agle's motion for inquiry into the sliding scale of corn
duties; of Lord Normanby's motion on the queen's speech in 1843, for
inquiry into the state of Ireland (then wholly under military
occupation); of Lord Radnor's bill to define the constitutional powers
of the home secretary, when Sir James Graham opened Mazzini's letters.
In 1844 he records a solitary protest against the judgment of the House
of Lords in _R._ v. _Millis_, 1844, 10 Cla. and Fin. 534, which affirmed
that a man regularly married according to the rites of the Irish
Presbyterian Church, and afterwards regularly married to another woman
by an episcopally ordained clergyman, could not be convicted of bigamy,
because the English law required for the validity of a marriage that it
should be performed by an ordained priest.

On the resignation of Lord Denman in 1850, Campbell was appointed chief
justice of the queen's bench. For this post he was well fitted by his
knowledge of common law, his habitual attention to the pleadings in
court and his power of clear statement. On the other hand, at _nisi
prius_ and on the criminal circuit, he was accused of frequently
attempting unduly to influence juries in their estimate of the
credibility of evidence. It is also certain that he liked to excite
applause in the galleries by some platitude about the "glorious
Revolution" or the "Protestant succession." He assisted in the reforms
of special pleading at Westminster, and had a recognized place with
Brougham and Lyndhurst in legal discussions in the House of Lords. But
he had neither the generous temperament nor the breadth of view which is
required in the composition of even a mediocre statesman. In 1859 he was
made lord chancellor of Great Britain, probably on the understanding
that Bethell should succeed as soon as he could be spared from the House
of Commons. His short tenure of this office calls for no remark. In the
same year he published in the form of a letter to Payne Collier an
amusing and extremely inconclusive essay on Shakespeare's legal
acquirements. One passage will show the conjectural Drocess which runs
through the book: "If Shakespeare was really articled to a Stratford
attorney, in all probability, during the five years of his clerkship, he
visited London several times on his master's business, and he may then
have been introduced to the green-room at Blackfriars by one of his
countrymen connected with that theatre." The only positive piece of
evide