Arthur Hobhouse, 1st Baron Hobhouse

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Arthur Hobhouse, 1st Baron Hobhouse (November 10, 1819–December 6, 1904), English judge, fourth son of Henry Hobhouse, permanent under-secretary of state in the Home Office, was born at Hadspen, Somerset.

Educated at Eton and Balliol, he was called to the bar at Lincoln's Inn in 1845, and rapidly acquired a large practice as a conveyancer and equity draftsman; he became QC in 1862, and practised in the Rolls Court, retiring in 1866.

He was an active member of the charity commission and urged the appropriation of pious bequests to educational and other purposes. In 1872 he began a five years' term of service as legal member of the council of the governor-general of India, his services being acknowledged by, a KCSI; and in 1881 he was appointed a member of the judicial committee of the privy council, on which he served for twenty years.

Baron Hobhouse was a title created in the Peerage of the United Kingdom on 2 July 1885 for Arthur Hobhouse, and consistently supported the Liberal party in the House of Lords. He died leaving no heir to the barony. His papers read before the Social Science Association on the subject of property were collected in 1880 under the title of The Dead Hand.