at Trinity College, Dublin. His father at this time designed him for holy orders, but the Rev. George Wheeler, afterwards rector of Ballysax, who was his tutor, strongly urged that Cairns should be bred to the law. Cairns's own bent was decidedly in the same direction. He took a first class in classics and his B.A. degree in 1888, and then came to England to prepare for the bar. He was called to the oar by the benchers of the Middle Temple in January 1844, and shortly afterwards ' migrated ' to Lincoln's Inn. In chancery he read in the chambers of Mr. Richard Malins, afterwards vice-chancellor ; and it was in those of Mr. Thomas Chitty, the well-known special pleader, of King's Bench Walk, that he read at common law. His original intention had been to return to Ireland, but upon the advice of Mr. Malins he determined to remain in England. He came to London, without influence or connection, and yet hisopportunities of success came early. His first brief was given him by Mr. Gregory of Bedford Row, who remained his firm client till he quitted the bar. His practice, once begun, grew rapidly. Yet constitutionally he was diffident and at first so nervous as a speaker that he thought himself unfit for anything but chamber practice and conveyancing. In July 1862 he entered parliament as member for Belfast, and continued to represent that town as long as he remained at the bar. In 1856 he was made a Q.C. and a bencher of Lincoln's Inn, and elected to practise in Vice-chancellor Wood's court. In February 1858, when Lord Derby took office, he was appointed solicitor-general and knighted, and from this time enjoyed an enormous practice. He was employed in many ecclesiastical cases, in which his opinions are still valued, and in Scotch and Irish appeals, and on various occasions, such as the Windham lunacy case and the case of the Alexandra, he made very successful appearances before juries at nisi prius. At tnis time his health, never very good, was tried to the utmost by his professional labours ; it was his habit to refuse all briefs for Saturdays and to take that day as a holiday, often in the hunting-field, while in his long vacations he annually recruited his vigour on the Scotch moors.
But from 1858 he became a conspicuous figure in public life. His first great success was on 14 May 1858, in the debate upon Mr. Cardwell's motion to censure the conduct of Lord Ellenborough in India. Of this Mr. Disraeli, in his official letter of the day to the queen, says : 'Two of the greatest speeches ever delivered in parliament, by Sir Edward Lytton and the solicitor-general. Sir Hugh Cairns. Cairns devoted an hour to a reply to Lord John's resolution and to a vindication of the government bill, which charmed every one by its lucidity and controlled every one by its logic ' (Martin, Life of the Prince Consort, iv. 411). This speech was subsequently published. In the following session he introduced two bills, one to simplify titles to real estate and another to estabush a land registry, and his speeches in bringing them in produced a very favourable impression upon the house. He also spoke with good effect, persuasively and pointedly, in the 'Cagliari' debate. In 1860, upon the motion for an address to the crown upon the French commercial treaty. Cairns accepted it, with criticisms, on behalf of his party; and in 1865, on Mr. Monsell's Roman Catholic Oaths Bill, he moved an amendment to secure protestant government and worship in the Fnited Kingdom, which was supported by Mr. Disraeli and defeated by the government by a majority of only nineteen. He also spoke on 23 Feb. 1864 on the right of the government to detain ships, with reference to the confederate privateers, and this speech was subsequently published. When the conservatives returned to power in 1866 and Sir Fitzroy Kelly was no longer aviedlable as attorney-general, that office was, without question, conferred on Cairns, and at the same time Lord Derby arranged with Lord Chelmsford that the lord-chancellorship was to be held by him only temporarily, and that he should in time make way for Cairns as his successor. Cairns's health, however, failed him under the stress of double duties, and when in October a vacancy occurred in the court of chancery, for the first time during fourteen years, by the retirement of Sir J. Knight-Bruce, he became the colleague of Lord-justice Turner as a lord-justice of appeal. A peerage was at the same time ofiered him, his party being desirous of retaining his great parliamentary services, but it was refused on the ground of want of means to support a title. Indeed the loss of income which he suffered by this promotion was very great. A wealthy relative, however, came to his assistance, and when the government, standing in need of an accession of strength in the House of Lords, renewed the offer in February 1867, it was accepted, and Cairns was created a privy-councillor and Baron Cairns of Garmoyle, co. Antrim. He now took a very active part in the discussions upon the Reform Bill, and made no less than twenty-four speeches on it. His resistance on one occasion went the length even of opposing his own party, and on 29 July he carried by a large majority against Lord Malmesbury, who had the conduct of the bill in the lords during
