enborough, 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. On the other occasion referred to, Sir Hugh Cairns spoke in
opposition to Lord John Russell's amendment to the motion for the second
reading of the government Reform Bill, winning the most cordial
commendation of Disraeli. 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. Meanwhile, Cairns had
maintained his reputation in many other debates, both when his party was in
power and when it was in opposition. In 1866 Lord Derby, returning to
office, had made him attorney-general, and in the same year he had availed
himself of a vacancy to seek the comparative rest of the court of appeal.
While a lord justice he had been offered a peerage, and though at first
unable 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 Baron Cairns of Garmoyle as lord 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. Lord Chelmsford bitterly declared that he had been sent away with less
courtesy than if he had been a butler, but the testimony of Lord Malmesbury
is strong that the affair was the result of an understanding arrived at
when Lord Chelmsford took office. Disraeli held office on this occasion for
a few months only, and when Lord Derby died in 1869, Lord Cairns became the
leader of the Conservative opposition in the House of Lords. 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. His speech on
Gladstone's Suspensory Bill was afterwards published as a pamphlet, but the
attitude which he and the peers who followed him had taken up, in insisting
on their amendments to the preamble of the bill, was one difficult to
maintain, and Lord Cairns made terms with Lord Granville in circumstances
which precluded his consulting his party first. He issued a ci