Premier in the Temple.

Timaru Herald, Volume XIIC, Issue 13916, 29 May 1909, Page 2 (Supplement)

Premier in the Temple.

A felicitous anecdote of Mi - Asquith and Mr Gladstone was told by Lord James of Hereford, at the annual meeting of tlie Barristers' Benevolent Association in the Middle ,'Teiri'ple Hall. Mr Asquith was in the chair.

Lord James recalled that when he was .Attorney-General, in the eighties, in Mr. Gladstone's Administration,' he had to . draw up within 48 hours a

statement of the effect of an.Affirmation Bill about to be introduced. "Ho required aid, and after other barristers lia.d ■ refused the task he was recommended to' a young man recently a scholar from Balliol,' who was" nost competent to discharge that duty. The young man was Mr. Asquith, who, on presenting a letter of recommendation, displayed some timidity as to his powers to draw up the summary required by Mr Gladstone. He undertook the task, and Mr Gladstone made his speech from the notes. A few years ago his lordship saw these notes, and there were very few marginal alterations ' in Mr (-dadscone's handwriting. That was the opportunity which Mr Asquith had grasped at the outset of his career.

Mr Asquith said he remembered the very early days of the Barristers' Benevolent Association. it wa\s regarded by those of them who had Ihen recently been called to the Bar as affording a most desirable safegiard. against the hazards of a peculiarly precarious profession, He hmiself remembered occupying at that time chambers in Fig Tree Court, -there.the advent of a County Court brief, marked one guinea, and bearing the name of a client whose time of payment and even his ability to pay were, to say the least, problematical, was a most welcome and not very ,% equ'mt phenomenon. (Laughter.) The general public had never yet realised the debt that England twed to the practitioners of the law." r ihe public was still apt to look at tho legal profession as a parasitic and not altogether necessary excrescence crowing on the healthy organism of society. Btit he and those there present Inew better. They knew further that there was no vocation in which the risks were greater and the hazards n ore incalculable.

In Lord Campbell's time there \ ere supposed to be throe traditional ways for the beginner to eke cut a coinpotency; to write a tcxtJjook, to frequent quarter sessions, to marry, the daughter of an attorney. (Laughter.) In those days, however, the members of the Bar were numerically a very small body.

A barrister's life presented a succession of momentous problems, i pon the right solution of which, his prosperity and his very existence might depend. Those who had attained some success might well recall what tho /aviei.t sceptic, said when shown in lbo T"inple of Neptune the votive offerings of rescued men: ,; But where are the tablets of those who perished in the waves r"