HARRISON, FREDERIC (1831-1923), English jurist and man of letters, was born in London on Oct. 18, 1831. Members of his family (originally Leicestershire yeomen) had been lessees of Sutton Place, Guildford, of which he wrote an interesting account (Annals of an Old Manor House, 1893). He was educated at King's College school and at Wadham college, Oxford, where, after taking a first-class in Literae Humaniores in 1853, he became fellow and tutor. He was called to the bar in 1858, and practised in equity cases. He worked at the codification of the law with Lord Westbury. His special interest in legislation for the working classes led to his appointment on the Trades Union Commission of 1867-69; he was secretary to the commission for the digest of the law, 1869-70; and was from 1877 to 1889 professor of juris prudence and international law under the council of legal educa tion. Of his separate publications at this time the most important are his lives of Cromwell (1888), William the Silent (1897), Ruskin (190 2) and Chatham (19o5) ; his Meaning of History (1862 ; enlarged 1894) and Byzantine History in the Early Middle Ages (1900) ; and his essays on Early Victorian Literature (1896) and The Choice of Books (1886) are remarkable alike for gener ous admiration and good sense. In 1889 he was elected an alder man of the London County Council, but resigned in 1893. In 187o he married Ethel Berta, daughter of Mr. William Harrison, by whom he had four sons.
Harrison was president of the English Positivist Committee from 188o to 1905. In his last book De Senectute (1923), which he did not live to see published, he re-affirmed his life-long prin ciple and attachment to the religion of Auguste Comte, and no estimate can do him justice which does not take into account the essentially religious character of his life, of which all his written works may be said to be a contributory expression. Though Frederic Harrison originally came into prominence in the days (1850-8o) of fighting agnosticism, he was never himself an "agnostic," and in fact was severely criticised by the leading agnostics, notably by Huxley and Herbert Spencer, etc. ; more over, as Positivist, he was a republican in spirit and, what was new at that period, a sociologist. It was this positivist sociology which caused him as a young man to espouse the cause of trade unionism, which he did with such energy and legal skill as adviser to the Royal Commission on Trade Unions in 1867, that he was really the inspirer and founder of the trade union law as it existed from 1868 to 1906. None the less, his religion did not permit him to embark upon a public career. He virtually retired from politics (in the party sense) and from legal practice in mid-life, this latter very largely as the enforced consequence of his pioneer fight on behalf of trade unionism, and took to letters.
At the age of 8o he published his Autobiographic Memoirs (2 vols., 1911) . Among the books that flowed almost annually from his pen may be mentioned: Memories and Thoughts (1906) ; National and Social Problems (1908) ; Tennyson, Ruskin, Mill and other Literary Estimates (1899) ; George Washington, etc. (19o1); Theophano (1904), a "romantic monograph" of the loth century; Nicephorus (1906), a verse tragedy; The Creed of a Layman (1907) ; Realities and Ideals (1908) ; Novissima Verba (1920) ; De Senectute (1923). As an historian Frederic Harrison did not belong to the modern school of specialization, and ranks as a "literary-historian"; as essayist, he excelled, occupying a distinguished place both for the soundness of his judgment and for the vigour and clarity of his style. Politically, he stood in the position of an unofficial pro-consul, and for some years before the World War he repeatedly warned his countrymen of the impending crisis arising out of the armed system of Europe, and of the necessity of British preparation to meet it. An article he wrote in The English Review in 1913 proved to be only too pro phetic. During the War he stood unfalteringly for victory and for the cause of France. His son, Rene, was killed in Flanders in 1915.
Frederic Harrison's life may be described as an attempt to intro duce Comte's Humanist sociology into England, to which end he devoted all his energies. For 20 years he was the leader of English Positivism and regularly lectured at Newton Hall, being also a co-founder of and contributor to The Positivist Review. His political views were zealously put forward in that organ. He was not a Radical in the party sense though always a Liberal in spirit. Internationally he was a life-long supporter of France, and in 187o vehemently urged British support of Gambetta as against Bismarckianism. If he was a "Little Englander," it was because of his championship of the "Little Peoples," and during the Boer War his pronounced anti-jingoism led him into acute controversy. Publicly, his attitude was often misunderstood for that reason. He may be said to have been a republican in spirit, a humanist by conviction and a "meliorist" as politician.
Frederic Harrison had not originally wished to found a Posi tivist centre or sect, but after the secession of Dr. Congreve on the crucial issue of allegiance to French Comtists, he virtually had no alternative, and it was thus that Newton Hall came into being. As head of that body, Frederic Harrison found copious use for his scholastic knowledge and energies as lecturer and teacher, and though in that position he was "labelled," the sin cerity and disinterestedness of his opinions were so universally recognized that his public moral authority did not lose through isolation. In this way he occupied a kind of "chair" of public morals, such as is hardly conceivable in any other country, hence his unflinching war determinism in 1914 caused him to be more popularly known and appreciated in extreme old age than had been the case during the Victorian epoch when, as a humanist, he found himself neither on the one side nor the other of the great Victorian struggle for "liberty of thought," the foundation of which intellectually had been laid by Auguste Comte and Charles Darwin.
In this great battle of "reason," which started at Oxford, Harrison played a conspicuous part, though never as an iconoclast and in interest, spiritually; i.e., outside the intellectual ethicism arising out of the new criticism, for he neither adhered to the utilitarianism of Mill nor to the "dry light" of the debaters in the famous Metaphysical Society of which he was a member. Positivism was at that time regarded as a "heresy" both by orthodoxy and by the agnostics, and in the controversies that ensued Harrison drifted somewhat out of the movements of his time. He was perhaps the last survivor of the "great" Victorians. He will be remembered as a supreme individualist, a slashing con troversialist, as a practical idealist and citizen. Thus he consist ently advocated the return of the "Elgin Marbles" to Greece on the ground that the statuary belonged to the historical religion of the Greeks. He was a friend of President Roosevelt and twice lectured in the United States. He was at his best as critic of life and art in relation of the past to the present, which was Comte's "law" of continuity, but Harrison was alive to the academic weaknesses in Comte's Polity and rejected any dogma. In his latter years he resided at Bath, of which city he was given the freedom. He died there on Jan. 14, 1923. He had refused all titles or "honours." His ashes, mingled with those of his wife, repose in an urn placed in the chapel of Wadham college, Oxford, according to his last wishes.