792 V. BENCH AND BAR The several stages of his speech are hke steps cut out of ice, as sharply defined, as smooth and as cold." There was a studied absence of passion, and an entire concentration on thought, clear exposition and remorseless logic. Beneath his cold exterior, however, there was the deepest feeling. Occasionally, when he was deeply moved, this suppressed fire came to the surface. One of these occasions was the disestablishment of the Irish Church, which aroused the deepest feelings of his nature. An eye witness to the final debate relates how " the Lord Chancellor, pale, emaciated, evidently very ill, but possessed by a spirit which no phys- ical infirmities could overcome, stood at the side of the wool- sack pouring forth for hours an unbroken stream of clear and logical eloquence against the measure before the House." 1 An examination of Cairns's judgments is apt, on first view, to be somewhat disappointing. In the first place, ill health constantly interfered with his work. He participated in the hearing of less than four hundred cases during his whole judicial career. In more than half of these cases he did not formulate an independent opinion. Moreover, Cairns sel- dom explained the process by which his mind reached a re- sult. Yet his mind was severely logical ; he had attained the perfect mental discipline which enabled him to follow without reflecting on the rule. With his swift, strong, subtle instinct for the truth, he was able to disregard the slow, syl-
- The peroration of his speech on the English humiliation in the Trans-
vaal has often been admired as a specimen of parliamentary eloquence: " I wish that while the Transvaal remains, as you say it does, under our control, the British flag had not been first reversed and then trailed in insult through the mud. I wish that the moment when you are weak- ening our empire in the East had not been selected for dismembering our empire in South Africa. These are the aggravations of the trans- action. You have used no pains to conceal what was humbling, and a shame which was real you have made burning. But the transaction without the aggravation is bad enough. It has already touched, and will every day touch more deeply, the heart of the nation. Other re- verses we have had, other disasters; but a reverse is not dishonor, and a disaster does not necessarily imply disgrace. To Her Majesty's gov- ernment we owe a sensation which to this country of ours is new and is certainly not agreeable. • In all the ills we ever bore, We grieved, we sighed, we toiled, we wept; We never blushed before.' "
