"Gentlemen, I really have not words. of the election. At the close of the poll, | had recommended him to their favour, for notwithstanding the boast of Sir Francis though born and having passed his whole Burdett's friends, Romilly was, as he had life among them, it was by his public been throughout the contest, at the head conduct alone that he had become known of the list. The numbers were-Romilly, to them. 5339; Burdett, 5238; Maxwell, 4808; and Hunt, who never had the slightest chance, adequately to express the gratitude which 84. At the close of the election Romilly I feel. I am sensible, however, that the addressed his constituents in a few earnest thanks which it will become me to give, and well-chosen words. and which will be worthy of you to receive, are thanks not to be expressed in words but in actions, not in this place but within the walls of the House of Commons. The representative of Westminster should express his thanks by a faithful discharge of the sacred duties which you have imposed on him; by a constant and vigilant attention to the public interest; by being a faithful guardian of the people's liberties and a bold asserter of their rights; by resisting all attacks, whether open or insidious, which may be made upon the liberty of the press, the trial by jury, and the Habeas Corpus, the great security of As long as the contest, he said (4th July, 1818), which had just terminated was depending, as long as his appearance among them could be considered as a solicitation of their votes for an honour which, whatever the kind partiality of his friends might have induced them to think, he never presumed to imagine himself deserving of, he had abstained from presenting himself to them; but now that the contest was at an end, now that he had been chosen one of their representatives, and that he could address them by the endearing name of his constituents he hastened to appear before them and to thank them for the honour all our liberties; by opposing all attempts they had done him, and for the confidence they had placed in him. To be chosen by their free and unbiassed votes to represent that great, populous, independent, and enlightened city in Parliament, to be selected from among public men to declare their will and express their sentiments upon all the most important questions that could interest the community, was in his estimation the highest honour to which, in that free state, any individual could be raised. It was an honour to which, notwithstanding the decision they had pronounced, he could still hardly venture to think that he had any just pretensions. The endeavours he had used to serve the public had, by the too indulgent partiality of others, been greatly overrated, and he ought rather to offer an apology for what had been said of him than to claim the benefits of such a panegyric. He had indeed endeavoured to be useful to the public, but his endeavours had seldom been successful. Such, however, as they were, it was those endeavours which alone to substitute in the place of that government of law and justice to which Englishmen have been accustomed a government supported by spies and informers; by endeavouring to restrain the lavish and improvident expenditure of public money; by opposing all new and oppressive taxes, and above all that grievous, unequal, and inquisitorial imposition, the income tax, if any attempt should be made in the new Parliament to revive it; by endeavouring to procure the abolition of useless and burdensome offices, a more equal representation of the people in Parliament, and a shorter duration of the Parliament's existence; by being a friend of religious as well as of civil liberty; and by seeking to restore this country to the proud station which it held among nations when it was the secure asylum of those who were endeavouring to escape in foreign countries from religious or political persecution. "These are the thanks which the electors of Westminster are entitled to expect; and when the time shall come that I shall have to render you an account of the trust you have committed to me, I trust in God that I shall be able to show that I have discharged it honestly and faithfully. Gentlemen, for myself I return you my sincerest thanks, and for the result of the election I offer you my warmest congratulations." A Leader of the Senate, one of the foremost men at the bar, member for one of the most influential constituencies in the kingdom, and enjoying a reputation which was European for his efforts as a reformer, Sir Samuel Romilly was now at the height of his fame and prosperity. There seemed no reason to doubt that a long career of public usefulness was open to him, and that one day he might grasp the most valued prizes in his profession. But as the darkest hour is the one preceding the dawn, so often the moment of our triumph is the one specially chosen to usher in our collapse. Lady Romilly had long been ailing, and her declining health had caused the devoted husband the deepest anxiety. After weeks passed in nursing her with all the tender solicitude that affection could inspire the end came, and the inconsolable Romilly had to face the terrible solitude of the future as a widower. His separation from her he so fondly loved was brief. Bowed down by a grief which refused to be solaced, and at times bereft of his senses by the gloom and despair which now embittered his existence, he, during one of these hours of temporary frenzy, took up a knife and sought peace in the fearful end of the suicide. Lady Romilly died October 29, 1818; within three days of her departure the frantic widower brought his own life to a close at the age of sixty-two. The exact position which Sir Samuel Romilly occupies in political biography is not difficult to determine. There are men who pass their lives in advocating measures which, rejected in their lifetime, are adopted and subsequently carried out by their sucLike pioneers they clear the path, map out the road, and draw attention to cessors. the obstacles which hinder progress; then others come, mark the wisdom with which the survey has been made, and avail themselves of past labours. Among this band of political pioneers Romilly takes high rank. He saw the blots in the pages of the statute-book, and he endeavoured to erase them; he was unsuccessful, but the evils once pointed out were not permitted to be forgotten, and eventually were removed. He paved the way for others to walk upon. The fate which followed upon one of the measures he introduced is characteristic of the rest. Some three years before his death he brought in a bill to subject freehold lands to simple contract debts. Its object was to prevent fraud, for at that date a man could borrow money to buy an estate and leave it at his death unencumbered to his son without a shilling of the debt being repaid. The bill passed the Commons, but was rejected by the Peers. Subsequently the measure was entered in the statute-book. "A few years after," writes Lord Campbell, "I had the privilege of humbly assisting my friend Mr. John Romilly, the son of Sir Samuel, to pass this very bill through Parliament, when even in the House of Lords it met with hardly any opposition. The justice and expediency of the measure are now so universally acknowledged, that people can hardly believe there was so recently a state of the public mind which could permit its rejection." It was the same with the other bills brought forward by Romilly. They passed the Commons, or they were rejected by the Commons; or they passed the Commons, but were rejected by the House of Lords. Then sooner or later they were taken up by his successors and carried. Such was the fate of his schemes for the amendment of the bankruptcy laws and his efforts to reform the cruel provisions of the penal code. Some little time after the death of Sir Samuel Romilly, Mr. Wilberforce, in presenting a petition to the House of Commons for the revision of the penal laws, thus prefaced his remarks: "To this question," he said, "it is impos- the press and trial by jury as the two great sible to advert without expressing, though securities for the rest of the liberties of the faintly, my deep regret in common with nation. He was in favour of parliamentary the whole House and country that it is reform, and an advocate of peace whenever now left for me to raise my feeble voice in there was a prospect of its being permana cause which has been so often and so ably ently obtained. He was the foe of extraadvocated by one whose name will be re- vagance in the public expenditure, and of corded among the benefactors of mankind, all corruption. "If I think I discover and whose memory will be fondly cherished peculation and corruption," he said, “in by all who reverence either public or private persons of the highest rank, I shall not be virtue; a man whose general knowledge deterred from censuring and arraigning was only equalled by his professional them by any apprehension that in so doing attainments, and who brought to the sub- I may incur their high displeasure, or blast ject all the lights of the understanding and for ever all the prospects of an honourable all the advantages of experience. ambition." His conduct towards the Duke of York proved that he was true to his colours. Nor was he any servile follower of his party. "I am resolved," he said, "whenever the men with whose political principles I in general agree, and with whom I therefore generally act, propose or support measures which in my conscience I disapprove, to oppose them just as if they were the measures of my political adversaries." In his efforts to reform the penal code we have seen him pursue this independent and high-minded course. He "The obligations of the country to the unwearied labours of this most distinguished and lamented individual are acknowledged by friends and enemies, if indeed the term friends can be applied to those who loved him with devoted enthusiasm, or enemies to those who, while they resisted his propositions, admitted the benevolence of their object and the admirable intentions of him who introduced them. He was a man in whom public and private excellences were so united and so equally balanced, that it is difficult to say which had the predomin-posed before the world as a reformer, nor ance. Those who knew him only as a member of Parliament will probably hold that his public principles had the predominance, while those who have enjoyed his friendship will feel satisfied that the general benevolence of his views and projects was even exceeded by the endearing qualities of his domestic life." We need hardly say, after the various extracts from the speeches we have given, that Sir Samuel Romilly was a Liberal in his opinions. Without binding himself to every article in the creed of his leader he was a Foxite, and ever regarded the founder of his political faith as one of the greatest and most enlightened of men-hence his unjust disparagement of Pitt-that the country had ever produced. He was firmly attached to those principles of the constitution which were established at the Revolution of 1688. He regarded the liberty of was he ashamed of the title; and it is as a reformer that history will cherish his career and his name. Whenever he saw evilwhether in the hateful traffic of men, or in the flogging of soldiers, or in the severity of the punishments that waited upon crime, or in the harshness of the game laws, or in the inequality of parliamentary representation-he was always ready to inquire into the cause of it and to suggest a remedy, in spite of the reproach of being an innovator. Nor was he ever deterred from doing his duty by the threats of power, the allurements of the great, or the temptations of private interest. Pure of life, blameless in all his dealings, tolerant, yet severe where severity was necessary, just, and large-hearted, he stands out from the mass of his contemporaries as one of the noblest and sweetest characters of which the early part of the nineteenth century can boast. |