FOLLETT, SIR WILLIAM WEBB (1798-1845), English lawyer, was born at Topsham in Devonshire on the 2nd of December 1798. He was the son of Captain Benjamin Follett, who had retired from the army in 1790, and engaged in business at Topsham. He received his education at Exeter grammar school and Trinity College, Cambridge, graduating in 1818. He had entered the Inner Temple in 1816 and began to practise as a pleader below the bar in 1821, but was called to the bar in 1824, and joined the western circuit in 1825. At the very outset his great qualifications were universally recognized. He was thoroughly master of his profession, and his rapid rise in it was due not only to his quick perception and sound judgment, but to his singular courtesy, kindness and sweetness of temper. In 1830 he married the eldest daughter of Sir Ambrose Harding Gifford, chief justice of Ceylon. In 1835 he was returned to parliament for Exeter. In parliament he early distinguished himself, and under the first administration of Sir Robert Peel was appointed solicitor-general (November 1834); but resigned with the ministry in April 1835. In the course of this year he was knighted. On the return of Peel to power in 1841 Sir William was again appointed solicitor-general, and in April 1844 he succeeded Sir Frederick Pollock as attorney-general. But his health, which had begun to fail him in 1838, and had been permanently injured by a severe illness in 1841, now broke down, and he was compelled to relinquish practice and to visit the south of Europe. He returned to England in March 1845; but the disease, consumption, reasserted itself, and he died in London on the 28th of June following. A statue of Follett, executed by Behnes, was erected by subscription in Westminster Abbey.
FONBLANQUE, ALBANY WILLIAM (1793-1872), English journalist, descended from a noble French Huguenot family, the Greniers of Languedoc, was born in London in 1793. John Grenier, a banker, became naturalized in England under the name of Fonblanque; and his son John Samuel Martin Fonblanque (1760-1838), a distinguished equity lawyer, and the author of a standard legal work, a Treatise on Equity, was the father of Albany Fonblanque; he represented the borough of Camelford in parliament; and was one of the Whig friends of George IV. when prince of Wales. At fourteen young Fonblanque was sent to Woolwich to prepare for the Royal Engineers. His health, however, failed, and for two years his studies had to be suspended. Upon his recovery he studied for some time with a view to being called to the bar. At the age of nineteen (1812) he commenced writing for the newspapers, and very soon attracted notice both by the boldness and liberality of his opinions, and by the superiority of his style to what Macaulay, when speaking of him, justly called the “rant and twaddle of the daily and weekly press” of the time. While he was eagerly taking his share in all the political struggles of this eventful period, he was also continuing his studies, devoting no less than six hours a day to the study of classics and political philosophy. Under this severe mental training his health once more broke down. His energy, however, was not impaired. He became a regular contributor to the newspapers and reviews, realizing a fair income which, as his habits were simple and temperate, secured him against pecuniary anxieties.
From 1820 to 1830 Albany Fonblanque was successively employed upon the staff of The Times and the Morning Chronicle, whilst he contributed to the Examiner, to the London Magazine and to the Westminster Review. In 1828 the Examiner newspaper, which had been purchased by the Rev. Dr Fellowes, author of the Religion of the Universe, &c., was given over to Fonblanque’s complete control; and for a period of seventeen years (1830 to 1847) he not only sustained the high character for political independence and literary ability which the Examiner had gained under the direction of Leigh Hunt and his brother, John Hunt, but even compelled his political opponents to acknowledge a certain delight in the boldness and brightness of the wit directed against themselves. When it was proposed that the admirers and supporters of the paper should facilitate a reduction in its price by the payment of their subscription ten years in advance, not only did Mr Edward Bulwer (Lord Lytton) volunteer his aid, but also Mr Disraeli, who was then coquetting with radicalism. During his connexion with the Examiner, Fonblanque had many advantageous offers of further literary employment; but he devoted his energies and talents almost exclusively to the service of the paper he had resolved to make a standard of literary excellence in the world of journalism. Fonblanque was offered the governorship of Nova Scotia; but although he took great interest in colonial matters, and had used every effort to advocate the more generous political system which had colonial self-government for its goal, he decided not to abandon his beloved Examiner even for so sympathetic an employment. In 1847, however, domestic reasons induced him to accept the post of statistical secretary of the Board of Trade. This of course compelled him to resign the editorship of the Examiner, but he still continued to contribute largely to the paper, which, under the control of John Forster, continued to sustain its influential position. During the later years of his life Fonblanque took no prominent part in public affairs; and when he died at the age of seventy-nine (1872) he seemed, as his nephew, Edward Fonblanque, rightly observes, “a man who had lived and toiled in an age gone by and in a cause long since established.”
The character of Albany Fonblanque’s political activity may be judged of by a study of his England under Seven Administrations (1837), in comparison with the course of social and political events in England from 1826 to 1837. As a journalist, he must be regarded in the light of a reformer. Journalism before his day was regarded as a somewhat discreditable profession; men of true culture were shy of entering the hot and dusty arena lest they should be confounded with the ruder combatants who fought there before the public for hire. But the fact that Fonblanque, a man not only of strong and earnest political convictions but also of exceptional literary ability, did not hesitate to choose this field as a worthy one in which both a politician and a man of letters might usefully as well as honourably put forth his best gifts, must have helped, in no small degree, to correct the old prejudice.
See the Life and Labours of Albany Fonblanque, edited by his nephew, Edward Barrington de Fonblanque (London, 1874); a collection of his articles with a brief biographical notice.
FOND DU LAC, a city and the county-seat of Fond du Lac county, Wisconsin, U.S.A., about 60 m. N. of Milwaukee, at the S. end of Lake Winnebago, and at the mouth of the Fond du Lac river, which is navigable for only a short distance. Pop. (1890) 12,024; (1900) 15,110, of whom 2952 were foreign-born; (1910) 18,797. The city is a railway centre of some importance, and is served by the Chicago, Milwaukee & St Paul, the Minneapolis, St Paul & Sault St Marie, and the Chicago & North-Western railways, by interurban electric lines, and by steamboat lines connecting through the Fox river with vessels on the Great Lakes. At North Fond du Lac, just beyond the city limits, are car-shops of the two last-mentioned railways, and in the city are manufactories of machinery, automobiles, wagons and carriages, awnings, leather, beer, flour, refrigerators, agricultural implements, toys and furniture. The total value of the city’s factory products in 1905 was $5,599,606, an increase of 95.7% since 1900. The city has a Protestant Episcopal cathedral, the Grafton Hall school for girls, and St Agnes hospital and convent, and a public library with about 25,000 volumes in 1908. The first settlers on the site of Fond du Lac arrived about 1835. Subsequently a village was laid out which was incorporated in 1847; a city charter was secured in 1852.