For political success Cairns had several qualities of the utmost value--a stately presence, a clear head, a resolute will, and splendid oratorical gifts. He was not an imaginative speaker, nor fitted to touch the emotions; but he had a matchless power of statement, and a no less matchless closeness and cogency in argument. In the famous controversies of 1866, he showed himself the clearest and most vigorous thinker among the opponents of reform, more solid, if less brilliant, than was Robert Lowe. His diction, without being exceptionally choice, was pure and precise, and his manner had a dignity and weight which seemed to compel your attention even when the matter was uninteresting. A voice naturally neither strong nor musical, and sometimes apt to sound hollow (for the chest was weak), was managed with great skill; action and gesture were used sparingly but effectively, and the tall well-built figure and strongly-marked, somewhat Roman features, with their haughty and distant air, deepened the impression of power, courage, and resolution which was characteristic of the whole man. The qualities of oratory I have described may seem better fitted to a comparatively sober and sedate assembly like the House of Lords than to a changeful and excitable assembly like the House of Commons. Yet, in point of fact, Cairns spoke better in the Commons than he did afterwards in the Lords, and would have left an even higher oratorical reputation had his career in the popular House been longer and his displays more numerous. The reason seems to be that the heat of that House warmed his somewhat chilly temperament, and roused him to a more energetic and ardent style of speaking than was needed in the Upper Chamber, where he and his friends, commanding a large majority, had things all their own way. In the House of Commons he confronted a crowd of zealous adversaries, and put forth all the forces of his logic and rhetoric to overcome them. In the more languid House of Lords he was apt to be didactic, sometimes even prolix. He overproved his own case without feeling the need, which he would have felt in the Commons, of overthrowing the case of the other side; his manner wanted animation and his matter variety. Still, he was a great speaker, greater as a speaker upon legal topics, where a power of exact statement and lucid exposition is required, than any one he left behind him.