The

Vol. IV.

No. 3.

Green

BOSTON.

Bag.

March, 1892.

THE ENGLISH BENCH AND BAR OF TO-DAY. IV. SIR CHARLES RUSSELL, Q. C. CHARLES ARTHUR RUSSELL is the eldest son of Arthur Russell, Esq., of Seafield House, County Down, Ire land, and was born in 1833. He was ad mitted to Lincoln's Inn in 1856, was called to the bar in 1859, became a Queen's Coun sel in 1872, and has held the office of Attor ney-General during each of Mr. Gladstone's last two administrations. From 1880 to 1885 he was M. P. for Dundalk; since 1886 he has sat in the House of Commons for the English constituency of South Hackney. Such are the leading dates in the exAttorney-General's career. Tall, strongly built, white-whiskered, chubby-faced, lynx-eyed, Charles Russell (the Christian name of " Arthur " has no share in his glory) is known by sight to all habitues of the High Court of Justice. He seems indeed to be an almost integral part of the English judicial system; and one can hardly believe that the common law courts would still presume to go on existing if he and his snuff-box and his eye-glass and his red pocket-handkerchief were withdrawn from their midst. The official Law Reports and the newspapers have contained scarcely a cause of first-class importance during the last twenty years in which he was not briefed by one side or the other, sometimes, as in the Bend Or Case, by both. To give an exhaustive account of a life so fertile in great events would obviously be impossible within the narrow limits of such an article as the present; and we shall therefore con13

tent ourselves with a sketch, enlivened by illustrations and anecdotes, of the chief foren sic qualities of our English Hortensius. Let us find out, in the first place, what Sir Charles Russell is not. He is not, in the strict sense of the term, a specialist. There is no branch of law that he has made peculiarly his own. Sir Horace Davey would beat him with ease on a question of settle ments. In a patent litigation he would be no match for Sir Richard Webster. In a heavy admiralty action, that we know of, he was badly defeated by Mr. (now Mr. Justice) Butt, over whose intellect, nevertheless, in the Colin-Campbell divorce suit, he subse quently exercised an influence that ill-natured persons might have been disposed to call "undue." We may take it, then, as indis putable that, except in " turf " cases, — which are rather technical than legal, — Sir Charles Russell has neither the specialist's narrow ness nor his power. Again, this great advo cate is not an orator, and is no master of style. His voice is husky, and his language is commonplace where it is not constrained. Sir Henry James " only needs a little rousing" to make him far surpass his old friend and rival, both in persuasiveness and in rhetoric. Finally, — and at this point dispraise must end, — Sir Charles Russell does not owe his unique reputation to unvarying success. He has had his own failures, and has made his own record of blunders and mistakes. Sir Edward Clarke has been, at least in recent years, a more successful verdict-getter.