MR JUSTICE GRANTHAM.

Otago Witness, Issue 3025, 6 March 1912, Page 89

MR JUSTICE GRANTHAM.

A POSITIVE INDIVIDUALITY. (From Our London Correspondent.) No judge of the King's Bench has been so much criticised of late as Mr Justice Grantham. Hie political beliefs were as strong as hie power of exasperating opponents, yet he was on the whole one of the best lawyers in the King's Bench Division. A legal correspondent of the Dauy Mail writes: "Sir William Grantham had been a judge for seven years when I first met him in 1893, and during the last 18 years of his life he changed very little. The incisive, rasping voice remained to the end ; the keen eyes, the shaven, ruddy face, which put one in mind rather of a busy, kindly somewhat irascible physician than of a lawyer. But he was a very sound lawyer notwithstanding. His definite opinions and blunt speech made him many enemies, so that one lest sight of the fact that his decisions were as sousd as any on the bench. Indeed, during the last 12 months no King's Bench judge was ' upset' less often on appeal. The judge his seventy-sixth birthday last October. The son of the late Mr George Grantham, a well-known land-owner, he became a barrister at 28, and entered Parliament as member o* East Surrey in 1874, subsequently sitting for Croydon. He was appointed to the Bench in 1886. It ie certain that he never willingly suffered political bias to colour his judgments, but his obiter dicta were sometimes unguarded, and gave his enemies a handle. "In Julv, 1906, matters came to a head when Mr Mac Neill proposed in the House of Commons that there should be an investigation ' of the complaints that have been made of the partisan and political character of the conduct during the trial of the Yarmouth election petition of Mr Grantham.' The motion was withdrawn, but not before many hard things had been said about the judge by political opponents. PICKWICKIAN HOSTILITY. "His friends knew well that he took these attacks very much to heart, nor were surprised when, five years later, he burst forth into a reply. He chose an unfortunate occasion, his charge to the Grand Jury at Liverpool, and his defence was made in an unfortunate manner, involving as it did some statements about the health of the brother judge who had sat - with him at Yarmouth. But the attempt to use this latest ebullition on the part of a strong and vehement personality as a fresh weapon of attack in the House was doomed to failure. The Prime Minister quietly squashed it. The truth is that much of the so-called hostility aroused by the judge was ' Pickwickian.' He exasperated his opponents, but even with them he was never unpopular. " The same may be said of his not infrequent brushes with counsel at the Bar. There was the historic storm roused by his statement that 20 per cent, of the people accused of crime are acquitted when they ought not to be ' by counsel endeavouring to attract the attention of the jury from the strong points made against them at the trial, and thereby raising what we speak of in a technical sense as false issues.' Mr (now Lord) Robson, the counsel who felt himself attacked, obtained an assurance from the judge that no such reflection on his personal honour was intended. But Sir Robert Ffnlay, then Attorney-general, used the opportunity of a banquet at the Mansion House to come clown upon the judge with an indignant repudiation. Sir William felt the vehement nature of the answer. But that was his character. He made vigorous statements and then was surprised at the hornet's nest which he aroused. THE BECK CASE. " It was Mr Justice Grantham, it will l>e remembered, who put back Mr Beck for sentence, and shortly afterwards the discovery was made of Mr Beck's double —the guilty man. At the subsequent proceedings, at which Mr Beck's innocence was established. Mr Justice Grantham was one of the first to shake his hand. " Sir William, much as he resented attacks, was always fond of telling a good story against himself. He was once travelling in a non smoking compartment when a man entered and lit a cigar. Despite Sir William's polite expostulation, the man continued to smoke, until at last the indignant judge handed the man his card and said he would speak to the guard. The man put the card in his pocket and continued to smoke. He alighted at the next station, and was followed by Sir William, who asked the guard to take the man's name and address. Presently the guard returned and whispered to the judge : ' If 1 were you, sir, I shouldn't press the charge. I .spoke to him, and he gave me his card. Here it is. sir ; you see, he is Sir William Grantham.' "'Having passed through the Stone Age and the Bronze Age,' he once remarked during the hearing of a libel action. ' we are now in what might be called the Age of Brass. The courts have very little to do now but try cases arising out <>f people being "cheeky" or " brassy " or " telling lies." ' During the hearinc of another case, he said that under Socialism there would be no ownership of property. Everybody would be seizing the first bit he could get hold of, and then someone else would come along and shoot them or fight them for it. A TORY SQUIRE. " Before all else Sir William was a country gentleman of the old-fashioned Tory type. As good a judge of a horse as any man in Sussex, he rode as straight as he spoke. He believed in the divine right of the squire ; that it was best for ,dl concerned that the land-owner should exercise a benevolent despotism over the tbiivroupduia neighbourhood, jni a battle in

1904 with the local district council over some cottages which he had built at BarJ combe is familiar to most people, whe ! remember his being summoned to the Police Count j but not so many knew of his kindness and goodness to his poorer neighbours. They at least recognised under the brusque and somewhat dictatorial exterior the loyal and lovable nature of the man. Indiscreet often in his utterances, he was a wiser man and a wiser judge than it was the fashion of late years to believe. A great personality has passed from the English Blench —one of those definite and positive figures which flourish in England."