prodigious number' of articles, pamphlets, and handbills, appealing chiefly to the dissenters to uphold the whigs in the impending election (Lord Holland, Memoirs of the Whig Party, ii. 229). On the defeat of the whigs Brougham turned to legal study and became the pupil of Mr. (afterwards chief justice) Tindal. In July 1808 he applied for a special call to the bar to enable him to go the ensuing circuit, and the benchers were willing to grant his petition. In order, however, to avenge their party, the attorney-general and solicitor-general came down and procured its rejection. On the following 22 Nov. he was called in the ordinary course and joined the northern circuit. Although his study of civil law in Scotland had to some extent 'legalised his mind,' he was not and never became master of the subtleties of English law, and he had little success in the courts until he had made his mark in politics (Campbell, Life, 233, 254). His first triumph as a barrister was political rather than legal. As counsel for the Liverpool merchants who petitioned against the orders in council he was heard before both houses of parliament on many successive days, and though the petition was dismissed his powers as an advocate were universally acknowledged, and the case may be said to have made his fortune.
Through the influence of Lord Holland, the Duke of Bedford offered Brougham a seat for Camelford, and he was returned to parliament on 5 Feb. 1810. His first speech, delivered on 5 March, in support of the vote of censure on the Earl of Chatham, was not a success, though he was not dissatisfied with it (Parl. Debates, 16, 7**; Life and Times, i. 500; Campbell, Life, 262). During the course of the session he spoke repeatedly, almost usurping Ponsonby's place as leader of the opposition in the commons; nor was he thought to be taking too much upon himself when only four months after he entered the house he moved an address to the crown on the subject of slavery (Quarterly Review, cxxvi. 42). His reputation as an advocate was increased by his triumphant defence of J. and J. L. Hunt on 22 Jan. 1811. The defendants were indicted for libel for publishing an article in the 'Examiner' on military flogging, and the case was especially suited to Brougham's peculiar power (Speeches, i. 15). Three weeks later he failed to procure the acquittal of the proprietor of a country newspaper who was indicted on a similar charge at Lincoln, and on 8 Dec. 1812 unsuccessfully defended the Hunts when indicted for a libel on the prince regent. These and other like cases in which Brougham was retained for the defence were of great public importance, and his success was declared 'more rapid than that of any barrister since Erskine' (Memoirs of F. Horner, ii. 123). Following the line he had already adopted as an advocate, Brougham on 3 March 1812 moved for a select committee with reference to the orders in council, and carried on his attack with such vigour that on 16 June Castlereagh announced that the orders would at once be withdrawn. This victory gained him immense popularity, especially with the commercial interest, which had suffered severely from the orders (Bentham, Works, x. 471). In the arrangements made by Lords Grey and Grenville in view of their possible return to office he was to have been president of the board of trade. As Camelford had passed into other hands, he was, at the dissolution on 29 Sept., forced to seek for a seat elsewhere, and the good service he had done to commerce led to an invitation to stand for Liverpool. He was, however, forced to retire from the poll on 16 Oct., and, after making an unsuccessful effort to secure a seat for the Inverkeithing burghs, found himself shut out from the house. He was very sore at this exclusion, he declared that he 'was thrown overboard to lighten the ship,' and he wrote bitterly of Lady Holland (Life and Times, ii. 92, 101). It would of course have been easy enough for the whigs to find him a seat, and his exclusion was caused partly by jealousy and partly by distrust. This distrust was not without foundation, for his letters to Lord Grey at this period show want of ballast and political insight. At last Lord Darlington offered him a seat for Winchelsea, and he returned to the house on 21 July 1815. Although not acknowledged as the leader he soon became the most prominent member of the opposition in the commons. He attacked the Holy Alliance; in March 1816 he succeeded in defeating Vansittart's income-tax bill; and on 9 April, in moving for a committee, made a powerful speech on the character and causes of the agricultural distress—one cause of the distress, he declared, was that the area of cultivation had been extended unduly. In a speech on the depression in trade delivered on 23 March 1817 he severely blamed the foreign policy of the ministry, and pointed out the evils of restriction and prohibition. He made another attack on the ministry on 11 June in the form of a motion for an address to the prince regent on the state of the nation, which was defeated by only thirty-seven votes, a defeat which was reckoned a triumph (Life and
