Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 7.djvu/311

 ALEXANDER WEDDERBURN (EARL op ROSSLIN). 447

and practice, which he greatly increased by becoming the advocate of lord Olive, in whose cause he was triumphantly successful. He pleaded on the great Douglas cause in 1768-9, when his acute reasoning, his deep reading, and his irresistible eloquence, attracted the favourable notice of lord Camden, and se- cured him ever after the protection and friendship of lords Bute and Mansfield. If the squibs of his political opponents in after life are to be trusted, his en- deavours at the commencement of his career to forget his national accent were not very successful ; while his friends asserted, perhaps truly, that he only re- tained enough of it to give increased effect to his oratory.

After having been called to the degree of sergeant-at-law, with the rank of king's counsel, he was promoted in January 1771, to the office of solicitor- general, and in June, 1773, to that of attorney-general: the duties of these posts he is said to have discharged with a mildness and moderation which pro- cured him universal approbation ; though his inveterate hostility to Franklin, and the overwhelming bitterness of his language before the privy council in -1774, are justly held to detract considerably from his merit. Mr Wedderburn first sat in parliament for the Inverary district of burghs, and in 1774, being chosen simultaneously for Castle Rising and Oakhampton, made his election for the latter ; in 1778, he was elected for Bishop's Castle. Throughout his career in the house of commons, he was a powerful support to the ministry of lord North, not only by his eloquence, but by the great extent of his legal, juris- prudential, and. parliamentary knowledge. His merits as a statesman are of course estimated very differently by contemporary party writers. Churchill has embalmed him in the well-known quatrain :

" Mute at the bar, and in the senate loud, Dull 'mongst the dullest, proudest of the proud, A pert, prim prater, of the northern race, Guilt in. his heart, and famine in his face. "

Yet even Junius has allowed that his character was respected, and that he pos- sessed the esteem of society. Sir Egerton Bridges says : " Lord Rosslyn ap- peared to be a man of subtle and plausible, rather than solid talents, ambition was great, and his desire of office unlimited. He could argue with great ingenuity on either side, so that it was difficult to anticipate h.s future by his past opinions. These qualities made him a valuable partisan, and an useful and efficient member of any administration." One public service of high value is always allowed to Mr Wedderburn. During the celebrated metropoli- tan riots in 1780, when the municipal power had proved so inadequate to th occasion, and the conflagration of the whole capital seemed to be threatened a privy council was held by the king, who asked Mr Wedderburn for his of- ficial opinion. Mr Wedderburn stated in the most precise terms, that any such assemblage of depredators might be dispersed by mihuury force, without waiting for forms or reading the riot act. Is that your declaration of the Taw as g attorney-general?" asked the king; Mr Wedderburn answering direct- ly in the affirmative," Then let it so be done," replied his *?%>'* ** attorney-general immediately drew up the order by which the noters we, . few hours dispersed, and the metropolis saved.

In June of the year last mentioned, Mr Wedderburn was called to tl privy council raised to the bench as lord chief justice of the court of Common Pleas andt'the peerage as lord Loughborough, baron of Loughborough in the cotty of LeiceJr. He bad occasion in his J^J^^ *X jury Sitting under the commission for the trial of the rioters ; and is aUo e thai the address was one of the finest specimens of reasoned eloquence that