aw and politics, Cairns's only interest was in
religion. He did not seem, although a good classical scholar and a
competent mathematician, to care either for letters or for science. But
he was a Sunday-school teacher nearly all his life. Prayer-meetings
were held at his house, at which barristers, not otherwise known for
their piety, but believed to desire county court judgeships, were
sometimes seen. He used to take the chair at missionary and other
philanthropic meetings. He was surrounded by evangelisers and
clergymen. But nothing softened the austerity or melted the ice of
his manners. Neither did the great position he had won seem to give a
higher and broader quality to his statesmanship. It is true that in
law he was wholly free from the partisanship which tinged his politics.
No one was more perfectly fair upon the bench; no one more honestly
anxious to arrive at a right decision. And as a law reformer, although
he effected less than might have been hoped from his abilities or
expected from the absolute sway which he exercised while Chancellor in
Lord Beaconsfield's Government from 1874 to 1880, he was free from
prejudice, and willing to sweep away antiquated rules or usages if they
seemed to block the channel of speedy justice. But in politics this
impartiality and elevation vanished even after he had risen so high
that he did not need to humour the passions or confirm the loyalty of
his own associates. He seemed to be not merely a party man, which an
English politician is forced to be, because if he stands outside
party he cannot effect anything, but a partisan--that is, a man
wholly devoted to his party, who sees everything through its eyes, and
argues every question in its interests. He gave the impression of
being either unwilling or unable to rise to a higher and more truly
national view, and sometimes condescended to arguments whose unsoundness
his penetrating intellect could hardly have failed to detect. His
professional tone had been blameless, but at the bar the path of
rectitude is plain and smooth, and a scrupulous mind finds fewer cases
of conscience present themselves in a year than in Parliament within a
month. Yet if in this respect Cairns failed to reach a level worthy of
his splendid intellect, the defect was due not to any selfish view of
his own interest, but rather to the narrowness of the groove into
which his mind had fallen, and to the atmosphere of Orange sentiment
in which he had grown up