§ 2.35 p.m.
§ THE LORD CHANCELLOR (Viscount Jowitt)My Lords, the noble Viscount the Leader of the House has suggested to me that before we begin our proceedings to-day it would be fitting and appropriate that we should pay some tribute to the late Lord Sankey. It seems only a few days ago that I was paying a tribute to our very dear friend Lord Caldecote, and it has now fallen to my lot to speak again. Lord Sankey was born in England. He had a distinguished career at his school and at Oxford, and then he furnished us with one of those comparatively rare examples of an Englishman who leaves for Wales to seek fame and fortune. Having been called to the Bar, he settled at Cardiff, where he rapidly began to make for himself a great reputation, particularly in that class of case which we call Workmen's Compensation. That brought him often to London, and often to the Court of Appeal. I remember, as a very young man at the Bar, hearing him arguing his cases before the Court of Appeal, and to a young man it was a marvellous example of the way in which a case should be put. With the greatest brevity, the greatest terseness, without an unnecessary word, he told the Court in a few sentences what was the point of the case. Then, my Lords, in due course, as was inevitable, he came to the Bench. He never hit the headlines at all. In that respect he was like most other excellent Judges. He worked his way from the King's Bench Division to the Court of Appeal, and all those who practised at the Bar had a profound regard for his judicial qualities.
986 It was shortly after the last war that Mr. Lloyd George had to appoint a Committee to inquire into the future of the mines, and he selected Lord Sankey—then Mr. Justice Sankey—as the Chairman of that Committee. Sankey had but little interest in politics; he was at that time, I suppose, a mild Conservative, but, of course, since his appointment to the Bench, he had ceased altogether political activities and political interests. He presided over that Inquiry, and he came to the conclusion, rightly or wrongly, which is familiar to all your Lordships. In regard to that conclusion he received some criticism, yet I think it is true to say that Lord Sankey was always his own most severe and most merciless critic; and so long as he could satisfy himself and live up to his own ideals, he had no reason to fear the criticisms of anybody else. On that occasion, as on all others, he followed the logical process of his reasoning, and he went with his own reasoning to the point at which that reasoning brought him, and there stood.
There is no doubt that the evidence which he then heard produced a profound effect on him, and it was not to be wondered at that Mr. Ramsay MacDonald, when he came to form his Government in 1929, selected Sankey as his Lord Chancellor. My Lords, at that time, I was his Attorney-General, and the relationship between Lord Chancellor and Attorney-General is—or at any rate always should be—a close and intimate one. It was a time when we were not universally acclaimed and I may say, quite frankly, that I derived immense help from Sankey. He was like a rock behind which I could always shelter if the winds of heaven were too strong for me, and I would like to pay a tribute to his genius and friendship and his desire to help others in their difficulties. He became Lord Chancellor without the experience in the House of Commons which Lord Chancellors usually have. He was the first Lord Chancellor for a very long time who had not had that experience. I was not here, hut many of your Lordships were here with him, and I am sure you will universally pay a tribute to the calm dignity with which he presided over the proceedings in your Lordships' House.
Like Lord Caldecote, Lord Sankey was a devoted son of the Church. His churchmanship differed widely from that of Lord 987 Caldecote, but they both derived consolation and comfort from their Churches. It so happened that when the Welsh Church was disestablished, it was Sankey who worked out the constitution of the new Welsh Church. And in his handwriting, preserved in the archives of the Museum of Wales, you will find the original constitution of the Church of Wales as he worked it out. His work withstood all the criticism of Lord Atkin and Sir John Eldon Bankes, which is no mean tribute. In his six years as Lord Chancellor he certainly showed himself to be a great law reformer; he was anxious to cut down the costs of litigation, to reduce what be thought to be the excessive number of appeals. But it is not primarily as a great law reformer that we think of him to-day; it is as a great human personality, a man who loved and was loved, a wise statesman, a fine friend, a man for whose loss we are all the poorer. I am sure that we should all desire to tender our respectful sympathy to those whom he has left behind.
§ 2.42 p.m.
§ Viscount SIMONMy Lords, may I be allowed to add a few words to what has been so well said by my noble and learned friend who sits on the Woolsack? My mind goes back a long way to recall the days when, at the Bar, I met John Sankey in fairly frequent conflict and very speedily made good friends with him. I think of the yean when I constantly watched him discharging with great dignity and urbanity the duties of Judge. On occasions like this, when we pause for a few moments to put on record our feelings about a distinguished Peer who has passed away, we do not seek to indulge in the language of indiscriminate eulogy; we try rather to select those qualities which were really characteristic of the man, and which make his memory now precious to us.
I should say, as indeed the noble and learned Viscount, the Lord Chancellor, said in one passage in his speech, that the quality which was outstanding in the character and personality of Lord Sankey was his humanity, his very deeply and sincerely felt sympathy with human people. One saw it when he administered justice. I saw it when he occasionally sat with me in criminal appeals here. It was this deep, genuine feeling for the difficulties and anxieties of the human lot which profoundly stirred him. It was not 988 a pose adopted in order to make things move on easily; it sprang from the depths of his nature. He was, I think, very slow to anger. He preserved, so far as I watched him, a great control over his feelings. He was very deliberate in expressing his conclusion, and when he did express it, it was always in carefully measured words. He was always, I think, essentially moderate, whatever the political Party with which he associated himself, and if I may respectfully say so, in the presence of noble Peers opposite, I conceive that he rendered, amongs other things, a great service to the Socialist Party, when they first came into office, by the very nature of his temper. I do not know that he will be specially remembered for particular legal decision;; in great number, though he did give some very important ones, especially in the Privy Council. But he certainly should be remembered as a man who had the highest possible conception of his duty. He rendered, as I suppose, an immeasurable service to the recently disestablished Church in Wales. He devoted himself to a number of other good causes which had no particular political flavour or attachment, but which he felt called for his full interest and sympathy. If we were to choose an epitaph for our departed friend, it would not be inappropriate, I think, to inscribe on his tomb the words that I have seen written over the grave of Henry Lawrence at Lucknow:
He tried to do his duty
§ 2.50 p.m.
The Marquess of READINGMy Lords, noble Lords on these Benches desire me to associate them fully with all that has been felicitously said by way alike of appreciation and regret concerning the late Lord Sankey, for indeed he possessed high qualities and he rendered great services. I remember him from my own earliest days at the Bar, when my master in the art and mystery of the Law used to sit day after day behind the then Mr. John Sankey, and I preserve valued memories of him in all the high judicial positions which he successively held. Although he became Lord Chancellor, his reputation will by no means be confined to his work in the law.
In most of the obituary notices great emphasis has rightly been laid upon his chairmanship of the Coal Industry Commission in 1919, but I doubt whether 989 even that achievement, measured in terms of value of service to the State, was greater than that which he rendered as a member of the India Round Table Conference and, in particular, as Chairman of the Federal Structure Committee of that body. There his professional abilities were so admirably supplemented by his human qualities of generosity, of accessibility, of sympathy and of geniality, that he was enabled rapidly to establish and firmly to maintain relations of complete confidence and cordiality with the varied representatives of India. Amongst his many loyalties and devotions were Oxford, his University, and the Middle Temple, his Inn. For all those and for other causes he strove ardently and unremittingly until gathering years and failing health brought his labours to a reluctant close. By all his collaborators, great and small, in those diverse fields he will be sincerely missed and mourned, and not less by those who admired his character, respected his talents and enjoyed his friendship within your Lordships' House.
§ 2.53 p.m.
THE LORD Bishop of ROCHESTERMy Lords, as you have heard, Lord Sankey was a distinguished and loyal son of the Church, and some voice from the Bishop's Bench, ought to pay tribute to that important aspect of his life and character. I am only sorry that the occasion has found me unprepared so that I cannot adequately express what the Church meant to him and he to the Church. As you have been reminded, when the Welsh Church was making its first difficult steps after Disestablishment, he lent it all the strength of his right arm. Also on many a Commission of the Church he gave without stint his time, his wisdom and his experience. Those who, like myself, met him on some of those Commissions fell beneath what I would call the spell of his large humanity, and as fellow Churchmen we looked up to him and admired him as one who "did justly loved mercy and walked humbly with his God."
§ 2.55 p.m.
§ LORD ROCHESTERMy Lords, after the eloquent and moving tributes from such distinguished and learned Lords and the right reverend Prelate, the Bishop of Rochester, a mere layman may well fear to tread. I do so because during the greater part of the time Lord Sankey was 990 Lord Chancellor it was my privilege to be a member of His Majesty's Government and to represent the Ministry of Labour, as well as my own Department, in your Lordships' House. Like the noble and learned Viscount who sits on the Woolsack, I well remember how ready Lord Sankey always was to help with wise counsel and advice, and I desire to pay my tribute to the then Lord Chancellor. It would be difficult indeed to exaggerate the kindness and consideration he was ever wont to show to his colleagues in the Government. He had a virile mind and a gracious disposition. Perhaps, too, I may be permitted to add a somewhat more intimate word. During the early part of the war, by accident of circumstances, it so happened that I lived for a few months in Oxford under the same roof as Lord Sankey and his sister, and I saw then something of the beauty of their companionship. Again, when I visited him in his last illness, I witnessed the patience and loving solicitude of his sister to whom he owed so much. Permit me therefore to pay this tribute, and to offer to Miss Sankey and to the other members of his family very deep and sincere sympathy in the irreparable loss they have sustained.