SELBORNE, ROUNDELL PALMER, 1ST EARL OF (1812-1895), English lawyer and statesman, was born at Mixbury, in the county of Oxford, on Nov. 27, 1812 ; his father was rector of the parish. He was educated at Rugby and Winchester, and at Trinity College, Oxford. He was called to the bar on June 7, 1837, and soon had a good chancery practice. In addition he wrote for The Times and the British Critic, and took an active interest in Church affairs.
In 1847, and again in 1853, Palmer was returned as M.P. for Plymouth, as a Peelite, and in the House of Commons he took an active and independent part. He advocated the admission of Jews to parliament ; he opposed Lord John Russell's measure to repel the so-called papal aggression ; he opposed the admission of Dissenters into the university of Oxford; and he was hostile to the action of the government in the Crimean War, and the second opium war with China. This attitude was disapproved of by his constituency, and he gave up his seat at the election of 1857. In 1848 he married Lady Laura Waldegrave, and in 1849 he became a Q.C. In July 1861 he accepted from Lord Palmerston the office of solicitor-general, a knighthood, and a safe seat for the borough of Richmond in Yorkshire; in Sept. 1863 he became attorney general, and, as such, was adviser of the ministry, in the courts, and in the House, in the questions which arose in respect of the "Trent" and the "Peterhoff," the cruisers "Alabama" and "Flor ida" and the "Alexandra," during the American Civil War. In 1866 he advocated making household suffrage the basis of representation, an expression of opinion which probably influenced the Reform Bill of the following year—in the discussions on which Palmer took a prominent part, and especially in opposition to the so-called "fancy franchises" originally proposed by its authors. In April 1868 he refused to support Gladstone's measures for the disestab lishment of the Irish Church, and after the election of that year he declined Gladstone's offer of the office of lord chancellor.
The treaty of Washington cast a great duty upon Palmer. After the conclusion of the Civil War in America very large claims were preferred against Great Britain for alleged breaches of her duty as a neutral power; and after long negotiations, England and the United States agreed to arbitration.
In Sept. 1872 Gladstone again offered him the great seal, and he accepted it, with the title of Lord Selborne. In the following
year Lord Selborne carried through Parliament the Judicature Act. The result of this act was to effect a fundamental change in the judicature system. By the operation of the Judicature Act one supreme court with several divisions was constituted ; each divi sion could administer the whole law; the conflict of divergent systems of law was largely overcome by declaring that when they were at variance, the principles of equity should prevail over the doctrines of the common law. The details of this great change were embodied in a code of general rules prepared by a committee of judges, over which Lord Selborne for two years presided week by week. "If," wrote Lord Selborne in his memoirs, speaking of the Judicature Act of 1873, "I leave any monument behind me which will bear the test of time, it may be this." This unification of the courts was more or less contemporary with the construc tion of a single building to house them; in 1882 Queen Victoria personally presided in the new Law Courts, and handed them over formally to Lord Selborne. On this occasion he received an earldom. In 1885 he definitely broke with Gladstone over Home Rule and disestablishment. But though he never held office again, he continued to sit in the House of Lords both to hear appeals and in the ordinary business.
In 1886, in answer to a pronouncement of Gladstone's, Lord Selborne published A Defence of the Church of England, on a historical basis, with an introductory letter addressed to Gladstone. In 1888 he published a second work on the Church question, en titled Ancient Facts and Fallacies concerning Churches and Tithes, in which he examined more critically than in his earlier book the developments of early ecclesiastical institutions, both on the continent of Europe and in Anglo-Saxon England, which resulted in the formation of the modern parochial system and its general endowment with tithes. He died on May 4, 1895, at his seat in Hampshire after an attack of influenza.
Among Lord Selborne's other interests were university and legal education: he made an attempt, before the time was ripe, to establish a school of law in London in 1867.
See his Memorials (ed. by Lady Sophia Palmer, 4 vols. 1896-98).