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ROUGHAM._] Brougham was called to the Scottish bar at the age of twenty-one, having already given proof of brilliant ability and rare versatility at the University of Edinburgh. He was the youngest and most prolific of the original writers in the _Edinburgh Review_, then a very powerful organ of whig opinion, and his contributions to it ranged over some thirty years after its first appearance in 1802. He was already twenty-nine when he joined the English bar in 1808, and though he never rivalled Eldon as a lawyer or Scarlett as a persuasive advocate, he soon became an acknowledged master of the highest forensic eloquence. His fame was already established by his argument before parliament against the orders in council when he entered the house of commons in 1810. There his passionate oratory and power of invective made him the most formidable of party speakers, and it was said that Canning alone could face him on equal terms in debate. Except during four years, 1812-16, when he was out of parliament, his prodigious energy and versatility were the greatest intellectual force on the liberal side throughout all the political conflicts under the regency and the reign of George IV. His speeches embraced every question of foreign, colonial, or domestic policy, and it may truly be said that no salutary reform was carried during that period of which he was not either the author or the active promoter. The suppression of the slave-trade which had revived after the great war, the liberty of the press, the cause of popular education--these were among the almost innumerable objects, outside the common run of politics, and largely philanthropic, to which he devoted his restless mind, before it was engrossed for a while by parliamentary reform. There, as we have seen, he showed a moderation which had not been expected of him, nor is it too much to say that, both as a leader of the bar and as chancellor, he made good his claim to be the greatest of law reformers. His famous speech of February 7, 1828, had quickened the germs of many legal improvements carried out in a later age, and the four years of his chancellorship actually produced great constructive amendments of the law, such as the institution of the central criminal court and the judicial committee of the privy council. Other reforms, in bankruptcy, criminal law, and equity, were mainly due to his initiative, and it was he who originated the county courts, though his bill w
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