John Andrew Hamilton

“ To stand on the defensive, to wait and watch, to make the peoples within our frontier prosperous and contented, and to leave the peoples beyond it independent without interference, was in his opinion the only safe way of meeting the advance of Russia in Central Asia. When Dost Mahommed died in 1868, turbuleace and disorder at once broke out in Afghanistan, and numerous claimants to the succession appeared. In spite of much pressure from advocates of a forward policy, Sir John Lawrence strictly abstained from any interference among them. ”

“ As an advocate Cockburn's knowledge of the law was not profound ; before his death he certainly was a good lawyer. He is said to have acquired his knowledge by sitting on the bench with Mr. Justice Blackburn. In style, however, his charges and considered judgments were masterpieces, and his summing up in the Matlock will case was especially eloquent. He preferred to take an adjournment in order to obtain time to throw his judgments into good form. It was his great pleasure to try all the most notorious cases himself. ”

“ For upwards of twenty years he was one of the strongest, most practical, and most learned judges in that court. He had a vast memory and erudition, a lucid mind, gifts of clear expression and an unfailing courtesy. ”

“ But this is erroneous ; he had the title of lord chancellor from the first. In this new position he discharged his duties to the satisfaction of the profession. Though his own practice had been chiefly in the queen's bench, his duties as solicitor-general frequently took him into chancery, and hence, though not a great founder of equity, he proved a good equity judge, and there were no complaints of his decisions; and having the good sense to pay great respect to the then very able common-law judges, and to consult them on new points, he was able to avoid conflicts between law and equity. ”

“ The last words are scarcely just. With every advantage of wealth, mental cultivation, a generous and sanguine temper combined with strong natural caution, fine appearance and manners, considerable eloquence and great industry, Herbert would certainly have achieved the highest political dignity, had not his determination to retrieve during his second administration of the army the misfortunes of his first sacrificed his health to unremitting devotion to duty. ”

“ Ellenborough had long coveted the complete opening, if not the possession, of the Indus. In the uncertain temper of the subjects of the ameers, it was doubtful if the troops could be withdrawn from their cantonments and the fact of evacuation be thus made patent, without provoking an outbreak and an attack. It was feared that the troops, if withdrawn at all, must cut their way out. Ellenborough seized on the fact that the ameers had not in all points fulfilled the treaty with Lord Auckland, and tendered to them fresh and more stringent terms. ”

“ What rankled in his mind was Grey's phrase used in the House of Lords on 19 May, that there was ‘an unseen and pestilent secret influence behind the throne, which it would be the duty of parliament to brand with some signal mark of condemnation.’ On 1 June he again had recourse to Wellesley, who came to Grey authorised to form an administration in conjunction with him. But Grey found that it was already settled with the prince that Moira, Erskine, and Canning were to be in the cabinet, and that only four places were to be open to the nominees of himself and Grenville. ”

“ The charge that Perceval during the Peninsular war was ‘afraid of throwing good money after bad,’ and that he ‘always took the money consideration first, and the moral consideration second,’ seems unfounded. A man of strong will and decisive character, he can, however, hardly be credited with possessing either ‘the information or the genius essential to an English minister at that momentous epoch.’ His word ‘became a law to his colleagues, and completely overruled the better judgment and more special experience of Lord Liverpool’ (Kebbel, History of Toryism, pp. 94–8) . ”

“ On 16 July 1866 he was raised to the bench as chief baron of the exchequer, and was sworn of the privy council. In spite of his age he proved himself an able and vigorous judge, until he became incapacitated by physical infirmity. His appearance on the bench was one of peculiar dignity and impressiveness, but in his late years the progress of a case before him was so slow as almost to amount to a denial of justice, and he was prone to introduce politics in court. In 1878 he disclosed the fact that the judgment of the privy council in the Ridsdale case had not been unanimous. ”

“ In January 1806 Grenville and Fox came into power, and in their administration Grey, now, by his father's elevation to an earldom, become Lord Howick, was first lord of the admiralty. He applied himself with his usual conscientiousness to the discharge of the duties of this office, and while it was under his control the success of the British naval operations was signal. Upon the death of Fox, Howick succeeded to his position as leader of the whig section of the government, and after some negotiation he became secretary for foreign affairs, with the lead in the House of Commons. ”

“ On the death of the Earl of Beaconsfield there was a considerable desire on the part of a portion of the conservative party that Cairns and not Lord Salisbury should succeed to the leadership, but neither health nor years fitted Cairns for that task, and it was undertaken by Lord Salisbury. After this date he appeared but rarely in debate, and still more rarely to hear appeals. His health, never strong, had long been failing. At one time he was kept alive only by breathing special inhalations for asthmatic disorders; towards the end of his life an affection of the ear made him very deaf. ”

“ Soon, however, it became plain that a regency would have to be provided for, and a warfare of intrigue between the prince and the queen, the whigs and the Pittites, began, first for the regency, and then for the custody of the king's person. Finding that the ministry proposed to fetter the regent with many restrictions to be imposed by parliament, the whigs put forward on behalf of the prince a claim to an indefeasible title in right of his birth to a regency without any restrictions at all. ”

“ When the regency became necessary he had high hopes from the Prince of Wales, with whom he was still very intimate, and who had even given him, while chancellor, an uncut topaz seal-ring, with the request that it might not be cut for the present, as he intended to give him an earl's coronet to engrave upon it. He strenuously opposed the proposed restrictions on the regent's powers. But the prince threw the whigs over, and Erskine's hopes of office finally vanished. He retired into private life, attending but little to the judicial and other business of the House of Lords. ”

“ During the Crimean war he earnestly opposed any forward movement into Afghanistan, either political or military, and then, as always afterwards, urged the sufficiency of the existing frontier for all the purposes of the safety of India. 'Let us only be strong on this side the passes.' he wrote, 'and we may laugh at all that goes on in Cabul. I would waste neither men nor money beyond.' Even Peshawur he considered a source not of strength but of weakness. A treaty was, however, concluded with the ameer, and at the ameer's own request Lawrence was sent in March 1855 to negotiate it. ”

“ From 1789 popular discontent had been growing. In August 1792 Archibald Hamilton Rowan, secretary of the Dublin Society of United Irishmen, published, in reply to a proclamation against them, an address to the volunteers of Ireland, inviting them, in view of the public dangers, to resume their arms. The government decided to prosecute him. Rowan desired that Thomas Emmett and the Hon. Simon Butler should defend him, but they finally prevailed on him to entrust the task to Curran, who then entered on that great series of defences in state trials which raised him to his highest fame. ”

“ At the end of that year George III became insane, and Pitt, who had defeated Fox and secured the imposition of considerable restrictions on the power of the regent, was anxious that they should be adopted by the Irish parliament. Every vote was of moment. Curran was told that a judgeship should be the price of his, with the prospect of a peerage. He, however, refused. A formal opposition was now constructed; the Duke of Leinster, Lord Ponsonby, and his brother George all resigning their places in order to take part in it. Grattan and Curran with Daly and Forbes all joined. ”

“ He avoided any prominent share in the preparation of the national covenant, and did not sign it, though he pronounced an opinion in favour of its legality; and, writing privately to the Earl of Morton, he called the covenanters ‘a number of the most loyal and faithful subjects that ever a prince had.’ Charles's royal commissioner, the Marquis of Hamilton, found him, according to Burnet, one of his greatest troubles, and yet dared not dismiss him. ”

“ His summing up was so defective, ‘for want of memory or goodwill,’ that the prisoner supplied its defects, as if he had been an uninterested spectator. Yet the prisoner was acquitted; so much to Mary's annoyance that the jury were punished for their verdict. ”

“ On the bench Curran was never at home. In spite of many efforts he could neither grasp the practice nor the principles of equity, and his only decision of any importance was that in Merry v. Power. Since the union Dublin society had lost much of its brilliancy, and after removing in 1807 to a house in Harcourt Street, and afterwards to 80 Stephen's Green South, he spent most of his time at the Priory, and took refuge as often as possible in England among his friends Lord Holland, Lord Erskine, Moore, and Godwin. ”

“ HODY, Sir JOHN (d. 1441) , chief justice of the king's bench, of an old Devonshire family, was son of Thomas Hody, lord of the manor of Kington Magna, near Shaftesbury, Dorset, and king's escheator there under Henry V, by Margaret, daughter of John Cole of Nitheway, Torbay. From 1425 his name often occurs in the year-books, and he must have become a serjeant-at-law before 1436, for in that year he contributed as a serjeant to the equipment of the army sent into France. He represented Shaftesbury in parliament in 1423, 1425, 1428, and 1438, and the county of Somerset in 1434 and 1440. ”

“ Lord Wellesley was then meditating the despatch of an envoy to Persia, the first since Elizabeth's reign, and he selected Malcolm for the mission. The objects were to induce Persia to divert the attention of the Afghans, who constantly menaced an invasion of north-western India, to check French influence, and to promote British trade. He left Madras in the middle of September, passing three weeks at Hyderabad to wind up various matters connected with prize-money and other affairs, and, travelling thence to Poonah and Bombay, he sailed for the Persian Gulf on 29 Dec. ”

“ Owing to his close relations with both whigs and tories, but especially with the Duke of Wellington, the Duke of Bedford, Lord Palmerston, and Lord Clarendon, relations so close that he was not infrequently employed as a negotiator during ministerial changes, especially at the time of Palmerston's resignation in 1853, he was peculiarly well informed on the most secret transactions of contemporary politics. He spared no pains in completing his information, recorded it with great freshness and perfect impartiality, and frequently revised his diaries. ”

“ In January 1869 he became a vice-chancellor of the court of chancery and a knight, and in 1870 a lord justice of appeal and a privy councillor. He was a most eminent judge, exceptionally learned, shrewd and strong, and gifted with a great power of terse and clear enunciation of principles. ”

“ By 1789 the prince was again almost as deeply in debt as ever. More than double the amount granted by parliament had been spent upon Carlton House. His creditors were clamorous and dunned him in the streets. During the king's illness he and his brother, the Duke of York, with the assistance of Weltjie, the cook, had begun raising money abroad upon their joint post-obits, conditioned for payment when either should ascend the throne. Some 30,000l. was obtained in this way upon most usurious terms, but with the king's recovery these bonds lost their attraction to speculators. ”

“ CHIITTY, JOSEPH, the elder (1776–1841) , legal writer, practised as a special pleader under the bar for some years before his call to the bar, which took place at the Middle Temple on 28 June 1816. He never took silk, but enjoyed an enormous practice, trained in succession in his pupil room at 1 Pump Court a great number of the most eminent lawyers, and poured forth a series of standard practitioners’ books. His learning and his memory were alike extraordinary, and although inclining to excessive technicality he did more than perhaps any man of his time to facilitate the study of the law. ”

“ Publicly, too, he was honest and disinterested, and his ability as a debater and administrator, and the courage and tenacity with which he fought difficult battles, are manifest. When he became prime minister he had practically no one but himself to rely on. Yet he carried on the government single-handed, prosecuted the war, defeated his opponents, and disarmed his critics. ”

“ Curran was elected to the Irish House of Commons for Banagher in May 1800. There followed the Act of Union, to which Curran was firmly opposed. In 1785 he declared that the union would be ‘the annihilation of Ireland.’ Disheartened with the sufferings of his country, weakened by a surgical operation, he thought of going to America, spent much time in England, especially with his friends Lord Moira and Godwin, and contemplated joining the English bar. In 1802, during the peace, he revisited Paris, and saw much of the Abbé Grégoire. He continued, however, his Irish practice. ”

“ Parliament was assembled in November, and the ‘Six Acts,’ prohibiting drilling, seditious meetings and seditious newspapers, and providing for the trial of offences against the public peace, for the seizure of arms, and for greater measures of precaution on the part of justices than had hitherto been legal, were quickly passed. Even in the House of Commons the opposition minorities never exceeded 150, and the Liverpool administration was everywhere triumphant. ”