In Lord Hatherley, who died on Sunday at his house
in Great George Street, Westminster, the country has lost a sin- gularly blameless, able, just, and religious lawyer and states- man, the 14ord Chancellor whom Mr. Gladstone wisely selected —Sir Roundell Palmer failing him in the emergency—for the Administration which was to disestablish the Irish Protestant Church. Lord Hatherley, formerly Sir W. Page Wood, was a Chancery barrister of singularly judicial and fair mind, who was for a short time Solicitor-General, under Lord John Russell, in 1851. He then became a Vice-Chancellor in the Court of Chancery, and, later, a Lord Justice of Appeal, entirely eschewing politics till Mr. Gladstone's Administration was formed at the end of 1868, in which he accepted the Great Seal. No one who heard his speeches during the Irish Church debate and the fierce attacks on the Government for its rather irregular promotion of Sir Robert Collier to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, will ever forget the singular impression of perfect truthfulness, candour, and goodness which they produced, even upon a hostile House. He re- signed the Great Seal in consequence of failing eyesight in 1872, and was succeeded by Lord Selborne. No juster mind ever presided over the deliberations of the House of Lords than Lord Hatherley's.
