Dictionary of National Biography, 1927 supplement/Macnaghten, Edward
MACNAGHTEN, Sir EDWARD, Baron Macnaghten, of Runkerry, and fourth baronet (1830–1913), judge, the second son of Sir Edmund Francis Workman Macnaghten, second baronet, of Dundarave, co. Antrim, by his wife, Mary Anne, only child of Edward Gwatkin, was born at his father's house in Bloomsbury 3 February 1830. Sir Edmund, formerly receiver of the court of chancery in Calcutta, was the elder brother of the diplomatist, Sir William Hay Macnaghten [q.v.], murdered at Kabul in December 1841. The founder of the Irish branch of the Macnaghtens had migrated from Scotland to Antrim in 1580, and Sir Edmund Macnaghten became M.P. for the county, as his uncle, Edmund Alexander Macnaghten, had been before him. Edward Macnaghten's early years were spent at Roe Park, Limavaddy, and he went to Dr. Cowan's school, The Grange, Sunderland, where many boys from the north of England and Ireland were then educated. Thence he was sent to Trinity College, Dublin, in 1847, and proceeded as a scholar to Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1850. He won the Davis university scholarship in 1851, and in 1852 was bracketed senior classic. He was also a senior optime (1852) and won the second Chancellor's medal in the same year. As, in addition, he won the Colquhoun sculls at Cambridge in 1851, the Diamond sculls at Henley in 1852, and twice rowed in the university eight (1851 and 1852), his Cambridge career was remarkable. He became a fellow of Trinity in 1853 and an honorary fellow in 1902. In 1857 Macnaghten was called to the bar at Lincoln's Inn, and for twenty-three years was an equity junior. For a time, in and after 1858, he was secretary to the Chancery funds commission, but otherwise he was absorbed in his practice and, having taken to the law rather because he could find nothing else to do than for any other reason, had now no ambition beyond the profession for which he proved to be so well fitted.
At the general election of April 1880 Macnaghten was returned for county Antrim in the conservative interest, and in the same month he accepted the offer of a silk gown from Earl Cairns just before the latter's resignation. He attached himself first to the Rolls court and then to the court of Mr. Justice (Sir Joseph William) Chitty [q.v.]; he became a bencher of his inn in 1883 and reached the treasurership in 1907. His high position at the Chancery bar is shown by the fact that in 1883 the Earl of Selborne offered him a judgeship, which he refused, since his seat would have been lost to his party. He expected after this, and on good grounds, to be appointed one of the law officers in Lord Salisbury's first administration, it having been the practice to fill one of these offices from the Chancery bar; but both appointments were given to common law men on this occasion. How good an impression Macnaghten made in the House of Commons is shown by the offer, brought to him personally by Lord Halsbury, of the home secretaryship, when Lord Salisbury's second administration was formed in 1886. This offer he refused, not then being disposed to abandon his career at the bar, and Lord Halsbury's offer of a Chancery judgeship in the following November was refused also. At last, in January 1887, he was appointed a lord of appeal in ordinary, on the retirement of Lord Blackburn. This was a promotion without precedent, for not only was it direct from the bar but it was made in the case of a man who had worn silk for no more than seven years.
Macnaghten had been elected for North Antrim after the redistribution of 1885, and had spoken in the House of Commons only on Irish topics. His speeches on the Land Law (Ireland) Bill on 12 May 1881 and on the Home Rule Bill on 31 May 1886 were long and excellent, abounding in happy quotations and equally happy sarcasms, particularly at the expense of his brother-lawyers, Sir Charles Russell (afterwards Baron Russell of Killowen) and (Sir) John Rigby; one of his jests in the former speech ruffled Mr. Gladstone himself. From the time when he first entered the House of Lords he took an active part in debate, generally, but by no means always, speaking on Irish questions and on legal bills. In 1887 he spoke eleven times and thereafter until 1900 he was completely silent only in the years 1895 and 1897. Repeatedly he took charge of bills, and on 6 August 1896 carried against the government an amendment on the Land Law Bill (Ireland) of Mr. Gerald Balfour. He was no respecter of persons, did not see why he should bridle his tongue, and in the course of much vigorous discussion bluntly told Lord Herschell that he did not understand the bill which he was talking about. In 1903 he was prominent in the committee stage of the Irish Land Bill and carried several 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.]