Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 44.djvu/389

Perceval Lord Loughborough was not alone in thinking highly of him. Only a few weeks earlier Pitt had offered him the chief secretaryship for Ireland, with the prospect of a pension. Perceval refused the offer on the ground that, with a wife and five children, he could not afford to accept any income that Pitt could fairly grant. His needs were considerable. Though he had lived, when first married, in lodgings in Bedford Row, he had bought about 1793 a good house in Lincoln's Inn Fields with money settled on his wife by her father, and there he kept an expensive establishment. In the course of 1796 a sixth child was born to him, and, for the time being, all his ambition was confined to making money by the law.

In the summer, however, a seat was found for him in parliament. Lord Northampton's death in April, and his son Lord Compton's elevation to the House of Lords, left a vacancy in one of the Northampton seats, and Perceval was returned unopposed. On the dissolution, which shortly followed, he was only elected after a sharp contest. He did not speak, apparently, till May 1797, when he made a favourable impression by his support of Pitt's proposal to make penal any attempt to sow disaffection in the forces. From his first entrance into parliament he declared for uncompromising war with France abroad, and for a strenuous support of Pitt and his repressive policy at home. He spoke after very careful preparation, and not unfrequently. His manner was epigrammatic though artificial, and he seems to have won the esteem not of Pitt only (who is said to have named him as a possible successor to himself as early as the date of his duel with Tierney), but also of Sheridan and of Fox. During 1798 and 1799 he more than once wound up debates on the government side and acted as teller for them in divisions. The growth of his political influence is shown by the fact that Mansel, his old tutor, was appointed master of Trinity in 1798 mainly by his solicitation, and that he himself was in the same year appointed solicitor to the board of ordnance through Lord Cornwallis's intervention, and solicitor-general to the queen by the special favour of the king. Nor had politics interfered with his progress at the bar. His income, which had been 1,012l. in his last year as a stuff-gownsman, had risen to 1,504l. in 1799, and to 1,807l. in 1800. Ultimately his private practice brought him four to five thousand a year.

When Pitt was succeeded by Addington the new minister found himself ill-supported in debate by the members of his cabinet, and therefore bestowed his law offices where he could get the required assistance. Law became attorney-general, Perceval solicitor-general, and it was intended that they should be regularly instructed as though they were counsel for the new administration (, Diary, i. 307). Perceval, as an earl's son, was permitted to decline the customary knighthood, the only exception made since 1783. From this time he gave up practice in the king's bench, and appeared only in chancery; but if his object was to secure more time for politics, he did not succeed, for he rapidly became the regular opponent of Romilly in the chancery courts. During the sessions of 1801 and 1802 he spoke little in the house, and mainly on Irish questions. In 1802 Law succeeded Lord Kenyon in the chief-justiceship of the king's bench, and Perceval became attorney-general. In that capacity he prosecuted Colonel Despard for high treason, and Peltier for a libel on Bonaparte. Both were convicted early in 1803. On 24 May 1804 he appeared again for the crown on the trial of Cobbett for the libels on Lord Hardwicke and Lord Redesdale, published in Cobbett's ‘Political Register,’ and signed ‘Juverna;’ and, when ‘Juverna’ proved to be Mr. Justice Johnson, one of the Irish judges, Perceval conducted his prosecution on 23 Nov., and again both prosecutions were successful. In the same year he declined the chief-justiceship of the common pleas, with a peerage.

During the career of the Addington administration Perceval, according to Brougham, almost single-handed, defended the ministry in the House of Commons from the assaults of Pitt, Fox, Windham, and their followers (Statesmen, i. 248, ii. 58). His future as a champion of debate seemed assured. Hence Pitt, on succeeding Addington, was anxious to secure his assistance. Perceval's first intention was to decline Pitt's advances. But he was approached adroitly through Lord Harrowby, one of his best friends, and, having stipulated for his own entire freedom at all times to oppose catholic emancipation, he accepted office again as attorney-general. Here he displayed a more liberal spirit than might have been looked for. He refused to prosecute the members of the early trade unions at the instance of the employers, on the ground that he was unwilling to commit the government to a uniform support of the employers on trade questions; and to Wilberforce's efforts to remedy the abuses of the Guinea slave trade he lent a warm and steady support. He took up the bill, which Sir William Scott had dropped, for compelling non-resident clergymen to pro-