SCARLETT, James (1769-1844), of Abinger Hall, Dorking, Surr. and New Street, Mdx.

Scarlett, who in this period acquired a Falstaffian girth, so that ‘his belly projects to an unusual extent, even for a corpulent man’, apparently wore ‘a perpetual smile, blended with an air of joviality’. [J. Grant], Random Recollections of Lords (1836), 196-7. As the leading nisi prius lawyer of his day, with an impressive record of success and fees to match, he had plenty to feel smug about. George Philips* of Sedgley, with whom he used to stay when attending Manchester sessions, wrote of him:

No man was vainer than he, but he never let his vanity interfere with the interest of his clients. He ... never attempted any flights of eloquence, to which he was incompetent, though he did not think so. [Henry] Brougham* said ... no man in any age had such a talent for gaining verdicts ... [As a judge, he was] ... unpopular at the bar. He was accused of being supercilious, and of deciding ex cathedra upon the justness of any observation made to him. Warws. RO, MI 247, Philips mems. i. 96-97, 100.

His professional reputation and a brilliant Commons debut in February 1819 as Member for the 2nd Earl Fitzwilliam’s borough of Peterborough quickly propelled him into the second rank of the Whig opposition, but in the end he fell short of expectations. He was overshadowed by Brougham, whom he habitually got the better of in the courts, but who ‘paid him off ... in the House of Commons’, where his laconic and languid conversational style did not go down well. Ibid. i. 97. One observer wrote that

when speaking in the ... Commons [Scarlett] was always above the common place ... His speeches frequently partook of the quality called special pleading. When it suited his purpose, no one could be more clear: when it served his object to mystify, there were few in the House who could do so with better effect. In both cases he appeared equally sincere. His manner was highly seductive ... He was always cool and collected ... [He had] no pretensions to the character of an orator, for which his manner is much too cold and quiet. Grant, 194-6.

At the general election of 1820 he was again returned for Peterborough, where an earlier report of trouble came to nothing. Wentworth Woodhouse mun. WWM F49/58. Less than a fortnight later he had the ‘delicate task’, as attorney-general of the northern circuit, of leading the prosecution at York assizes of Henry Hunt* and others over the Peterloo incident, having condemned the massacre in the House in late 1819. Personally, however, he had no doubt that the meeting had been illegal and intimidatory. Hunt was convicted, but other defendants were acquitted; and one Tory observer reckoned that while Scarlett had been ‘earnest in the cause notwithstanding his votes and speeches’, he seemed to have ‘mismanaged the prosecution, and not to have brought forward all that he was capable of doing’. Ibid. F52/56; The Times, 18, 20, 22, 25, 27, 28 Mar. 1820; Colchester Diary, iii. 126. In the Commons, where he normally sat next to the opposition leader Tierney on the front bench, Life of Campbell, i. 375. he divided with his friends on the civil list, 5, 8 May, and against the appointment of an additional baron of exchequer in Scotland, 15 May 1820. He was named to the select committee on the criminal laws, 9 May. He dismissed an inmate’s complaint of ill-treatment in Lancaster gaol, 31 May, and agreed that it was inconvenient that Welsh judges should double as counsel, 1 June, when he voted against the aliens bill. He opposed as inadequate the government’s bill to relieve the superior courts of trivial business, 20 June. He declined an approach to act as counsel for Queen Caroline and on 21 June clashed with Brougham, her attorney-general, over the best way to proceed. Torrens, Melbourne, i. 154; Brougham and Early Friends, iii. 23; Geo. IV Letters, ii. 831. Next day he voted against Wilberforce’s compromise resolution, as he did the ministerial proposal for a secret committee, 26 June, when, in what his friend Sir James Mackintosh* considered ‘a very animated and rather violent attack on the ministers’, he accused them of risking ‘revolution’ by defying public opinion on this issue. Add. 52444, f. 177. After denouncing the ‘tyrannical’ aliens bill, 10 July, he stood by his description of the ministry as ‘weak’ in the face of angry personal attacks on him. He voted for economies in revenue collection, 4 July. On 17 Oct. 1820, soon after his future son-in-law John Campbell II* had noted that if ministers fell Scarlett, ‘the best man the party furnishes since [Samuel] Romilly’s† death’, would become attorney-general, perhaps even lord chancellor, he condemned the bill of pains and penalties as a ‘disgrace’. Life of Campbell, i. 385.

In late December 1820 he wrote to Fitzwilliam’s son Lord Milton*:

I cannot imagine how the ministry can stand without [George] Canning* unless the plans of opposition are founded on folly or betrayed by treachery. Whatever is violent and extravagant on our part must give strength to ministers, and they are and will be safe if it becomes the fashion with us to be so candid as to admit that we had not the means of forming an administration. It is my honest conviction that a total change of ministers is essential to prevent a revolution, and that every man who has any property, not depending on the patronage of the present administration, has an immediate interest in effecting its dissolution ... I think it highly important that Lord Grey should be in town some days before the 23rd [of January], and that there should be a deliberate and concerted plan of the approaching campaign ... I dread the operations of the Mountain in the House of Commons. Grey’s presence and counsels may bring it to order. Fitzwilliam mss 102/2.

He was involved in pre-session deliberations with Tierney and Brougham. Grey mss, Tierney to Grey, 13 Jan. 1821; Creevey Pprs. ii. 2. His part in the abortive parliamentary campaign on behalf of the queen was inconspicuous and undistinguished. A young Whig spectator thought his speech on the liturgy question, 26 Jan. 1821, was ‘dull’; while the ‘Mountaineers’ Henry Grey Bennet and Thomas Creevey respectively deemed it ‘a powerless, miserable’ effort and ‘rum’. Castle Howard mss, G. Howard to Lady Morpeth, 28 [Jan. 1821]; HLRO, Hist. Coll. 379, Grey Bennet diary, 6; Creevey’s Life and Times, 136. After the failure of the attack Campbell noted that Scarlett, who ‘insinuated that if he had defended the queen he would have turned out the ministers’ and had ‘fully expected ere now to have been James, Lord Abinger’ and chancellor, was disappointed, but ‘affects to say that a man’s happiness depends upon the state of his digestion, and not the station he fills’. Life of Campbell, i. 394. Grey Bennet approved his argument that the Langholme presbytery’s loyal address was a breach of privilege, 1 Feb. Grey Bennet diary, 9. He was named to the select committees on the report of the Irish judicial commission, 26 June 1821, 19 Mar. 1823. Before leaving for the circuit in mid-March he voted in condemnation of the Allies’ suppression of the liberal regime in Naples, 21 Feb., divided for reception of Davison’s petition complaining of his treatment by Justice William Best† but spoke circumspectly on the case, 23 Feb.; paired for Catholic relief, 28 Feb.; supported Milton’s proposal to give Leeds a ratepayer franchise if it received Grampound’s seats, 2 Mar, and voted in the opposition minority on the revenue, 6 Mar. On his return from York assizes, where he resumed his rivalry with Brougham, Smith Letters, i. 377. he voted for the disfranchisement of ordnance officials, 12 Apr., Lambton’s parliamentary reform scheme, 18 Apr., and Russell’s general reform motion, 9 May. That day he obtained leave to introduce a bill to amend the poor laws, which he said operated ‘as a premium for poverty, indolence, licentiousness and immorality’. He proposed to impose a maximum on rate assessments, to do away with relief for single able-bodied men and to end the power of justices to remove paupers to their place of birth. The measure had a mixed reception (and was publicly mocked by Sydney Smith in the autumn), and on 2 July Scarlett abandoned it for the session, complaining that ‘many inflammatory and calumnious misrepresentations had gone abroad’. Grey Bennet diary, 74, 88, 114; J. Wasson, Whig Renaissance, 113; Philips mems. i. 101-2; Edinburgh Rev. xxxvi (1821-2), 110-19. He tried again in 1822, but the bill was thrown out on its second reading, 31 May, by 82-66. On Chetwynd’s plan to amend the vagrancy laws, 24 May 1821, he pointed to the ‘absurdity’ of sending miscreants to their place of settlement to be punished. He divided sporadically for economy and said it was ‘the only resource’, 14 June; but in a review of the session Grey Bennet noted that Scarlett and Mackintosh ‘took every occasion to separate themselves from the few combatants who fought on the third bench for public economy’. Grey Bennet diary, 82. He voted silently for mitigation of the punishment for forgery offences, 23 May, 4 June. He had no doubt that the proceedings of the Constitutional Association were illegal, 30 May, but was opposed to interference by Parliament, 3 July. He spoke and was a minority teller against Martin’s bill to curb the ill-treatment of cattle, 1 June. He spoke and voted against Thomas Frankland Lewis’s* inclusion in the Irish revenue commission, 15, 26 June. He divided in minorities of 28 to condemn the Holy Alliance, 20 June, and of 35 for intervention to preserve liberalism in Sicily next day. He said that the queen’s right to be crowned was ‘a matter of custom and law’, 30 June 1821.

Scarlett voted for the amendment to the address, 5 Feb., more extensive tax reductions, 11, 21 Feb., and gradual remission of the salt tax, 28 Feb. 1822. On 5 Mar. he presented and endorsed a constituency petition ascribing agricultural distress largely to the resumption of cash payments. He divided against the Irish habeas corpus suspension bill, 7 Feb., in protest against Sir Robert Wilson’s* dismissal from the army, 13 Feb., and for inquiry into the Scottish burghs, 20 Feb. He believed that Hunt’s complaints about his treatment in Ilchester gaol were justified, 4 Mar. He voted again for reform, 25 Apr., 3 June. He was a fairly regular though silent supporter of economy, retrenchment and reduced taxation after his return from the circuit. He was in Ricardo’s minority of 25 for a 20s. duty on imported wheat, 9 May. He joined in the successful opposition to the Salford Hundred court bill, 13 May, and called for reform of the ‘defective’ Welsh judicial system, 23 May. He voted for inquiry into the government of the Ionian Islands, 14 May, in support of Brougham’s motion on the increasing influence of the crown, 24 June, and to condemn the lord advocate’s dealings with the Scottish press, 25 June. He voted for Mackintosh’s motion for criminal law reform, 4 June. Next day he spoke against the ‘unjust, tyrannical and unnecessary’ aliens bill, which he doggedly resisted thereafter; he was a teller for the minority of 13 for his own amendment, 10 July. Opposing the ill-treatment of cattle bill once more, 7 June 1822, he remarked that if its principle was admitted there would be ‘punishment affixed to the boiling of lobsters, or the eating of oysters alive’.

From Lancaster assizes, 22 Aug. 1822, Scarlett, optimistically speculating on the imminent ‘dissolution’ of the ministry after Lord Londonderry’s* suicide and the possibility of a Whig alliance in government with Canning, urged Lord Lansdowne to delay his continental holiday to be ‘within reach of any call that may be made upon you’:

I am persuaded that for some years past the part of opposition has been much more agreeable in Parliament than that of the ministry. But notwithstanding my habits, which are almost inveterate, I cannot but entertain some fears that a long continued and a powerful opposition may become too factious, and that the determined exclusion of a very considerable portion of the rank and wealth of the nation from any share in the government may at length drive them to seek their just place even by revolution. On this account I sincerely wish for some change that may soften the fury of the Mountain by contact with the Court. Lansdowne mss.

Had the Whigs come in, he would have been made attorney-general, perhaps even lord chancellor. Bessborough mss, Brougham to Duncannon [4 Sept.]; Grey mss, Grey to Holland, 9 Sept. 1822. In October he entertained Canning, now foreign secretary, at his Surrey home at Abinger, having originally invited him there to say his farewells when he was expected to go to India. ‘Greatly puzzled to know’ how Canning could act with his reactionary colleagues, he anticipated a ‘turbulent’ next session, and hoped ‘we shall be rid of the sinking fund and the assessed taxes at the least’. Scarlett, 105; Fitzwilliam mss, Scarlett to Milton, 12 Oct. 1822. At the end of the month he declared his candidature for a vacancy for Cambridge University, where a division in the ministerial interest promised success, having obtained Fitzwilliam’s permission to vacate Peterborough and an assurance that he could come in again if necessary. He finished a distant third behind an anti-Catholic Tory and fell back on Peterborough in February 1823, when he was returned after a token contest. Whishaw had commented to Lady Holland, 27 Nov. 1822:

I am sorry for Scarlett, who has rashly involved himself in a great difficulty by an overweening confidence in himself ... It seems that the representation of Cambridge was an old object of ambition with him ... But he has acted his part very well, and, from whatever motive, has made great personal sacrifices to the Whig cause, for which I hope he will have due honour from the leaders of the party. Add. 51659.

Scarlett voted silently for parliamentary reform, 20 Feb., 24 Apr., 2 June 1823. He divided against the national debt reduction bill, 28 Feb., 6 Mar., and the ministerial plan to contract for naval and military pensions, 14, 18 Apr. He voted for repeal of the Foreign Enlistment Act, 16 Apr. On the 15th he questioned the ‘constitutionality’ of the Irish attorney-general’s ex-officio informations in the case of the Dublin Orange rioters, and he was in the majority for inquiry (during which he examined witnesses), 22 Apr. He objected to any interference with mercantile law, 12 May, and was named to the select committee on this subject, 15 May. He spoke and voted for Mackintosh’s motion for abolition of the death penalty for larceny, 21 May, and welcomed the conciliatory attitude of Peel, the home secretary. He approved the principle of Lord Althorp’s small debts bill, 27 May, and of Colonel Wood’s plans to amend the laws of settlement, 4 June. He voted in censure of the lord advocate, 3 June. He spoke and voted for inquiry into chancery arrears, 5 June, and divided for investigation of the coronation expenses, 9, 19 June, but he voted against inquiry into the currency, 12 June. He tried unsuccessfully to secure postponement of consideration of the case of the Irish judge O’Grady, 13, 17 June, and on 9 July was a majority teller for his own motion to drop proceedings. He was in small minorities against the beer duties bill, 13, 17 June, and voted in favour of the Irish Catholics’ petition complaining of the administration of justice, 26 June, for the introduction of jury trial to New South Wales, 7 July, and against trying capital offences in the Indian army by courts martial, 11 July 1823. At Brighton in October Tierney was pleased to find him ‘with the air and manner of a man with whom the world goes smoothly’; and soon afterwards he went with his two eldest sons to Italy, travelling as far as Florence and calling on the de Broglies en route. Add. 51586, Tierney to Lady Holland [Oct]; 51659, Whishaw to same, 3 Nov. 1823; Scarlett, 98, 102-3.

Scarlett strongly supported the complaint of breach of privilege against lord chancellor Eldon, 1 Mar. 1824. Later that month his sudden death on the circuit was convincingly but falsely reported in the press. The Times, 27, 29 Mar.; Add. 51668, Bedford to Lady Holland [28 Mar. 1824]; Scarlett, 103; Life of Campbell, i. 419. In the previous November Whishaw had wondered whether ‘Canning’s friendship’ might soon secure him a senior judicial place. Two months later Canning apparently urged his claim to be made solicitor-general, and at the end of March 1824 warmly recommended him to Lord Liverpool as a radical but sound choice as lord chief justice of the common pleas, pointing to ‘the singular ability, temper, firmness and good faith’ with which he had conducted Hunt’s prosecution, and the fact that he had ‘never gone into violent politics’. The premier would have none of it, given that Scarlett, though ‘never ... the advocate or supporter of jacobinical or dangerous opinions’, was still ‘systematically opposed’ to government in the Commons. When he heard of this Scarlett, according to Campbell, said he would have declined the offer. Hobhouse Diary, 108; Add. 40311, ff. 60, 64; 51659, Whishaw to Lady Holland, 29 Nov. 1823; Life of Campbell, i. 420-1. He supported the Scottish juries bill, 4 May. He voted for inquiries into the Irish church establishment, 6 May, and the state of Ireland, 11 May, for proper use of Irish first fruits revenues, 25 May, to end Irish church pluralities, 27 May, and, in a minority of 14, against the Irish insurrection bill, 18 June. He divided for repeal of the assessed taxes, 10 May, and was in Hume’s small minority against naval impressment, 10 June. He condemned the exterior of the new Westminster courts as ‘a disgrace to the national taste’, 21 May, and on the 24th opposed Althorp’s county courts bill. On 1 June he called for the adoption of some middle course on the case of the Methodist missionary John Smith, being unwilling, as Brougham proposed, to condemn outright his prosecution in Demerara; he paired against this motion, 11 June. Brougham mss, Wilberforce to Brougham, 6 June 1824. He disliked Peel’s transportation bill, 4 June, but welcomed his ‘very useful’ juries empanelling bill, 18 June 1824.

Scarlett voted against the Irish unlawful societies bill, 15, 25 Feb., and supported Brougham’s bid to permit the Catholic Association to state its legal case, 18 Feb. 1825. He divided silently for Catholic relief, 1 Mar., 21 Apr., 10 May, and presented a favourable petition from members of the English bar, 19 Apr. He argued that Hume’s precipitate repeal of the Combination Acts had only created new problems, 4 May. He said that the proposed salary of £10,000 for the lord chief justice was too low, 16 May, and on the 27th tried unsuccessfully to increase it by £2,000. He would not support Brougham’s amendment to deduct £500 from puisne judges’ salaries, but later that day spoke and voted for his motion to make them immoveable. He divided against the duke of Cumberland’s grant, 27, 30 May, 6 June. He supported inquiry into the Jamaican deportations, 16 June. He spoke and voted for the spring guns bill, 21 June, attacked the Scottish partnerships bill, 22 June, and ranted at length against the law of merchants bill, but did not divide the House, 28 June 1825. He apparently approved of the ministerial plan to restrict the circulation of small bank notes in February 1826. Fitzwilliam mss 124/8/1. He did not think the case of William Kenrick† need concern the Commons, 17 Feb. On 1 Mar. he professed support for amelioration of the condition of West Indian slaves, but wanted the owners to be conciliated and not coerced. He divided against the proposed separate salary for the president of the board of trade, 10 Apr., for reform of Edinburgh’s representation, 13 Apr., and general reform, 27 Apr., and for revision of the corn laws, 18 Apr. He reckoned the new chancery court building was a ‘contemptible’ waste of money, 17 Apr., when he made some comments on the criminal justice bill. He was not convinced by George Lamb’s argument in favour of introducing defence by counsel to felony trials, 25 Apr., but remained open to persuasion and so voted for his bill. He was in Hume’s minority for inquiry into the state of the nation, 4 May. Next day he presented and endorsed Daniel O’Connell’s* petition for the removal of the aged Lord Norbury from the Irish bench. He favoured investigation of James Silk Buckingham’s† grievances over infringement of press freedom in India, 9 May. He was in the majority for Russell’s resolution condemning electoral bribery, 26 May 1826.

At the general election the following month he came in unopposed again for Peterborough. Later that summer he evidently sent Lady Holland a favourable report of economic conditions in the north; but the duke of Bedford was sceptical:

A lawyer, leading on the circuit, thinks of little beyond filling his bags with briefs, and his pockets with money; and provided these do not fail, he thinks there can be no distress, and knows and sees but little of the sufferings of the manufacturer at the loom, or the labourer in the field. Add. 51669, Bedford to Lady Holland, 28 Aug. [1826].

Scarlett believed that ‘the pretext and probably the cause’ of the early summoning of Parliament was the corn laws, though he suspected also that ministers were in ‘great embarrassment’ on the subject of Ireland. Add. 51813, Scarlett to Lady Holland, 5 Sept. 1826. He doubted the worth of Lord Althorp’s resolutions against electoral bribery, 22 Nov. 1826, but supported them as ‘a step towards a very desirable object’. He secured an adjournment of the confused debate on the same subject, 26 Feb. 1827. That month he stayed away from the discussions on the duke of Clarence’s grant, of which he approved. Add. 51784, Holland to C.R. Fox, 17 Feb. 1827. He voted for Catholic relief, 6 Mar., having earlier communicated to Peel Burdett’s wishes as to the timing of his motion. Add. 40392, f. 109. He defended the Wakefields against the charge of abduction at Lancaster assizes in March, when his illness caused the trial to be put back a day. Macaulay Letters, ii. 218. On his return to London in April he argued in favour of the Whigs supporting Canning in his bid to form a new ministry, to which he was touted as a potential recruit. Fitzwilliam mss, Scarlett to Milton [18 Apr.]; Bagot, Canning and Friends, ii. 387; Canning’s Ministry, 150; Life of Campbell, i. 440. On 20 Apr. Canning offered him the attorney-generalship. He consulted Lansdowne and Lord Holland, who, as Canning’s enemy Mrs. Arbuthnot put it, gave him ‘leave to rat’; but he felt obliged to give Fitzwilliam the last and deciding word. Fitzwilliam initially gave ‘a frank recommendation not to accept’, while indicating his own determination to support Canning’s ministry; and Milton, who distrusted Canning and had reservations about Scarlett’s reliability as a Whig, was discouraging, arguing that joining Canning, especially when Lansdowne’s stipulations about the composition of the Irish executive had been rejected, would not advance the Catholic cause. Scarlett, who was desperate for the office, even though it would materially diminish his income, contended that politicians must deal in practicalities, that ‘an immediate adhesion to Canning’s government’ would ‘shortly lead to a complete Whig government’ and that Canning was ‘at this moment the only bridge over which we can pass to that most desirable end of all, the emancipation and tranquillity of Ireland’. On 24 Apr. Fitzwilliam relented and not only gave his blessing, but promised him a secure re-election for Peterborough; and the following day Milton wrote that ‘if you think that by accepting office, the Catholic question will be advanced, you are not only justified, but called upon to accept’. This he did, with great glee, according to Campbell, who believed that the appointment would ‘give great satisfaction’ to the profession. Life of Campbell, i. 441, 443, 445; Arbuthnot Jnl. ii. 108; Canning’s Ministry, 199, 200, 204, 232, 240, 244, 255-6, 258; Geo. IV Letters, iii. 1320; Grey mss, Grey to Fitzwilliam, 22 Apr.; Wentworth Woodhouse mun. G15/1, 3-6; Fitzwilliam mss 731, pp. 121, 125, 127. ‘On the wing for Peterborough’, where he was quietly re-elected, 9 May, Scarlett urged Lansdowne to adopt ‘some more distinct outward and visible sign of an union between you and the government than the mere support by speaking and voting in Parliament’, perhaps by taking his place in the cabinet immediately: ‘I hope it would set in motion ... the spirit which exists in the country but which cannot be called into action by a provisional government, not understood by the people’. Canning’s Ministry, 295. In his first speech as an official man, 18 May, he had a slight brush with Brougham on the Penryn corruption inquiry and welcomed in principle Peel’s criminal justice bill. He now opposed Taylor’s plan to separate bankruptcy from chancery administration, 22 May, when Brougham had some harsh words for him; but Brougham was more conciliatory towards him when he replied for the government against Hume’s call for repeal of the Blasphemous Libels Act, 31 May. NLS, Ellice mss, Grey to Ellice, 31 May 1827; Geo. IV Letters, iii. 1341. He was in the ministerial minority against the disfranchisement of Penryn, 28 May. He opposed Hume’s frivolous arrests bill and made fun of his legal ignorance, 1 June, endorsed the Coventry magistracy bill, 18 June 1827, and on the 20th approved Peel’s small debts bill.

Scarlett was ‘very much affected’ by Canning’s death, as he told Lady Holland:

It has for many years been the first of my political wishes to see him in a position in which his just and liberal principles might be applied by his great and practical talents for the benefit of country and of mankind ... To look upon the possible consequences of his loss in the return of all the barbarous policy and prejudices which it has been his glory to combat ... to anticipate rebellion in Ireland, the bitterness of civil dissensions at home, a national bankruptcy, an irritated population and new laws of coercion to restrain them - all these fill me with horror and despair.

He initially expected to be ‘turned out’, but in the event he was retained by Lord Goderich, nothing having come of rumours that he was to replace Lord Lyndhurst as lord chancellor. Life of Campbell, i. 447-8; Add. 51813, Scarlett to Lady Holland [?13 Aug. 1827]; Arbuthnot Corresp. 86; Croker Pprs. i. 392. In late 1827 Scarlett, who had had a cool but civil encounter with Grey at Fitzwilliam’s in September, apparently proposed to the cabinet repeal of the Foreign Enlistment and Libels Acts. Add. 51586, Tierney to Lady Holland [19 Sept. 1827]; E. Herries, Mem. John Charles Herries, ii. 55.

When the duke of Wellington came to power in January 1828 Scarlett took a gloomy view of the likely political consequences, anticipating a return to Tory reaction. Fitzwilliam mss, Scarlett to Milton, 15 Jan. 1828. He was told by William Huskisson, to whom he had looked ‘as his leader since Canning’s death’, that he and his principal associates might well join the ministry; and Huskisson thought there was ‘a very fair prospect’ of persuading him to continue as attorney-general, which the king certainly wished him to do, so that he might handle some pending duchy legal business. Add. 40395, ff. 18, 20, 21; Southampton Univ. Lib. Broadlands mss PP/GMC/26; Wellington Despatches, iv. 200; Colchester Diary, iii. 540. Aware that a proposal to stay in was likely to be made to him and conscious of the awkwardness which it would entail, he sounded Milton in general terms and sought and received from Huskisson assurances that Canning’s domestic and foreign policies would be maintained, ‘more especially with regard to the real neutrality of the government’ on the Catholic question. Campbell encapsulated his dilemma:

He cannot stay without a rupture with Lord Fitzwilliam and the whole of the Whig party. He will go sine spe redeundi, and with the certainty of seeing young and obscure men put over his head ... All that could be said is that Scarlett was not put in by Lansdowne and the Whigs, but by Canning, and that he is therefore justified in acting with Canning’s friends. He says, I believe sincerely, that he would be well pleased to hear that he was dismissed. Fitzwilliam mss, Scarlett to Milton [19 Jan. 1828]; Add. 38754, ff. 188, 190, 202; 40395, f. 26; Life of Campbell, i. 452.

When he was formally invited, through Lyndhurst, to continue, he consulted Fitzwilliam and Milton:

Considering me as a mere party man, there can be no doubt what ought to be my decision; but ought I to consider myself so much of a party man as to make the duties of party paramount to all others in my case?

Both, being ‘furious against the present government’, were adamant that he should resign, though Brougham and Lansdowne encouraged him to stay (the former to keep him away from the circuit). He duly stood down after amicable explanations with Lyndhurst and Wellington. Fitzwilliam mss, Scarlett to Milton, 22 Jan., reply, 24 Jan.; Add. 38754, f. 282; 40395, ff. 127, 129; Wellington Despatches, iv. 216-17, 222; Life of Campbell, i. 453-4; Devon RO, Sidmouth mss, Pearse to Sidmouth, 25 Jan. 1828; Greville Mems. ii. 148; Creevey Pprs. ii. 148. The king wanted him to retain the lead in his duchy cases, but the new attorney-general Sir Charles Wetherell* refused to give him precedence. Geo. IV Letters, iii. 1489, 1491, 1495-7; Wellington Despatches, v. 179. Scarlett voted for repeal of the Test Acts, 26 Feb., presented a pro-Catholic petition, 31 Mar., and divided for relief, 12 May 1828. He was named to the select committees on parochial settlements, 21 Feb., and the poor laws, 22 May. On Brougham’s motion for a commission on the common law, 29 Feb., he welcomed Peel’s receptive attitude but denied the need for radical change and ‘jealous’, so it was said, ‘that Brougham should run away with all the honour ... sneered at the length and infinite extent of Brougham’s speech’. He ‘rather shabbily’ left the chamber before the ‘furious’ Brougham replied. Croker Pprs. i. 407-8. He spoke and voted against Taylor’s renewed motion for chancery reform as a ‘mere abstract proposition’, 24 Apr. He ‘entirely’ approved the financial provision for Canning’s family, 14, 22 May. He presented and endorsed attorneys’ petitions calling for improvements to judges’ chambers at Serjeants’ Inn, 16 July, and to the new Westminster courts, 8 July 1828.

That autumn he was made cautiously optimistic by indications that Wellington ‘intends to do something decisive for the Catholics’: if so, he told his son, he would be ‘ready to forget all "untoward events" and support his government de bon coeur’, for he regarded the duke as ‘the only man in the present crisis who can carry this question in Court and Parliament’. Brougham mss, Scarlett to Brougham, 26 Sept. [late 1828]; Scarlett, 114; Fitzwilliam mss, Scarlett to Fitzwilliam [30 Oct. 1828]. Ministers were considering removing the troublesome Wetherell to the bench, but their general opinion was that it would not be politically expedient to replace him with Scarlett. He remained in their minds, however, as the Catholic emancipation furore broke and Wetherell defiantly opposed the concession. Wellington Despatches, v. 179, 192, 203, 217-18; Ellenborough Diary, ii. 285, 355, 388, 401; Arbuthnot Jnl. ii. 260; Lonsdale mss, Lowther to Lonsdale, 24 Mar. [1829]. Scarlett, who had reluctantly bowed to the king’s express wish that he should head the commission of inquiry into the duchy courts, Scarlett, 101. and had lost his wife on 8 Mar, voted silently for emancipation, 6, 30 Mar., and presented and supported the English bar’s favourable petition, 25 Mar. 1829. He called the new Westminster king’s bench court ‘a disgrace’, 13 Apr. As the Whig Member George Agar Ellis saw it, he ‘spoke for’ but ‘voted against’ O’Connell being allowed to take his seat unhindered, 18 May; he had left the House without voting on the 15th. Northants. RO, Agar Ellis diary, 18 May; Dorset RO D/BKL, Bankes jnl. 167 (15 May 1829). Wetherell had been dismissed, and once the emancipation dust had settled Scarlett was offered his place. Having already gathered that Grey, Fitzwilliam and ‘the general wish of the party’ favoured his acceptance, he took it without hesitation. He was at the same time offered government support for the vacancy for Cambridge University, but on Milton’s insistence he continued at Peterborough. Scarlett, 139-40; Add. 40399, ff. 227, 229; Ellenborough Diary, ii. 28, 44, 49; Arbuthnot Jnl. ii. 277. The day after his formal acceptance of the office he received from Milton, who acquiesced in rather than approved of it, a letter requesting him to come to an understanding with Wellington that he was to remain free to support parliamentary reform. In reply Scarlett, who insisted that he had ‘not been asked to abandon any principle or pledge as the condition of office’, sought to clarify his views, and particularly to set out

the limits beyond which I should be very unwilling practically to go, however I might be disposed whilst in opposition to give a general vote as a testimony of my good will ... I have never yet heard propounded any uniform system of election which I could prefer to the present ... I never can approve of any system of representation that takes from property the power and influence necessary to protect it ... I am an advocate for all the improvements of which the present system is susceptible as occasions may suggest and above all disposed to take every fair opportunity of diverting the representation from the small towns, which do not want it, to the large towns which cry aloud for it.

Milton acknowledged that they were in broad agreement. Scarlett, 141-3; Fitzwilliam mss, Scarlett to Milton 29 May 1829. His appointment gave general cross-party ‘satisfaction’, though Tierney supposedly remarked that he would be ‘of little use’ to government in debate. Lady Holland to Son, 105; Arbuthnot Jnl. ii. 278, 286-7; Cockburn Letters, 218; Greville Mems. i. 295, 298-9. A hint of future trouble came in the shape of a letter from Milton, 14 June, threatening to boycott his re-election for Peterborough unless ministers ‘disavowed’ the support which Lyndhurst and others were giving to the anti-Catholic George Bankes* against a Whig in the Cambridge University by-election. Fitzwilliam mss 731, p. 167. According to Grey’s son Lord Howick*, ‘it had been a matter of doubt’ whether Scarlett and Lord Rosslyn, another recent recruit to the government, would dine with the Whigs at their Fox dinner, 27 June 1829, or opt for the ministerial fish dinner with which it clashed; but in the event Scarlett chose the Whig gathering. Grey mss, Howick jnl. 27 June [1829].

He discussed mitigation of the punishment for forgery with Peel during the recess and put to the cabinet plans for reform of the Welsh judicature. Add. 40399, ff. 312, 415; Ellenborough Diary, ii. 162. He severely damaged himself in the eyes of most leading Whigs by ‘engaging’, as Abercromby had it, ‘in a single-handed war against the press’ by means of ex-officio informations for libel. In particular, his speech at the trial of Alexander of the Morning Journal in December 1829, when he lamented the unchecked licentiousness of the press for the past ten years, thereby implying that his predecessors had been negligent, caused great offence. Howick commented in his diary that Scarlett ‘may call himself a Whig, but his conduct and speeches could not have been in a worse spirit had he been a pupil of Castlereagh himself’; while Althorp wondered ‘what had happened to Scarlett’s sanity’. Brougham mss, Abercromby to Brougham, 26 Dec.; Add. 51580, Carlisle to Lady Holland, 31 Dec. [1829]; 76369, Althorp to Brougham, 30 Dec. 1829; Grey mss, Durham to Grey, 1 Jan. 1830; Greville Mems. i. 346; Howick jnl. 25 Dec. [1829]. Privately, Scarlett was unrepentant, telling his son that he had been misreported and misrepresented and that he had done his ‘duty’ and was ‘not afraid’, for ‘the liberty of the press does not consist in the power of publishing slander with impunity’. Scarlett, 116-17. Lord John Russell* thought on the eve of the 1830 session that he might ‘feel his situation disagreeable’, but he defiantly defended himself in the House against Wetherell’s vindictive attack, 2 Mar., ‘very well’, as Howick conceded, but ‘without ... at all clearing himself from what was really blameable in his conduct’. Brougham mss, Russell to Brougham, 30 Jan.; Life of Campbell, i. 465; Howick jnl. 2 Mar.; Keele Univ. Lib. Sneyd mss, Littleton to Sneyd, 3 Mar. 1830. He voted for the transfer of East Retford’s seats to Birmingham, 1 Feb., but against Lord Blandford’s reform scheme, 18 Feb. He endorsed Peel’s proposed law reforms, 18 Feb., and the illusory appointments bill, 24 Feb. On 9 Mar. he obtained leave to bring in the administration of justice bill to assimilate the Welsh and Chester palatine jurisdictions into the English. He introduced it on 22 Mar. and saw it through the House, eventually conceding modifications to meet a plethora of objections. On the third reading, 7 July, he successfully opposed Hume’s attempt to reduce the judges’ salaries; and when proposing adoption of the Lords’ amendments, which according to Lord Ellenborough, a member of the cabinet, had made him ‘very angry indeed’, Ellenborough Diary, ii. 312. he called it ‘the most important measure which has been submitted to Parliament for many years’. It received royal assent on 23 July 1830 (11 Geo. IV & 1 Gul. IV, c. 70). He saw no reason to resist reception of Drogheda’s petition for repeal of the Union, 22 Mar. He supported the principle of Poulett Thomson’s usury laws repeal bill, 26 Apr., but pointed out the need to establish a fixed rate of interest, and approved the principle of Brougham’s plan to establish local judicatures, 29 Apr. He was suspicious of O’Connell’s proposal to put Catholic charitable bequests on the same footing as those of Protestant Dissenters, 4 May, and on the 12th resisted his attack on John Doherty*, the Irish solicitor-general, over the Cork conspiracy trial. He voted against Jewish emancipation, 17 May. Next day he said that he could not force the abolition of arrest for debt on mesne process on a reluctant House and persuaded Lord Morpeth to withdraw his motion for a bill to end banishment for a second libel offence so that he could introduce a measure of his own. He steered this (which Ellenborough considered ‘a poor weak inoperative thing, ridiculous and unconciliating’) Ibid. ii. 247-8, 251. through the House, though Morpeth carried an amendment to it, 6 July. He secured one of his own to increase recognizances, 9 July. Add. 40401, f. 28. He explained the bill brought in to deal with the four-and-a-half per cent duties, defended the grant for the annual law charges and replied to renewed criticism of his ex-officio prosecutions, 4 June. He apparently ‘lost his temper’ as he ‘fell amongst thieves’, and the cabinet, according to Ellenborough, thought he ‘did ill’. Ellenborough Diary, ii. 263. He was in the ministerial majority for the grant for South American missions, 7 June. He endorsed the bill to create an additional chancery judge, 24 June. ‘Suffering under some degree of indisposition’, he put the ministerial case on the regency issue, 6 July 1830.

In late March 1830 he had told Brougham that Wellington was ‘more firmly entrenched than ever with the people, Parliament and the Court’; but a week before the death of George IV in June he informed his son, to whom he complained that he was ‘worn out in the House of Commons’ by constant late nights, that he was ‘not sure’ that the ministry would ‘last long’. Brougham mss, Scarlett to Brougham [27 Mar. 1830]; Scarlett, 117-18. Soon afterwards he was told through Lord Dundas that as Milton intended to give up his Yorkshire seat at the impending general election he was required to make way for him at Peterborough. He confirmed his acquiescence in a subsequent friendly conversation with Milton, who assured him that their now being on opposite sides in the Commons was not behind the move, and began negotiations through government for an alternative seat. On 12 July, however, he received from Fitzwilliam an unsolicited offer to return him for Malton, which he readily accepted, although he had received the same day an offer from Lord Cleveland. Scarlett, 119-20, 144-5; Wentworth Woodhouse mss G2/7; G83/110. Milton endorsed the arrangement, but wanted Scarlett to continue to support, as far as he conscientiously could, reform and revision of the corn laws. Scarlett had no problem with this, but a week before the Malton election he got from Brougham a letter informing him that his sitting as an office-holder under the aegis of men who were determinedly opposed to the administration was ‘a subject of general disapprobation’. While the devious Brougham, who was nettled because he had wanted the Malton seat for his own brother, professed to be warning Scarlett ‘as a friend’, he had maliciously put it about that he had ‘had the baseness’ to solicit the seat from Fitzwilliam. Howick, for one, was taken in by Brougham’s lie. Scarlett tried to set the record straight with Brougham and Milton, who concurred in the accuracy of his statement. Scarlett, 145-7; Chatsworth mss 6DD/1960; Brougham mss, Scarlett to Brougham [26 July]; Fitzwilliam mss, same to Milton, 26 July; 732, p. 9, reply, 28 July; Howick jnl. 27 July [1830]; Nottingham Univ. Lib. Ossington mss OsC 75. Scarlett, who also had to ask Holland to explain a reported recent public criticism of his abandonment of his past principles on the libel issue (Holland said that he had been mischievously misreported), decided to go to Malton, though he told his son that he would probably have to surrender the seat ‘soon after Parliament meets’. Scarlett, 119-20; Add. 51813, Scarlett to Holland, 26 July, reply, 27 July [1830]. On the hustings, in what Carlisle heard was ‘rather a dextrous speech’, he promised to back ‘any well considered reform that in my judgement is not calculated to affect the stability of the throne, or the just and useful authority of either House’; to support the abolition of slavery by ‘such means as may be consistent with safety’ to the negroes, and to continue to be ‘a zealous advocate of retrenchment, and economy in the public service’. Of the elections in general he remarked to his son that ‘public opinion was never so decided against the Tories’, although he felt that it was in favour of Wellington and Peel as ministers. Scarlett, 120-2, 126; Add. 51580, Carlisle to Lady Holland, 25 Aug. 1830. In his pamphlet reviewing the elections the vindictive Brougham highlighted Fitzwilliam’s ‘unaccountable measure’ of returning Scarlett for Malton and predicted that ‘he cannot, he will not, for his honour’s sake, he dares not to continue so to sit’. Result of General Election (1830), 9.

Scarlett, who was aware of the intensity of Brougham’s malevolence, and was now also required to explain and justify to Milton his conduct on the libel law repeal, claiming that his hands had been tied by the cabinet, had an audience of the new king at Brighton on 29 Sept. 1830. To Milton he expressed his ‘dread’ of ‘the consequences of the intemperate zeal of some who may second without intending it the attack which is made by the greater part of the press at this moment on property and rank and station, the natural objects of envy and hatred to the ignorant multitude’. Wentworth Woodhouse mun. G83/111, 112; Life of Campbell, i. 47. When press libels were discussed a month later Ellenborough noted that Scarlett who, with the solicitor-general, advised the cabinet against prosecution ‘without the sanction of Parliament’, appeared to be ‘quite cowed by opposition and the press’. Ellenborough Diary, ii. 407-8. He presented a Malton Dissenters’ petition for the abolition of slavery, 5 Nov. Brougham’s notice of a reform motion made his personal ‘situation ... very painful’; and Campbell felt he should ‘vote for the resolution, and receive his dismissal if the duke thinks fit’. Life of Campbell, i. 485. He and Peel were reckoned to have ‘licked’ Brougham in a clash on the civil list, 12 Nov., when Scarlett said that ‘irregularity ... [was] a part of his hereditary claims’. Ellenborough Diary, ii. 431. He was in the ministerial minority in the division on the civil list which brought the government down, 15 Nov. With some embarrassment, he introduced and rushed through a bill to remedy a technical defect which had made the Administration of Justice Act inoperable, 19 Nov. 1830. For a few days his fate was uncertain. He did not immediately resign, told Milton that he had foreseen the collapse of the ministry and, alarmed by the continuing ‘terror’ of the `Swing’ disturbances, professed to perceive ‘something like the beginning of that servile war which I predicted as the natural result of the system of poor laws which I endeavoured ineffectually to correct’. He heard nothing from Grey, the new premier, or Brougham, who had been appointed lord chancellor, until he was dismissed for Thomas Denman*. Life of Campbell, i. 488-91; Fitzwilliam mss, Scarlett to Milton [17 Nov. 1830]. He was ‘much mortified’ to be cast aside ‘without a kind word from anybody’, and bridled under the resulting ‘supposition that I have done anything to forfeit the esteem of my friends or to make it proper that they should eject me from their party’. He later admitted that he had considered himself entitled to be afforded at least the chance to refuse the place of chief baron of the exchequer, which was given to Lyndhurst. Fitzwilliam mss, Scarlett to Milton, 11 Dec. 1830; Add. 51813, same to Holland [25 Apr. 1831]; Three Diaries, 94. Scarlett, who dined with opposition party managers and ex-ministers at Ellenborough’s, 11 Dec., Three Diaries, 32. took charge of the five law reform bills which had come from the Lords, 13 Dec., and approved the principle of his son-in-law’s general registry bill, 16 Dec. 1830.

That month Arbuthnot urged Holland, his successor as chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster, to get Scarlett, who ‘seems to feel that he has not been kindly treated by his old friends the Whigs’, to complete the report on the palatine courts as soon as possible. Add. 51835, Arbuthnot to Holland, 7, 14, 15 Dec. 1830. When sending Holland a partially finished report, Scarlett deplored the ‘rage of the day’ against the hereditary revenues of the crown, which he saw as ‘a rapid stride’ towards republicanism:

Although I am not driven yet to be a Tory, I am really upon principle attached to the monarchy, being satisfied that under a republic the tyranny of the many would be more oppressive and the extravagance of the government just as great ... I hope that the new government will by the wisdom and moderation of their measures bring Europe as well as our own country into such a state of repose that I may soon find some corner of France or Italy in which to pass the remainder of my years or days in tranquillity and sunshine, undisturbed by frost or law or politics. At present I am terrified by the Hunts and the Cobbetts and the Humes and the O’Connells of the day ... and I find no place even in my own country to rest the soles of my unblessed feet. Add. 51813, Scarlett to Holland, 15, 19 Dec. [1830].

Soon afterwards Russell, one of the authors of the Grey ministry’s reform bill, to whom Scarlett had evidently applied for some patronage, asked Milton if he thought he would ‘support an extensive plan of reform’; and four days after the details of the measure had been revealed, 1 Mar. 1831, Holland wrote to Grey: ‘Should not Milton ascertain distinctly whether Scarlett means to vote against us, as his language occasionally indicates? If he does, a hint, and a broad one, should be given to him’. Fitzwilliam mss, Russell to Milton, 28 Dec. [1830]; Grey mss, Holland to Grey [5 Mar. 1831]. Scarlett, who was horrified by the sweeping and radical nature of the bill, had told Russell that he did not think he would be able to support it; but on 6 Mar. he received a note from Milton urging him to try to do so. In reply that day he said that ‘if the bill does not come out in a very different shape from the committee, I cannot support it’, and in effect tendered the resignation of his seat. Milton, though disappointed, was unwilling to force him to vote for the bill and did not ask him to go out. Scarlett, 148-50; Life of Campbell, i. 507. On 22 Mar. Scarlett, despairing of any prospect of the bill, which he felt would establish ‘an entire new construction of the whole constitution and government of the country’, being modified, spoke at length and voted against the second reading. Next day, finding that Milton had gone to the country, he wrote to him resigning his seat. In the House, 24 Mar., he presented, ‘with cheerfulness’, a petition in favour of the bill from Malton, and in what he later called a ‘funeral dirge’, announced that he was about to resign. He wrote to his son, 25 Mar.:

My speech ... [on the 22nd] met with more attention than The Times represents ... The game is ... up with the constitution. You must not state to any person, however, that I express a strong opinion upon it, as I made a moderate speech without any party feeling. There must be some sort of convulsion, I fear, whatever happens ... I am full of uneasiness about our home affairs.

In a curious incident that evening, he turned up, apparently uninvited, at Grey’s drawing room, but departed abruptly when the premier ‘received him ... coldly’. When he got Milton’s reply the following morning he immediately took the Chiltern Hundreds. He commented to his son:

I have taken leave of Parliament, where I have never yet been in a desirable position between a party seat and moderate opinions ... I have lost my seat by an adherence to the same opinions upon which I came into Parliament, upon the question of reform, which opinions have never varied or been concealed. Scarlett, 124, 127; Life of Campbell, i. 509; Creevey Pprs. ii. 225-6; Fitzwilliam mss 732, p. 21.

Scarlett, who received ‘a very kind letter from the duke of Wellington ... regretting the loss of my seat’, was angered by ‘more persecution from the Whigs’: he and Milton publicly refuted a revival of ‘the old lie’ that he had applied to Fitzwilliam for the Malton seat and been turned out for breaking a pledge on reform. Scarlett, 128; Sun, 28 Mar.; The Times, 12 Apr. 1831. Four days before the reform bill’s defeat on Gascoyne’s amendment, 19 Apr., he wrote to his son:

It is said by many persons that most thinking men are against it ... Those who are for it are the radicals, the ultra Whigs, and a certain active and restless class that belongs to every government ... They have persuaded the people that it will give them cheap bread, abundant work, and exemption from taxes ... I ought to add to the supporters the vast class of journalists whose importance will be increased by it. Nevertheless I fear it will be carried. Fear will make men vote for it who actually disapprove of it ... We are altogether in a strange disjointed state. I am not upon the whole sorry to be out of Parliament at this moment. Scarlett, 128-9.

A few days later he had a conversation with Holland about his apparent ‘proscription and exclusion’ by the Whigs. Holland mentioned this to Grey and in writing assured Scarlett that there was ‘nothing of the kind’ and that once reform had been secured they would be happy to resume a political connection with him and give fair, unprejudiced consideration to his claims to professional advancement. Yet at Grey’s behest he warned Scarlett that reform was the touchstone and that it was impossible now to give him ‘any positive or implicit promise with respect to a specified place on the bench in the contingency of a vacancy’, more especially as the claims of others would almost certainly be enhanced by their support for reform. In reply Scarlett, distressed to be thought to have been angling for promotion, reviewed his political conduct since 1801 and particularly since 1827; admitted his grievance over the way he had been unceremoniously ditched and discountenanced by the new ministry; claimed that he had been anxious to support the reform bill but could not honestly do so, and hinted at his belief that Brougham’s personal malice lay behind the vendetta against him. He later wrote that Holland’s assertion that ‘the reform bill was the vital question of the Whig party’ was what prompted him to accept the unbending Tory Lord Lonsdale’s offer of a seat for Cockermouth (preferring this to one offered by Alexander Baring*) at the impending general election, ‘in order that I might in the most authentic form indicate my resolution to be no longer a Whig’. In Campbell’s words, he thereby ‘openly leagued with the Tories’. Add. 51813, Holland to Scarlett and reply, 24 Apr. [1831], Abinger to Lady Holland, 14 Feb., 5 Apr. 1841; Scarlett, 130-8; Life of Campbell, i. 513. After his return, free and in absentia, Scarlett, who had his eye on Guildford for the future, having earlier declined to vote for reform to secure his return there, told his son:

I shall now take my part firmly in Parliament and meet my fate ... without dismay. The bill or something like it must be carried. I doubt if this was the original intention, but the ministers have excited a tumult which is still raging, and which if it continues much longer will force them to the ballot and universal suffrage ... The Whigs will keep the government for some time; indeed, their bill is intended to crush the Tory party in Parliament, and it will succeed. But the party will exist in the country, and, if it becomes factious, I think the Whigs will be very intolerant, and very unpopular before long. Scarlett, 151-2.

Scarlett voted silently against the second reading of the reintroduced reform bill, 6 July, and at least once for an adjournment, 12 July 1831. He voted for use of the 1831 census to determine the disfranchisement schedules, 19 July, when he argued that Appleby deserved a reprieve, as he did of Bere Alston next day. When he tried to make capital of the London livery’s censure of their Member Thompson for opposing a detail of the bill, 22 July, Waithman, one of the other City Members, wiped the floor with and humiliated him. Hatherton diary, 22 July; Creevey mss, Creevey to Miss Ord, 23 July 1831. He voted to postpone consideration of the partial disfranchisement of Chippenham, 27 July, and spoke against that of his own constituency, 28 July, and of Guildford, 29 July. He had the ‘greatest possible objection’ to the appointment of boundary commissioners ‘to do that which the framers of the bill have not done themselves, nor empowered the House to do’, 5 Aug. He made technical observations on the £10 householder and copyholder franchises, 17 Aug., and on the registration clause, 19 Aug., sarcastically thanked ministers for giving lawyers such potentially lucrative work. Supporting his son-in-law’s attempt to deprive weekly rent-payers of the vote, 25 Aug., he declared, ‘I am not ... never was ... and never will be a radical reformer’. He argued, 18 July, for referral of William Long Pole Wellesley’s* case to the committee of privileges, where he ‘of course took an active part against Brougham’; he was apparently miffed when his ‘special pleading’ for Wellesley was ‘disregarded’. Hatherton diary, 20, 26 July [1831]. He dismissed the Deacles’ charges against William Bingham Baring* as ‘utterly devoid of foundation’, 21 July, and opposed an inquiry, 22 Sept. On 23 Aug. he spoke and voted in favour of censuring the Irish government over the Dublin election affair. He was supposed to open the debate for opposition against the motion for the third reading of the reform bill, 19 Sept., but ‘from want of attention’ failed to rise in time to prevent the Speaker putting the question, which led to a premature division. Opposition managers, especially Billy Holmes*, were ‘very angry’; and Scarlett sought to make amends with a long harangue against the ensuing motion for the passage of the bill. Arbuthnot Corresp. 150; Hatherton diary, 19 Sept. [1831]. He was in the minority in both divisions. During the riots sparked by the bill’s defeat in the Lords he commented to Sir Robert Wilson, another renegade Whig (who had helped to engineer his return for Cockermouth) that ‘the king, the ministers, the press and the mob all combine to intimidate poor common sense out of its propriety’ and that ‘it is plain the radicals and the press are at work to frighten the ministers from any departure from the bill’. Sir James Graham mss (IHR microfilm XR 80), Wilson to Graham, 31 May 1831; Add. 30115, f. 51.

He voted against the second reading of the revised bill, 17 Dec. 1831. He scored a technical point against O’Connell on the regulations governing the appointment of returning officers, 24 Jan., and on the £10 householder clause, 3 Feb., he argued for an increase to £20, predicting that in Manchester, for example, the bill as it stood would ‘throw the whole representation into the hands of persons without education, or property of any kind’. He again put the case for reprieving Appleby, 21 Feb., voted against the enfranchisement of Tower Hamlets, 28 Feb., and protested against the transfer of a seat from Monmouthshire to Merthyr, 14 Mar. He divided against the third reading of the bill, 22 Mar. He saw no need for Campbell’s proposal to add a clause to the fines and recoveries bill for the compensation of displaced officials, 20 Jan. He spoke and voted against government on the Russian-Dutch loan, 26 Jan., and voted silently in the same sense, 12 July. He was contemptuous of Hunt for raking over the ashes of Peterloo, 15 Mar., 17 May. He recommended delay on the Norfolk assizes bill, 23 May, and carried by 43-18 a motion to adjourn proceedings on Campbell’s ‘very objectionable’ dower bill, 8 June. He approved the ministerial proposal to advance £1,000,000 to West Indian colonies to cover losses sustained in recent hurricanes, which would help to ‘conciliate the angry feelings of the colonists’, 29 June 1832.

In November 1832, to his chagrin, his old friend and professional junior Denman was made lord chief justice, not long after they had clashed publicly and heatedly, in a row over politics provoked by Scarlett, during the trial of the mayor of Bristol for negligence during the 1831 riots. Holland commented that while Scarlett ‘may be a more subtle lawyer’, it was a ‘triumph of simplicity and honesty’ over ‘artifice [and] cunning’, and that Scarlett ‘really deserves all the mortification he feels’. Greville Mems. ii. 329-30; Add. 51786, Holland to C.R. Fox, 8 Nov. 1832. Scarlett told his son:

I have lost friends and perhaps made enemies, but ... my conscience is clear of offence, and I know of no reason in the world why I should be abandoned by those who once made such strong professions of kindness to me, and considered me entitled, in spite of adverse politics, to the honours of the profession. I am doing my best ... to prove that I still continue to deserve what I never shall attain ... At no period in my life have I been more engaged in business ... If I should get into Parliament and abuse the Whigs very much, they will perhaps propose to do something for me. I never got anything from their friendship. Scarlett, 155-6.

At the general election of 1832 he stood for Norwich and was returned in second place. He was later depicted during the new Parliament as a morose and largely silent figure, a living ‘illustration of the homely aphorism of falling between two chairs’; but he reaped his reward for his apostacy when Peel came to power in 1834 and gave him a choice of the attorney-generalship and the chief barony of exchequer. Even now Brougham tried to thwart him, but he opted for the judgeship, though it would lose him £7,000 a year, and took a peerage. Grant, 192; Add. 30115, f. 54; 40405, f. 259; 40408, ff. 131, 175; 40409, ff. 44, 46, 73, 74; Creevey Pprs. ii. 298, 300-1; Disraeli Letters ii. 373. He was not very active in the Lords and, being dictatorial and partial, was less successful on the bench than at the bar. Oxford DNB; E. Foss, Lives of Judges, ix. 260. In 1843, when almost 74, he took a second wife who was 32 years his junior. He died at Bury St. Edmunds in April 1844, five days after suffering a stroke. Campbell remembered him for his ‘good qualities’, which ‘made all his children most tenderly attached to him. He was likewise kind and attentive to all depending upon him, and very steady in his early friendships’. Life of Campbell, ii. 189-90; Gent. Mag. (1844), i. 648; Scarlett, 209-11. By his brief will, dated 28 Sept. 1843 and in which he neglected to name an executor, he provided his wife with a life annuity of £400 and an additional £157 a year from the rent of two London houses and canal share dividends. He left all the rest of his property to his eldest son Robert Campbell (1794-1861), his successor in the peerage, a barrister and Conservative Member for Norwich, 1835-8, and Horsham, 1841-4. PROB 11/1996/266; Gent. Mag. (1844), ii. 652. His second son James Yorke (1799-1871), Conservative Member for Guildford, 1837-41, commanded the heavy brigade at Balaclava; and his youngest, Peter Campbell (1804-81), had a successful diplomatic career.