The
Vol. IV.
No. ii.
Green
BOSTON.
Bag.
November, 1892.
THE ENGLISH BENCH AND BAR OF TO-DAY. VI. SIR JAMES HANNEN. ' I ^HE Right Hon. Sir James Hannen President of the Probate, Divorce, and Admiralty Division of the High Court of Justice, and sometime President of the Parnell Commission, was born in 1821, was educated at St. Paul's School and afterwards at the University of Heidelberg, became a student of the Middle Temple, and was called to the bar in 1848. In 1853 the hour of opportunity that cometh to every man over took him. The interminable Canadian Fisheries' Disputes between England and America had reached a crisis. The proxi mate cause of quarrel was the alleged en croachment upon British fishing-grounds by vessels belonging to the United States; and the English Colonial Secretary, Sir John Pakington, in a circular addressed to the colonial governors concerned, had used fool ish language, to which Mr. Webster, the American Secretary of State, had unfortu nately and unwisely replied. Less trivial circumstances have ere now plunged nations into the horrors of war. But the relations between Great Britain and America, though strained, were happily not ruptured. A Mixed Commission to adjudicate upon the matter generally, and upon the outstand ing claims in particular, was appointed; and the Gazette for Nov. 16, 1853, announced the nomination of James Hannen, Esquire, as agent for Great Britain before the Com missioners. The Mixed Commission sat in London from 1853 to 1854 or 1855; it settled the immediate difficulties between 64
England and the United States; and it brought at the same time to Sir James Hennen both reputation and practice. Cases of a sensational character Hannen never re ceived, and could not have conducted with success. But heavy arbitrations, solid mer cantile questions, difficult points of law sought out his chambers instinctively, and departed thence settled and solved. In the course of time he became Treasury " devil." In modern legal nomenclature, the word "devil " has no Satanic significance. In its generic character, it is a term applied to a junior barrister who digests cases, and occa sionally holds briefs, for an overburdened senior. These services are not always paid for, — at least directly. But the devil gains experience,— at the cost of his leader's clients, — establishes a claim to his employer's good offices in the future, and eventually forms a connection of his own. The Treasury devil is the highest species of this important order of beings. He is the junior counsel to the Government, is briefed in all heavy Crown cases, enjoys, besides, a lucrative private practice, and has a reversionary right to a puisne judgeship, without being expected either to take part in politics or to become a Queen's Counsel. Lord Justice Bowen, Mr. Justice Mathew, and Mr. Justice A. L. Smith are types of the class. During his tenure of the office of Treasury devil, Sir James Hannen was called upon to take part in several important cases,— the trial of Franz Muller for the murder of Mr. Briggs, the
