Mr. yustice Hawkins. as has never before been seen in the courts of England. Mr. Justice Hawkins was so long on the bench, and so long an active practitioner at the bar, that his career becomes an excep tionally interesting one to students of con temporary legal history. He was called to the bar in 1843, and fifteen years afterwards took " silk." Thenceforward, as a Queen's counsel, and afterwards as a judge, he took part in nearly every important case of the last half century. His most notable work, in cases with which Americans are familiar, was in connection with the famous Tichborne trial. The array of counsel alone in that case would make it something to be remembered beyond the present generation. In the first of the cases, for there were two, Orton claimed the Tichborne estate. Ser geant Ballantine appeared for the plaintiff, and with him were Mr. Hardinge Gifford (now the Lord Chancellor), Mr. Jeune (now Sir Francis Jeune, the presiding judge of the Divorce Court), and others, while for the defense were Sir John Coleridge (afterwards Lord Chief Justice), Mr. Hawkins, Q. C. (the Mr. Justice Hawkins who has just re tired), and, among others, Mr. Charles Bowen, who afterwards became Lord Jus tice Bowen, one of the most able judges who ever sat in the Qourt of Appeal. Legal students assert, and more than one text-book writer has confirmed the opinion, that the masterly manner in which, for eleven days, Mr. Hawkins cross-examined Boiquet, a friend of the family, an antiquarian, and the principal witness for the claimant, was a model for students in practice and evidence. The second trial, that of Orton for per jury, began on April 23, 1872, and was not finished until February 28, 1874, having occupied, during these twenty-two months, no less than 188 days of solid work! In the former trial Mr. Coleridge had occupied twenty-six days in opening the defense, and Dr. Kenealy had made two speeches each of twenty-eight days' duration; in the sec
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ond, Mr. Hawkins, wishing to be brief, took only six days in opening the case for the crown, and, after examining 180 witnesses, he occupied nine days in his reply to the jury. During the continuance of this trial, Mr. Hawkins was accustomed to work till past midnight, and to rise every morning at four o'clock to read over the evidence which had been given on the previous day, in order to see how it bore on his policy, and where it should be strengthened or weakened. This strain he endured constantly for months, and until the end, although nearly prostrated by an attack of brain fever. He was successful in getting a verdict from the jury, and in seeing the claimant sentenced to fourteen years' hard labor for perjury. The two qualities for which Mr. Justice Hawkins was most distinguished were capa city for work and immense power of con centration and application to matters of intricate detail, when the subject interested him. As a lawyer, his income was so con siderable from lucrative compensation cases, election petition cases, and important crim inal cases, that he amassed a large fortune; and the story is current that his clerk, who, as is the custom at the English bar, received certain fees depending in amount upon his master's income, was able to ride in the park and have a box at the opera. This capacity for work enabled the retiring judge, as his last act on the bench, to preside at a trial at the Old Bailey which lasted several days, and in which thirty or forty witnesses were examined. His summing up occupied three hours, and, without referring to a single note, he covered every material fact in the testimony of the witnesses, and weighed every point presented to him by counsel. The stories that are told of Mr. Justice Hawkins are innumerable; and while some may be attributed to him for want of a better peg to hang them on, enough of the genuine may be gathered up to show the manner of the man and the quickness of his wit. As a junior counsel, Mr. Justice Hawkins
