128
COOKERMOUTH—COCOS
otherwise. Sir Alexander Cockburn made an exhaustive study of the medical aspects of the case, and the prisoner s comment when convicted after a twelve days’ trial was, alluding to the Attorney-General’s advocacy, It was the riding that did it.” In 1854 Cockburn was made recorder of Bristol. In 1856 Sir John Jervis died, and Cockburn became Chief Justice of the Common Pleas. In 1859 Lord Campbell became Chancellor, and Cockburn became Chief Justice of the Queen’s Bench, continuing as a judge for twenty-four years, and dying in harness. On Friday, the 19th of November 1880, he tried causes with special juries at Westminster; on Saturday, the 20th, he presided over a Court for the consideration of Crown Cases Reserved; he walked home, and on that night he died of angina 'pectoris at his house in Hertford Street. It is characteristic of the man that when he learnt that he was dying, his comment to his doctor was, “Well, I have had a good time.” Sir Alexander Cockburn earned and deserved a high reputation as a judge. He was a man of brilliant cleverness and rapid intuition, rather than of profound and laboriously _ cultivated intellect. He had been a great advocate at the Bar, with a great charm of voice and manner, as well as a fluent and persuasive tongue, rather than a learned lawyer, but he was considered to be a good lawyer before he died, some assigning his unquestioned improvement in this respect to his frequent association on the bench with Blackburn. He had notoriously little sympathy with the Judicature Acts. Many were of opinion that he was inclined
- to take an advocate’s view of the cases before him, making up
his mind as to their merits prematurely and, in consequence, wrongly, as well as giving undue prominence to the views which he so formed ; but he was beyond doubt always in intention, and generally in fact, scrupulously fair. Lord Russell of Killowen, L.C. J., writing of his immediate predecessor Lord Coleridge in 1894, gave his opinion that the beauty of Lord Coleridge’s voice was unsurpassed in his experience, except perhaps by Sir Alexander Cockburn, Mr Gladstone, Sir Robert Peel, and Father Burke of the Dominican Order. Coleridge, he further says, “could not have made the great Don Pacifico speech of Sir Alexander Cockburn ; but then, who could?” Commenting on the case of Saurin r. Starr (Feb. 1869), in which Coleridge led for the plaintiff, Lord Russell also wrote : “Sir Alexander Cockburn tried the case, and it afforded a strong illustration of a peculiarity in that remarkable man which those who practised before him will recognize. He began by being breast-high for the plaintiff, and so continued during the earlier stages of the trial; but as the trial progressed, and especially after Mr Mellish’s opening speech, lie speedily turned round, and did all he could to secure a verdict for the defendants. But it was too late. The case was of a kind, not unnaturally, to excite prejudice against them, and the minds of the jury could not be turned back from the direction which the earlier action of the Chief Justice had given them.” This criticism is interesting as coming from so great an advocate' and so masterful a Lord Chief Justice, himself by no means given to concealing his prejudices. It will further be remembered, however, that in this case Lord Russell, then Mr Charles Russell, was counsel on the losing side, that the case involved charges against a Roman Catholic religious establishment, and that he was himself a staunch Roman Catholic. Mr Justin M:Carthy calls Cockburn “one of the few great advocates who ever made a political figure in the House of Commons.” Disraeli, in a characteristic speech, once said of him in the House: ‘ ‘ He is a man of transcendent abilities ; ... he sustained the reputation which he had attained here and in the Courts of his country with learning and majesty . . . He has shown himself a jurist and a publicist of the highest character” {Times, 24th April 1875). This was on the occasion of an attack upon him by Dr Kenealy, M.P., the Tichborne claimant’s counsel in the trial at Bar which consigned the claimant to penal servitude for perjury. Sir Alexander Cockburn, with Mr Justice Mellor and Mr Justice Lush, had tried him, the case lasting one hundred and eighty-eight days, of which the Lord Chief Justice’s summing up occupied eighteen. It is not necessary to enumerate the many causes celebres at which Sir Alexander Cockburn presided as a judge. It was thought that he went out of his way to arrange that they should come before him, and his successor, Lord Coleridge, writing in 1881 to Lord Bramwell, to make the offer that he should try the murderer Lefroy as a last judicial act before retiring, added, “ Poor dear Cockburn would hardly have given you such a chance.” Be this as it may, Cockburn tried all cases which came before him, whether great or small, with the same thoroughness and with great courtesy and dignity, so that no counsel or suitor could complain that he had not been
fully heard in a matter in which the issues were seemingly trivial; while he certainly gave great attention to the elaboration of his judgments and charges to juries. The greatest public occasion on which Sir Alexander Cockburn acted, outside his usual judicial functions, was that of the Alabama Arbitration, held at Geneva in 1872, in which he represented the British Government, and dissented from the view taken by the majority of the arbitrators, without being able to convince them. He prepared, with Mr C. F. Adams, the representative of the United States, the English translation of the award of the arbitrators, and published his reasons for dissenting in a vigorously worded document which did not meet with universal commendation. He admitted in substance the liability of England for the acts of the Alabama, but not on the grounds on which the decision of the majority was based, and he held England not to be liable in respect of the Florida and the Shenandoah. His opposition to the appointment of Sir Robert Collier to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council had, shortly before the arbitration, so embroiled him with the Government that, stung by a speech of the duke of Argyll, he had threatened to resign his position as arbitrator. His views on the Collier controversy were chiefly expressed in letters to Lord Westbury ; he was at all times fond of controversy and controversial writing. In personal appearance Sir Alexander Cockburn was of small stature, but his dignity of deportment caused this to be forgotten. His courtesy and polish of manner have been referred to. In private life he was fond of sport, and he was engaged in writing a series of articles on the “History of the Chase in the Nineteenth Century ” at the time of his death. He took his relaxation during his last years in his yacht the Zouave, and he was also fond of music. He was fond, too, of society ; and in the interesting debate on the Tichborne trial, to which reference has been made, some aid was lent to Kenealy’s attack by a jocular, but somewhat imprudent, remark of Cockburn’s to a lady at a dinner-party, which she was foolish enough to repeat. He was also throughout his life addicted to frivolities not altogether consistent with advancement in a learned profession, or with the positions of dignity which he successively occupied. Shooting once at Hinton with Lord Westbury, when a high rocketing pheasant was nearly dropped on his head by another gun, Sir Alexander Cockburn, who had not seen the bird, called out, “Fire high, fire high.” Whereupon Lord Westbury said, “Don’t be alarmed, Chief Justice : you are quite safe. You are not as near heaven as that bird was when it was shot, and I am sadly afraid, after those stories of yours at luncheon, that you never will be.” At the same time he showed no lack of dignity in his public capacity. He had a high sense of what was due to, and expected from, his profession; and his utterance upon the limitations of advocacy, in his speech at the banquet given in the Middle Temple Hall to Mons. Berryer, the celebrated French advocate, may be called the classical authority on the subject. Lord Brougham, replying for the guests other than Berryer, had spoken of “the first great duty of an advocate to reckon everything subordinate to the interests of his client.” The Lord Chief Justice, replying to the toast of “the Judges of England,” dissented from this sweeping statement, saying, amid loud cheers from a distinguished assembly of lawyers, “The arms which an advocate wields he ought to use as a warrior, not as an assassin. He ought to uphold the interests of his clients per fas, not per nefas. He ought to know how to reconcile the interests of his clients with the eternal interests of truth and justice” {Times, 9th Nov. 1864). Sir Alexander Cockburn was never married, and the baronetcy became extinct at his death. Authorities.—Times, 22nd Nov. 1880 ; Law Journal; Law Times; Solicitors' Journal, 27th Nov. 1880 ; Law Magazine, new series, vol. xv. p. 193, 1851 ; Ashley’s Life of Lord Palmerston ■, Nash’s Life of Lord Westbury; “Reminiscences of Lord Chief Justice Coleridge,” by Lord Russell of Killowen, in the North American Review, Sept. 1894; The Greville Memoirs; Crokers Correspondence and Diaries ; Justin M‘Carthy’s History of Our Own Times; Serjeant Ballantine’s Experiences; Bench and 'Bar, by Serjeant Robinson'; Fairchild’s X7/e o/Lord Bramwell; Manson’s Builders of Our Lav:; Burke’s Peerage, ed. 1879 ; Fosters’ Peerage, 1880. (e. A. Ak.) GOCkermOUth, a market-town in the Cockermouth parliamentary division (since 1885) of Cumberland, England, on the Derwent, 27 miles south-west of Carlisle by rail. A statue was erected in 1875 to the sixth earl of Mayo, who represented the borough in parliament and was subsequently viceroy of India. Ironworks, tanneries, and confectionery works have been established. Area of township (an urban district), 2425 acres. Population (1881), 5353; (1901), 5355. COCOS Islands,
See Keeling Islands.
