Book Review

Rose A. Melikan, John Scott, Lord Eldon, 1751–1838: The Duty of Loyalty, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999. Pp. xvii + 370. $74.95 (ISBN 0-521-62395-2).

It makes sense to review these biographies in a single essay, for they exemplify a special symmetry: Robert Chambers (1737–1803) and John Scott (1751–1838), both Newcastle men and contemporaries of a sort, were well acquainted with one another. In fact, Scott had served Chambers as a deputy lecturer during the latter's tenure as Vinerian Professor in Law at Oxford. Their friendship proved an enduring one. As Lord Chancellor, Eldon befriended Chambers in a time of need; he served even as a pallbearer at his funeral.	1
However many the intersections in their respective lives and careers, Chambers and Scott pursued the law in decidedly different ways. Chambers, an attorney's son, began his in academe, succeeding Blackstone in the Vinerian Chair in 1766. Eight years later he went out to India to begin a lengthy tenure on the Supreme Court of Bengal; after many years waiting he became chief justice in 1789. In all, Chambers served twenty-six years as judge before his return to England in 1799. He was remarkable for the manner in which his career at once embodied elements of eighteenth-century British imperialism and empathy and understanding of the alien culture that he engaged.	2
Scott's career course acquired a far less romantic cast. Early on he seemed headed for the family coal business; the university altered those intentions in favor of the church. His elopement with Elizabeth Surtees necessitated changing course again; this time he switched to law. Called to the bar in 1776, he spent the next decade dispensing law on circuit, in Parliament, and in London practice. Career progress was more evident in the 1780s: he became an MP in 1783, was appointed solicitor general and knighted in 1788, advanced to attorney general, 1793–99, and became chief justice of Common Pleas briefly before his elevation as Lord Eldon to the chancellorship in 1801. With the exception of a brief interlude in 1806–7, he remained Lord Chancellor until his resignation in the spring of 1827. After that, in the House of Lords, he actively opposed Catholic Emancipation and political reform.	3
On the face of it Eldon's career excels over that of Chambers both in prestige and certainly remuneration. But it was hardly more intriguing. At Oxford Chambers showed himself an accomplished legal scholar; in London he cut a fascinating figure in the circle that included Johnson, Reynolds, Goldsmith, Garrick, and Boswell. Nor were these mere acquaintances: his Johnson connection was strong, durable, and immensely important--as thoroughly documented by Curley. Chambers's work in India was hardly less engrossing, bringing him into the intrigue and squabbles surrounding the judge Sir Elijah Impey and the governor general Warren Hastings. All the while he established himself as a devotee of Indian culture and even Sanskrit literature.	4
Both these biographies retrieve their subjects from relative obscurity. In the case of Chambers, who inevitably lingers in the shadows of his mentor Blackstone, it is more than that. Although A. W. B. Simpson called Chambers "one of the many undistinguished successors of Blackstone in the Vinerian Chairs" and refers to his "dreary" Treatise on Estates and Tenures (A. W. B. Simpson, ed., Biographical Dictionary of the Common Law [London, 1984], 109), Curley in his edition of Chambers's long lost law lectures (A Course of Lectures on the English Law Delivered at the University of Oxford 1767–1773 by Sir Robert Chambers [Madison, Wisconsin, 1986], 2 vols.) and John Baker's review of the same did resurrect Chambers a decade or so ago. Baker's conclusion merits repeating here, for it helps put the non-lawyer/non-legal historian Curley on firm footing in his treatment of Chambers then as well as in the present biography:	5
Perhaps the greatest value of this edition [of Chambers's lectures] will be simply as a law book. Here is a competent, lucid and sometimes eloquent survey of the Georgian constitution and the common law. If it cannot be placed on the same level as Blackstone, equally it cannot be denied a fairly prominent place in the canon of legal literature. Anyone who now turns to Blackstone for legal guidance will be advised to refer to Chambers as well (Law and History Review 7 [Fall 1989]: 389).
In Rose Melikan's work on John Scott, Lord Eldon joins Henry Bourguignon's biography of elder brother William Scott, Lord Stowell, in the Cambridge Studies in English Legal History. Both merit these up-dated biographies. More than a century and a half ago Horace Twiss wrote the only other notable account of Eldon, a multi-volume work with correspondence (The Public and Private of Life of Lord Chancellor Eldon, with Selections from his Correspondence [London, 1844], 3 vols.). The present piece recognizes Eldon as the chancellor who, his shortcomings notwithstanding, reigned supreme during the first quarter of Britain's nineteenth century; moreover, it represents a corrective to the image of the bumbling procrastinator parodied by Dickens in Bleak House's Jarndyce v. Jarndyce.	6
Melikan states that her intent is to concentrate on the person John Scott, Lord Eldon rather than on "a trend or general phenomenon" and to "link the worlds of law and politics." She has, on the whole, produced a readable work about the Lord Chancellor and his times without bogging down in the intricacies of Chancery doctrine and detail. This said, she is at pains to provide an intelligible context for Scott/Eldon's various ventures: her enlightening treatment of "independent learned gentlemen" performing in Commons is a good example. Her discourse on Scott's involvement in the impeachment of Bengal Chief Justice Impey regarding the Nand Kumar judicial murder conveniently links this work to Curley's Chambers. Young Scott's conservatism and political acumen is well documented in his drafting of the Regency Bill of 1788, affinity with Pitt and George III, and ardent though unsuccessful prosecution of the radicals Horne Tooke and Thomas Hardy. Scott's willingness to suspend Habeas Corpus in the 1790s prefigures a similar inclination at the time of Peterloo decades later. That a man who had won the ear of George III and strived for a semblance of objectivity in the royal divorce proceedings between Queen Caroline and George IV could eventually win favor with the latter testifies to his political adroitness. Perhaps the best chapters were the last ones--possibly because they focus on the issues that we most associate with Eldon. In "Lord Endless" Melikan thoroughly discusses the embattled chancellor and the contemporary criticism that dogged him about the case backlog in his court. "Faithful Defender" treats Eldon, though retired as Lord Chancellor, as a relentless foe of Catholic Emancipation. Finally, "Twilight of the State" regards the aging Eldon in opposition to the Reform Act of 1832, which to him represented an attack on propertied society.	7
Curley has presented a remarkable account of Chambers--his youth and Oxford apprenticeship, his Vinerian years, his association and "secret collaboration" with Johnson on his lectures, his response to the intrigue in judicial and political circles in India, his deep interest in Indian culture, and, Finally, an estimate of his accomplishments in India. Curley is so steeped in the subject--especially the Chambers-Johnson linkage--that his work bubbles with all the enthusiasm and enchantment derived from scholarly discovery. Immeasurably more detailed than Melikan's work, Curley's remarkably gets inside his subject's mind. One has constantly to be amazed at just how much he knows about Chambers. The difference in these two biographies is obvious: Melikan's, competent though it is, is clearly one derived from a dissertation; Curley's bears the stamp of a life-long enterprise.	8
Beyond these words of praise there is a qualifying comment about Curley's work. The author simply tires the reader with a bewildering barrage of superlatives in defining his own accomplishments and those of Chambers. Such verbiage, particularly his reliance on adjectives, is such that it leaves the reader unappreciative of an otherwise enticing style and leads even to mistrusting or at least questioning judgments that are so often expressed in those superlatives.	9
That said, the reader cannot but be impressed by Curley's prodigious scholarship resulting from his numerous trips to India and Britain, his almost boundless knowledge of Johnsonian England, and his acquired understanding of English law and the legal system. The work is profusely documented, containing nearly a hundred pages of notes and more than twenty of bibliography. Melikan's work makes a more measured contribution but contribution it is. The two together provide--as did the lives of the men portrayed--a penetrating insight into aspects of the legal and political history of the late Georgian and Regency eras.	10
Albert J. Schmidt George Washington University

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