by winner Running Rein--in
substance to determine, if possible, the vexed question whether Running
Rein was a four-year-old or a three-year-old when he was racing as the
latter. Running Rein could not be produced by Mr Wood, and Baron
Alderson took a strong view of this circumstance, so that Cockburn found
himself on the losing side, while his strenuous advocacy of his client's
cause had led him into making, in his opening speech, strictures on
Lord George Bentinck's conduct in the case which had better have been
reserved to a later stage. He was, however, a hard fighter, but not an
unfair one--a little irritable at times, but on the whole a courteous
gentleman, and his practice went on increasing.

In 1847 he decided to stand for parliament, and was elected without a
contest Liberal M.P. for Southampton. His speech in the House of Commons
on behalf of the government in the Don Pacifico dispute with Greece
commended him to Lord John Russell, who appointed him solicitor-general
in 1850 and attorney-general in 1851, a post which he held till the
resignation of the ministry in February 1852. During the short
administration of Lord Derby which followed, Sir Frederic Thesiger was
attorney-general, and Cockburn was engaged against him in the case of
_R._ v. _Newman_, on the prosecution of Achilli. This was the trial of a
criminal information for libel filed against John Henry Newman, who had
denounced a scandalous and profligate friar named Achilli, then
lecturing on Roman Catholicism in England. Newman pleaded justification;
but the jury who heard the case in the Queen's Bench, with Lord Campbell
presiding, found that the justification was not proved except in one
particular: a verdict which, together with the methods of the judge and
the conduct of the audience, attracted considerable comment. The verdict
was set aside, and a new trial ordered, but none ever took place. In
December 1852, under Lord Aberdeen's ministry, Cockburn became again
attorney-general, and so remained until 1856, taking part in many
celebrated trials, such as the Hopwood Will Case in 1855, and the
Swynfen Will Case, but notably leading for the crown in the trial of
William Palmer of Rugeley in Staffordshire--an ex-medical man who had
taken to the turf, and who had poisoned a friend of similar pursuits
named Cook with strychnine, in order to obtain money from his estate by
forgery and otherwise. Cockburn made an exhaustive study of the medical
aspects