Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 03.pdf/428

 The

Vol. III.

No. 9.

Green

BOSTON.

Bag.

September, 189 1.

LORD SELBORNE. IN view of the fact that the American Bar Association at its recent meeting in Boston awarded a gold medal to Lord Selborne for his eminent services in the cause of legal reform, his name becomes of especial interest to the profession in the United States, and a brief biographical sketch of so distinguished a man cannot fail to be welcomed by our readers. Lord Selborne is the second son of the late Rev. William Jocelyn Palmer, rector of Mixbury, Oxfordshire, England (the son of William Palmer, Esq., of Nazing Park), by Dorothea, youngest daughter of the late Rev. Wm. Roundell, of Gledstanes, Yorkshire, and was born at Mixbury, on the 27th of Xovember,i8i2. His school and college career was of the utmost brilliancy. He went first to Rugby and then to Winchester, and in 1830 gained an open scholarship at Trinity College, Ox ford, where he graduated first class in classics in 1834, having previously gained the Chan cellor's prize for Latin verse (" Numantia") and for the Latin essay in 1831, the Newdigate prize for English verse ( " Staffa " ) in 1832, and in the same year the Ireland schol arship, which was certainly considered the "blue ribbon" of the University until the institution of the Derby scholarship some ten years ago. In the same year that he took his degree he was elected to a fellow ship at Magdalen College — of which society he is still an honorary fellow — and obtained the Eldon Law Scholarship. He graduated M.A. in 1837, and was called to the bar at Lincoln's Inn on the 9th June of that year. Mr. Palmer's upward path in the profession he had chosen was smooth, and it is perhaps 5i

hardly an exaggeration to say that from the first its highest rewards were prophesied for him. At that time a reputation such as he had brought with him from Oxford was no mean passport to success in liberal callings and in the world of politics, though no doubt it would be folly to deny that his influential family connections were of much greater ser vice to him. Having attained a very heavy and lucrative practice as a Chancery "stuff," he was created a Queen's Council in April, 1849, and was in due course elected a Bench er of his Inn, and it might be convenient here to sum up his career at the bar by remarking that the Law Reports show that when he had once made his way to the front he was hardly ever left out of a big case in Lincoln's Inn, or any important appeal to the House of Lords. No more need be said in praise of the indus try and solid talents of one who yet was never deemed to possess the versatility and genius for law possessed by a Cairns or a Bethell. As a " political lawyer," Mr. Palmer was an early and pronounced success, and did yeoman service to the Liberal party during the many years he was associated with it in the House of Commons. He was first re turned to Parliament as member for Plymouth at the General Election of July, 1847, and is described in the " Dod " of the day as "a Liberal Conservative, favorable to the exten sion of Free Trade, but friendly to the prin ciple of the Navigation Laws; opposed to the endowment of the Roman Catholic Clergy." He represented Plymouth till July 1852, when he was not re-elected. However, he regained his seat in June, 1853, and held it till March, 1857, when he did not offer himself as a can