ABBOT, CHARLES, afterwards Lord Colchester (born 1757, died 1829), entered parliament in 1795, and became chairman of Pitt's finance committee 1797. He carried in 1800 a bill for charging public paymasters with the payment of interest on sums in hand. He was also the initiator of the commission of inquiry into the public records in the same year. But perhaps his chief title to fame is his introduction, in 1800, of the motion for a complete census of Great Britain. In spite of some opposition the Population Act, as it was called, was duly passed, and its provisions carried into force in the next year (see CENsus). As speaker (elected 1802) he gave his casting vote against Lord Melville in 1805. On his retirement from the House of Commons in 1 817 he was made a peer, and received a pension of £4000 a year. He devoted his later years to foreign travel, and to the improvement of roads in the Scottish highlands. J. B.