Page:Select Essays in Anglo-American Legal History, Volume 1.djvu/737

 19. ZANE: THE FIVE AGES 723 year Romilly passed his bill through the Commons ; but it always failed in the Lords before the opposition of Eldon and Ellenborough. Eventually he must have succeeded, but his wife's death in 1818 plunged him into such profound grief that in a moment of madness he took his own life. His practice at the bar was solely in the chancery court. The favor of Lord Eldon made him the leading chancery barrister. We have preserved to us the substance of his argument in a great leading case.^ Lord Cottenham, after- wards, speaking from the bench ^ of Romilly's celebrated reply, said : " From the hearing of it, I received so much pleasure, that the recollection of it has not been diminished by the lapse of more'than thirty years." Romilly's winning personality, his charming manners, his uprightness and love of humanity, his really marvellous eloquence, make him one of the most interesting figures at the English bar. His son Lord Romilly, the well-known Master of the Rolls, has made the name a noted one in the judicial records. A greater than Romilly now took up the burden of re- form. Henry Brougham, was, perhaps, at certain times, the most effective orator of the first half of the nineteenth century ; but he was never a close and accurate lawyer. He had nothing like the success at the bar of Law, the defender of Warren Hastings, or of Erskine. He had neither steadi- ness nor application in ordinary practice. But he was the foremost figure in the most celebrated trial of the century. When George IV. attempted to rid himself of his wife, Caro- line of Brunswick, by a bill of pains and penalties, she was defended by Brougham, Denman, and Wilde, while John Singleton Copley assisted in the prosecution. All of them attained the highest honors ; three of them were chancellors and one a lord chief justice. Both Brougham and Denman on that trial made splendid speeches, but the finest argu- ment from a lawyer's standpoint was Copley's. Romilly, Brougham, and Mackintosh found the greatest obstacle to their work for law reform to be the presence of Lord Eldon in the House of Lords. Eldon himself •Dent V. Russell, 4 Myl. & Cr. 277.
 * Hugenin v Baselee, 14 Ves. 273.