energy of character, did he not play an even more conspicuous part in
politics, and succeed, after Lord Beaconsfield's death, to the
chieftaincy of the Tory party? The answer is to be found partly in the
prejudice which still survives in England against legal politicians,
partly in certain defects of his own personality. Although sincerely
pious, and exemplary in all the relations of domestic life, he was
ungenial and unbending in social intercourse. Few equally eminent men
of our time have had so narrow a circle of personal friends. There was
a dryness, a coldness, and an appearance of reserve and hauteur about
his manner which repelled strangers, and kept acquaintanceship from
ripening into friendship. To succeed as a political leader, a man must
usually (I do not say invariably, because there are a few remarkable
instances--Mr. Parnell's would appear to be one of them--to the
contrary) at least seem sympathetic; must be able to enter into the
feelings of his followers, and show himself interested in them not
merely as party followers, but as human beings. There must be a
certain glow, a certain effluence of feeling about him, which makes
them care for him and rally to him as a personality. Whether Lord
Cairns wanted warmth of heart, or whether it was that an inner warmth
failed to pierce the cloak of reserve and pride which he habitually
wore, I do not attempt to determine. But the defect told heavily
against him. He never became a familiar figure to the mass of his
party, a person whose features they knew, at whose name they would
cheer; and nowadays all leaders, to whatever party they belong, find a
source of strength in winning this kind of popularity. The quality
which Americans call magnetism is perhaps less essential in England
than in the country which distinguished and named it; but it is
helpful even in England. Cairns, though an Irishman, was wholly
without it.
In the field of law, where passion has no place, and even imagination
must be content to move with clipped wings along the ground, the
merits of Lord Cairns's intellect showed to the best advantage. At the
Chancery bar he was one of a trio who had not been surpassed, if ever
equalled, during the nineteenth century, and whom none of our now
practising advocates rivals. The other two were Mr., afterwards Lord
Justice, Rolt, and Mr. Roundell Palmer, afterwards Lord Chancellor
Selborne. All were admirable lawyers, but, of the three, Rolt excelled
in his spirited presentation of a case and in the lively vigour of his
arguments. Palmer was conspicuous for exhaustless ingenuity, and for a
subtlety which sometimes led him away into reasonings too fine for the
court to follow. Cairns was broad, massive, convincing, with a robust
urgency of logic which seemed to grasp and fix you, so that while he
spoke you could fancy no conclusion possible save that toward which he
moved. His habit was to seize upon what he deemed the central and
vital point of the case, throwing the whole force of his argument upon
that one point, and holding the judge's mind fast to it.
All these famous men were raised to the judicial bench. Rolt remained
there for a few months only, so his time was too short to permit him
to enrich our jurisprudence and leave a memory of himself in the
Reports. Palmer sat in the House of Lords from his accession to the
Chancellorship in 1872 till his death in 1896, and, while fully
sustaining his reputation as a man of eminent legal capacity, was, on
the whole, less brilliant as a judge than he had been as an advocate,
because a tendency to over-refinement is more dangerous in the
judicial than in the forensic mind. He made an admirable Chancellor,
and showed himself more industrious and more zealous for law reform
than did Cairns. But Cairns was the greater judge, and became to the
generation which argued before him a model of judicial excellence. In
hearing a cause he was singularly patient, rarely interrupting
counsel, and then only to put some pertinent question. His figure was
so still, his countenance so impassive, that people sometimes doubted
whether he was really attending to all that was urged at the bar. But
when the time came for him to deliver judgment, which in the House of
Lords is done in the form of a speech addressed to the House in
moving or supporting a motion that is to become the judgment of the
tribunal, it was seen how fully he had apprehended the case in all its
bearings. His deliverances were never lengthy, but they were
exhaustive. They went straight to the vital principles on which the
question turned, stated these in the most luminous way, and applied
them with unerring exactitude to the particular facts. It is as a
storehouse of fundamental doctrines that his judgments are so
valuable. They disclose less knowledge of case-law than do those of
some other judges; but Cairns was not one of the men who love cases
for their own sake, and he never cared to draw upon, still less to
display, more learning than was needed for the matter in hand. It was
in the grasp of the principles involved, in the breadth of view which
enabled him to see these principles in their relation to one another,
in the precision of the logic which drew conclusions from the
principles, in the perfectly lucid language in which the principles
were expounded and applied, that his strength lay. Herein he surpassed
the most eminent of contemporary judges, the then Master of the Rolls,
for while Jessel had perhaps a quicker mind than Cairns, he had not so
wide a mind, nor one so thoroughly philosophical in the methods by
which it moved.
Outside the spheres of law and politics, Cairns's only interest was in
religion. He did not seem, although a good classical scholar and a
competent mathematician, to care either for letters or for science. But
he was a Sunday-school teacher nearly all his life. Prayer-meetings
were held at his house, at which barristers, not otherwise known for
their piety, but believed to desire county court judgeships, were
sometimes seen. He used to take the chair at missionary and other
philanthropic meetings. He was surrounded by evangelisers and
clergymen. But nothing softened the austerity or melted the ice of
his manners. Neither did the great position he had won seem to give a
higher and broader quality to his statesmanship. It is true that in
law he was wholly free from the partisanship which tinged his politics.
No one was more perfectly fair upon the bench; no one more honestly
anxious to arrive at a right decision. And as a law reformer, although
he effected less than might have been hoped from his abilities or
expected from the absolute sway which he exercised while Chancellor in
Lord Beaconsfield's Government from 1874 to 1880, he was free from
prejudice, and willing to sweep away antiquated rules or usages if they
seemed to block the channel of speedy justice. But in politics this
impartiality and elevation vanished even after he had risen so high
that he did not need to humour the passions or confirm the loyalty of
his own associates. He seemed to be not merely a party man, which an
English politician is forced to be, because if he stands outside
party he cannot effect anything, but a partisan--that is, a man
wholly devoted to his party, who sees everything through its eyes, and
argues every question in its interests. He gave the impression of
being either unwilling or unable to rise to a higher and more truly
national view, and sometimes condescended to arguments whose unsoundness
his penetrating intellect could hardly have failed to detect. His
professional tone had been blameless, but at the bar the path of
rectitude is plain and smooth, and a scrupulous mind finds fewer cases
of conscience present themselves in a year than in Parliament within a
month. Yet if in this respect Cairns failed to reach a level worthy of
his splendid intellect, the defect was due not to any selfish view of
his own interest, but rather to the narrowness of the groove into
which his mind had fallen, and to the atmosphere of Orange sentiment
in which he had grown up. As a politician he is already beginning to
be forgotten; but as a judge he will be held in honourable remembrance
as one of the five or six most brilliant luminaries that have
adorned the English bench since those remote days[29] in which the
beginning of legal memory is placed.
-----
[28] No biography of Lord Cairns has (so far as I know) appeared--a
singular fact, considering the brilliancy of his career, and
considering the tendency which now prevails to bestow this kind
of honour on many persons of the second or even the third rank.
One reason may be that Cairns, great though he was, never won
personal popularity even with his own political party or among
his contemporaries at the bar, and was to the general public no
more than a famous name.
[29] The reign of King Richard the First.
BISHOP FRASER
James Fraser, Bishop of Manchester from 1870 till 1885, was born in
Gloucestershire, of a Scottish family, in 1818, and died at Manchester
in 1885.[30] He took no prominent part in ecclesiastical politics, and
no part at all in general politics. Though a sound classical scholar
in the old-fashioned sense of the term--he won the Ireland University
Scholarship at Oxford, then and still the most conspicuous prize in
the field of classics--he was not an exceptionally cultivated man, and
he never wrote anything except official reports and episcopal charges.
Neither was he, although a ready and effective speaker, gifted with
the highest kind of eloquence. Neither was he a profound theologian.
Yet his character and career are of permanent interest, for he created
not merely a new episcopal type, but (one may almost say) a new
ecclesiastical type within the Church of England.
Till some sixty or seventy years ago the normal English bishop was a
rich, dignified, and rather easy-going magnate, aristocratic in his
tastes and habits, moderate in his theology, sometimes to the verge of
indifferentism, quite as much a man of the world as a pastor of souls.
He had usually obtained his preferment by his family connections, or
by some service rendered to the court or a political chief--perhaps
even by solicitation or intrigue. Now and then eminence in learning or
literature raised a man to the bench: there were, for instance, the
"Greek play" bishops, such as Dr. Monk of Gloucester, whose fame
rested on their editions of the Attic dramatists; and the _Quarterly
Review_ bishops, such as Dr. Copleston, of Llandaff, whose powerful
pen, as well as his wise administration of the great Oxford College
over which he long presided, amply justified his promotion. So even in
the eighteenth century the illustrious Butler had been Bishop of
Durham, as in Ireland the illustrious Berkeley had been Bishop of
Cloyne. But, on the whole, the bishops of our grandfathers' days were
more remarkable for their prudence and tact, their adroitness or
suppleness, than for intellectual or moral superiority to the rest of
the clergy. Their own upper-class world, and the middle class which,
in the main, took its view of English institutions from the upper
class, respected them as a part of the solid fabric of English
society, but they were a mark for Radical invective and for literary
sneers. Their luxurious pomp and ease were incessantly contrasted
with the simplicity of the apostles and the poverty of curates, and
the abundance among them of the gifts that befit the senate or the
drawing-room was compared with the rarity of the graces that adorn a
saint. The comparison was hardly fair, for saints are scarce, and a
good bishop needs some qualities which a saint may lack.
That revival within the Church of England which went on in various
forms from 1800 till 1870, at first Low Church or Evangelical in its
tendencies, latterly more conspicuously High Church and Ritualist,
began from below and worked upwards till at length it reached the
bishops. Lord Palmerston, influenced by Lord Shaftesbury, filled the
vacant sees that fell to him with earnest men, sometimes narrow,
sometimes deficient in learning, but often good preachers, and zealous
for the doctrines they held. When the High Churchmen found their way
to the Bench, as they did very largely under Lord Derby's and Mr.
Gladstone's rule, they showed as much theological zeal as the
Evangelicals, and perhaps more talent for administration. The popular
idea of what may be expected from a bishop rose, and the bishops rose
with the idea. As Bishop of Oxford, Dr. Samuel Wilberforce was among
the first to make himself powerfully felt through his diocese. His
example told upon other prelates, and prime ministers grew more
anxious to select energetic and popular men. So it came to pass that
the bishops began to be among the foremost men in the Church of
England. Some, like Dr. Magee of Peterborough, and afterwards of York,
were brilliant orators; some, like Dr. Lightfoot of Durham, profound
scholars; some, like Dr. Temple of Exeter, able and earnest
administrators. There remained but few who had not some good claim to
the dignity they enjoyed. So it may be said, when one compares the
later Victorian bishops with their Georgian predecessors, that no
class in the country has improved more. Few now sneer at them, for no
set of men take a more active and more creditable part in the public
business of the country. Their incomes, curtailed of late years in the
case of the richer sees, are no more than sufficient for the expenses
which fall upon them, and they work as hard as any other men for their
salaries. Though the larger sees have been divided, the reduction of
the toil of bishops thus effected has been less than the addition to
it due to the growth of population and the increased activity of the
clergy. The only defect which the censorious still impute to them is a
certain episcopal conventionality, a disposition to try to please
everybody by the use of vague professional language, a tendency to
think too much about the Church as a church establishment, and to
defer to clerical opinion when they ought to speak and act with an
independence born of their individual opinions. Some of them, as, for
instance, the three I have just mentioned, were not open to this
reproach. It was one of the merits and charms of Fraser that he was
absolutely free from any such tendency. Other men, such as Bishop
Lightfoot, have been not less eminent models of the virtues which
ought to characterise a great Christian pastor; but Fraser (appointed
some time before Lightfoot) was the first to be an absolutely
unconventional and, so to speak, unepiscopal bishop. His career marked
a new departure and set a new example.
Fraser spent the earlier years of his manhood in Oxford, as a tutor in
Oriel College, teaching Thucydides and Aristotle. Like many of his
Oxford contemporaries, he continued through life to think on
Aristotelian lines, and one could trace them in his sermons. He then
took in succession two college livings, both in quiet nooks in the
South of England, and discharged for nearly twenty years the simple
duties of a parish priest, unknown to the great world, but making
himself beloved by the people, and doing his best to improve their
condition. The zeal he had shown in promoting elementary education
caused him to be appointed (in 1865) by the Schools Inquiry
Commissioners to be their Assistant Commissioner to examine the
common-school system of the United States, and the excellence of his
report thereon attracted the notice of the late Lord Lyttelton, one
of those Commissioners who were then sitting to investigate the state
of secondary education in England. His report long remained by far the
best general picture of American schools, conspicuous for its breadth
of view, its clearness of statement, its sympathetic insight into
conditions unlike those he had known in England. On the recommendation
(as has been generally believed) of Lord Lyttelton and of the then
Bishop of Salisbury, who was a friend of Dr. Fraser's, Mr. Gladstone,
at that time Prime Minister, appointed him Bishop of Manchester in
1870. The diocese of Manchester, which included all Lancashire except
Liverpool and a small district in the extreme north of the county, had
been under a bishop who, although an able and learned man, capable of
making himself agreeable when he pleased, was personally unpopular,
and had done little beyond his formal duties. He lived in a large and
handsome country-house some miles from the city, and was known by
sight to very few of its inhabitants. (I was familiar with Lancashire
in those days, for I had visited all its grammar-schools as Assistant
Commissioner to the Commission just referred to, and there was hardly
a trace to be found in it of the bishop's action.) Fraser had not been
six months in the county before everything was changed. The country
mansion was sold, and he procured a modest house in one of the less
fashionable suburbs of the city. He preached twice every Sunday,
usually in some parish church, and spent the week in travelling up and
down his diocese, so that the days were few in which he was not on the
railway. He stretched out the hand of friendship to the Dissenters
(numerous and powerful in the manufacturing districts), who had
hitherto regarded a bishop as a sort of natural enemy, gained their
confidence, and soon became as popular with them as with the laity of
his own Church. He associated himself with all the works of
benevolence or public utility which were in progress, subscribed to
all so far as his means allowed, and was always ready to speak at a
meeting on behalf of any good enterprise. He dealt in his sermons with
the topics of the day, avoiding party politics, but speaking his mind
on all social and moral questions with a freedom which sometimes
involved him in passing difficulties, but stimulated the minds of his
hearers, and gave the impression of his own perfect candour and
perfect courage. He used to say that as he felt it his duty to speak
wherever he was asked to do so, he must needs speak without
preparation, and must therefore expect sometimes to get into hot
water; that this was a pity, but it was not his fault that he was
reported, and that it was better to run the risk of making mistakes
and suffering for them than to refuse out of self-regarding caution to
give the best of himself to the diocese. He had that true modesty
which makes a man willing to do a thing imperfectly, at the risk of
lowering his intellectual reputation. He knew that he was neither a
deep thinker nor a finished preacher, and was content to be what he
was, so long as he could perform the work which it was in him to do.
He lost no opportunity of meeting the working men, would go and talk
to them in the yards of the mills or at the evening gatherings of
mechanics' institutes; and when any misfortune befell, such as a
colliery accident, he was often among the first who reached the spot
to help the survivors and comfort the widows. He made no difference
between rich and poor, showed no wish to be a guest in the houses of
the great, and treated the poorest curate with as much courtesy as the
most pompous county magnate. His work in Lancashire seldom allowed him
to appear in the House of Lords; and this he regretted, not that he
desired to speak there, but because, as he said, "Whether or not
bishops do Parliament good, Parliament does bishops good."
Such a simple, earnest, active course of conduct told upon the
feelings of the people who read of his words and doings. But even
greater was the impression made by his personality upon those who saw
him. He was a tall, well-built man,[31] erect in figure, with a quick
eye, a firm step, a ruddy face, an expression of singular heartiness
and geniality. He seemed always cheerful, and, in spite of his endless
labours, always fresh and strong. His smile and the grasp of his hand
put you into good-humour with yourself and the world; if you were
dispirited, they led you out of shadow into sunlight. He was not a
great reader, and had no time for sustained and searching thought; yet
he seemed always abreast of what was passing in the world, and to know
what the books and articles and speeches of the day contained,
although he could not have found time to peruse them. With strong
opinions of his own, he was anxious to hear yours; a ready and eager
talker, yet a willing listener. His oratory was plain, with few
flights of rhetoric, but it was direct and vigorous, free from
conventional phrases, charged with clear good sense and genuine
feeling, and capable, when his feeling was exceptionally strong, of
rising to eloquence. He had a ready sense of humour, the best proof of
which was that he relished a joke against himself.[32] However, the
greatest charm, both of his public and private talk, was the
transparent sincerity and honesty that shone through it. His mind was
like a crystal pool of water in a mountain stream. You saw everything
that was in it, and saw nothing that was mean or unworthy. This
sincerity and freshness made his character not only manly, but lovable
and beautiful, beautiful in its tenderness, its loyalty to his
friends, its devotion to truth.
His conscientious anxiety to say nothing more than he thought was apt
to make him an embarrassing ally. It happened more than once that when
he came to speak at a public meeting on behalf of some enterprise, he
was not content, like most men, to set forth its merits and claims,
but went on to dwell upon possible drawbacks or dangers, so that the
more ardent friends of the scheme thought he was pouring cold water on
them, and called him a Balaam reversed. In a political assembly he
would have been an _enfant terrible_ whom his party would have feared
to put up to speak; but as people in the diocese got to know that this
was his way, they only smiled at his too ingenuous honesty. As he
spoke with no preparation, and was naturally impulsive, he now and
then spoke unadvisedly, and received a good deal of newspaper censure.
But he was never involved in real trouble by these speeches. As Dean
Stanley wrote to him, "You have a singular gift of going to the very
verge of imprudence and yet never crossing it."
No one will wonder that such a character, set in a conspicuous place,
and joined to extraordinary activity and zeal, should have produced an
immense effect on the people of his city and diocese. Since
Nonconformity arose in England in the seventeenth century, no bishop,
perhaps, indeed no man, whether cleric or layman, had done so much to
draw together people of different religious persuasions and help them
to realise their common Christianity. Densely populated South
Lancashire is practically one huge town, and he was its foremost
citizen; the most instant in all good works; the one whose words were
most sure to find attentive listeners. This was because he spoke, I
will not say as a layman, but simply as a Christian, never claiming
for himself any special authority in respect either of his sacerdotal
character or his official position. No English prelate before him had
been so welcome to all classes and sections; none was so much lamented
by the masses of the people. But it is a significant fact that he was
from first to last more popular with the laity than with the clergy.
Not that there was ever any slur on his orthodoxy. He began life as a
moderate High Churchman, and gradually verged, half unconsciously,
toward what would be called a Broad-Church position; maintaining the
claim of the Anglican Church to undertake, and her duty to hold
herself responsible for, the education of the people, and upholding
her status as an establishment, but dwelling little on minor points of
doctrinal difference, and seeming to care still less for external
observances or points of ritual. This displeased the Anglo-Catholic
party, and even among other sections of the clergy there was a kind of
feeling that the Bishop was not sufficiently clerical, did not set
full store by the sacerdotal side of his office, and did not think
enough about ecclesiastical questions.
He was, I think, the first bishop who greeted men of science as
fellow-workers for truth, and declared that Christianity had not, and
could not have, anything to fear from scientific inquiry. This has
often been said since, but in 1870 it was so novel that it drew from
Huxley a singularly warm and impressive recognition. He was one of the
first bishops to condemn the system of theological tests in the
English universities. He even declared that "it was an evil hour when
the Church thought herself obliged to add to or develop the simple
articles of the Apostles' Creed." These deliverances, which any one
can praise now, alarmed a large section of the Church of England then;
nor was the bishop's friendliness to Dissenters favourably regarded by
those who deny to Dissenting pastors the title of Christian
ministers.[33]