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 was styled in its edition for the provinces, with the motto of ‘Pro rege sæpe, pro patria semper.’ In Michaelmas term 1819 he was called to the bar, joining the midland circuit. He at once obtained a brief in a case arising out of the Manchester massacre. On his first circuit he was engaged for the defence of Major John Cartwright [q. v.] and others who were prosecuted for conspiracy in attending a meeting to elect what they called ‘a legislatorial attorney’ for Birmingham. Hill's known sympathies with the radical party and his ability led to his being retained for the defence in many other political trials. In 1820 he defended the wife of Richard Carlile [q. v.] on a charge of selling a seditious libel, and in 1822 Carlile's shop-boy on a charge of disseminating blasphemy. In 1831 he was leading counsel for the Nottingham rioters, in 1839 for the Canadian prisoners, and in 1843 for the ‘Rebecca’ rioters in South Wales. In 1844 he was one of the counsel for Daniel O'Connell in his appeal to the House of Lords, and in 1848 for the plaintiffs in the Braintree church rate case, and for the crown in the case of the appointment of Dr. Hampden to the see of Hereford. He was for many years actively engaged both in parliament and in the courts of law in the celebrated case of the Baron de Bode, who claimed as an English subject compensation for the loss of his property confiscated by the French government. The money had been paid by the French government in 1814 into the English treasury; but in spite of the support given to the baron's claim by Lords Derby, Truro, Brougham, and Lyndhurst, all Hill's efforts for his client were fruitless.

In 1822 he had published his work on ‘Public Education’ [see under], which led to an intimate acquaintance with Jeremy Bentham and other advanced liberals. In 1823–4, under the pseudonyms of William Payne and Martin Danvers Heaviside, he contributed to Knight's ‘Quarterly Magazine,’ and so became intimate with Macaulay. In a contribution entitled ‘My Maiden Brief’ he gave a lively account of his first case. In 1826 he took part with Brougham in founding the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge. In the political agitation which resulted in the Reform Bill he was largely concerned, and on the resignation of Lord Grey's ministry in 1832, when it was believed that the Duke of Wellington was going to use military force, he, like many of the reformers, purchased a rifle to use on the side of the people. Being returned for Hull in the first reform parliament, he strongly supported all measures for improving the law and extending liberty. He had the charge of the bill for the colonisation of South Australia, which in 1834 received the royal assent. In a speech at Hull in 1833, imprudently repeating a statement which he had heard in private conversation, he charged an Irish member with opposing a bill, and at the same time privately intimating to the government that it ought to pass. This led on the opening of the session to an unseemly debate, in the course of which Lord Althorp, who avowed his belief that the statement was true, and Sheil were committed to the custody of the sergeant-at-arms, as a duel between them seemed impending. A committee of inquiry was appointed, before which Hill, convinced that the report which had reached him could not be sustained, finally withdrew the charge. In the general election of 1835 he lost his seat. In 1838 he published a pamphlet, ‘A Letter to Thomas Pemberton, Esq., M.P., on the Privileges of the House of Commons.’

In 1834 he took silk, and in 1839, on the erection of his native town into a municipal corporation, he was appointed recorder of Birmingham. It was in this office, which he held for twenty-six years, that he delivered that series of charges to the grand jury which greatly helped to effect a reform in the criminal law. These charges were published in a collected edition in 1857 under the title of ‘Suggestions for the Repression of Crime.’ He had for a fellow-worker his youngest brother, Frederic Hill, who as first inspector of prisons in Scotland had remodelled the gaols in that part of the kingdom, and published the results of his experience in a work entitled ‘Hill on Crime’ (1853). In dealing with criminals the following were the principles which Hill laid down: (1) The object of criminal jurisprudence should be the repression of crime to the lowest possible amount, the treatment of the criminal being a means to that end, not an end itself; (2) with retribution for sin, man, in regard to his fellow-man, has nothing to do; (3) punishment used solely as a deterrent being often futile, at the best insufficient, and always uncertain in effect, two methods alone exist of preventing crime by penal means, namely, incapacitation or reformation. Under incapacitation come capital punishment and imprisonment. Criminals guilty of murder, but who have been reprieved, or guilty of inflicting irremediable injury, and those whom repeated convictions for grave offences have shown to be incorrigible, he proposed to imprison, not nominally as at present, but really for life, in a special gaol. From this there was to be no release except by the recommendation of the judicial committee of the privy council. In dealing with