Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 04.djvu/163

Bell ably discharged the important duty of drawing up the report upon which was founded the bill which passed into law in 1825 as the Scottish Judicature Act, a measure largely superseded by later reforms, and was consulted by the committee of the House of Lords, which had charge of the framing of the measure, upon many points of detail. In 1826 he published a fifth edition of his 'Commentaries.' In 1832 he succeeded David Hume, nephew of the philosopher, as one of the four principal clerks of session. In 1833 he was nominated chairman of the royal commission then appointed to inquire into and draft proposals for the amendment of the Scotch law, from which resulted the Scotch Bankruptcy Act of 1839 (2 & 3 Vict. c. 41) which continued to regulate bankruptcy proceedings in Scotland until 1856, when it was superseded by the act now in force. In 1841 he was attacked by a severe inflammation of the eye. Though the son of an episcopalian clergyman, he belonged to the whig party. He was of a genial disposition and courteous manners, and appears to have had a larger culture than is common amongst lawyers. Throughout life he was on terms of close intimacy with Jeffrey. A fine portrait of him by Raeburn hangs in the Parliament House, Edinburgh. His great work, the 'Commentaries,' has fully sustained the reputation which it acquired during its author's life. A sixth edition with notes was published in 1858 by his brother-in-law, Patrick Shaw, Esq., advocate, and a seventh, also with notes, in 1870, by John M'Laren, Esq., advocate. In a very recent case reported in the law reports (appeal cases) for 1882 (The Royal Bank of Scotland v. The Commercial Bank of Scotland), the judges of the Court of Session having to choose between the authority of Lord Eldon and that of Bell upon a difficult question of bankruptcy administration, and having preferred to follow the latter, the House of Lords declined to overrule them.

Bell also published: 1. 'An Examination of the Objections stated against the Bill for better regulating the Forms of Process in the Courts of Scotland,' 1825. 2. 'Principles of the Law of Scotland, for the use of Students in the University of Edinburgh,' 1829, a professorial manual originating in outlines of his lectures issued to his students, of which a second edition appeared in the following year, a third in 1833, and a fourth in 1836. 3. 'Illustrations from adjudged Cases of the Principles of the Law of Scotland,' 1836 (second edition, 1838), in three volumes, 8vo, being a commentary upon the preceding work. 4. In 1840, 'Commentaries on the recent Statutes relative to Diligence or Execution against moveable Estate, Imprisonment, Cessio Bonorum, and Sequestration in Mercantile Bankruptcy.' This book, a thin quarto, was not so much an independent work as a supplement to the 'Commentaries on the Laws of Scotland.' A short treatise, 'Inquiries into the Contract of Sale of Goods and Merchandise,' revised and partly printed before his death, was published the following year.

[Letters of Sir C. Bell; Edinburgh Review, April 1872; Anderson's Scottish Nation; Grant's Story of the Univ. of Edinburgh, ii. 374.]

 BELL, HENRY (1767–1830), the builder of the Comet steamship, and therefore the introducer of practical steam navigation in England, was born at Torphichen Mill, near Linlithgow. His father, Patrick Bell, was a millwright, and, according to an account given by himself, his relations both on the father's and mother's side were engaged in mechanical businesses. He was first intended to be a mason, but, at the age of sixteen, he was apprenticed to the millwright's trade. After serving under several engineers he went to London, and spent some time under Rennie. It appears to have been while he was with Shaw and Hart, shipbuilders of Borrowstounness, in 1786, that he conceived the idea of applying steam to navigation, an idea that was at that time filling the minds of many inventors and engineers. In 1790 he settled in Glasgow, and in the following year he entered into partnership with a Mr. Paterson, forming the firm of Bell & Paterson, builders. In 1798 he is said to have turned his attention specially to the steamboat, and in 1800 he began experimenting with an engine placed in a small vessel. An application the same year to the admiralty was unsuccessful, as was a second appeal in 1803, though on the latter occasion Lord Nelson is stated to have spoken strongly in favour of the scheme. There is evidence to show that Fulton, who started a steamer on the Hudson in 1807, had obtained his ideas from Bell in the previous year, and that therefore Bell has a fair claim to be considered, not the inventor of the steamboat–Papin (1707), Jouffroy (1776), Miller of Dalswinton (1787), and many others (some, indeed, only on paper) anticipated him but the first to realise practically the proposals then in the minds of many for applying the steam-engine to the propulsion of vessels. He certainly was the originator of steam navigation in Europe, and in America he was only preceded by Fulton, who, 