Story of Lord Halsbury.

Hokitika Guardian, 11 February 1922, Page 4

Story of Lord Halsbury.

i “WEEPING COUNSEL” JN , ' TICHBOItNE CASE. HATER OF TOBACCO. , One must go back to Eldon and Lyndhurst for a parallel to the lengthy and noble legal! career ended by the death of the venerable Lord Halsbury in his ninety-ninth year. Hardinge Giffard, first Earl of Halsbury, and for 17 years Lord Chancellor of England, was horn in London on September 3, 1823. The family belonged to Devonshire, although Lord Halsbury’s grandfather lived in Ireland, where he was proprietor of the Dublin Journal. Stanley Lees Giffard, father of the future Lord Chancellor, was a : barrister, but forsook law for journalism. For many years he was editor of the Standard; and his son, after ho had reached the woolsack, declared that he had received all his early education from his father and had never been to school. j However that may be, the young Giffard went up to Merton College, Oxford, where his career was quite without distinction. In 1850, aged 27, he was called to the Bar. He chose the Old Bailey, as the principal scene of , his labours. The family was in prosperous circumstances. He could afford , to wait for briefs, nor had he To wait ; very long, although his career was near•ly cut short in court in 1854 by the | bullet of an insane clergyman who had

been beaten in a lawsuit. HUGE FEES.

By 1856 it could truthfully ho said that no important Old Bailey trial was complete without him. He defended Arthur Orton, the Tichborne claimant when the later was indicted for perjury. His emotional forensic style gained for him on that occasion the sob liquet of “The Weeping Counsel.” His defence of Governor Eyre, acquitted of mansclalighter- in connection with his suppression of tho Jamaica rebellion, placed him in the front rank of advocates. He blossomed out into election cases where he earned huge fees. His own atempts (1875-77) to enter Parliament were at first unsuccessful. Like Sir Horace Davey after him, he was for some time Solicitor-General without a seat.

In 1877, however, he obtained a Conservative seat at Launceston, which he held until 1885, when Lord Salisbury made him Lord Chancellor in the stopgap Ministry which was destined to keep the Liberals out of office until 1892. When, on the defeat of Lord Roseberry in 1895, Lord Salisbury again returned to power, Lord Halsbury returned to the woolsack, where he remained until the Conservative rout in 1905.

At eighty-three, released from the cares of office, lie settled' down to the task of editor-in-chief of “The Laws of England,” which is complete at present in thirty-one volumes, and is Lie most up-to-date compendium of its kind available to lawyers, and the nearest approach to the Code Napoleon to be found in English law. IN A SNOWSTORM TO SMOKE.

Lord Halsbury ascribed his longevity i the fact that he never smoked. His ijection to the smell of tobacco almost [nailed Queen Victoria’s antipathy, ace he and Montagu Williams (as the tter relates in his “Leaves of a ife”), were together at Shrewsbury i the occasion of the memorable elecnn petition. They occupied the same Agings, and the first evening after nner. Montagu Williams could only ijoy his cigar hv putting on his macktosh and smoking out of floors in a owstorm.

Next morning Giffard, according to his punctilious, or rather courtly,habit, awaited breakfast for his sluggish junior, who only appeared in the breakfast room five minutes before it was time to go into court. Tn reply to his leader’s remonstrances, Williams remarked casually that he never cared for breakfast. And when the other observed that Williams was the most selfish man he knew, tho subject of last night’s cigar, was tactfully introduced into the conversation. That evening Montagu Williams was able to smoko indoors. At the Bar there was a, tradition that Hardinge Giffard never read his briefs. And it is related that at a' country house on one occasion, ho was locked in the billiard room, after dinner, alone with a very fat brief relating to a heavy election case to open next morning. In three hours’ time they found him fast asleep on the sofa with the brief still unopened, as his pillow. Of course the charge was a, libel. No lawyer can triumph as Giffard did without untiling industry. Few are left of those who heard him as an advocate. One of them said recently that no advocate he had ever listened to show ed such a grasp of hisl cases. On the Bench lie was diligent and attentive. In time his experience made him a great lawyer. Two decisions in which ho toojc part- the Taff Yale judgment (concerning the immunity of trade unions) and Sharp v. Wakefield (compensation for license-holders) —possibly aroused the anger of political o]>ponents. But, like Lord Chancellors be fore and since, he had to administer the law as he found it, and no one of those most hostile to his obstinate Tory principles ever suggested that he did nny--1 thing else.