Legal Career
In 1778, however, Romilly determined to go to the bar, and entered himself at Gray's Inn. He went to Geneva in 1781, where he made the acquaintance of the chief democratic leaders, including Étienne Dumont. Called to the bar in 1783, he went the midland circuit, but was chiefly occupied with chancery practice. On the publication of Martin Madan's Thoughts on Executive Justice, advocating the increase of capital punishments, he at once wrote and published in 1786 Observations on Madan's book.
Of more general interest is his intimacy with the great Honoré Mirabeau, to whom he was introduced in 1784. Mirabeau saw him daily for a long time and introduced him to Lord Lansdowne, who highly appreciated him, and, when Mirabeau became a political leader, it was to Romilly that he applied for an account of the procedure used in the British House of Commons.
He visited Paris in 1789, and studied the course of the Revolution there; and in 1790 he published his Thoughts on the Probable Influence of the Late Revolution in France upon Great Britain, a work of great power. His practice at the chancery bar continued largely to increase, and in 1800 he was made a King's Counsel. In 1805 he was appointed chancellor of the county palatine of Durham.
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