Page 4 Advertisements Column 4

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LVI, Issue 292, 13 May 1914, Page 4

A PROMINENT PERSONALITY. 'The personality of Sir Edward Carson is sketched lightly, but with a rare impartiality, by Mr. Edward Legge in the latest Fortnightly Review. The writer admits the amazement which he felt when Sir Edward Carson, eminent lawyer and Privy Councillor, became the inspirer and leader of a campaign in open defiance of the law. Sir Edward, however, was on quite safe ground when he dared the Government to arrest him for treason. The boundaries of the law had not been overstepped, since his inflammatory harangues were made merely upon the hypothesis that the Army might be ordered to shoot, and that if they did so the Ulstermen would be justified in returning the fire. "Such a course of procedure," Mr. Legge believes, "was eminently safe and judicious, and it had the further advantage of provoking many Liberal organs to frenzy." A sluggish man by nature, inclined to put work off as long as possible, Sir Edward Carson would never have achieved fame, we are led to believe, if it had not been for the pressure of his wife. His success at the English Bar was extraordinary. When his doctor told him that lie must do less work or his health would break down lie doubled his fees, with the result that he was more sought after than before. A story is told of how he sent a message to one client, that lie would not take his brief at the proffered fee of five hundred guineas. The messenger returned to say, "He will make it a thousand guineas, sir." "No, I won't take it under fifteen hundred," was the reply, which Sir Edward hoped would rid him of the business. But the soft answer left him no escape: "He agrees to the lifteen hundred, sir." In tin"fine art of cross-examination, it is said, the leader of the Ulster Unionists is practically unrivalled. "He showers upon witnesses ridicule,.contempt and scorn. His questions are not only put in thunderous tones—they are 'hissed' out with deadly effect, and the witness leaves the. box without a dry thread upon him and the subconscious feeling that he is a Ifar and a perjurer of no ordinary kind." A striking and impressive figure and a powerful brogue are given as other factors in his success. He can impress crowds as well as juries, and -English crowds as well as Ulstermen. And, whatever view is taken of his cause, it stands as evidence of his sincerity that lie has sacrificed a full £20,000 a year for it.