The Sun.
London, England, 1868-12-12 00:00:00

THE NETV LORD CHANCELLOR.

The Times gives the following account of Lord Rather-
ley :—" The learned lawyer who takes his seat henceforth
upon the woolsack as Lord High Chancellor, and whom
in a day or two we shall have to style Lord Hatherley, is
the second son of the late Alderman Sir Matthew Wood,
who sat for many years as M.P. for London in the Liberal
interest, and who was one of the first persons on whom
her Majesty was pleased to confer a title after her acces-
sion to the throne, in acknowledgment of many obligations
to the alderman on the party of royalty. We do not allude
so much to the zeal he displayed in the cause of Queen
Caroline as to the fact that it was he who, having acted
as a trustee of the Duke of Kent's affairs, first suggested
to his Royal Highness shortly before the birth of her pre-
sent Majesty the propriety of the Duke and Duchess
coming over to England, in order that-the possible future
heir to the throne of England might be born upon
British soil. The Lord Chancellor's mother was Maria,
daughter of the late Mr. John Page, a surgeon and
apothecary, of Woodbridge, Suffolk, the same gentleman to
whom the poet Crabbe was originally articled or appren-
ticed. The title of Baron Hatherley, by which his lord-
ship has chosen to be called to the Upper House, is taken
by him from the village of that name in Gloucestershire,
in which stood the residence of his father, Hatherley
House. It is not a little singular that the living of Hather-
ley is now in his lordship's patronage in his official capacity.
The Lord Chancellor himself was born in London in the
year 1801, and received his early education at Winchester
School. Thence he was transferred at the usual age to
Trinity college, Cambridge, of which he was successively
Schoir 'yellow, and where he took ' --achelor's
degree, s Twenty-fourth Wrangler, in 1824, the late
Bishop (Bowstead) of Lichfield, Professor Hall, and Arch-
deacon Lawson obtaining honours in the same mathemati-
cal tripos. The classical tripos was not instituted till the
following year. He was called to the bar at Lincoln's Inn
in 1827, and, devoting himself to the Chancery aide of
Westminster Hall, soon gained a very fair share of pr
fessional practice. It was not, however, till after
he had entered Parliament that his name became
widely known to the public ; and he must be set down as
one of those to whom a career in the Commons proved
a first step t 3 the woolsack. He sat as M.P. for the
city of Oxford, in the moderate Liberal interest, in the
Parliament of 1847-52, and was re-chosen at the general
election of the latter year, on both occasions without
the trouble of a contest. In 1849 he was appointed to
the post of Vice-Chancellor of the County Palatine
of Lancaster, and two years later succeeded Sir
Alexander Cockburn in the Solicitor-Generalship, which
he held until the retirement of his party from
power in the February of the following year. His tenure
of this office was but short, and it was marked by no event
of importance or significance. We believe it is no secret
in the profession that his appointment to the Solicitor-
Generalship was largely due to a speech he made in the
House of Commons on the Ecclesiastical Titles Bill, upon
which it is remarkable that he took the very opposite line
to the present leader of the Cabinet in which he sits. He
maintained, with great learning, and with frequent reference
to the canon law, that, notwithstanding th e Roman Catholic
Church was not an established body in England, still the
act of the Pope in issuing his bull' for appointing
bishops with territorial titles in England would largely
affect the nature of the law of the Romish Church here;
and that as the Court of Chancery, in its dealings with
religious and charitable trusts, must recognise and enforce
the law of every religious community, whether established
or not, therefore this measure, if allowed to he legal,
would practically work an alteration in the law of the land.
In fact, his argument came to this : that establishment'
meant `recognition by the State,' not 'a positive connection
with the State.' - This question, so raised by him nearly
twenty years ago, may, as will readily be seen, have a
direct bearing on the impending controversy respecting
the disestablishment of the Irish Church. Early in the
year 1853 Sir William Page Wood was nominated one of
the Vice-Chancellors by the Administration of Lord Aber-
deen, on their accession to office, and he consequently
retired from the representation of Oxford, his removal
from St. Stephen's making a vacancy for the return
of Mr. Cardwell, who had failed to secure his
re-election at Liverpool. The duties of Vice-Chancellor
Sir W. Page Wood discharged until early in the present
year, when he succeeded Lord Cairns as one of t 1 Lords
Justices of Appeal in Chancery, and at the same t;me was
sworn a member of her Majesty's Privy Council. It is
no small tribute to his high personal and legal merits,
that, although a Liberal in politics, he should have been
offered this high appointment by the Conservative party,
who had no lack of available candidates on their own
side of the House ; and a similar honour was
paid to him by Lord Justice Selwyn, who, though nomi-
nated to a Lord Justiceship a few weeks or months pre-
viously, gracefully waived his right of precedence in favour
of his brother justice, so much his senior. Neither as a
member of Parliament nor as a member of the bar did Sir
William Page Wood ever rank very high as an orator ; but
it may be safely said that on the judicial bench few of his
brethren have ever held a higher position. He has ahewn
himself a sound and able lawyer, most honest and con-
scientious, and wonderfully industrious and painstaking ;
and his courtesy and kindness have won for him the
respect and even affection of the bar. He is known to
the world at large as a man of high character and attain-
ments, a sincere and attached Churchman, though tolerant
in his religious opinions, and a zealous supporter of the
leading societies of the Established Church. He is also
the author of more than one work on religious subjects.
His lordship— who,although not actually heir-presumptive,
is in remainder to the baronetcy of his great-nephew, the
present Sir Matthew Wood, of Rivenhall-place, Essex—
married, in 1830, Charlotte, only daughter of Major
Edward Moor, of Great,Bealings, Suffolk."

THE EVANGELICAL CHURCH UNION.-A meeting
of the Evangelical Church Union was held on Thursday
afternoon at Exeter Hall, in the course of which it was
announced that during the winter bands of persons would
parade the streets and the suburbs of London, singing
hymns and psalms, with the view of attracting persons not
alive to the influences of religion, it being impossible to
carry out open-air preaching to any successful extent
during the cold months.

The Cattle Defence Association, which includes
many members of Parliament who sit on both sides of the
House, assembled on Thursday at the Salisbury Hotel,
and passed a series of resolutions, in which it was main-
tained that the ensuing session ought not to be allowed to
pass without effective legislation on the subject of the
foreign cattle trade, and urging that every legitimate
effort should be made in aid of this important object.
Two new M.P.'s were amongst the speakers—Mr.
APClombie and Mr. Albert Pell.

THE OLATAIS OF WOMEN.—On Thursday night
g.iss Emily Faithfull addressed an audience at the
ihnover-square Rooms on this subject. The lady claimed
for her sex a fairer chance than they now possessed of
earning a livelihood: proper legal rights, greater educa-
tional advantages, and the suffrage. It was not her
wish that women should perform men's work, but that they
should be encouraged to do that for which they were
physically and mentally capable. At present they had
not that fair opportunity which was their undoubted
right. Out of the six millions of women in this country,
two-and-a-half millions were unmarried ; and it was abso-
lutely essential to the well-being of society that, where
the disproportion between the sexes was so large, the
weakest should have the widest possible field to obtain
the means of supporting themselves.