CAIRNS, HUGH McCALMONT CAIRNS, 1st EARL (181g-1885), Irish statesman, and lord chancellor of England, was born at Cultra, Co. Down, Ireland, on Dec. 27, 1819, and was educated at Belfast academy and Trinity college, Dublin, graduating with a senior moderatorship in classics in 1838. In 1844 he was called to the bar at the Middle Temple, to which he had migrated from Lincoln's Inn. During his first years at the chancery bar, Cairns showed little promise of the eloquence which afterwards distinguished him. In 1852 he entered parlia ment as member for Belfast, and his Inn, on his becoming a Q.C. in 1856, made him a bencher.
In 1858 Cairns was appointed solicitor-general, and was knighted, and in May of that year made two of his most brilliant and best-remembered speeches in the House of Commons. In the first he defended Lord Ellenborough's public censure of Lord Canning in the India despatch, and in the other he spoke in reply to Lord John Russell for the Government—the Reform bill— winning the most cordial appreciation from Disraeli. In 1866, when Lord Derby returned to office, he was made attorney general and in the same year after a breakdown in health he became a Lord Justice of Appeal. At first unable to accept a peerage for want of means, he was enabled to do so in 1867 by the assistance of a relative.
The appointment of Baron Cairns of Garmoyle as lord chan cellor in 1868 involved the superseding of Lord Chelmsford, an act which apparently was carried out by Disraeli with less tact than might have been expected of him. Disraeli held office on this occasion for a few months only, and when Lord Derby died in 1869, Lord Cairns became the leader of the Conservative oppo sition in the House of Lords. He had distinguished himself in the Commons by his resistance to the Roman Catholics' Oath bill brought in in 1865; in the Lords, his efforts on behalf of the Irish Church were equally strenuous. His speech on Gladstone's Suspensory bill was afterwards published as a pamphlet, but the attitude which he and the peers who followed him had taken up, in insisting on their amendments to the preamble of the bill, was one difficult to maintain, and when Lord Cairns was privately offered concessions provided he withdrew his opposition at once, he took the responsibility of accepting, as there was no opportu nity to consult his party. Not long after this, Lord Cairns resigned the leadership of his party in the upper house, but he had to resume it in 187o and took a strong part in opposing the Irish Land Bill in that year. On the Conservatives coming into power in 1874, he again became lord chancellor; in 1878 he was made Viscount Garmoyle and Earl Cairns; and in 188o his party went out of office.
After this, owing to failing health, his appearances were less frequent, and he died at Bournemouth from congestion of the lungs on April 2, 1885. Cairns was the first lawyer of his time. His judgments were in the main expositions of principle, with a few decisions cited at the end as illustrations. In the legislation of the day, particularly on questions involving the Church or legal reform, his influence was great, and the harmony with which he could work with his great friend and opponent, Lord Selborne, led to this influence being felt while he was in opposition as well as when he was in office. Among the Statutes with which he was concerned were the Conveyancing Act 1881-82, the Settled Land Act, the Judicature Acts, and the Married Women's Property Act. Of his speeches, in addition to those referred to above, his criti cism of Gladstone's policy in the Transvaal after Majuba (Times, April 1, 1881) is especially memorable.