SIR ILAY CAMPBELL, Baronet, Lord Succoth (1734-1823), was born on 23rd August, 1734. He was the eldest son of Archibald Campbell of Succoth, W.S., by his wife, Helen, only daughter of John Wallace of Ellerslie, Renfrewshire, and was admitted an advocate on 11th January, 1757. He soon obtained an extensive practice at the bar, and was one of the counsel for the appellant in the Douglas cause. During his last fifteen years at the bar his practice had become so great that there was scarcely any case of importance in which he was not engaged or consulted. In 1783 he was appointed Solicitor-General, in succession to Alexander Murray of Henderland, who was raised to the bench on 6th March of that year, but upon the accession of the Coalition Ministry he was dismissed, and Alexander Wight appointed in his place. Upon the fall of the Ministry he succeeded the Hon. Henry Erskine as Lord Advocate, and in the month of April, 1784, was elected to represent the Glasgow District of Burghs in Parliament, where he took an active share in all the important transactions of the time. The University of Glasgow conferred on him the degree of Doctor of Laws in 1784, and from 1790 to 1801 he held the office of Lord Rector. After acting as Lord Advocate for nearly six years, on 14th November, 1789, Campbell was appointed President of the Court of Session on the death of Sir Thomas Miller, Bart., and assumed the judicial title of Lord Succoth. He was placed at the head of the Commission of Oyer and Terminer, issued in the year 1794, for the trial of those accused of high treason in Scotland at that disturbed period, and was highly commended by English lawyers for the manner in which he acquitted himself in that capacity. Campbell held the office of Lord President for nineteen years, and upon his resignation was succeeded by Robert Blair of Avonton. He presided for the last time on 11th July, 1808, being the final occasion on which the old Court of Session, consisting of fifteen judges, sat together. After the vacation, the Court sat for the first time in two Divisions. On 17th September, in the same year, he was created a baronet. He died on 28th March, 1823, in the eighty-ninth year of his age. Campbell was an able lawyer, but without any great forensic gifts. His written pleadings were models of perspicuity, force, and eloquence, but his speeches though admirable in matter, were unattractive in delivery. Cockburn says of him, “His voice was low and dull, his face sedate and hard. Even when heaving internally with strong passion, externally he was like a knot of wood” (“Memorials of his Time,” 1856, p. 127). He was inferior to none of his brethren in depth of learning, and in private life was highly esteemed.