In personal appearance Sir Alexander Cockburn was of small stature, but great dignity of deportment. He was fond of yachting and of sport, and was engaged in writing a series of articles on the "History of the Chase in the Nineteenth Century" at the time of his death. He was fond, too, of society, and was also throughout his life addicted to frivolities not altogether consistent with advancement in a learned profession, or with the positions of dignity which he successively occupied. At the same time he had a high sense of what was due to and expected from his profession; and his utterance upon the limitations of advocacy, in his speech at the banquet given in the Middle Temple Hall to M. Berryer, the celebrated French advocate, may be called the classical authority on the subject. Lord Brougham, replying for the guests other than Berryer, had spoken of "the first great duty of an advocate to reckon everything subordinate to the interests of his client." The lord chief justice, replying to the toast of "the judges of England," dissented from this sweeping statement, saying, amid loud cheers from a distinguished assembly of lawyers, "The arms which an advocate wields he ought to use as a warrior, not as an assassin. He ought to uphold the interests of his clients _per fas_, not _per nefas_. He ought to know how to reconcile the interests of his clients with the eternal interests of truth and justice" (_The Times_, 9th of November 1864). Sir Alexander Cockburn was never married, and the baronetcy became extinct at his death.
AUTHORITIES.--_The Times_, 22nd of November 1880; _Law Journal_; _Law Times_; _Solicitors' Journal_, 27th of November 1880; _Law Magazine_, new series, vol. xv. p. 193, 1851; Ashley's _Life of Lord Palmerston_; Nash's _Life of Lord Westbury_; "Reminiscences of Lord Chief Justice Coleridge," by Lord Russell of Killowen, in the _North American Review_, September 1894; _The Greville Memoirs_; Croker's _Correspondence and Diaries_; Justin M'Carthy's _History of Our Own Times_; Serjeant Ballantine's _Experiences; Bench and Bar_, by Serjeant Robinson; Fairchild's _Life of Lord Bramwell_; Manson's _Builders of Our Law_; Burke's _Peerage_, ed. 1879; Foster's _Peerage_, 1880.