Perhaps his greatest forensic triumph was in the famous case of Belt v. Lawes (1882). The plaintiff was a sculptor, and the substantial issue in the case was whether he prepared with his own hand and mind the works which issued from his studio, or employed ‘ghosts’, that is, paid small sums to obscure persons who were better artists than himself, to make the busts and statues by the supply of which he earned a large income. The case against Giffard’s client, Belt, was almost overwhelming, and the defendants were represented by Sir Charles Russell—then at the height of his powers—and Sir Richard Webster (each of them subsequently lord chief justice) instructed by Sir George Henry Lewis, whose reputation as an exposer of impostors was unrivalled. But Giffard carried with him the judge, the jury, and a large proportion of the public, and obtained for the plaintiff a verdict for £5,000.
In 1885 Giffard was appointed lord chancellor in Lord Salisbury’s first administration. His appointment came as something of a surprise both to the public and to the legal profession. His early work as an ‘Old Bailey man’ had never been forgotten, and his general reputation as an advocate had never been that of a Russell or a Cockburn on the one hand, or of a Palmer or a Cairns on the other. The promotion, however, had been fully earned. Holker having died in 1882, the only possible competitor was William Brett, Viscount Esher [q.v.], master of the Rolls. Brett had been, seventeen years previously, solicitor-general for less than twelve months, after which he had accepted a puisne judgeship. Giffard, besides fighting several elections, had done excellent service to his party in parliament, both in office and in opposition, for eight years. His claim to the woolsack was admitted on reflection; his ability to occupy it with distinction was widely doubted by superficial observers. Such doubts were laid to rest before the government went out of office in January 1886. From the first Giffard took command, as much as a president should, of any court over which he presided. He was strong enough to be primus inter pares whoever his peers might be, and they included at different times Lords Selborne, Watson, Blackburn, Bramwell, Herschell, Davey, Bowen, Macnaghten, and Robertson. On his appointment he took the title of Baron Halsbury, of Halsbury, in the parish of Parkham, Devon, one of the former seats of the Giffard family.
When the defeat of the first Home Rule Bill and the consequent general election restored the conservatives to power in July 1886, Halsbury again became lord chancellor, and he was appointed for the third time to that office by Lord Salisbury in 1895. His third period of office, in the Ministries of Lord Salisbury and Mr. Arthur Balfour, lasted until 1905. He thus held the great seal for seventeen years—longer than any one else except Hardwicke and Eldon. When he resigned shortly after his eighty-second birthday he still possessed, but for a slight degree of deafness, all the necessary powers of body and mind in full vigour. In 1898 he was created Earl of Halsbury and Viscount Tiverton.
Halsbury’s dissenting judgment in Allen v. Flood (1898) taken together with his prevailing judgment in Quinn v. Leathem (1901) is a good illustration of his robust and cogent methods of thought, and incidentally exhibits his increasing control of the tribunal of which he was the chief. The wealth of his learning and his facile mastery of exceedingly complicated facts are well displayed in his judgment in the Free Church of Scotland case (1904). The cases of R. v. Jackson (1891), which denies to a husband the right to use force for the purpose of securing or retaining his wife’s cohabitation, Powell v. the Kempton Park Race Course Co. (1899), as to the legality of betting on race courses, and Cowley v. Cowley (1901), as to the use of titles after remarriage, are other examples of Halsbury’s confident and effective treatment of questions that came before him.
Although always a tenacious and resolute conservative, Halsbury did not for a moment suppose that English law was incapable of improvement, and he was substantially the author of two such important reforms as the Land Transfer Act (1897), and the Criminal Evidence Act (1898) by which persons accused of indictable offences, and their spouses, were made competent witnesses. Halsbury, during his occupancy of the woolsack, appointed in each division of the High Court more judges than it had ever contained at the same time, viz. eight in Chancery, seventeen in the queen’s (or king’s) bench, and three in the probate division. After his resignation he continued to do active service judicially and politically. He was increasingly troubled by deafness, but his other physical faculties remained almost unimpaired until the closing years of his long life. He presided, from start to finish, over the production of the complete digest of The Laws
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