CO LC II ESTE R, CHM tLES ABBOT, LORD, was born at Abingdon, on the 14th of October 1757, and was the younger son of the Rev. John Abbot, D.D., rector of All Saints, Colchester, who died about three years after the birth of his son. Mrs. Abbot, who was daughter of Jonathan Farr, Esq., of Long Whittenham, in Berkshire, married, in 1765, Mr. Jeremy Bentham, solicitor, of London, the father, by a former wife, of the distinguished writer on jurisprudence of the same names, and survived to the year 1809.
Abbot was educated at Westminster School, from which he was elected a student of Christ Church, Oxford, 1775. In 1777 he gained the chancellor's medal for Latin verse; in 1783 he took his degree of B.C.L., and became Vinerian scholar ; and soon after he was called to the bar. In 1795 he published a work on ' The Jnrisdiction and Practice of the Court of Great Sessions of Wales upon the Chester Circuit,' in the preface to which be urged the abolition of the separate Welsh judicature, a reform which was at last carried into effect in 1830. This same year however he retired from the bar, on succeeding his elder brother, John Farr Abbot, as clerk of tho rules in the court of King's Bench. This appointment produced his next publication, entitled Rules and Orders of the King's Bench.' In June 1795 Abbot was returned to parliament for the borough of Heleton, in the interest of the Duke of Leeds. He eat for the same place in the next two parliaments, and ho spoke on the ministerial side on several occasions during the first session with much effect. In the same session, on the 12th of April 1796, Abbot moved and obtained the appointment of a select committee to consider the subject of temporary and expiring laws ; and the report of this committee, which he laid on the table of the House on that day month, led to a great improvement of the practice previously followed in regard to that kind of legislation. In the next session, on the 2nd of November 1796, he obtained the appointment of another committee to consider the most expedient mode of promulgating the statutes; and the plan that is now followed, of sending copies of all new acts as soon as printed to all the municipal bodies and benches of county magistrates throughout the kingdom, was adopted on the recommendation of this committee, and of another, also appointed on his motion, in 1801. The activity, clearness of head, and general talent for business, as well as the spirit of practical improvement, for which he had established a character, led to his being chosen chairman of the committee on the public finances, which was appointed on the motion of Mr. Pitt, on the 10th of March 1797; and of the thirty-six reports presented by this committee in the course of that and subsequent sessions, three of the most elaborate, namely, those respecting the revenue, the exche quer, and the law courts, were prepared by Abbot. His next labours
were connected with the public records, the state of which he brought before the House on the 18th of February 1800, on moving the appointment of a committee to consider what should be done for their better management, preservation, and more convenient use. The committee was appointed accordingly, and, with Abbot for its chair man, immediately set to work and prosecuted its task with so much diligence, that in the course of the same session it produced, in two successive reports, one of the most complete and masterly surveys of any subject ever laid before parliament. From the recommendation of this committee of the House of Commons originated the royal record commission, the proceedings of which continued to be superin tended by Abbot till the year 1817. Meanwhile, on the 19th of May 1800, he'ealled the attention of the House to the abuse which then prevailed of allowing the proceeds of the taxes and other moneys to lie, often for a considerable time, in the hands of the public accountants without payment of interest, and obtained leave to bring in a bill, establishing a few simple regulations, which he explained, founded substantially on the principle of assimilating the method of accounting between the crown and those of its servants entrusted with the collec tion or disbursement of the public money, to that generally followed in accounts between private parties, and sanctioned by all courts of justice. This scheme of reform was received with unqualified approval by both sides of the House, Mr. Tierney, the chief opposition financial authority, joining the attorney-general in expressing his commendation of it in strong terms; and the bill which Abbot obtained leave to bring in passed through all its stages in both Houses without further discussion. On the 19th of November of the same year, a few days after the commencement of the next session, be introduced to the House perhaps the most important of all the measures with which his name is connected, in a motion for leave to bring in a bill for taking a census of the population of the kingdom. The enumeration taken in the following year, which has been since decennially repeated, arose out of this proposition, being the first enumeration of the people which had ever been effected in England by public authority, at least in modern times. Abbot's motion was seconded by Mr. Wilberforce, and the bill encountered no opposition in either House.