Thomas Erskine, 1st Baron Erskine

Thomas Erskine, 1st Baron Erskine (born January 10, 1750, Edinburgh, Scotland—died November 17, 1823, Almondell, Linlithgowshire) was a British Whig lawyer who made important contributions to the protection of personal liberties. His defense of various politicians and reformers on charges of treason and related offenses acted to check repressive measures taken by the British government in the aftermath of the French Revolution. He also contributed to the law of criminal responsibility. He was raised to the peerage in 1806.

Early life and career

Erskine was the youngest son of Henry David Erskine, 10th earl of Buchan. Though he wanted to enter a learned profession, because of the straitened financial circumstances of his family he sought a career in the Royal Navy instead. He became a midshipman in 1764 but left the service in 1768 and purchased a commission in a regiment of the 1st Royals. His unsigned pamphlet, Observations on the Prevailing Abuses in the British Army (1772), gained a wide audience. Finding opportunities for advancement in the British army no more favourable than in the navy and encouraged by the friendly interest of Lord Mansfield, Erskine decided to enter the law. He was admitted to Lincoln’s Inn in 1775, and in 1778 he received an honorary M.A. degree from Trinity College, Cambridge, after which he was called to the bar.

Professional life

Within a few months, his future was assured by his defense of Captain Thomas Baillie, lieutenant governor of Greenwich Hospital, who had published charges of corruption in the administration of the hospital. Those accused instituted a proceeding to show cause why Baillie should not be prosecuted for criminal libel. Erskine was retained by Baillie as his junior counsel and in his first appearance at the bar vindicated his client with remarkable eloquence and courage. He very quickly rose to the leading position in the English bar. In the following year, he successfully assisted the defense in the court-martial of Admiral Augustus Keppel. His successful defense of Lord George Gordon on the charge of high treason for instigating the anti-Catholic riots of 1780 substantially destroyed the English legal doctrine of constructive treason—i.e., treason imputed to a person from his conduct or course of actions, though none of his separate actions amounts to treason. Erskine appeared in most of the major cases that arose out of the disruption of commercial relations with France, which had entered the American Revolution against Britain in 1778.

In 1784 Erskine unsuccessfully represented a clergyman defending a charge of criminal libel, but his contention that it is for the jury, not the judge, to determine whether a publication is libelous was vindicated by the passage of the Libel Act of 1792. In 1789 he won an acquittal for a bookseller who was charged with criminal libel for selling a pamphlet criticizing the trial of Warren Hastings, a former governor-general of India who was impeached for alleged misconduct. Erskine’s speech on that occasion is one of the monuments in the literature of English freedom. His unsuccessful defense of Thomas Paine, whom William Pitt, the prime minister, had caused to be indicted for treason for publishing The Rights of Man, cost him his position as attorney general to the prince of Wales.

His defense of various politicians and reformers on charges of treason and related offenses placed a powerful check on the repressive measures taken by the ministry of William Pitt in response to the insecurity and hysteria engendered in England by the French Revolution and its aftermath. In 1800, by establishing the defendant’s insanity, he successfully defended James Hadfield, who had attempted to assassinate George III. Erskine’s argument at the trial is an important contribution to the law of criminal responsibility.

Erskine, who was an intimate of the Whig leaders Charles James Fox and Richard Brinsley Sheridan, sat in the House of Commons from 1783 to 1784 and from 1790 until he became a peer in 1806. His undistinguished parliamentary career was almost wholly devoid of the forensic triumphs that marked his legal practice. In 1806–07 he was lord chancellor during the so-called Ministry of All the Talents. His latter years were marked by private sorrows and misfortunes, which caused him almost completely to withdraw from public affairs. Toward the close of his life, however, he again achieved widespread prominence by his role in defense of Queen Caroline, whom her husband, George IV, had brought to trial before the House of Lords for adultery in order to deprive her of her rights and title.

Erskine excelled principally as a jury lawyer. His courtroom speeches are characterized by vigour, cogency, and lucidity and often by great literary merit.