It is part of our English system to expect of our professors, however eminent they may be, that they should examine undergraduates, serve on boards, committees, syndicates, and take an active part in University and College affairs. Maitland did not seek to escape any duty which he might be expected to discharge. He examined five times in the Law Tripos, twice in the Historical Tripos and three times in the Moral Science Tripos. From November, 1886, to January, 1895, he served as secretary to the Law Board, and always took an active share in its work. He was a member of the Library Syndicate (helping to redraft its regulations), he served on the General Board of Studies, and in 1894 was elected to the Council of the Senate. Nobody is so valuable on a committee as a good draftsman and Maitland's quick and exact draftsmanship caused his services to be highly esteemed by any board or syndicate of which he was a member. "He took," says Mr Wright, "little part in the discussions of these bodies unless he had something definite to say, but was always ready to state his views on being appealed to, and it is not necessary to say that they always carried great weight." The Dean of Westminster, who for some time sat next to him at the Council meetings, was impressed by the "sagacity and courage" of his judgments in the interpretation of statutes. "'I always stretch a statute,' he whispered to me once half humourously. He seemed to be making the law grow under his hands[22]."
In the public debates of the Senate House he was rarely heard, but when he spoke there was a sensation. Academic oratory is generally above the average in tone and ability, but is seldom spirited or passionate, and often goes astray into subtleties and side issues. In the judgment of some members of his audience, Maitland's speaking was quite unlike any other oratory which was heard in Cambridge. The whole man seemed quick with fire. His animation was so intense that it hardly seemed to belong to a northern temperament, expressing itself with dramatic force in every line of his eloquent face, in every movement of hand and arm and in the rhythm of the body which swayed with the spoken word. The language of his speeches, which had been carefully thought out, was clear and weighty, full of pungent humour and unexpected turns, and stamped with the impress of a restrained but vehement idealism. The speech on Women's Degrees was a masterpiece after its kind and very little was heard of a proposal to establish a separate University for Women after Maitland had suggested that it should be called the "Bletchley Junction Academy"--"for at Bletchley you change either for Oxford or for Cambridge."
