Page:The Annual Register 1899.djvu/573

 1899.]

OBITUAEY.

149

Entered the Diplomatic Service, 1859 ; Secretary of Legation at Tokio, 1882-9 ; at Berlin, 1889-98 ; Minister to Mexico, 1893-4 ; Japan, 1894-6. On the 30th, at Maidenhead, aged 59, Charles Henry Coote. For forty years employed in the British Museum, where he became one of the first authorities on old maps, etc. ; author of several works in connection with Shakespeare, etc.

MAY.

Viscount Seller. — William Baliol Brett, son of Rev. Joseph G. Brett, of Chelsea, was horn August 18, 1815, and was educated at Westminster and Gaius College, Cambridge, where he rowed three times in the University eight. He was called to the Bar at Lincoln's Inn 1846, and joined the Northern Circuit, and soon obtained a fair amount of work both in London and at Liverpool, and took silk in 1861. On Mr. Cobden's death he stood as a Conservative for Rochdale, when he was defeated by Mr. T. B. Potter. In the following year he stood for Helston, Cornwall, when both he and his opponent polled the same number of votes, the mayor, as returning officer, giving his casting vote in favour of the latter, Mr. Robert Campbell. As this vote was given after four o'clock, an appeal was lodged against the return, and the mayor was summoned to the Bar of the House, and both members were allowed to take their seats. He at once took a prominent place among the lawyers on the Conservative side of the House, especially in the debates on Mr. Disraeli's Reform Bill, which he urged his party to settle on the broadest possible basis.

In February, 1868, Mr. Brett was appointed Solicitor-General in suc- cession to Sir C. Selwyn, Sir John Karslake being Attorney-General. As such he appeared for the Crown in the prosecution of the Fenians charged with having caused the Clerkenwell explosion. In Parliament he took a leading part in the promotion of several bills connected with the admin- istration of law and justice. By the Parliamentary Elections Act an addi- tional judge was added to the Common Law Division for the trial of petitions, and Sir Baliol Brett was appointed to be a Justice of the Court of Common Pleas, which he declared in his farewell speech to the Bar to have been the object of his early ambition. In the discharge of his judicial duties his sentences were sometimes the subjects of serious controversy, notably in the case of the gas-stokers' strike, when he sentenced the defendants to imprison- ment for twelve months (subsequently reduced by the Home Secretary to four) and hard labour, for quitting

their employers' service without notice.

In 1876 on the reconstruction of the Court of Appeal, Mr. Justice Brett was raised to the rank of a Lord Justice, and after seven years' tenure succeeded in 1888 Sir George Jessel as Master of the Rolls, and thereby Presi- dent of the Court of Appeal. In several important cases, chiefly those involving questions of commerce, he found him- self in a minority in the court, but on appeal to the House of Lords he fre- quently found his views supported against those of his colleagues. In 1885 a barony was conferred upon him in recognition of his prolonged service, and he at once brought the influence of his position to bear upon professional questions. He opposed (1886) the bill proposing that an acoused person or his wife might give evidence in his own case, and he supported (1887) the bill which empowered Lords of Appeal to sit and vote after their retirement. He was instrumental in passing the Solicitors Act, 1888, increasing the powers of the Incorporated Law Society. His views on the adminis- tration of the law were strongly ex- pressed in the House in 1890, deploring the delay and expense of trials, which he regarded as having been increased by the Judicature Acts.

At the end of 1897 he retired after having occupied a seat on the Bench for nearly thirty years, during which the members of the Bar had often winced under his sharp interruptions, but as the Attorney-General in his leave-taking speech added, " they left no sting behind." A viscounty was conferred upon him on his retirement, a mark never given to any judge, Lord Chancellors excepted, "for mere legal conduct since the time of Lord Coke." Lord Esher married in 1850 Eugenie, daughter of Louis Mayer, and step- daughter of Captain Gurwood, the editor of the " Wellington Despatches," and died at his town house in Ennis- more Gardens on May 24 after an illness of several weeks, but from whioh he had partially recovered. Many years previous to his death he had caused a monument to be erected in Esher Church to his own memory and to that of his wife, who survived him.