The Sun.
London, England, 1859-01-31 00:00:00

IRELAND.
♦
DUBLIN, SATURDAY MORNING.
THE IRISH JUDICIAL BENCH.

The retirement of Mr. Justice Crampton, after
25 years' service in the Court of Queen's Bench,
took place yesterday in presence of a large assem-
blage of the bar and the public, including, of course,
several ladies. The Attorney-General, on the part
of the bar, pronounced a glowing eulogium on the
professional and private worth of the learned judge.
now about to quit the busy scene where he had
played so active a part for nearly half a century.
Mr. Justice Crampton briefly, but eloquently, re-
plied. Ile then bade farewell to the Chief Justice
and to Judges Perrin and O'Brien, and on retiring
from the bench he was greeted with a hearty burst
of applause from the bar and the spectators. The
following sketch or memoir of the ex judge is taken
from the Freemen of this morning :—" Though not
of the first order of judicial intellect, Judge Cramp-
ton was an admirable working judge,and thoroughly
conversant with every department of public busi-
ness in the Queen's Bench. He had a refined mind,
perhaps too subtle for general use, and not reliable
from the sudden and unexpected turns it was

wont to take in the course of argument. He was
remarkably urbane and bland in his demeanour,
though his temper sometimes strayed from the con-
straint in which he habitually held it, and then he
would let loose some of those sharp and sarcastic
things which he knew how to point in such per-
fection. Other judges counsel could gauge with
some approach to certainty, but the most acute
never know whether Judge Crampton went with or
against him. He would smilingly assent to a pro-
position—nodding his head in very decided appro-
bation, but when judgment was to be given all tht
nods would often prove only lures to lead astray.'
lle was a man of many and various acquirements,
perhaps the most learned on the bench, though be
very rarely obtruded his extra-judicial erudition on
the bar. At an early age he was distinguished in
a field which, in the beginning of the present cen-
tury, attracted great competition. In 1807 he
gained the second Fellowship 'of Trinity College,
the first having been obtained by the late Bishop
of Waterford, Dr. Sandes. In 1816 Mr. Crampton
was appointed Professor of Common and Feudal
Law in the University, which he held until his pro-
motion to the bench, when he was succeeded by
Judge Longfield. In politics he was not very de-
cided, but his middle age tendencies inclined to
mild Liberalism, which, after great efforts, could
screw itself up to a reform in Parliament. When
Lord Grey's Bill was convulsing England, and the
Reformers swept all before them, Mr. Crampton had
his weather eye open, and rode like many others on
the favouring gale. He was a very respectable
gentleman, ex-Fellow of college, Professor in the
University. a good lawyer and advocate, and alto-
gether acceptable to the hypocritical Liberals of
the day, among them the present Premier, then
Chief Secretary for Ireland. In 1832 Mr. Cramp-
ton was appointed Solicitor-Genera, and having
entered Parliament for one of the Englieh Whig
boroughs, he assisted Mr. Stanley in draughting
and carrying through the Irish Reform Bill, one of
the most unsuccessful and embarrassing pieces of
legislation of modern times. Previously he had
made a grand Reform speech in contesting the
University, and compared the efforts of Toryism to
arrest the Reforming spirit to a pebble combating
with the mighty flow of ocean !, When he reached
the bench, however, in 1834, he forgot all about
Reform and returned to the love of his earlier
years. He was always snapping at Reform and
iteformers, and mention of the House of Commons
appeared to have much the same effect on his lord-
ship as a red rag shaken before a turkey cock; For
some time it was supposed he would have reserved
his seat for the Liberal party. He received all his
promotions from a Liberal Government, and to them
he should, on every principle of justice and honour,
have resigned his seat. Conservative judges fol-
low the rule of party, which in this respect is a
commendable rule, because it accords with our ideas
of gratitude and good faith. Though Judge
Crampton had ceased to be a Reformer, he was, at
least, bound to restore the office to the representa-
tives of the Reform party. But let us not be too
political on a question which should exclude all
hasty considerations. Judge Crampton has ren-
dered good services to the public, and well has he
been rewarded for his gentle labours. The Attor-
ney-General commends that rare virtue in the out-
going judge which he would wish to see repeated
in another. Surely
.two judgeships in a month
would content less inordinate desires, and satisfy
less ambitious hopes."
The Evening Post adds some items to the fore.
going narrative :—" Mr. Philip Cecil Crampton,
who has thus closed his public career, had been a
Whig barrister, and was appointed, in 1830, to the
office of Solicitor-General under the Administration
of Lord Grey. At the general election in 1832 he
was one of the Liberal candidates for the represen-
tation of the University of Dublin, the other being
the late Hon. Frederick Ponsonby; and in his
speech at the nomination—the profession of Reform
principles having been then the pas.iport to popu-
larity and office—he said that he gloried in the
avowal that he was a Radical Reformer. Mr.
Crampton failed in the contest, in which he and
Mr, Ponsonby were opposed and defeated by Mr.
Lefroy, the present' Lord Chief Justice, and Mr.
Shaw, the Recorder ; but soon after, in 1834, the
Whig Solicitor-General was solaced for his discom-
fiture by a judicial seat in the Court of Queen's
Bench. Mr. Crampton owed that appointment to
his political connexions and to his profession of
Liberal and Reform principles. It has now become
our duty, as a journalist, to treat him as a public
man closin,, his career • and truth compels us to de-
clare that he took a final farewell of Liberal principles
on the day that his appointment as a judge had ren-
dered him for life independent of the great party of
which he had been so zealous a supporter. On as-
cending the bench, Mr. Crampton did not altoge-
ther cease to be a politician ; but he was no longer
a Liberal in profession or practice, and the Tory
party, to which he had been previously so eagerly
antagonistic that it became his boast that he was
nothing less than a Radical Reformer—that old
Tory party from that period had his undisguised
y m p.tt hieF, and, so far as it could have been ren-
dered consistently with his judicial functions, the
same party had hisf support.'