Up for auction the "1st Baron Campbell" John Campbell Hand Signed Free Frank Dated 1838. 

ES-1473

John Campbell, 1st Baron Campbell, PC, QC, FRSE (15 September 1779 – 23 June

1861) was a British Liberal politician,

lawyer and man of letters. The second son of the Reverend George Campbell,

D.D., and Magdalene Hallyburton, he was born a son of the manse at Cupar,

Fife, Scotland, where his father was for fifty years parish minister. For seven

years, from the age of 11, Campbell studied at the United College, St Andrews.

When he was 18, he was offered the opportunity to leave home and see something

of the world by becoming tutor to James Wedderburn-Webster.

The family lived in Clapham, just outside London, with a

summer house at Shenley, Hertfordshire.

His employer was David Webster, London merchant of a sugar trading house, with

family connections through the Wedderburn baronets to

the plantations of Jamaica. Living in this wealthy household, the young

Campbell saw a different world, and it didn't impress him: the commercial

conversation and gossip of "West India merchants and East India

captains" created an atmosphere "irksome" and

"unbearable". His pupil James was about ten years old, and as yet

ignorant of Latin, which Campbell himself had learned at school in Cupar.

Campbell

took advantage of being in London to attend a session of the House of Commons,

hearing William Wilberforce speak against

slavery, followed by Charles James Fox and William Pitt. He describes

it vividly in his memoirs forty years later, concluding, "After hearing

this debate, I could no longer have been content with being 'Moderator of the General Assembly [of the Church of Scotland]'.".

In

1800 Campbell was entered as a student at Lincoln's Inn, and, after working briefly for the Morning Chronicle, was called to the bar in 1806. Campbell

at once began to report cases decided at nisi prius (i.e. on

jury trial). Of these reports he published four volumes; they extend from Michaelmas 1807 to Hilary 1816. Campbell also devoted himself to criminal

business, but failed to attract much attention behind the bar. It was not till

1827 that Campbell took silk and began to develop

political aspirations. He had unsuccessfully contested the borough of Stafford in

1826, but was returned for it in 1830 and again in 1831. He stood as a

moderate Whig, in favour of the

connection of church and state and opposed to triennial parliaments and the

secret ballot. His main object, like Lord

Brougham, was the amelioration of the law by the abolition of

cumbrous technicalities rather than the assertion of new principles. To this

end his name is associated with the Fines and Recoveries Abolition Act 1833; the Inheritance

Act 1833; the Dower Act

1833; the Real Property Limitation Act 1833; the Wills Act 1837; the Copyhold

Tenure Act 1841; and the Judgments

Act 1838. The second was called for by the preference which the

common law gave to a distant collateral over the brother of the half-blood of

the first purchaser; the fourth conferred an indefeasible title on adverse possession for

twenty years (a term shortened by Lord Cairns in

1875 to twelve years); the fifth reduced the number of witnesses required by

law to attest wills, and removed the distinction which existed in this respect

between freeholds and copyholds; the last freed an innocent debtor from

imprisonment only before final judgment (or on what was termed mesne process),

but the principle stated by Campbell that only fraudulent debtors should be

imprisoned was ultimately given effect to for England and Wales in 1869. Perhaps

his most important appearance as a member of parliament (MP) for Stafford was

in defence of Lord John Russell's first Reform Bill (1831). In a speech, based on Charles James Fox's declaration against

constitution-mongering, he supported both the enfranchising and the

disfranchising clauses. The following year (1832) found Campbell Solicitor

General, a knight and member for Dudley. Dudley had been enfranchised under the Reform Act of 1832 and

so Campbell became the first MP to represent the town in modern history.

However, his appointment to the post of Attorney

General in 1834 lead to a by-election, which he lost to Thomas Hawkes. John

Campbell returned to Parliament swiftly, however, as he was returned by Edinburgh in

1835, which seat he represented until his ennoblement in 1841. One of his first

acts as Attorney General was the prosecution of a bookseller called Henry Hetherington on

the charge of blasphemous libel. In this

case Campbell gave his opinion that morality depended on divine revelation:

the vast majority of

the population believe that morality depends on entirely on revelation; and if

a doubt could be raised among them that the ten commandments were given by God

from Mount Sinai, men would think they were at liberty to steal, and women

would think themselves absolved from the restraints of chastity.

In 1840 Campbell conducted the

prosecution against John Frost, one of the

three Chartist leaders who attacked the town of Newport, all of

whom were found guilty of high treason. Next year, as the Melbourne

administration was near its close, Plunkett, the Lord Chancellor of Ireland,

was forced to resign, and was succeeded by Campbell, who was raised to

the peerage as Baron Campbell, of St Andrews in the County of Fife. The

post of chancellor Campbell held for only sixteen days, and then resigned it to

his successor Sir Edward

Sugden. It was during the period 1841–1849, when he had no legal

duty, except the self-imposed one of occasionally hearing Scottish appeals in

the House of Lords, that Lord

Campbell turned to literary pursuits. He bought Hartrigge House in Jedburgh during this period. However, he did take up

the cause of the families of railway accident victims in introducing and

steering through the Commons, the Fatal Accidents Act 1846,

known as Lord Campbell's Act.