ELDON, JOHN SCOTT, 1ST EARL OF (1 7 51-1838), Lord High Chancellor of England, was born at Newcastle on June 4, 17 5 1 . His father was a coal-broker in Newcastle who had made a fortune. He was educated at Newcastle Grammar school, and was to have been apprenticed to his father's business, but his brother William (afterwards Lord Stowell) interfered to send him to University college, Oxford, where he won the English Essay prize, and graduated in I 7 7o and took a fellowship. He destroyed his chances of a college living by eloping with Bessy, daughter of Aubone Surtees, of Newcastle. His father was subsequently re conciled to them, as was Mr. Surtees. He entered the Middle Temple in Jan. 1773, and was called to the bar in 1776, practising in London and on the Northern Circuit. He was helped on by his brother, now Camden Professor of Ancient History, and by Andrew Bowes, who retained him as junior in his election petition for Newcastle. In 178o he made his name in Ackroyd v. Smithson, still a leading case, which he insisted on taking up on appeal in opposition to his clients' opinion, and won before Lord Thurlow. The next year he enhanced his reputation in the Clitheroe election petition. In 1782 he took silk, and soon had a huge practice on the Northern Circuit, at the Parliamentary Bar, and in Chancery.
In 1782 he went into Parliament for Lord Weymouth's close borough of Weobley, as a supporter of Pitt. His first speeches were made against Fox's India bill, and were very thoroughly ridiculed by Sheridan. In 1788 he was made Solicitor-General and knighted, and the next year he is said to have drafted the Regency bill. In '793 he became Attorney-General, and conducted the prosecutions against the supporters of the French Revolution, especially that against Horne Tooke. In 1799 he became Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, with the title of Baron Eldon, and in 1799 he was Lord Chancellor in Addington's ministry, which he owed to his anti-Catholic zeal. In 1804 we find him conducting the negotiations that led to Pitt succeeding Addington, and he re mained Lord Chancellor under Pitt. Pitt's death was followed by Grenville's ministry, and then under Liverpool, Eldon returned to the Woolsack, where he continued the predominant member of the Cabinet for 20 years. He was made an earl in 1821. In 1827 Canning, a supporter of Catholic Emancipation, became Prime Minister, and he resigned ; he fully hoped to be asked to take office again under Wellington, but was disappointed. His wife, to whom he was entirely devoted, died in 1831, and Eldon died in London on Jan. 13, 1838.
As a legislator he was profoundly conservative. For 4o years he fought innovation by repression, seeing in every reform pro posed the downfall of the country, and preserving himself and his party in power by tact, conservatism and anti-Catholicism. As a judge, his greatness is indisputable, though his judgments, as voluminous as they are profound, are notably clumsy in form. During the many years he presided over the Chancery he naturally had a considerable effect on the development of Equity. Most of this is purely technical, but it should be observed that it was under his influence that the injunction became so important a weapon in the Chancellor's armoury, and the rules for its use became settled. But he had one fatal fault, his slowness, which outweighed all his virtues. The notorious slowness of the Chan cery reached its climax under him, and it is said that he would keep papers by him for years, though he rarely altered his first estimate of a case. It is the procedure under him that is satirized in the famous verse that ends, "And the Chancellor said —`I doubt'." Twiss, Life of Lord Chancellor Eldon (1844) ; W. E. Surtees, Sketch of the Lives of Lords Stowell and Eldon (1846) ; Lord Campbell, Lives of the Chancellors; W. C. Townsend, Lives of Twelve Eminent Judges (1846) ; Greville Memoirs.
EL DORADO, a city of southern Arkansas, U.S.A., 15m. from the Louisiana boundary; the county seat of Union county. It is on Federal highway 167, and is served by the El Dorado and Wesson, the Missouri Pacific and the Rock Island railways. The population was 3,887 in 192o (26% negroes) and was 16,421 in 193o by the Federal census. It is the metropolis of the pioneer oil field of the State, which in 1928 was producing about 85,000bbl. daily. In 1921 the discovery well was brought in. El Dorado was settled in 1843 and incorporated in 187o.