LORD CARSON

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22709, 23 October 1935, Page 9

LORD CARSON

DEATH ANNOUNCED (United Press Assoclaiion) (By Electric Telegraph—Copyright) LONDON, October 22. (Received Oct. 23, at 1. a.m.) The death has occurred of Lord Carson. The unteachable party of the landlord ascendency in Ireland will lose in the person of Sir Edward Carson almost the last parliamentary spokesman of its creed. He was an Irish lawyer and an Irish Tory of the mos. uncompromising kind in politics, and «it one period at. any rate more Unionist than the Unionist Government which he supported by almost open revolt. Edward Henry Carson was (he second sou of Mr E. 11. Carson, C.E., of Harcourt street, Dublin, a former vice-presi-dent of the Royal Institute of Architects, and was born in the Irish capital on February 9, 1854. He read law and was called to the Irish Bar as a student of the King's Inns in 1877. As a practising barrister in Dublin he soon made his way, and in 18S9 was made a Q.G. of the Irish Bar. From iSB7 to 1890 he acted as counsel to the Attorneygeneral of Ireland, and in 1891-2 was Senior Crown Prosecutor for the county and city of Dublin. Early in 1892 he was appointed Solicitor-general for Ireland in succession to Mr A.tkinson, but he did not retain the office very long owing to the fall of the Unionist Government in the same year.

Mr Carson sat in Parliament as Unionist representative ->l Dublin University from 1892 onwards. His maiden speech in the House of Commons, delivered on February 10, 1893, in the debate on the Address, Uci.lt with the Irish situation. Mr Carson vehemently opposed Mr Chamberlains policy, and made many speeches on the Home Rule Bill of 1893 with caustic sarcasm and biting insinuation against the sincerity of the Prime Minister's attempt to solve the Irish question. He went so far as to accuse him of complicity in outrage. " It is unfortunately becoming," said Mr Carson in his second reading speech on the Bill, " the common creed of the Liberal Party that when once you have adopted a policy the best way to bring it to completion is by the commission of some terrible outrage. That, sir, is an old story, since the Clerkenwell explosion brought within the region of practical politics the question of the Irish Church disestablishment." In spite of Mr Gladstone's indignant protest, he went on to add: " The policy supported by the Government, was nurtured and matured in crime, and I have no doubt that if this Bill is thrown out, as we all know it will be thrown out, it will undoubtedly be attempted to be sustained by crime." To such reasoning as that there could be no appeal, it was typical of Mr Carson's whole political attitude. Mr Carson's reputation in England both as a lawyer and politician grew rapidly. He was called to tire English Bar at the Middle Temple in 1893 and " took silk " as English Q.C. in the following year. In Parliament he submitted the Irish proposals of Mr Morley, the Evicted Tenants Bill of 1894 and the Land Law Bill of 1895, to the most searching criticism. In regard to the latter Bill he warned the Conservatives of England against " shaking off the landlord party of Ireland," declaring that " everything that was attempted in Ireland would sooner or later be attempted in England." So irreconcilable was Mr Carson to any attempt to solve the Irish land question that when the Unionists came into office in 1895 he did not become a member of the Administration. Mr Gerald Balfour as Irish Secretary found it necessary to deal at once with the landlords of Ireland, and his Land Act of 1896 aroused the keenest criticism and opposition from Mr Carson, who when it was introduced declared "every section required amendment."' In these days the Irish lawyer used to sit below the gangway whence as an Independent candid friend he gave the Unionists many disagreeable knocks. The Irish Local Government Act of 1898 was strongly denounced by Mr Carson, who on occasion went into the division lobby against the Government. He also voted against Lord Hasbury's Law of Evidence (Criminal Cases) Act of the same year, which enabled accused persons to give evidence on oath in their defence. In common with many lawyers of all shades of political opinion, Mr Carson considered the innovation detrimental to the interests of prisoners. He also disliked the Workmen's Compensation Act and the Vaccination Act, and in a speech delivered at Manchester in February, 1899, he subjected the domestic policy of the Unionist Government to a most comprehensive piece of candid criticism, and he bluntly said that " some of the measures to which he had referred might turn out to be good measures, but lie confessed, if they were to be passed, he should have preferred that they had been passed not by the Conservative but by the Liberal Party." In May, 1900, Lord Alverstone (then Sir Richard Webster) was succeeded as Attorney-general by Sir Robert Findlay, and the oflice of Solicitor-general, which the latter vacated, was filled by the appointment of Mr Carson, who as usual leceived a knighthood at the same time. The cynics said, not unnaturally, that the appointment once more proved the way to promotion was through the path of "candid friendship," and it was also said that the Unionist Government desired to put a muzzle upon Sir Edward. lie. however, declared that he had accepted oliice without any conditions and would refuse to be muzzled. Sir Edward held the Solicitor-gcue-alship from May, 1900, to December, 1905, going out of oflice with his colleagues on Mr Balfour's resignation. During this period his greatest achievement in point of legislation was the piloting of the Licensing Bill in 1904 through the House of Commons, and in point of administration his inability to find a case for the public prosecution of Whittaker Wright, the fraudulent director of the London and Globe —an inability which lie shared with Sir Robert Findlay, the Attorney-general. The revolutionary Irish Land Purchase Act o. 1903 he acquiesced in, but the later developments of Unionist policy in connection with the M'Donnell question and the " devolution" proposals of Lord Dunraven's party forced Sir Edward Carson

once jnore into something like revolt, and lie became a leading champion of the ultra-Unionists in their resistance to these proposals. In one particular Sir Edward showed traces of Liberalism, for he always favoured a Roman Catholic University for Ireland. Sir Edward married in 1879 Sarah Annette, daughter of Mr H. Pirsse Kirwan, Triston Lodge, County Gahvay. He was admitted to the Privy Council of Ireland in ISO 6 and of Great Britain in 1905. He was Solicitor-general from 1900 to 1900, Attorney-general in 1915, First Lord of the Admiralty in 1917, and a member of the War Cabinet without portfolio in 1917-18. He received the peerage in 1921.