amendments, but from that year onwards he never spoke in debate, though he never ceased to be interested in public affairs, and especially in Ulster. In spite of his high judicial office, and though he was a justice of the peace for county Antrim, where he had a country residence, he signed the Ulster covenant (28 September 1912).
From 1887 till his death Macnaghten's life is largely written in twenty-six volumes of the appeal cases and in many volumes of the Indian law reports. He undertook other work, however, in addition to his judicial duties: he was arbitrator in the questions arising out of the affairs of the Portsea Island building society in 1893; chairman of the arbitral tribunal in the boundary dispute between Chile and the Argentine Republic in 1899; and, from 1895 till his death, chairman of the Council of Legal Education, where he was the real founder of the new system of professional training, which was so greatly developed after he first took that office.
As a judge, Macnaghten's name will long endure. He possessed in a happy combination the gifts of listening with patience and deciding without doubt, after bringing to bear his great range of unobtruded learning and a clear practical appreciation of business and of character. Others in his time were as erudite and his equals in acumen, but it was remarkable that both bench and bar fell into the way of citing a sentence or two of an opinion of Macnaghten and of accepting it without discussion as an authoritative statement of the law. This was largely due to his gift of summarizing broadly the law on the question in hand as the starting-point for discussion and judgment, and of using simple yet exact terms. In narrative he presented the relevant facts with a rapidity and sweep that seemed quite spontaneous, but he never failed to give a picture of the case which needed no further touches. To all this his nature added the charm of humanity and humour. With law he found, as Dr. Johnson's friend, Edwards of Pembroke, found with philosophy, that cheerfulness was always breaking in. Van Grutten v. Foxwell (1897) is the example most often quoted of his power of combining learning, style, and humour, so as to produce out of a dry and technical discussion a delightful literary essay, but it is far from being the only one. In fact he could not help being humorous. This style had begun before he had been four months in the House of Lords with his comments in Drummond v. Van Ingen (1887) and was still lambent in 1912, when he pointed out the legal bearings of the fact that ‘there was no “pickled tea” at Mi Shwe Mai's wedding’ (L. R. 39, I. A. p. 6). When he was deeply moved, however, he could use the language of curt sarcasm and of righteous wrath (Gluckstein v. Barnes, 1900, quoted in The Oxford Book of English Prose), and his dissentient opinion in the Free Kirk case (Free Church of Scotland v. Overtoun, 1904) rises to a height of lofty and stately eloquence rare in legal judgments.
In 1903 Macnaghten was created G.C.M.G. and in 1911 G.C.B. In the latter year he succeeded his brother Francis, as fourth baronet. To the end of his life his retentive memory and his powerful judgement were unimpaired, and in spite of years he never lost his personal activity. He died in London 17 February 1913.
Macnaghten married in 1858 Frances Arabella (died 1903), only child of Sir Samuel Martin [q.v.], a baron of the Exchequer, by whom he had five sons and six daughters. Of these Edward Charles, who succeeded his father as fifth baronet and was a leader at the Chancery bar, died in 1914; his two sons, the sixth and seventh baronets, fell in the battles on the Somme in July and September 1916 respectively; Lord Macnaghten's second son then succeeded as eighth baronet. There is a portrait of Lord Macnaghten by Hugh Glazebrook at Lincoln's Inn and a replica of it is in the Privy Council chamber. There is also a miniature of him by Miss E. Grace Mitchell, executed in 1904.
[Memoir by Lord Justice Kennedy in the Law Magazine, fifth series, vol. xxxviii, p. 455; private information; personal knowledge.]
MACPHERSON, Sir JOHN MOLESWORTH (1853–1914), Anglo-Indian legislative draftsman, was born in Calcutta 8 August 1853. He was the elder son of John Macpherson, M.D. [q.v.], of the East India Company's medical service, and nephew of Samuel Charters Macpherson [q.v.], of the Madras army, and of William Macpherson [q.v.] of the Calcutta bar. His mother was Charlotte Melusina, fifth daughter of the Rev. John Molesworth Staples, rector of Lissan and Upper Moville, co. Tyrone. Educated at Westminster School, Macpherson was called to the bar by the Inner Temple in 1876 and enrolled as an advocate of the Calcutta high court in the same year. His career at the bar, however, was brief; for in the following year he was appointed deputy secretary to the government of India in the legislative department. After officiat--
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