Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 12.djvu/193

 carrying the valuable bill for authorising the defence by counsel of prisoners in criminal trials. A singular fatality had this year befallen most of the government measures, a fact of which the most was made by Lyndhurst in a review of the session (18 Aug.), the first of a series of similar assaults on Lord Melbourne's administration, which helped materially to shake it by the skill of analysis and the vigour of their invective. This was a busy year with Lyndhurst, for besides playing a prominent part in politics, he attended closely to appeals in the House of Lords as well as to the business of the privy council. In 1837 his attention was chiefly directed to judicial business. But, in concert with Lord Brougham, he rendered important service in bringing into shape several bills for the reform of the criminal law, introduced by Sir John Campbell, then attorney-general. The Irish Municipal Corporations Reform Bill, again introduced in much the same terms as the previous year, was again defeated, the house refusing by a majority of eighty-six to let it go into committee. In two successive sessions the bill shared the same fate, and it only passed in 1840 with material modifications in the direction indicated by Lord Lyndhurst. In January 1834 Lady Lyndhurst, to whom he was warmly attached, had died after a short illness. Four years afterwards, in August 1837, he married Georgiana, daughter of Lewis Goldsmith, a union the happiness of which was unbroken to his death. His skill as lawyer and legislator was shown in the session of 1838 by his amendments on the bill for the abolition of imprisonment for debt, and also on the Juvenile Offenders Bill. In 1840 he was elected, in opposition to Lord Lyttelton, by a majority of 485, to the office of high steward of the university of Cambridge, an honour which he prized as one of the chief distinctions of his career, especially as men of all shades of opinion had combined to confer it. ‘His reception in the senate house,’ writes one who was present, ‘was a striking and strange exhibition of reverential uproar, such as I never witnessed except in the same place five years before, when the great duke was presented as “Doctor” Wellington.’ When Sir Robert Peel was called, in August 1841, to form a ministry on the defeat of the Melbourne administration, he at once named as his chancellor Lord Lyndhurst, with whom he had for years ‘been on the most confidential intercourse on political matters,’ and on whom, to use his own words, ‘he could confidently rely when real difficulties were to be encountered.’ Lyndhurst was now in his sixty-ninth year, but he was strong, and proved himself quite equal to the heavy work of his office. During his tenure of it he displayed in a pre-eminent degree the judicial aptitude, the desire to arrive at truth, and the splendid power of statement for which he had previously made a great reputation. His speeches in the House of Lords were confined almost exclusively to questions of legal reform raised by himself or others. Despite the pressure of advancing years and the threatened loss of eyesight, he forbore to retire, as he wished to do, when his leader became involved in difficulty with his party by the pressure of the question of free trade in 1844–5, and remained to fight and fall with him upon that question. With heartfelt delight he retired from office, and retreated to a country house at Turville, which he had taken on lease some years before, and where he was happy with his family, his books, his friends, and the occupations of a farm. In 1846 he made, with the approval of the Duke of Wellington, an unsuccessful attempt to reunite the broken ranks of the conservative party, under the leadership of Lord Stanley. But all hope of healing the breach failed owing to the resistance of Lord George Bentinck, the leader for the time of the protectionists. On this Lyndhurst was glad to retire for a time from active participation in the debates of the House of Lords, but he continued to keep up intimate relations with Lord Stanley and other leading men of his party. For the next two years he appeared little in public life. The blindness with which he had been for some time threatened had become so great that for the greater part of 1849 he could neither read nor write. But his family made this deprivation comparatively light for him by reading to him whatever he wished, and his remarkable tenacity of memory came to his aid by retaining every fact and figure of importance. In June 1849 he created surprise by rising to speak in the House of Lords against the royal assent being given to an act of the Canadian legislature, under which he contended that compensation for loss in the Canadian rebellion might be given to those who had abetted it. Frail and feeble physically as he obviously was, it was apparent that nothing but a strong sense of duty could have induced him to appear; but it was soon seen that he had lost nothing of his old intellectual vigour, as for more than an hour he rivetted the attention of the house. There was something singularly pathetic in his words, when, apologising for having addressed their lordships at all, he said, ‘Perhaps it is the last time I shall ever do so.’ It was, happily, very far from being so; for although now verging on his eightieth year, his eyes