Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 17.djvu/448

 years. He opposed the Copenhagen expedition and the orders in council, and entered a protest against the bill to prohibit the exportation of jesuits' back to Europe. The only question in which he interested himself was the prevention of cruelty to animals, for which he introduced a bill on 15 May 1809, which passed the lords but was lost in the commons by 37 to 27, and another in the following session, which he withdrew. He was always attached to animals and had many pets, a dog which he introduced at consultations, a goose, and even two leeches, and in 1807 he published privately a pamphlet, 'An Appeal in favour of the Agricultural Services of Rooks' (Notes and Queries, 1st series, i. 138). The subject was at length dealt with by the act 3 Geo. IV, c. 71. Gradually, too, he altered his early views on slavery, and inclined more and more to emancipation. In 1810, yielding to his besetting sin of seeking popularity, he maintained, on the committal of Sir F. Burdett to the Tower, that all questions of privilege ought to be decided by courts of law only. When the regency became necessary he had high hopes from the Prince of Wales, with whom he was still very intimate, and who had even given him, while chancellor, an uncut topaz seal-ring, with the request that it might not be cut for the present, as he intended to give him an earl's coronet to engrave upon it. He strenuously opposed the proposed restrictions on the regent's powers. But the prince threw the whigs over, and Erskine's hopes of office finally vanished. He retired into private life, attending but little to the judicial and other business of the House of Lords.

He lived the life of an idler and man about town, sometimes melancholy in private, but in company extraordinarily vivacious and sprightly, a characteristic which he always retained (, Recollections, p. 118). He fell into pecuniary straits. Always careless of money—he once dropped 20,000l. of stock on the floor of a shop—in spite of his great professional earnings and his chancellor's pension of 4,000l. a year, he was now poor. Apprehensive of revolution in England he had invested large sums in the United States and lost them. He had given up his house in Lincoln's Inn Fields and now sold his house at Hampstead, Evergreen Villa, and bought an estate in Sussex and took to the study of farming. The estate proved sterile, and though he began to manufacture brooms, as the only things it would produce, his loss was heavy. He haunted the courts at Westminster, expressing many regrets that he ever left the bar, interested himself in his inn, of which he had become a bencher in 1785 and treasurer in 1795, in anniversary dinners and literary institutions, and appeared at innumerable parties and balls. He took to letters, and wrote, at first anonymously, a political romance, 'Armata,' an imitation of Morels 'Utopia' and Swift's 'Gulliver,' which ran through several editions. To the cause of law reform he was indifferent, and, having taken charge in the House of Lords in 1814 of Romilly's bill to subject freehold estates to the payment of simple contract debts, he neglected it so much, since he ' did not understand the subject and was incapable of answering any objections,' that it had to be entrusted to other hands (, Memoirs, 5 Nov. 1815). Some comment was excited by his accepting from the regent the knighthood of the Thistle, and more by his wearing the insignia on every possible occasion. From 1817 he began to return to active public life; he opposed both the Seditious Meetings Bills and the act for the suspension of habeas corpus, and during 1819 and 1820 offered a most determined opposition to the six acts, resisting them at every stage, and also supported Lord Lansdowne's motion for a committee to inquire into the state of the country. He had not been in Scotland since he went to sea as a lad of fourteen. He was now invited and went to a public banquet at Edinburgh 21 Feb. 1820 (Campbell wrongly says 1821); yet so bitter was party spirit that Scott refused to meet him (, Scott, vi. 369). Upon the trial of Queen Caroline he took a part which was deservedly popular, and, in spite of his obligations to the king, insisted in all the debates on securing a fair trial for the queen. In these debates his voice was very influential. Unlike most of the whigs he voted for submitting the 'green bag' to a secret committee, but he proposed a resolution that the queen should have a list of the witnesses before the second reading, which was lost by 28 to 78; resisted successfully the motion of the attorney-general for an adjournment to give time for fresh witnesses to arrive; opposed the second reading on 2 Nov. and 4 Nov., and again attacked the bill in committee, and his speech on the third reading was the last of any importance which he delivered in parliament. His health indeed was failing, and in the middle of his speech on 2 Nov. he was seized with cramp and fell senseless on the floor. His chivalrous speeches on behalf of the queen revived his almost forgotten popularity. But his public part was almost played. On 10. July 1822 he recorded his protest against the Corn Law Bill (3 Geo. Iv, c. 26), on the ground that it diminished instead of increasing agricultural protection. He made some efforts