Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 08.djvu/386

Campbell of his services his wife should be raised to the peerage. She was created Baroness Stratheden. In 1838 and in 1839, when vacancies occurred in the court of common pleas, he had still serious thoughts of accepting a puisne judgeship, but he was again dissuaded from abandoning the government. After the Real Property Acts, his chief legislative work during this period was the Municipal Corporations Act of 1835, in the preparation of which he had a chief part, and which he carried through the House of Commons. He had much at heart the carrying of a measure for abolishing imprisonment for debt, except in certain cases of fraud, and for giving creditors greater powers over their debtors' property, but he was only partially successful. An act of 1836 (1 & 2 Vict. c. 110) extended the remedies of judgment creditors, and abolished imprisonment for debt on mesne process; but imprisonment for ordinary debts after judgment was not done away with till 1869. Yet another abuse he swept away by the Prisoners' Counsel Act (6 & 7 Wm. IV, c. 114), which gave to a person charged with felony, or to his counsel, the same rights of addressing the jury on the merits of the case as if he were charged with treason or misdemeanor, and allowed all persons on trial to have copies of, and to inspect, depositions taken against them. Strange to say, nearly all the judges were opposed to this change, Mr. Justice Allan Park, in fact, threatening to resign if the bill were carried. Among the famous cases in which Campbell took part while he was at the head of the bar were the trial of Lord Melbourne in 1836, the second action of Stockdale v. Hansard in 1839, the trial of Frost the chartist in 1840, and the trial of Lord Cardigan in 1841 for wounding Captain Tuckett in a duel. In 1842 he published a selection of his speeches delivered at the bar and in the House of Commons; and with a lack of good feeling, for which he was very justly condemned, he included his defence of Lord Melbourne. The only part of the volume that has any permanent value is his argument in Stockdale v. Hansard. He had devoted a great part of two long vacations to preparing it. 'I had read everything,' he says, 'that had the smallest bearing on the subject, from the earliest year-book to the latest pamphlet—not confining myself to mere legal authorities, but diligently examining historians, antiquaries, and general jurists, both English and foreign' (see also 's Life, ii. 13). He printed much in later years, but nothing that showed more careful labour than the full account which this speech contains of the history and the reason of parliamentary privilege. The court, over which Lord Denman presided, decided against him (9 A. & E. 1; see Bradlaugh v. Gossett, L. R. 12 Q. B. D. 271); and the excitement and the difficulties caused by their 'ill-considered and intemperate judgment,' as Campbell unreasonably calls it in his 'Autobiography,' were ended only by the passing of an act to give summary protection to persons employed in the publication of parliamentary papers (3 Vict. c. 9. See his Life, ch. xxiii.; Speeches, p. 406; and 's Constitutional Law, where the case is reported with a summary of Campbell's argument). Another elaborate argument was delivered by him in the great Sergeant's case, but he did not include it in his published speeches (see 's Sergeant's Case, p. 114. In 's Cases and Opinions on Constitutional Law will be found a considerable number of Campbell's opinions written while he was a law officer).

In 1841, when the dissolution was resolved on which ended in the fall of the whigs, it was felt that Campbell's services should receive recognition. Pressure was brought to bear on Lord Plunket, the Irish lord chancellor, to induce him to resign, which he did unwillingly, protesting against the arrangement, and Campbell was appointed and raised to the peerage. As the appointment was so impopular in Dublin, and as it had been freely called a job, he publicly declared that he would forego the usual pension of 4,000l. a year which attached to the Irish chancellorship. When the subject had been first mooted, he appears to have thought that Lord Plunket's consent had been obtained, and when he learned the real state of matters, the delay had put in danger his Edinburgh seat. His own account of the transaction shows that he himself saw nothing discreditable in the part which he played. He held the office only for six weeks, and sat in court only a few days. His lack of experience as an equity lawyer did not prevent him from forming large schemes for the reform of equity procedure, which he sketched out in an address to the Irish bar (Speeches, p. 516); but they were cut short by the resignation of the Melbourne ministry, and he was replaced in the chancellorship by Sugden (Life of Plunket, ii. 329;, Lives of the Lord Chancellors of Ireland, ii. 595).

He returned to England, and, according to his bargain, without a pension. Judicial business in the House of Lords (where he took part in the O'Connell case) and on the judicial committee of the privy council left him plenty of leisure, which his ambitious 