Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 49.djvu/194

 ,’ 1760–1856, which was published at Cambridge in 1856, 8vo.



ROMILLY, SAMUEL (1757–1818), law reformer, youngest son of Peter Romilly, jeweller, of Frith Street, Soho, by Margaret, daughter of Aimé Garnault, was born in Westminster on 1 March 1757. His father was a younger son of Etienne Romilly, a Huguenot of good family and estate, who fled from Montpellier to England on the revocation of the edict of Nantes, by Judith, second daughter of François de Montsallier, merchant, of Shoreditch. He was an upright and religious man, not without a taste for the fine arts, and, thrown on his own resources at an early age, realised a competent fortune by his business. He died on 29 Aug. 1784, leaving, besides Samuel, an elder son, Thomas Peter (d. 1828), who married his cousin, Jane Anne, second daughter of Isaac Romilly, and was by her father of [q. v.], and a daughter Catherine, who married John Roget, pastor of the French protestant church, London, and was mother of [q. v.] When Samuel Romilly was born, his mother, who died 30 April 1796, was already a confirmed invalid; and he was accordingly brought up by a female relative—who taught him to read from the Bible, the ‘Spectator,’ and an English translation of Télémaque—and a methodist maid-servant, who stuffed his head with stories of the supernatural. The morbid bias thus given to his mind was aggravated by much poring over an immense martyrology and a copy of the ‘Newgate Calendar;’ and, though his home surroundings were otherwise cheerful, the gloom inspired by these early impressions haunted him at intervals throughout life. At school—a private school kept by a preceptor more familiar with the use of the cane than the Latin grammar—he learned little beyond the three R's.

It was the rule to speak French every Sunday at home, and to attend the French reformed church once a fortnight. He early lost all faith in Christianity, but embraced with ardour the gospel of Rousseau, which was brought to his notice by John Roget. At sixteen he began the study of Latin under a private tutor. He read hard, and in the course of a few years had mastered most of the authors of the golden age. During the same period he familiarised himself with the masterpieces of English literature, assiduously practised verse and prose composition in both languages, and began to contribute to the press. Greek literature he knew only through translations. He also attended lectures on natural philosophy, and the Royal Academy courses on the fine arts and anatomy, and acquired a knowledge of accounts by keeping his father's books. After some years spent in the office of William Michael Lally, one of the six clerks in chancery, he was admitted on 5 May 1778 a member of Gray's Inn, where he was called to the bar on 2 June 1783, and was elected treasurer in 1803. When the Inn was menaced during the Gordon riots in June 1780, he gallantly got under arms, did sentry duty at the Holborn gate, and fell ill from excitement and exposure. During his convalescence he learned Italian, and was soon deep in Machiavelli and Beccaria. The latter author doubtless helped to give his mind the strong bent towards law reform which became manifest in later years.

During a vacation tour on the continent in 1781 he laid the basis of a lifelong friendship with the Genevese preacher and publicist Dumont, the friend of Mirabeau, and afterwards editor of Jeremy Bentham's works. At Paris he met Diderot and D'Alembert, and, on a subsequent visit, Dr. Franklin and the Abbé Raynal. In London in 1784 he made the acquaintance of Mirabeau, and translated his pamphlet on the American order of the Cincinnati. In the same year he wrote, in reference to the case of the dean of St. Asaph [see ], ‘A Fragment on the Constitutional Power and Duty of Juries upon Trials for Libels,’ which was published anonymously by the Society for Constitutional Information. It was much admired by Jeremy Bentham and Lord Lansdowne, with both of whom Romilly became intimate. In 1786 he exposed not a few of the anomalies of the criminal law in his anonymous ‘Observations on a late Publication [by Martin Madan] entitled “Thoughts on Executive Justice,”’ London, 8vo. The long vacations of 1788 and 1789 he spent with Dumont at Versailles and Paris, which he revisited in 1802 and 1815. In 1788 he furnished Mirabeau with the matter for his ‘Lettre d'un Voyageur Anglois sur la Maison de Force de Bicêtre,’ which was suppressed by the police. The English original, however, found a place in the ‘Repository,’ ii. 9*. Romilly's sympathies were at this time wholly with the radical party; and on the assembling of the States-General he drafted for their use a précis of the procedure of the House of