Hugh McCalmont Cairns was born at Cultra, Co. Down, Ireland, on the 27th of December 1819. His father, William Cairns, formerly a captain in the 47th regiment, came of a family1 of Scottish origin, which migrated to Ireland in the time of James I. Hugh Cairns was his second son.
Hugh McCalmont Cairns was educated at Belfast academy and at Trinity College, Dublin, graduating with a senior moderatorship in classics in 1838.
In 1844 Hugh McCalmont Cairns was called to the bar at the Middle Temple, to which he had migrated from Lincoln's Inn.
In the first, he defended the action of Lord Ellenborough, who, as president of the board of' control, had not only censured Lord Canning for a proclamation issued'by him as governor-general of India but had made public the despatch in which the censure was Conveyed.
Disraeli's appreciation found an opportunity for displaying itself some years later, when in 1868 he invited him to be lord chancellor in the brief Conservative administration which followed Lord Derby's resignation of the leadership of his party.
While a lord justice he had been offered a peerage, and though at first uhable to accept it, he had finally done so on a relative, a member of the wealthy family of McCalmont, providing the means necessary for the endowment of a title. The appointment of BaronCaimsof Garmoyleaslord chancellor in 1868 involved the superseding of Lord Chelmsford, an act which apparently was carried out by Disraeli with less tact than might have been expected of him.
He had distinguished himself in the Commons by his resistance to the Roman Catholics' Oath Bill brought in in 1865; in the Lords, his efforts on behalf of the Irish Church were equally strenuous.
He issued a circular to explain his action in taking a course for which many blamed him.
Viewed dispassionately, the incident appears to have exhibited his statesmanlike qualities in a marked degree, for he secured concessions which would have been irretrievably lost by continued opposition.
On the Conservatives coming into power in 1874, he again became lord chancellor; in 1878 he was made Viscount Garmoyle and Earl Cairns; and in 1880 his party went out of office.
He had periodically made enforced retirements to the Riviera, and for many years had had a house at Bournemouth, and it was here that he died on the 2nd of April 1885.
Cairns was a great lawyer, with an immense grasp of first principles and the power to express them; his judgments taking the form of luminous expositions or treatises upon the law governing the case before him, rather than of controversial discussions of the arguments adduced by counsel or of analysis of his own reasons.
Lucidity and logic were the leading characteristics of his speeches in his professional capacity and in the political arena; In an eloquent tribute to his memory in the House of Lords, Lord Chief Justice Coleridge expressed the high opinion of the legal profession upon his merits and upon the severe integrity and single-minded desire to do his duty, which animated him in his selections for the bench.
His piety was reflected by that of hia great opponent, rival and friend, Lord Selborne.
Like Lord Selborne and Lord Hatherley, Cairns found leisure at his busiest for teaching in the Sunday-school, but it is not recorded of them (as of him) that they refused to undertake work at the bar ob Saturdays, in order to devote that day to hunting.
Of his personal characteristics, it may be said that he was a spare man, with a Scottish, not an Irish, cast of countenance.
Probably he thought the exhibition of humour incompatible with the dignity of high judicial position.
His power was felt, as has been said, both when he was in office and when his party was in opposition.
He took part, when out of office, in the passing of the Married Women's Property Act, and was directly responsible for the Conveyancing Acts of 1881-1882, andfor the Settled Land Act.
Many other statutes in which he was largely concerned might be quoted.
His judgments are to be found in the Law Reports and those who wish to consider his oratory should read the speeches above referred to, or that delivered in the House of Lords on the Compensation for Disturbance Bill in 1880, and his memorable criticism of Mr Gladstone's policy in the Transvaal, after Majuba Hill.
(See Hansard and The Times, ist of April 1881. )
His style of delivery was, as a rule, cold to a marked degree.
The term " frozen oratory " has been applied to his speeches, and it has been said of them that they flowed " like water from a glacier.
The several stages of his speech are like steps cut out in ice, as sharply defined, as smooth and as cold. "
Lord Cairns married in 1856 Mary Harriet.
