for the county instead of for Knaresborough, where he was also returned. In the course of the election he pledged himself to reform (Quarterly Review, April 1831, xlv. 281). He prepared a scheme of reform which gave the franchise to all householders, leaseholders, and copyholders, and took one member from each of the rotten boroughs (Roebuck, Whig Ministry of 1830, i. 420), and on 16 Nov. gave notice that he would lay it before the house. On that day Lord Grey received the king's command to form a ministry. The whig leaders would have been glad to leave Brougham out of the cabinet. On the 17th he was invited to become attorney-general. He indignantly declined, and the next night announced, with an implied threat, his intention of proceeding with his motion. This made him to some extent master of the situation. He wished for the rolls, for he did not want to leave the commons. The king, however, would not hear of this, for he knew that Brougham's presence would render Lord Althorp's leadership impotent (Croker, ii. 80). He was therefore offered the chancellorship. He received the great seal on 22 Nov., was elevated to the peerage with the title of Baron Brougham and Vaux on 23rd, and on 25th was sworn as chancellor.
He worked with extraordinary energy in his new office. He had often, and especially in 1825, reproached Lord Eldon for the delays in his court, and he was determined to bring in a wholly new system. At the rising of the court for the long vacation he was able to announce that he had not left a single appeal unheard. While he did much, and certainly far more than any other chancellor had done, to expedite proceedings in chancery, he gave some offence by boasting publicly and repeatedly of achievements that he had not performed, and that were indeed beyond mortal power. Moreover, both now and at other times, he was singularly negligent of professional courtesy (Campbell). Pursuing the work of law reform, he was the means of effecting considerable improvements in the court of chancery, the abolition of the court of delegates, the substitution for it of the judicial committee of the privy council, and the institution of the central criminal court. The foundation of these two courts alone would entitle him to be remembered as a great legal reformer. He brought in a bankruptcy bill, which eventually became the basis of a statute; and though his Local Courts Bill of 1830 fell through, it prepared the way for the present system of county courts. Since 1820 the subject of education had occupied much of his attention. In conjunction with Dr. Birkbeck, he helped to set on foot various mechanics' institutes. In 1825 he published his 'Observations on the Education of the People,' which before the end of the year reached its twentieth edition. In this pamphlet (Speeches, iii. 103) he proposed a plan for the publication of cheap and useful works, which he carried out by the formation of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge. The first committee of this society was formed in April 1825. After some delays it recommenced its work November 1826, and published its introductory volume, written by Brougham, in March 1827 (Edin. Rev. June 1827, xlvi. 225). The 'Observations' also contain a reference to the need of scientific education for the upper classes (151). Brougham sought to supply this need by the foundation of the London University, a work which he brought to a successful conclusion in 1828. He took the leading part in the debates on education in 1833, and on 14 March announced that he saw reason for abandoning the plan of a compulsory rate he had hitherto advocated. On 23 March 1835 he moved that parliament should vote grants for education, and that a board of commissioners should be appointed to control the application of the money granted, and on 1 Dec. 1837 brought forward two bills further developing the system of national education. In April 1831 the defeat of the ministry necessitated a dissolution, and political circumstances made it equally necessary that the dissolution should be immediate, and that the prorogation should be pronounced by the king in person. The extraordinary account that Brougham has given through Roebuck (Hist. of the Whig Ministry, ii. 148-52) of his saving the country by taking on himself to order the attendance of the troops and the like, and of his almost compelling the king to go down to the house, and the whole story of what passed in the interview he and Grey had with the king on 22 April, are apocryphal. In the exciting scene in the House of Lords which followed the announcement of the king's arrival, the chancellor's self-importance caused him to lose his head (Grey Correspondence, i. 234-6; Greville Memoirs, 1st ser. ii. 135-7). On 7 Oct. Brougham made a speech on the second reading of the Reform Bill that has been held to be his masterpiece: it is full of sarcasm on the tory lords. As in most of his great speeches, the peroration is studied and unnatural. Brougham ended with a prayer; he fell on his knees, and remained kneeling. He had kept up his energy with draughts of mulled port, and his friends, who thought that he was unable to rise, picked him up and set him on the woolsack (Speeches, iii. 559; Campbell, Life, 398). In the crisis
