On Saturday last, one of the greatest, most learned, and
most laborious of the Lord Chancellors of this century, Lord Selborne, died in the eighty-third year of his age. Roundell Palmer was born in 1812, was educated at Winchester and Oxford, was called to the Bar in Lincoln's Inn, in 1837, and took silk in 1849. He entered the House of Commons in 1847, but lost his seat at the General Election in 1857, after Lord Palmerston had been condemned by the House for his Chinese war, and Roundell Palmer had voted with Mr. Glad- stone against him. When he became Solicitor-General in 1861, a seat was found for him at Richmond, in Yorkshire ; and then he joined the Government as a Moderate Liberal, gradually becoming a very advanced Liberal so far as regarded the question of the suffrage. At the height of his activity he worked so hard that on one occasion he never took off his clothes between Monday morning and Saturday night. In 1872, when Lord Hatherley resigned the Lord Chancellor- ship, Sir Roundell Palmer succeeded him, taking the title of Lord Selborne ; and it was at this period that Lord Selborne carried the great Judicature Act, which transformed the organisation of the Law Courts. He was Lord Chancellor for the second time, from 1880 to 1885. Sedate, a little frigid and formal to strangers, but mild and gentle to all men, Lord Selborne was one of the greatest of statesmen of the study,—of those who have hardly passion enough for the masses, but who give principle, calmness, and stateliness, to the deliberations of the council chamber.
