prominent part in the debates on the abortive liberal Education Bills of 1906–1908; but after that his interventions became rarer. He was, however, in full sympathy with his party in the bitter constitutional struggle that arose out of Mr. Lloyd George's Finance Bill of 1909; he lent the support of his authority as a constitutional lawyer to the action of the House of Lords in rejecting the Bill; and he deeply resented what he regarded as the mutilation of the constitution by the passing of the Parliament Act of 1911, and the policy of Mr. Asquith's government in forcing their Home Rule Bill through parliament under the powers obtained under that Act. He died at Oxford after a short illness 4 June 1914. He never married.
Anson found time for many forms of public service outside the academic and the political fields. He was chancellor of the diocese of Oxford (1899–1912), chairman of the Oxfordshire Quarter Sessions (1894–1914), a trustee of the British Museum, and of the National Portrait Gallery, a bencher of the Inner Temple, fellow of Eton College, and chairman of the council of Oxford House in Bethnal Green. But a mere recital of his activities gives a very imperfect idea of his personality; a churchman, a scholar, a lawyer, a politician, he was above all a friend; his courtesy and sympathy made young and old feel at home in his company; his humour left no sting except when it was pointed at what seemed to him low or mean; his generosity, often exercised anonymously, seemed to have no limits.
In his Principles of the English Law of Contract Anson set himself to ‘delineate the general principles which govern the contractual relation from its beginning to its end’. He asked and answered with admirable lucidity just those questions that an intelligent student would ask about the subject. The book possesses two eminent merits: it directs the student's attention to general principles, avoiding doubtful or exceptional rules and the peculiarities of the special contracts; and it teaches him method. It has remained the indispensable introductory text-book on the subject. Sixteen editions have been published in this country, it has been translated into German, and an American edition has been widely used. But the book is also memorable because it heralded a new conception of legal education. The scientific study of English law dates practically from the latter half of the nineteenth century; when Anson began to lecture on it, he was the only teacher of English law in Oxford; and, in spite of Blackstone's example, almost all books on English law were then written with a professional and not an educational, purpose. Anson himself was one of a band of pioneers who by their own personal teaching and by their admirable text-books dealt a mortal blow to the superstition that English law cannot be taught; and to help in ending the centuries-old divorce between English law and the English universities was no slight service to both. His Law and Custom of the Constitution has the same merits of orderly arrangement and perfectly lucid expression, but its aim is different. It is not primarily a book for the beginner, but a full and accurate description of the constitution from a special point of view carefully chosen and continuously adhered to by the author. The two parts of the work deal respectively with Parliament and The Crown; in each his attitude is that of a scientific inquirer investigating and demonstrating the anatomy of a highly complex organism; yet he never allows the reader to forget that what he is examining is not a piece of dead mechanism, but a living body with a history of past development and a future of which the trend can sometimes be dimly forecast. It was the actual working of the constitution in the present that he had set himself to describe, and he strictly subordinated to this its other aspects; yet he well knew that it is only for purposes of analysis and exposition that the law and the history of the constitution can be dissociated. No other writer on the constitution has chosen to observe it from exactly the angle chosen by Anson; and his work has therefore a distinctive object and method, which, together with its admirably thorough execution, ensure it a place in the permanent literature of the English constitution. Five editions of it have appeared. Besides his legal works, Anson published in 1898 the Autobiography and Political Correspondence of Augustus Henry, 3rd Duke of Grafton.
Anson's portrait, painted by Sir H. von Herkomer in 1895, hangs in the hall of All Souls, and a recumbent effigy by John Tweed has been placed in the college chapel.
[A Memoir of Sir William Anson, edited by H. H. Henson, 1920; The Times, 5 and 6 June 1914; personal knowledge.]
ARBER, EDWARD (1836–1912), man of letters, the youngest son of Thomas Arber, architect, of London, by his wife, Eleanor Newell, was born at 29 George
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