Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846. Various
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are now to be found nowhere but in the volumes of Law Reports, where the essence of his innumerable masterly arguments will be found collected and preserved by gentlemen of patient attention and learning competent for the task, and on whose modest but valuable labours will hereafter depend all that posterity will know of Sir William Follett. These are the legitimate records of his intellectual triumph; as are the prosperous circumstances in which he has left his family, to them a solid and noble testimonial of his affectionate devotion to their interests. Their fortune was the purchase of his life's blood. The acquisition of that fortune absorbed the whole of his time, and of his energies; it deprived him of thousands of opportunities for relaxation and enjoyment, and also – it must be added – for the exercise of virtues which probably he possessed, but gave himself little or no time for calling into action – of those virtues which elevate and adorn the individual, while they benefit our fellow-creatures and society – for performing the duties which God Almighty has imposed upon his creatures, proportionately to their endowments and opportunities, himself telling us, that to whom much is given, of him shall much be required. To the young, eager, and ambitious lawyer, the contemplation of Sir William Follett's career is fraught with instruction. It will teach him the necessity of moderation, in the pursuit of the distinctions and emoluments of his profession. By grasping at too much often every thing is lost. Was not Sir William Follett's life one uninterrupted scene of splendid slavery, the pressure of which at length broke him down in the meridian of his days? Had he been able to resist the very strong temptations by which he was assailed – temptations, too, appealing powerfully to his love of family and offspring – a long life's evening of tranquillity, of unspeakable enjoyment, might have rewarded a day of great, yet not excessive, labour. He might also have devoted his powerful talents to the public benefit, in such a way as to secure the lasting gratitude and admiration of posterity, by remedying some great existing defect in his country's jurisprudence, by making some solid contribution to the safeguards of the constitution. But did he ever do so? All his great experience, talents, and learning, might never have existed, for any trace of them remaining in the records of his country's constitution. What page in the statute-book attests his handiwork? And what did he ever do to advance the interests of the profession to which he belonged? These are questions asked with sorrowful sincerity and reluctance, and with every disposition to make the amplest allowances for those failings of Sir William Follett, which undoubtedly detracted somewhat from his excellence and eminence. He was a man of modest, mild, inoffensive character, who spoke ill of, and did harm to, no one; but, at the same time, was not distinguished by that active and energetic benevolence, liberality, and generosity, which secure for the memory of their exhibitant, ardent, enduring gratitude and reverence. His excellence was of a negative, rather than a positive kind. He did harm to no one, when he might have done so with impunity, and was possibly sometimes tempted to do so; but then he did not do good, at all events, to the extent which might have been expected from him. He was, however, by no means of a mean or selfish nature; but in his excessive, and to a certain extent pardonable, eagerness to make what he deemed a suitable provision for himself and his family, gave himself the appearance of being comparatively indifferent to the interests or welfare of others. It is, however, only fair to his memory to acknowledge, that legal eminence is too often liable to the same imputations – that professional pursuits have certainly a strong tendency to warp amiable and generous natures – to keep the eye of ambition, amidst the intense fires of rivalry and opposition, fixed exclusively upon one object – the interest and advancement of the individual. Nothing can effectually control or counteract this tendency, but a lively and constant sense of religious principle; which enlarges the heart till it can love our neighbour as ourself, which brightens the present with the hopes of the future, which purifies our corrupt nature, and elevates its grovelling earthward tendencies by the contemplation of an eternal state of being dependent upon our conduct in this transient state of trial. Who can tell the extent to which these and similar considerations are present to the minds of the dying great ones of the earth, who, suddenly plucked from amidst the dazzling scenes of successful ambition, are laid prostrate upon the bed of death – their pale faces turned to the wall, with hereafter alone in view, and under an aspect equally new and awful? Let us, therefore, be wise, and be wise in time, nor haughtily disregard the earnest voice of warning, however humble and obscure may be the quarter whence it comes.
Sir William Follett belonged to a respectable family in Devonshire, and was born on the 2d December 1798. In 1814 he went to Trinity College, Cambridge, and took the degree of B.A. in 1818, without any attempt to obtain honours; quitting college in this latter year, and entering the Inner Temple, he prosecuted the study of the law in the chambers of eminent practitioners, where he continued for three years – and then practised for about three years as a special pleader. He was called to the bar in 1824, and went the western circuit, but for one or two years was much disheartened by his want of success. He expressed, on one occasion, his readiness to accept of the place of police magistrate, if it were offered! His progress was, soon afterwards, signal, and all but unprecedentedly rapid. He was appointed Solicitor-general in 1834, while yet behind the bar, and in 1835 was returned for Exeter, for which place he sate till his death. He quitted office with Sir Robert Peel in 1835, but returned with him to it in 1841, and became Attorney-general in 1844, on the promotion of Sir Frederick Pollock to the chief seat in the Court of Exchequer. For several years before Sir William Follett's decease, his constitution, never of the strongest, was broken by his incessant and severe labours; and in 1844, having been obliged to give up practice altogether, he went to Italy at the close of the session – having attended at the bar of the House of Lords, to lead for the Crown in the O'Connell case. He was, however, quite unfit for the task. His spine was then so seriously affected, that he was obliged to sit upon a raised chair while addressing the House, the Chancellor and the other Lords, out of great consideration for the distinguished and enfeebled speaker, moving down to the lower end of the House, close to the bar, in order to occasion him as little exertion and fatigue as possible. He did not speak long, and the effort greatly exhausted him; and it was not without difficulty, owing to something like partial paralysis of the lower extremities, that he could walk from the House. He returned from the Continent in March 1845, a little better than when he had gone, and endeavoured to resume the discharge of such of his less onerous, professional, and official duties as admitted of their being attended to at his own house. He continued to listen to patent cases, attended by counsel, till within a short period of his being finally disabled; but every one saw with pain the total exhaustion under which he was suffering. Finding himself rapidly declining, in May 1845, he wrote a letter to the Prime Minister, proffering the resignation of his office of Attorney-general.
He soon afterwards retired, for the advantage of some little change of air, to the house of a relative in the Regent's Park, where he enjoyed the soothing attentions of his family, and reverently received the consolations of religion. The public manifested great anxiety to have the state of his health, and the morning and evening newspapers contained regular announcements on the subject, as in the case of persons of the highest distinction. Her Majesty, Prince Albert, also, with numbers of the nobility, sent daily to enquire concerning him. For the last day, or possibly two days of his life, he became unconscious, and slightly delirious – and expired, without apparent pain, on Saturday afternoon, the 28th June 1845. For a long series of years, the death of no member of the legal profession had excited a tithe of the public concern which followed that of Sir William Follett, the Attorney-general. The bar felt that its brightest light had been almost suddenly extinguished. Its most gifted members, and those of the judicial bench, heartily acknowledged the transcendence of his professional qualifications, and the unassuming peacefulness with which he had passed through life. Had he lived to occupy the highest judicial seat – the woolsack – few doubted that, when relieved from the crushing pressure of private practice, he would have displayed qualities befitting so splendid a station, and earned a name worthy of ranking with those of his great predecessors.
His funeral took place on Friday, the 4th of July, at the Temple church. He was a bencher of the Inner Temple, and his remains repose in the vault at the south-eastern extremity of the church. For nearly two hours before the funeral took place, the church – a chaste and splendid structure – had been filled with members of the bar, and a few others, all in mourning, and awaiting, in solemn silence, the commencement of the mournful ceremony. At length the pealing of the organ announced the arrival of the affecting