Robert Percy Smith

Robert "Bobus" Percy Smith (7 May 1770 – 10 March 1845) was a British lawyer, Member of Parliament, and Judge Advocate-General of Bengal, India.

He entered Eton College in 1782, and became very intimate with John Hookham Frere, George Canning, and Henry Vassall-Fox, 3rd Baron Holland.

With them in 1786 he started the school magazine entitled The Microcosm, which ran for forty volumes,[1] and procured for Smith an introduction to Queen Charlotte.

In 1803, through the influence of William Petty, first Marquess of Lansdowne, and Sir Francis Baring, he obtained the appointment of Judge Advocate General of Bengal.

At the general election of 1818 he contested Lincoln unsuccessfully, but two years later he won the seat and sat as the representative of the borough until his retirement after the dissolution of 1826.

Although Robert never attained the same level of fame as his brother Sydney - with whom his relationship was always affectionate - those who knew both men considered "Bobus" to equal, if not surpass, Sydney in "the very qualities for which the younger was renowned"; he was considered "a man of great originality, a profound thinker, and of wide grasp of mind.