BELL, George Joseph, brother of the preceding, was born at Edinburgh on the 20th of March 1770. At the age of eight he entered the High School, but he received no university education further than attending Tytler's lectures on civil history, Stewart's course of moral philosophy, and Hume's lectures on the law of Scotland. He became a member of the Faculty of Advocates in 1791, and was one of the earliest and most attached friends of Francis Jeffrey. It was by his counsel and encouragement that the distinguished critic was persuaded to persevere in his professional career at a time when his prospects of success at the bar were dark and discouraging. In 1804 he published a Treatise on the Law of Bankruptcy in Scotland, in 2 vols. 8vo, which was gradually enlarged in future editions, till at length a fifth edition was published in 1826, in 2 vols. 4to, under the title of Commentaries on the Law of Scotland and on the Principles of Mercantile Jurisprudence—an institutional work of the very highest excellence, which has guided the judicial deliberations of his own country till the present time, and has had its value acknowledged by no less jurists than Story and Kent. In 1821 he was unanimously elected professor of law in the university of Edinburgh; and in 1831 he was appointed to one of the principal clerkships in the Supreme Court. He was in 1833 placed at the head of a commission to inquire into the expediency of making various improvements in the Scottish bankruptcy law; and in consequence of the reports of the commissioners, chiefly drawn up by himself, many beneficial alterations have been made in this department of the law. He died at Hull on the 23d September 1843.