BERRYER, Pierre Antoine, a French advocate and parliamentary orator, was born at Paris, January 4, 1790, in the midst of the agitating events of the first year of the great Revolution. Berryer’s father was an eminent advocate and parliamentary counsellor. The son was educated at the Collège de Juilly, on leaving which he adopted, in deference to his father’s wishes, the profession of the law; but his own leaning at that time was to the church. After completing the usual course of professional studies, he was admitted advocate in 1811, and in the same year he married. In the great conflict of the period between Napoleon I. and the Bourbons, Berryer, like his father, was an ardent Legitimist; and in the spring of 1815, at the opening of the campaign of the Hundred Days, he followed Louis XVIII. to Ghent as a volunteer. After the second Restoration he distinguished himself as a courageous advocate of moderation in the treatment of the military adherents of the emperor. He was engaged, in conjunction with his father and Dupin, in the unsuccessful defence of Marshal Ney before the Chamber of Peers; and he undertook alone the defence of General Cambronne and General Debelle, procuring the acquittal of the former and the pardon of the latter. Proceedings were soon after commenced against him for some assertions in one of his speeches, but he escaped with nothing more severe than a censure by the Council of Advocates. By this time he had a very large business as advocate, and was engaged on behalf of journalists in many press prosecutions. He stood forward with a noble resolution to maintain the freedom of the press, and severely censured the rigorous measures of the police department. In 1830, not long before the fall of Charles X., Berryer was elected a member of the ...