Henry McCardie
Mr. Justice McCardie. By Goargo Pollock. (John Lane. 15s.) Tins, as the dust cover informs us, is " the official biography " of the late Mr. Justice McCardie compiled by a practising barrister after a study of the judge's private papers.
Legal biography presents its own technical problems. A lawyer's life is necessarily episodic. His cases bear little relationship to his personality, and the legal principles which he is compelled to elaborate are not of his own invention and do not necessarily meet with his approval. Nevertheless it is possible, as has been demonstrated by recent works, to present such a life as an artistic whole. A lawyer's life may be episodic, but so was The Odyssey. A deft touch of the biographer and the personality of the man is illustrated by the methods of the advocate. There is the great drama of the successful career, beginning out' of small origins and ending in spectacular achievement. More lawyers than one have been fabri forlunac suae. In a judge the task is made lighter by the possibility of indicating the reaction of a subtle human personality upon the accumulated wisdom of
centuries. Many judges have, like Lord Blackburn, left the impress of their personality plainly upon the pages of the common law.
McCardie, apart from his tragic end, would have been an admirable subject for a work of this kind. His kindly gracious personality, his fearlessness and outspoken views, the story of the Birmingham tradesman's son reaching an average income of £20,000 a year without abandoning the stuff gown, the long and eventful career upon the Bench of a learned lawyer who was also a determined reform these things might have made the subject of an excellent legal odyssey.
It is a pity, but it has not been done. The author can hardly be blamed for not attempting an adequate portrait of his subject. He presents to his readers the McCardie that all remember and desire to remember, the McCardie who was so widely and so justly loved. But by itself, this McCardie is slightly unconvincing as a human figure. McCardie would have been the first to recognize that a portrait cannot be painted simply by the use of a mass of high lights. We see the cheek bones without the rest of the face. This is the fault, not of the author, but of his hero's tragic end.
More serious is the lack of arrangement. The work begins with birth, devotes forty-six pages to early life and the life at the Bar, the rest to career on the Bench, terminated by death. But within this framework there is little attempt at arrangement, whether chronological or according to subject matter, and nowhere an effort to give a single appreciation of McCardie's work. McCardie's views on various topics are found in chapters sandwiched in between reports of cases which McCardie tried, without regard apparently for date or subject. The latter part of the book deals with the following topics in the following order : The Douglas Murder Trial (1917), including ten pages of Sir John Simon's speech to the jury, verbatim ; a chapter on woman's dress containing an account of Martial v. Frankau ; the Amritsar trial (1924, twice wrongly ascribed to 1926) ; " Crime and Punishment " n address delivered in 1924) ; the Hurd Case (1929) ; McCardie's views on sex, sterilization and abortion ; Said v. Butt (1920) ; the Helen of Troy Case (1932) ; the True and Jacoby trials (19*; an address by McCardie on the study of law (1926) ; Pratt v. British Medical Association (1923) ; " False Witness " (McCardie's views on perjury, undated) ; the question of the judges' salaries (1931) ; Heddon v. Evans (1915) ; and then the Judge's death (1933).
All this leaves the reader bewildered, and he is not greatly helped by the inordinate length of the quotations from McCardie himself, permissible and even desirable in a larger work, in this merely destructive of artistic unity. If the legal disquisitions, designed to make intelligible the judgements to the lay reader, were really necessary, it would have been more desirable to include them in a general conspectus of the Judge's work.
All this is to be regretted : McCardie was an interesting figure. As the author points out, more than any of his contemporaries he represented the views of a Younger Generation. His virtues were their virtues. His faults, their faults. His indiscretions, their indiscretions. His views, their views. His opinions upon .divorce, sex and social problems came in for much criticism, some of it justified. But they were honestly, fearlessly and sometimes moderately expressed. He said with some justice that the case against them has never been reasonably stated. For all his reforming zeal, he was not an antinomian. He believed in capital punishment and flogging, though not in imprisonment. At least one of his disputes with higher judicial authority was due to his infliction of a severer sentence than the Court of Criminal Appeal was prepared to allow.
There is one significant, but likeable, failing which is not completely hidden by the official biographer, McCardie's curious, sensitive egotism. He is describing Horace to the Horatian Society in 1932: " Yes, Horace is with us. Well past middle age, his black hair flecked with grey. He is short of stature with well-rounded figure. You see his broad forehead, his keen but kindly eyes, his_mouth quivering with humour and good fellowship." Does it require much knowledge of psychology to recognize the self-portrait of the
Judge ? Horace is escorting " a charming girl. Can it be Lalage ? " Poor Horace.
The same egotism lost McCardie a political career and his MIk gown. Lord Loreburn, the Lord Chancellor of the day, dallied over his application for silk. McCardie withdrew it, and when the list came out with his name on it, refused the honour. Likewise he refused a safe seat for Parliament, because he was only given half an hour in which to consider his decision. This was perhaps his greatest error. For all his legal learning he was a legislator by instinct rather than a judge. He represented vast opinion in the country, but was prevented by the limits of the system it was his duty to interpret from achieving many of those things which he desired done. He died without realizing the affection which he inspired, but those who read this book will feel assured that if at the last there is a judgement to which even judges must submit, Henry McCardie will meet with the mercy he so often showed.
QUINTIN HOGG.
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