THE IRISH CHIEF-JUSTICESHIP.
[TO THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR.") know from experience how anxious the Spectator is to avoid unfairness in criticism and to hear the other side, and as I think the observations in the current number upOn the appoint- ment of Mr. May to the Chief-Justiceship are not just, I would, with your permission, endeavour to represent the facts.
To begin, I am in a position to state that his appointment has given general satisfaction to the Bar, especially to the leaders of the profession, and I am also aware that the educated public are very pleased to see an accomplished gentleman as well as a lawyer at the head of the Common Law Bench. Mr. May is a very eminent lawyer, whose character as such has been fully recog- nised by the present Lord Chancellor of England, and by others of the Law Lords, and though his practice has been chiefly in Chancery, it must be borne in mind that when a man becomes a leader of the Bar in this country he almost invariably confines himself to Chancery practice. This was notably the case with the present Chief Baron Panes, who never went into a Law Court under a certain fee. Moreover, when the Irish Judicature Bill passes, it will be no disadvantage to the Court of Queen's Bench that one of its members should be thoroughly acquainted with the principles of Equity. Sir Richard Amphlett was selected by Lord Seiborne to be a Baron of the Exchequer on the very ground that he was an Equity lawyer, and Mr. May has this advantage over him, that he was in very fair business on circuit. But the present Chief Justice is not a mere lawyer. He took a very brilliant degree at Cambridge in a very brilliant year, being next to the late Lord Lyttelton and the present Master of the Temple in the Classical Tripos. Then, again, Mr. May is not, so far as I am aware, an Orangeman, nor indeed is he a politician, it is true that he made a most injudicious speech at a dinner of a Con- servative Club in Dublin this time last year, but it often hap- pens that when a man has to assume a role in which his heart is not, he very frequently caricatures his part. From personal knowledge, I am convinced that, so far as the Chief Justice is concerned, there will be no want of harmony among the Judges of the Queen's Bench, for a more retiring and sensitive gentleman does not exist.
it was a sad mistake on the part of the Government leaving this great office so long unfilled, more especially when they had one so fitted for it in their Attorney-General. It was intelligible their offering it to Mr. Baron FitzGerald, for if he had taken it, they would, not have filled up the vacant Judgeship in the Exchequer, but when he refused it, they had no kind of excuse in hawking about this great judicial post. It is, indeed, as you remark, incredible that it should have been offered to Lord Justice Christian, but it is nevertheless a fact that it was. I said, however, in a letter in the Spectator last summer, that Sir Michael Hicks-Beach was headstrong rather than strong, and tried to govern Ireland as he and his brother squires do Glouces- tershire. He lacks, in fact, the essential quality of a ruler among Celts—tact—that power of sympathy which enables a man to comprehend the altered circumstances of a novel situation.—
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