We regret to record the death on Saturday last of
Sir Edward Fry, at the age of ninety. He was the first Quaker to reach the English Bench, and he served with distinction as a Judge of the High Court and as a Leed Justice of Appeal. Since his retirement in 1892 he had done much good work as a Chairmenof Royal Com- missions, as an arbitrator, and as the chief British delegate to the Hague Conference of 1907. The Spectator has a special reason for remembering Sir Edward Fry as an honourable and courageous man. We had commented some years ago on the hypocrisy of the members of the Cadbury and Rowntree families, who denounced gambling in their morning paper, the Daily News, and fostered it in their evening paper, the Star, which owed its circulation in no small measure to the racing tips of " Captain Coe." The members of the Cadbury and Rowntree families resented our oriticisms and tried to defend their inconsistency, with the tacit approval of the Friend, which refused to publish any letters unfavourable to them. Sir Edward Fry of his own accord then took up the controversy, and in a long letter to the Society of Friends in October, 1911, pointed out that the Spectator was perfectly justified, and that the Society ought to condemn the Quakers concerned in the gambling business. "If our Society," he ea d, "has not a high moral standard to put before the world, the sooner it perishes the better."
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