He was called to the bar in 1832.  He had, however, by no means paid an exclusive attention to the study of the law, or his success in his profession might have been greater, and the world might have had a good lawyer instead of a bad politician.  The period of his Inner-Temple student-life was a very stirring time in England.  Old principles were dying out, and wrestling in death-struggle with newer and wider theories of human liberty and human progress.  The young East-Indian Canadian rushed with natural impetuosity into the arena, and was one of the most reckless and noisy debating-club spouters of the day.  In speaking of the Reform Bill at a meeting at a tavern in London, he said, that, if the bill did not pass, he for one should like to “wade the streets of the capital knee-deep in blood.”  It was consoling to reflect, even at the time, that the atrocious aspiration was mitigated by the reflection that it would not require a deluge of gore to reach the knees of such a Zacchaeus as Roebuck.  “Pretty wicious that for a child of six!” said the amiable Mr. Squeers on one occasion; and pretty sanguinary that, say we, for a rising little demagogue of thirty.

As England was at that time in a seething ferment of excitement, men who were unscrupulous in their language were at a premium in the political market, and the respectable constituency of the pleasant watering-place of Bath, in Somersetshire, elected the fierce little man as their representative in the Imperial Parliament.  This was a great start in life for the new-fledged barrister, and, had he moderated his overweening vanity, and studied wisely, and with some self-abnegation and honest adherence to party, he might have risen to some useful position, and been saved, at least, from the indignity of fetching and carrying for the Emperor of Austria, and from the impertinence of intruding himself into the august presence of Mr. Kinglake’s amiable and virtuous friend, the Emperor of France.  The English nation might then possibly have pointed to his portrait in their historical gallery as that of an efficient public servant who had deserved well of his country, and he might have escaped a ludicrous immortality as the Dog Tear-’em, in the recent admirable sketch in “Punch.”

But, in the words of a political song,—­

    “There weren’t no such luck
    For John A. Roebuck,
  And he thought he would teach the whole nation
    That the Tories were fools,
    And the Whigs only tools,
  But Roebuck was England’s salvation.”

And he, according to this programme, set himself to reform the Constitution and protect the Colonies.

  “Nullius addictus jurare in verba magistri,”