legal wrangling, and when one listened to his unenergetic lisping before judge or jury, a feeling of some surprise arose, h o w it ever came to pass that he selected the Bar as a vocation. H e was the second Commissioner of Insolvency in Port Phillip, and the first Master in Equity and County Court Judge in Victoria; and on two occasions he acted as the locum tenens Judge of the Supreme Court. In his judicial capacity he rendered m u c h satisfaction, for, though his legal abilities belonged to the moderate order, he was gifted with a plodding, painstaking faculty of application, and an unflinching honesty of purpose, which enabled him to dispense justice of a quantity and quality which could not be outdone by a m a n of quicker perception, or more intellectual parts. For years he acted as Chairman of the Board of Denominational Education; he did m u c h to promote purposes of charity, and was for years one of the most dutiful children of the Church Episcopalian. originally an Advocate in the Scottish Courts, performed the difficult feat, if not of unlearning the legal lore he hadfirstacquired, at least of substituting for it, or overloading it with the studies required for the English Bar, to which he was called in 1834. C o m i n g to Melbourne in 1841, he was soon enrolled amongst the legal acolytes of the Court of Judge Willis, and between them they contrived to improvise some stirring episodes, for Willis, w h o was always fiery, would be met by a tetchiness on the part of Cunninghame, which was far from agreeing with his Honor's brimstone temperament. They soon, however, drifted into a better understanding, and Cunninghame, without opposition from the Judge, managed to get appointed Official Assignee in some protracted insolvent estate cases, which brought acceptable grist to the mill. Cunninghame's line in law was Equity, his style as befitted such a branch was prolix, dry, and tedious, his personnel was peculiar, and his voice harsh. W h e n addressing the Court he did so with a stoop, and the conformation of his face was such( and his nose so beakish, that a listener with any force of imagination, would fancy that he saw before him a huge crow cawing away at something like a jackdaw perched aloft before him. But, there were occasions when the monotonous Barrister could shake himself u p and show there was an extra judicial vivacity in him; for when divested of the cumbersome trapping of wig and gown, and on his legs at public meeting or public dinner, he would hit out with a verve, and declaim with a pathetic eloquence, enough to cause a person to doubt whether the lithe, lively, and rhetorical orator before him, could possibly be the horse-haired, sabled talking automaton of the Supreme Court.
ARCHIBALD CUNNINGHAME
an English Barrister of standing, dated 1831, was son of the Scotch Lord Elibank, and so be re the prefix "Honourable," then rare, but since grown c o m m o n in the Colony. H e was a '41 arrival, and for a brief period mixed actively in the vitality of the district, enjoying alike the solemnity of the Supreme Court and the conviviality of a public dinner, the recklessness of the racecourse and the rowdyism of a Corporation election meeting. A s a lawyer he was superficial, and his style of address showy, shallow and insinuating. H e bid high for the applause of the many, in which he succeeded, by the combined influence of a bonhomie almost Hibernian, and ancestralic blue blood, considerations which invariably act with an almost resistless power in captivating the populace. But, Judge Willis could not bear him, and they were soon not only at drawn daggers with each other, but willing enough to wound if it only could be done with impunity. In his altercations with Murray, Willis particularly delighted in derisively accentuating the term "honourable," such as " O h , the honourable Mr. Murray, I beg your pardon. A h , honourable is it ? I suppose it will not be polite, though it m a y be the correct thing to say dis—honourable; I beg your pardon, &c.;" whereat Mr. Murray would writhe in his wig and scowl at his tormentor, almost wishing himself an anthropophagus, and that he had Willis, cooked or raw, for a meal before him. There was once a row at an early race meeting, where Mr. Oliver Gourlay, a fast merchant, obstructed the police in the arrest of a peace disturber. T h e police turning on him, he was overpowered and handcuffed. Murray, w h o was an intimate friend of the second prisoner, did something towards inciting to a rescue, and narrowly escaped a locking up in the watchhouse ; but his rank turned the scale, and heescaped the indignity. T h e land mania of the period was too m u c h for the uncanny Scotchman, who plunged into transactions so risky and long-winded, that in instances he gave bills running for five years. At length he slipped so far out of his depth that, to save himself from being carried out to
JAMES ERSKINE MURRAY,
