Henry Lord Brougham (1778-1868) was a Whig politician and member of Parliament; he was instrumental in the passage of the 1832 Reform Act and the 1833 Slavery Abolition Act. He was also a very successful barrister who was retained by Queen Caroline to defend her in divorce proceedings brought by her husband George IV. During that trial he famously proclaimed the duty of a lawyer to his client:
"An advocate, in the discharge of his duty, knows but one person in all the world, and that person is his client. To save that client by all means and expedients, and at all hazards and costs to other persons, and amongst them, to himself, is his first and only duty; and in performing this duty he must not regard the alarm, the torments, the destruction which he may bring upon others. Separating the duty of a patriot from that of an advocate, he must go on reckless of consequences, though it should be his unhappy fate to involve his country in confusion."
He served four years as Lord High Chancellor, 1830-1834. He then served in the House of Lords until death in 1868. His three volume autobiography was posthumously published in 1871. The first volume covers his life to 1804.
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