The Times Great Irish Lives: Obituaries of Ireland’s Finest. Charles Lysaght

it is right to say that he was always loyal to his Alma Mater. He entered Trinity College while still a mere boy and took his degree before he had completed his 20th year, graduating as Senior Moderator and gold medallist in Logic and Ethics in the summer of 1847 … He was called to the Irish Bar in 1849, and soon won a large practice on circuit and at nisi prius, especially in cases connected with his own province. His force of character and his racy wit, founded always on a strong basis of sterling common sense and an undisguised contempt for sentimentality and phrase-making, were rapidly recognized. He took silk in 1863, when he was a little over 35 years of age. In Galway, where he always enjoyed an extraordinary personal popularity, he attained to a position which enabled him to secure his return for that city, at the general election of 1865, at the top of the poll, obtaining the votes of over 90 per cent of the electors, though he issued no formal address and attached himself to no party. At no time, however, was it doubtful that Morris was a conservative in the broad sense of the word. He distrusted democratic institutions, particularly as applied to an imperfectly developed community like Ireland, and he scorned the sounding platitudes of professional patriots. No Irishman, however, had the best interests of his country more sincerely at heart, or worked more vigorously for them. Morris took up an independent attitude in the House of Commons. But on the change of Ministers in June, 1866, he was offered by Lord Derby and accepted the office of Solicitor-General for Ireland, being the first Roman Catholic who had received such promotion under a Conservative Administration. His acceptance was referred to in complimentary terms by the Prime Minister in the House of Lords. That it was not distasteful to his constituents in Galway was clearly shown when his seat was challenged on his seeking re-election after his appointment. He was returned by a majority of five to one, and when he became Attorney-General a few months later no one ventured to come forward against him.

      In April, 1867, when he was little more than 39, he became a puisne Judge of the Court of Common Pleas, … On the retirement of Lord Chief Justice Monahan, in 1876, Mr Justice Morris succeeded him and was the last Chief of the Common Pleas. Eleven years later he was placed at the head of the Irish Common Law Bench as Lord Chief Justice of Ireland. Meanwhile he had done much public service of a non-judicial character. He was a leading member of the Royal Commission on Irish Primary Education in 1868–70; was one of the Commissioners of National Education in Ireland from 1868 … In 1885 he was created a baronet. In 1889 he attained the culminating point of his professional success, becoming Lord of Appeal in Ordinary and entering the Upper House as a life peer with the title of Lord Morris of Spiddal. At the same time he was sworn of the Privy Council in England, and shortly afterwards became a bencher of Lincoln’s Inn. This was the first occasion – apart from the complimentary admission of Royal and princely personages – in which one who had never been called to the English Bar was placed upon the governing body of one of the Inns of Court.

      As a puisne Judge, as Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, and as Lord Chief Justice of Ireland, Morris showed high judicial qualities. He was not, and he never professed to be, a lawyer deeply read in the reports and eager to associate his name with subtle developments of case law. But he was a most capable and careful Judge in nisi prius cases and on circuit, where his inborn sagacity, his scorn for shams, his rapidity in mastering facts, his knowledge of the national character, and his genial humour gave him a controlling power over all save the most incorrigible of juries. Yet it would be wrong to say that afterwards, when Lord Morris became a member of the Supreme Appellate Tribunal, he was not capable of dealing ably with judicial principles. Though he was an Irishman, he was not given to verbosity, and he was frequently content to record his concurrence with others of the legal members of the House of Lords. When he pronounced his judgments, however, he spoke always to the purpose, if briefly. Perhaps the public, and even his profession, cannot realize how valuable a check is the presence of incarnate common sense and good-humouredly cynical contempt for the extravagances of hair-splitting and logic-chopping on the part of some eminent lawyers. Of the House of Lords as an abode of liveliness, whether regarded from the political or from the legal point of view, Lord Morris had not a very high opinion. It is even whispered that he used to talk of the august Chamber, irreverently, as “the graveyard.” He sometimes could not resist the temptation to supply the quality that was lacking. The proceedings were occasionally diversified by a sally, delivered in the brogue which he never sought to modify, and which, indeed, he frankly declared had been his fortune. One of these interruptions to grave argument was in the prolonged appeal of “Allen v. Flood,” the trade union case decided in December, 1897, after a two years’ sojourn in the House of Lords. The late Lord Herschell had been frequent in rather petulant interruption of the counsel for the respondent. Lord Morris took the opportunity of saying, in a pretty loud voice and in a way which made laughter irresistible:- “I think we can all understand from the present proceedings what amounts to molesting a man in his business.” … The late Lord’s humour was not of the literary kind which finds its way into judgments, but it does bubble up now and again. In the decision of the Judicial Committee in “Cochrane v. Macnish” the question was of the lawful and unlawful use of the term “club soda,” and Lord Morris, who gave the decision of the tribunal, remarked:- “In the manufacture of soda-water there is no secret, and frequently no soda.” Perhaps his best judgment was the admirable one which he delivered in the Privy Council in “McLeod v. St Aubyn” in 1899. The decision was referred to in these columns in comment on the case in which grossly disrespectful language was used in a Birmingham newspaper of Mr Justice Darling, and the writer was subjected to a fine. Lord Morris, while affirming the existence, deprecated the exercise, of the jurisdiction to commit for contempt of Court on account of scandalous matter published with respect to the Court or Judge … On Lord Morris’s retirement in the summer of 1900 a hereditary peerage, the barony of Killanin, was bestowed upon him. He preferred, however, to be known by his old name.

      Perhaps the most signal triumph, from a personal point of view, that Lord Morris had to boast of in his long and successful career was won shortly after his resignation of the Law Lordship in the early part of 1900. While he filled a judicial office, Lord Morris felt that it was not right for him to take an active share in party politics and political controversy. His eldest son contested the borough of Galway unsuccessfully in 1895, and, though he was chosen a member of the first county council of Galway under the Irish Local Government Act in 1899, the only Unionist elected west of the Shannon, it seemed that he had not much prospect of victory when he presented himself again as a candidate for the borough after the dissolution of last year. But, in the meantime, his father had been “unmuzzled.” Lord Morris had never lost touch with the people of Galway. He lived much among them, and enjoyed living among them. He knew them all, and rarely forgot a face. When the Local Government Bill was before the House of Lords, he fought manfully, and for the moment successfully, to preserve for Galway a privileged position as a county borough, and by his individual energy carried an amendment to this effect against the Government, in the Upper House, which was set aside in the House of Commons. Lord Morris, during the interval before the strict “electoral period,” when it was permissible for him as a peer to engage in political conflict, threw himself with characteristic energy and humour into the fray. It was largely due to his personal influence that Mr Martin Morris won his seat – the only one outside Ulster for which a Unionist was returned last autumn – by a satisfactory majority against a singular combination of adverse forces. All the sections of the Nationalists combined to work for the Separatist candidate, Mr Leamy, a popular and able man apart from politics. The Roman Catholic Bishop was Mr Leamy’s proposer, and, with hardly a single exception, the clergy, parish priests and curates alike, were active partisans on the same side. But Lord Morris appealed successfully to the memories and the kindly feeling of his old friends and neighbours, his former constituents. He reminded them that he had never severed his interests from theirs, and that he had always lived among them, dealt with them, knew almost every man by name, and was ardent for their welfare. He repelled in vigorous speeches the attacks upon him and his son as representatives of Toryism and landlordism. He roused the enthusiasm of the fishermen of “the Claddagh” by speaking to them in Irish, though he used to confess that he could no more read a line in that language than the majority of the professional patriots could understand it, whether spoken or written. Mr Martin Morris’s victory was creditable to himself; but it was even in a higher degree a personal triumph for his father and a tribute to the unique place he had won in the hearts of the people of Galway.

      Perhaps