalf of the abolition of flogging in the army, the
repeal of Catholic disabilities, reform in the govern-
ment of India, the spread of education, the improve-
ment of prison manaaement, the abolition of
slavery, law reform, and the independence of the
public Press, will never be forgotten by a grateful
people. Mr. Brougham remained out of Parlia-
ment from 1812 to 1816, when he was returned for
the since-disfranchised borough of Winchilsea by
the influence of his old friend and patron the Earl
of Darlington,
and he continued to represent that
constituency until early in 1830, when he resigned
his seat, and was immediately elected member for
Knaresborough. During this time he spoke much
and often on the reduction of taxation, the repeal
of the property-tax, and other kindred subjects,
and in 1818 obtained a Parliamentary committee
for inquiry into abuses connected with the
educational foundations of the United King-
dom, the first commencement of the movement
in favour of
popular education. During 1820
and the following year he was mainly en-
gaged professionally in Westminster Hall as
Attorney-General to her Majesty Queen Caroline,
whose cause he advocated successfully against
George IV., with something more than the zeal
of a common advocate, and, his eloiuence had a
wonderful effect in securing on her behalf, as a
woman and a wife, the sympathy of the British
people. In 1825 Mr. Brougham was elected Lord
Rector of Glasgow University, as a mark of appre-
ciation of his zeal iu the cause of education, and of
his foundation of mechanics' institutes in con-
junction with the late Dr. Birkbeck. In 1827 he
laid the foundation of the Society for the Diffusion
of Useful Knowledge, of which he was also the
first president. The first publication of this society
discourse " On the Objects,
Advantages of Science." Iu
the month cf Au,
being
Mr. Brougham
rwlaseasAulrre.sß, roatnigdhads
of York, and in that capa-
city the satisfactioungusoti being chosen to re-
the acknowledged champion of the
cpresentity te
ctahme e county
cause of Parliamentary Reform. A day had been
actually appointed for his motion on the subject,
when the Duke of Wellington sent in his resigna-
tion to the King, and Earl Grey was appointed
Premier in his place. O wing to a combination of
circumstances, the nation was much surprised to
learn from the Gazette a few days afterwards that
the Chancellorship
the new Administration had
been
i to Mr. Brougham, who was at the
entruste
same time raised to the peerage as Lord Brougham
and Vaux. From November, 1830, to November,
1834, Lord Brougham was thoroughly identified
with the policy pursued by Lord Grey, and after-
wards by his successor, the late Lord Melbourne ;
and the defence and support of the Reform Bill in
the Upper house devolved almost entirely on the
hands of his lordship, who has thus summed up
the series of measures carried into effect dur-
ing these few brief years :—" The abolition
ofof the
eaveiriast
in all our colonies ; the opening
India trade, and the. destruction
of monopoly ; the amendment of
the erei the Company's
vast improvements in the whole
t a law ;

municipal jurisprudence, both as regards law and
equity ; the settlement of the Bank Charter ; the
total reform of the Scotch Municipal Corporations;
the entire alteration of the poor laws ; and an
ample commencement made in reforming the Irish
Church, by the abolition of ten bishoprics." Ilia
speeches in the House of Lords during these
eventful years form a large proportion of the entire
collection, as published in Hansard. In November,
1834, Sir Robert Peel assumed the reins of Govern.-
ment, and Lord Brougham resigned office with his
colleagues. The Whig Ministry of Lord Mel•
bourne, however, returned to power in the following
April, but Lord Brougham was not reappointed to
the C hancellorship.- The reason of his exclusion
must be left for the future biographer and historian
to tell. Since that time his lordship has continued
to hold an independent position in the Upper House,
freely criticising the measures of Whig and Tory
Governments alike, but paying constant and
careful attention to the leg al business of the
house as one of the " law lords." In 1848
his lordship, who had previously purchased an
es-ate at Cannes, in the south of France, proposed
to the newly-established French Republic to be
naturalised as a citizen in that country ; but, in re-
ply to his application, he was informed by M.
Marras that his wish could be carried out only by
his ceasing to be au English peer. During the
period which has elapsed since his release from the.
duties of the Senate and the forum Lord Brougham
has contributed largely to the list of modern publi-
cations. In 1838 he published the collected edition
of his speeches, with notes and introductions, and a
discourse on the eloquence of the ancients. He has
also edited " Paley's Natural Theology," and writ-
ten "Dissertations on Subjects of -Science connected
with Natural Theology." In 1839 appeared the
first of his " Historic Sketches of Statesmen who
flourished in the Reign of George III.," a work
which he completed in 1813, and .tw o yeari later
published his " Lives of Men of Art and Science"
belonging to the same period. He also edited the
speech. of Demosthenes de Corona. A new and
complete edition of Lord Brougham's works, in-
cluding his "Political Philosophy," as yet incom-
plete, and other political and mathematical treatises,
has recently been published under his own superin-
tendence, by Messrs. Griffin and Co., of Glasgow.
After the passing of the Reform Bill, and since
his retirement from official life, Lord Brougham has
exerted his energies in working out his .favourite
schenie of law amendment, and in the establish-
ments of courts in which cheap justice might be
dealt out to the middle and lower classes. So early,
indeed, as in the month of June, 1830, he intro-
duced into the House of Commons, a measure,
" the declared object of which," in the words of a
contemporary memoir, " was to bring justice home
to every man's door at all times of the year by the
establishment of local courts. By this bill the law
of arbitration was to be extended, the general local
jurisdiction established, and courts of reconcile-
ment were to be introduced." This measure, some-
what modified, is now seen in full operation in the
county courts, established about twelve years since.
A succession of other bills for the. reform of pro-
ceedings in bankruptcy were afterwards introduced
by Lord Brougham, who, from his first entrance
into the Upper House, "has laboured for the im-
provement of the law with a zeal approaching to
enthusiasm." lu 1850 Lord Brougham resumed
his scientific researches, and communicated to the
Royal Society a paper of " Experiments and Ob-
servations on the Properties of Light," which he
followed up by further papers on the same subject
in 1852 and 1853, in which he proves the principle
upon which Newton established his theory of light
to be inconclusive. In 1855 he published, in con-
junction with E. J. Routh, Esq., an " Analytical
View of Newton's Principia." He has since given
to the world a paper on the " Integral Calculus,"
and has contributed further articles on Light to the
Transactions of the Enstitute.of France, of which
body he was a member, and before whom he recently
spoke in French on that subject. •
In 1819 Lord Brougham married Mary Anne,
widow of John Spalding, Esq., and eldest daughter
of Thomas Eden, Esq., DepUty Auditor of Green-
wich Hospital (brother of the late Lord Auckland
and Henley), by whom he had an only daughter,
who died young, Nov. 30, 1839. In 1860 he ob-
tained a free patent of peerage, with remainder to
his brother, Mr. William Brougham, and his issue
male.