didate; indeed, when in the middle of 1861 Lord Palmerston made him Solicitor-General in succession to Sir William Atherton (who had become first law officer of the Crown on the elevation of Sir Richard Bethell to the woolsack), he was without a seat, though one was soon afterward found for him at Rich mond, — a borough in which the influence of the Whig Earl of Zetland was paramount, and which he continued to represent until he was raised to the peerage. Sir Roundell Palmer became AttorneyGeneral on the death of Sir William Ather ton, in 1863, — an office which he of course lost when Lord John Russell's second administra tion was compelled to resign some three years later. But his party did not long remain in. the cold shades of opposition, and on its re turn to power under the leadership of Mr. Gladstone, in December, 1868, he was offered the Chancellorship. The mission with which Mr. Gladstone was then charged by the country was the disestablishment and disendowment of the Irish Church, and Sir Roundell Palmer differed from his chief on this great question. He publicly stated in a speech made at the time to his constitu ents that though he was willing to endorse the policy of the Government as far as dis establishment was concerned, he could not concur with its views as to disendowment. He accordingly declined to take office. Ow ing to this refusal Sir William Page Wood became Chancellor, and Sir Roundell Palmer took up the position of an independent sup porter of the Government, which he rep resented as counsel before the Court of Arbitration on the " Alabama " claims at Geneva in 1871. On the retirement of Lord Hatherley, in October, 1872, he had no diffi culty — the Irish Church question being set tled — in accepting the Chancellorship, and was raised to the peerage by the title of Baron Selborne. Since then he has been created an Earl. Lord Selborne attained the highest judicial office without ever having held a seat on the ordinary judicial bench. Erskine was pro
moted in like manner per saltnm in 1806; so was Sir Frederick Thesiger in 1858, and Sir Richard Bethell in 1861. In 1852 also Lord St. Leonards was appointed Lord Chancellor of Great Britain without ever having been an English judge, though he sat as Lord Chan cellor in Ireland for a few months in 1835, as did Lord Campbell in 1841 . This in no way prevented Lord Selborne gaining a solid repu tation as a judge, and his decision in Morris v. The Earl of Aylesford, the leading modern case on 'catching bargains with heirs and re versioners,' is a good specimen of his pains taking and exhaustive style of dealing with the questions which come before him. His efforts in the cause of the reform of legal procedure will be remembered by the bar, if not by the public. In 1871 he proposed, in a long and weighty speech in the House of Commons, a resolution for the establishment of a " General School of Law," having sole power to grant certificates of capability to practice, both to barristers and solicitors. The debate died a natural death; but he had spoken with such severity of the deficiencies of the Inns of Court, that the benchers of those societies were startled, and with the view, no doubt, of to a certain extent cutting the ground from under his feet if he should reintroduce his resolution, instituted the sys tem of compulsory examinations now obtain ing. In 1872, however, Sir Roundell Palmer returned to the charge; but though his reso lution was by no means of so sweeping a character as that of the previous year, and indeed merely proposed the establishment of what was called a " Legal University," it was defeated by a majority of thirteen. Almost every lawyer of note in the House took part in the discussion, and the Attorney-General (Sir John Coleridge) and the Solicitor-Gen eral (Sir George Jessel ) in particular distin guished themselves by the energy of their attacks upon the project. But it would be impossible to over-estimate the benefit done to the cause of legal education by these two bold denunciations of faults and abuses in the Inns of Court. During his first terra
