(Vendors and Purchasers) Act as a pendant to the Real Property Limitation Act, and in 1879 the Irish University Bill, in substitution for that introduced by the O'Conor Don. He was created in September 1878 Viscount Garmoyle and Earl Cairns in the peerage of the United Kingdom; but after the conservative defeat and his resignation in 1880 he played a comparatively retired part in public life. He often, however, powerfully criticised the liberal government on various points of its policy, especially the Transvaal question, and his speech on this was published. On the death of the Earl of Beaconsfield there was a considerable desire on the part of a portion of the conservative party that Cairns and not Lord Salisbury should succeed to the leadership, but neither health nor years fitted Cairns for that task, and it was undertaken by Lord Salisbury. After this date he appeared but rarely in debate, and still more rarely to hear appeals. His health, never strong, had long been failing. At one time he was kept alive only by breathing special inhalations for asthmatic disorders; towards the end of his life an affection of the ear made him very deaf. He spent much time on the Riviera, and in 1873 built himself a house at Bournemouth, where he died 2 April 1886 of congestion of the lung, and was buried 8 April. He was made LL.D. of Cambridge in 1863, D.C.L. of Oxford in 1863, and was also LL.D. of Dublin University and chancellor from 1867. He married, 9 May 1866, Mary Harriet, eldest daughter of John MacNeile of Parkmount, co. Antrim, by whom he had five sons and two daughters. The eldest son dying shortly after his birth, the second, Arthur William, succeeded to the peerage.
Cairns was confessedly the first lawyer of his time; his especial characteristic was lucidity. Without any great parade of case-law, he would exhaust the argument from principle and only in conclusion illustrate it by citing a few decisions. As a judge he did not explain the process by which his mind had been persuaded, but adhered to strict reasoning, his mind working like a logical machine. As a speaker he was very cold and unimpassioned, though in public addresses there were traces of repressed fire; but he invariably produced personally an impression of the dullest austerity. He was believed to have but one human weakness, namely, for immaculate bands and tie in court and for a flower in his coat at parties. His classical and literary attainments were great, but if he had any humour—Lord Coleridge in his obituary speech to the lords, 13 April 1885, pronounced it keen—it was assiduously concealed. He was an evangelical churchman of great piety. Like Lords Selborne and Hatherley, he was a Sunday-school teacher almost all his life. He was a frequent chairman of meetings at Exeter Hall and of missionary meetings. Addresses of his on such occasions were published, one on the Irish church in 1864, another on the Young Men's Christian Association in 1881, He zealously supported Dr. Barnardo's homes for boys and conduct of them, and laid foundation stones for him at Ilford in Essex in 1875. He was also a supporter of the coffee-house movement and looked askance upon the stage. He was not popular.
[Earl Russell's Recollection's; Memoirs of Lord Malmesbury, ii. 373, 378, 409; Law Journal, 1 April 1885; Solicitors' Journal and Law Times, 11 April 1885; Times, 3 April 1885.]
CAIRNS, WILLIAM (d. 1848), philosophical writer, was a native of Glasgow. After completing his course at the university, he, in 1800, enlarged the Antiburgher Secession Hall for the study of divinity. In March 1808 he was ordained minister of the secession church at Johnshaven, Kincardineshire, This position he resigned in October 1815 on being chosen professor of logic and belles-lettres by the directors of the Belfast Institution. He remained there till his death, 21 April 1848. He was the author of 'Outlines of Lectures on Logic and Belles-Lettres,' 1829, and 'Treatise on Moral Freedom,' 1844. He also edited, with a memoir, 'Lectures on Intellectual Philosophy,' by Dr. John Young, 1836.
[Mackelvie's Annals of the United Presbyterian Church. pp. 80, 660; Irving's Dict. of Eminent Scotsmen; Brit, Mus. Cat.]
CAISTOR, RICHARD (d. 1420), theologian, is said to have been born at Caistor, near Norwich, from which place he appears to have derived his surname (Blomefield, p. 591). In October 1386, at a time when he had already received the first tonsure, a title for this diocese was given to him (Tanner, from Reg. Merton. Priorat. Bibl. E. 64). On 22 May 1402 he was instituted vicar of St. Stephen's, Norwich, in which city he died 29 March 1420. For his extreme piety Caistor received the cognomen of 'good,' and Blomefield adds that he was a constant preacher of God's word and a great supporter of Wycliffite doctrines in the reign of Henry V. While living, the common people regarded him as a prophet, and after his death miracles were reported to have been wrought at his tomb, which became the object of local pilgrimage, to the great annoyance of the orthodox authorities. Caistor's popularity may be gauged by the fact
