better founded than the contrary opinion adopted by the Privy Council.
The quality of a judge’s work is shown quite as much by his skill in dealing with the intricacies of facts, as by the logical development of principles of law and their application to new conditions. Some few of Evans’s recorded judgments, notably that in the Kim case, show how he could reduce to orderly sequence a confused mass of facts; but it was even more in the ordinary unreported business of the court that he was continually called upon to unravel the most complicated commercial transactions, and often, too, to expose the highly ingenious subterfuges which were employed in order to deceive the court. He has been charged with being somewhat too ready to condemn, and he was certainly acute to detect and stern in dealing with a fraud attempted on the court; on the other hand if such a criticism is tested by inquiring whether his severity led him on any single occasion to condemn an innocent ship or cargo, it will easily be seen to be unfounded. Those who found in Evans a stalwart obstacle to the carrying on of an illicit but lucrative trade naturally resented his vigilance; but the honest trader had no grievance against him.
Evans was created G.C.B. in 1916, and he was offered, but for private reasons declined, a peerage. He was twice married: first, in 1887 to Rachel (died 1889), daughter of William Thomas, of Skewen, Glamorganshire, by whom he had a son; secondly, in 1905 to Blanche, daughter of Charles Rule, of Cincinnati, U.S.A., by whom he had a daughter. Evans died 13 September 1918.
There is a portrait of Evans in the hall of the Middle Temple, and a bust, by Sir G. Frampton, R.A., in the Royal Courts of Justice.
[The Times, 14 September and 19 October 1918; Earl of Birkenhead, Points of View, vol. ii, c. 13, 1922; private information. Evans's judgments in prize are reported in the ordinary series of Law Reports, and are, also collected in British and Colonial Prize Cases and in Lloyds's Prize Cases.]
FAIRBAIRN, ANDREW MARTIN (1838–1912), Congregational divine, was born at Inverkeithing, Fife, 4 November 1838. He came of sturdy Covenanting stock and his religious training was of the strictest. He was the second son of John Fairbairn, a miller, and a leader in the United Secession Church, by his wife, Helen, daughter of Andrew Martin, of Blainslie, near Lauder. He had very little regular schooling, and began to earn his own living before he was ten. But he was a voracious reader, with a most retentive memory, and in his spare time prepared himself for Edinburgh University, where he afterwards studied, though he took no degree. Meanwhile he had become an adherent of the Evangelical Union founded by Dr. James Morison [q.v.]. Under his influence Fairbairn decided to become a minister, entered in 1857 the theological college of the Union in Edinburgh, and ultimately (1860) settled down to the charge of the Evangelical Union church in Bathgate. While there he visited Germany, where he studied at Berlin under Dorner, Tholuck, and Hengstenberg, and from that time onwards the advocacy of a freer and broader theology than that prevalent in the Scotland of his day became the passion of Fairbairn’s life. He wrote, preached, and lectured with untiring persistence. Controversy was meat and drink to him, and he found a ready hearing among the younger men, both laymen and clergy. From Bathgate he removed in 1872 to St. Paul’s Congregational church, Aberdeen, where he won a great reputation as a preacher and as a lecturer on philosophical and theological subjects. His first book, Studies in the Philosophy of Religion and History (1876), at once called attention to him as a new and original religious teacher. In 1877 Fairbairn was invited to become principal of the Airedale theological college, Bradford, and by accepting the invitation he cast in his lot for the future with English Congregationalism. Here again he soon showed his quality as a religious leader, and while at Airedale became chairman of the Congregational Union of England and Wales (1883). At that time also he set himself to a task which absorbed him for many years, namely, the reform and development of theological education among the Free Churches, When, therefore, it was proposed in 1886 to establish a Congregational theological college in Oxford, Fairbairn was marked out as the best man to lead the enterprise. He was made principal of the new foundation, Mansfield College, and the success which attended it from the first was largely due to his sagacity, industry, and tact. His wide learning and liberal spirit, the rugged eloquence of his style, and his deep insight into human nature made him a most attractive and stimulating teacher; and his students responded with the
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