BIRRELL, AUGUSTINE English author and politician, son of a Nonconformist minister, was born near Liver pool on Jan. r9,185o. He was educated at Amersham Hall school and at Trinity Hall, Cambridge. He went to the bar, and gradual ly obtained a good practice ; in 1893 he became Q.C., and he was professor of law at University college from 1896 to '899. The publication of Obiter Dicta (1884) showed him to be a literary critic of unusually clever style and an original vein of wit. In 1889 he was returned to Parliament for West Fife as a Lib eral. In the House of Commons his light but pointed humour led to the coining of a new word, "birrelling." His books on copyright and on trusts were no less sparkling than his literary °biter Dicta. A second series of the latter appeared in 1887. Res Judicatae in 1892 and various other volumes followed. In 1888 Mr. Birrell married as his second wife Mrs. Lionel Tennyson, daughter of the poet Frederick Locker (Locker-Lampson). De feated at North-East Manchester at the general election of 'goo, he re-entered Parliament in 19°6 for a Bristol division, and as minister for education was responsible for the Education bill, which had ultimately to be withdrawn. Campbell-Bannerman then transferred him to the chief-secretaryship in Ireland, and he introduced the Irish Councils bill, which was killed by its repudia tion at the Nationalist Convention. Irish administration became more and more difficult, but Mr. Birrell declined to invoke the Crimes act. He continued to be chief secretary for Ireland until the Dublin rebellion of Easter 1916, a period of over nine years. The cattle-driving agitation died down, and Irish politics, save for labour troubles, were comparatively quiet, until the two general elections of i9ro had once again made retention of office by the Liberal leaders dependent on the Irish vote. A third Home Rule bill was now inevitable, and Mr. Birrell spent much of the autumn of i9r r in preparing it. The main conduct of the rneasure was, however, taken out of his hands, in the sessions of 1912, 1913 and 1914, by Mr. Asquith, the prime minister.
When resistance was organized in Ulster, when volunteers were enlisted and drilled in the province, and a provincial government constituted, Mr. Birrell adopted the laissez-faire attitude which had throughout been the mark of his Irish administration; and he applied the same treatment to the Irish volunteers who were raised in the Sinn Fein and Nationalist interest. With the out break of the World War the Home Rule controversy was left in abeyance; and the danger with which Mr. Birrell had to cope came from extremists of the Sinn Fein, Irish-American and Irish Labour parties, of whom Casement and Larkin were the apparent leaders. They promoted a strong and largely successful propa ganda against enlistment in Ireland, which culminated suddenly in open rebellion at Easter 1916. Immediately after the suppres sion of the rising, Mr. Birrell resigned; and he left Parliament and political life in 1918. Resuming his literary work, he published in 192o a life of his father-in-law, the poet Frederick Locker Lampson ; in 1922, Collected Essays, in 1924 More Obiter Dicta, and in 1930, Et Cetera. His originality, satire and ripeness put him at the head of English men of letters on the critical side.