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Vol. XI.

No. 2.

BOSTON.

February, 1899.

MR. JUSTICE HAWKINS. BY the retirement of Mr. Justice Hawkins, just before the Christmas vacation of the High Court of Justice in England, the English Bench loses one of its most con spicuous characters and unique personalities. He was better known to the public than any of his associates, not because he was a better lawyer, although he was, in fact, an excep tionally good one, nor because he had for a longer period occupied his exalted position, for there have been several English judges who have sat longer on the bench and at tained a greater age while in the perform ance of their duties than had Mr. Justice Hawkins. And yet he had passed his eightyfirst birthday, and had completed his twentysecond year of continuous and exceptionally active service before he finally laid the er mine aside. He had made himself noted for a good many things which took the popular fancy. He was not a university man, as are most barristers, nor was he socially wellconnected, his father having been a country solicitor, but he was a prodigious worker, and he had a large mental endowment to work with, and he had also an overmastering and dominating will. Such men, provided there is not some defect of moral character, are absolutely sure of success, and young Hawkins succeeded from the first. As he succeeded he cultivated himself, and when finally he reached the bench and settled himself to the enjoyment of its honors as well as to the discharge of its duties, he ex hibited a tact and a keenness of intellect few judges possess. His was the name among the judges that most people knew, and his room in the courts came to be the " showI room." No matter what was going on, it '

was sure to attract a larger audience than any other, not even excepting that of the Lord Chief Justice. Strangers from the provinces, American lawyers making the rounds of the English courts, idlers seeking a sensation, and, most of all, the regular gallery habitues, were eager to see " Old Hawkins," as he was not disrespectfully called, or " Sir 'Enery 'Orkins," as he was known among a certain class who probably had greater reason to fear than to love him. For years past he had the pick of the soci ety cases in the Queen's Bench division, and if there was nothing on the lists for the day, he invariably had something on hand out of which he could provide entertain ment. If everything else failed, he could enliven the proceedings with a tilt against some one of the counsel who had excited his animosity, or an onslaught on the solici tors for the way they had worked up, or failed to work up, the case, or the poor solicitors' clerks for the illegibility of their writing, or the manner in which the papers had been prepared. A dry commercial case had no attraction for him, and aroused his sarcasm against the litigants and the lawyers alike. Upon taking his seat in the morning he would say: "Who is in Jones v. Smith? Ah! you Mr. Robes? Well, I have looked at the pleadings in that case, and I can't make head or tail of them. Nobody could. The plaintiff don't seem to know what he is com plaining about, and the defendant hasn't a ghost of an idea what sort of a case he is meeting. I can't try the case. No one could. You must put your heads together and settle it. If you can't agree, come to 49