d both at school (he was
educated at the Academy in Belfast) and at college (Trinity College,
Dublin), and so much impressed the counsel in whose chambers he
studied for a year in London, that he strongly dissuaded the young
man from returning to Dublin to practise at the Irish bar, promising
him a brilliant career on the wider theatre of England. The prediction
was verified by the rapidity with which Cairns, who had, no doubt,
the advantage of influential connections in the City of London, rose
into note. He obtained (as a Conservative) a seat in Parliament
for his native town of Belfast when only thirty-three years of age,
and was appointed Solicitor-General to Lord Derby's second Ministry
six years later--a post which few eminent lawyers have reached before
fifty. In the House of Commons, though at first somewhat diffident and
nervous, he soon proved himself a powerful as well as ready speaker,
and would doubtless have remained in an assembly where he was
rendering such valuable services to his party but for the weakness
of his lungs and throat, which had threatened his life since boyhood.
He therefore accepted, in 1867, the office of Lord Justice of
Appeal, with a seat in the House of Lords, and next year was made
Lord Chancellor by Mr. Disraeli, then Prime Minister, who dismissed
Lord Chelmsford, then Chancellor, in order to have the benefit of
Cairns's help as a colleague. Disraeli subsequently caused him to
be raised to an earldom.

After Lord Derby's death, Cairns led the Tory party in the House of
Lords for a time (replacing the Duke of Richmond when the latter
quitted the leadership), but his very pronounced Low-Church
proclivities, coupled perhaps with a certain jealousy felt toward him
as a newcomer, prevented him from becoming popular there, so that
ultimately the leadership of that House settled itself in the hands of
Lord Salisbury, a statesman not superior to Cairns in political
judgment or argumentative power, but without the disadvantage of being
a lawyer, possessing a wider range of political experience, and in
closer sympathy with the feelings and habits of the titled order.
There were, however, some peers who, when Lord Beaconsfield died in
1881, desired to see Cairns chosen to succeed him in the leadership of
the Tory party, then in opposition, in the Upper Chamber. Whether in
opposition or in power, Cairns took a prominent part in all
"full-dress" political debates in the House of Lords and in th