Le Conte’s engraving 
Colquhoun and Maconochie from Kay’s engravings 
The Painting
3] Archibald Campbell-Colquhoun (1754-1820) was the son of John Campbell, a wealthy merchant and Provost of Glasgow. He assumed the additional surname of Colquhoun when he inherited the estate of Killermont in 1804. He became an advocate in 1768 and after the downfall of the Ministry of All the Talents in 1807, he was appointed Lord Advocate by the subsequent Tory administration. To fulfil this role he acquired the parliamentary seat firstly of Elgin and then of Dunbartonshire which he held until his death. As Lord Advocate he played an important part in reforming the Court of Session and contributed to other legal reforms in Scotland.
He was described in Kay’s Portraits as ‘a good classical scholar. His abilities as a sound lawyer, a judicious and elegant pleader, were fully acknowledged…- his independent fortune, and a reserve, to a certain extent, in manner, inducing him not to court general business so much as some of his contemporaries….His attention to the duties of parliament …was unremitting and efficient.’[i] This last seems to have been an overstatement for his only recorded parliamentary speech was shouted down by the opposition.[ii]
[i] Kay’s Portraits 2 p431
[ii]Hansard, Parl. Debates, 1809, xiii. 577-8