We regret to announce the death in his seventy-fourth year
of Lord Morris, the famous Irish Law Lord and wit. In the year 1889 he was withdrawn from the Irish Bench and appointed one of the Lords of Appeal in Ordinary, resigning in May, 1900, when he was created a Peer of the United Kingdom. But "Judge Morris," to call him by the name by which he was best known in Ireland, owed his reputation at least as much to his good sayings as to his learning. Long before his translation to the English Bench his °biter dicta, forensic or political, had attained so general 8, circulation that it was a common practice of minar Irish wits to gain cunancy for their good sayings by ascribing them to Judge Morris. But of the genuine Morrisiana enough are extant to warrant the statement that none of his contemporaries excelled him as a milieus stultorum. He used the 'bludgeon in preference to the rapier; eschewed all subtlety of expression, and delighted in telling home truths in the most homely language, reinforced by a deliberately exaggerated and stentorian brogue. Lord Morris, as a strong though somewhat :scornful Unionist, shone in his comments on the Home-rule agitation. When the wife of a Gladstonian Viceroy asked him at a party in Dublin, "Are there many Home-rulers here to-day ? " he is alleged to have replied, "My Lady, the only Home-rulers present are yourself, his Excellency, and the lackeys." Another time, when trying some young farmers for illegal drilling, he said, "There you go on making fools of yourselves marching and counter-marching when you ought to be out in the fields carting dung." And again, in reply to the argu- ment of an eloquent advocate that "the people" were in sympathy with certain offenders, he said, quite in the style of Dr. Johnson, "I never knew a small town in Ireland that hadn't a blackguard in it who called himself the people." Lastly, as an instance of his inability to bear with what he considered meddlesome interference, there is the story of his reception of a distinguished Treasury official sent over to Dublin to inquire into the expenditure of fuel in the Courts. He was received politely by the Chief Justice, who said he would put him in communication with the'proper person, and rang the belL When the elderly female who acted as Court-keeper appeared, he remarked, as he left the room, "Mary, this is tho young man that's come about the coals."
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