Early Life
After a distinguished career at school and college, he adopted the law as his profession, and in 1837 married the highly gifted but eccentric Augusta Marie, daughter of the philologist Peter Oluf Brøndsted. A natural conservatism indisposed Hall at first to take any part in the popular movement of 1848, to which almost all his friends had already adhered; but the moment he was convinced of the inevitability of popular government, he resolutely and sympathetically followed in the new paths. Sent to the Rigsforsamling of 1848 as member for the first district of Copenhagen, a constituency he continued to represent in the Folketing till 1881, he immediately took his place in the front rank of Danish politicians.
From the first he displayed rare ability as a debater, his inspiring and yet amiable personality attracted hosts of admirers, while his extraordinary tact and temper disarmed opposition and enabled him to mediate between extremes without ever sacrificing principles. Hall was not altogether satisfied with the fundamental law of June; but he considered it expedient to make the best use possible of the existing constitution and to unite the best conservative elements of the nation in its defence. The aloofness and sulkiness of the aristocrats and landed proprietors he deeply deplored.
Failing to rally them to the good cause he determined anyhow to organize the great cultivated middle class into a political party. Hence the "June Union," whose programme was progress and reform in the spirit of the constitution,; and at the same time opposition to the one-sided democratism and party-tyranny of the Bondevenner or peasant party. The "Union" exercised an essential influence on the elections of 1852, and was, in fact, the beginning of the national Liberal party, which found its natural leader in Hall. During the years 1852-1854 the burning question of the day was the connexion between the various parts of the monarchy.
Hall was eider dansk by conviction. He saw in the closest possible union between the kingdom and a Schleswig freed from all risk of German interference the essential condition for Denmark's independence; but he did not think that Denmark was strong enough to carry such a policy through unsupported, and he was therefore inclined to promote it by diplomatic means and international combinations, and strongly opposed to the Conventions of 1851-1852, though he was among the first, subsequently, to accept them as an established fact and the future basis for Denmark's policy.
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