John Arthur Roebuck, an English politician, born at Madras in December, 1802. From 1815 to 1824 he resided in Canada, and in 1832 he was admitted as a barrister in London. In the same year he was elected to parliament for Bath, and he soon became prominent as a radical reformer. In 1835 he was appointed agent for the assembly of Lower Canada during the contest between that house and the executive. He soon after published a series of political pamphlets, which involved him in a bloodless duel with the editor of the " Morning Chronicle," Nov. 19, 1835. In 1837 he lost his seat in parliament in consequence of his attack upon the whigs, but was reelected in 1841. In 1847 he was defeated again, and in 1849 was elected for Sheffield, which he represented till 1869. In the election of February, 1874, he was again returned as a liberal from Sheffield. On Jan. 29, 1855, the passage of his motion to inquire into the state of the army in the Crimea caused the resignation of the Aberdeen ministry; and he was chairman of the committee subsequently appointed for that purpose, and also of the short-lived "Administrative Reform Association," organized in 1856. He is the author of "Plan for the Government of our English Colonies" (1849), and of a "History of the Whig Ministry of 1830" (2 vols. 8vo, 1852).