The news of the death of Sir Herbert Stephen, Clerk of Assize on the Northern Circuit from 1889 to 1927, which we announced on another page to-day, will be received with great regret, especially by readers of The Times, who for many years have enjoyed his contributions to our correspondence columns upon legal and other topics of general interest. For logical thinking and lucid expression Herbert Stephen was probably unsurpassed as a newspaper controversialist, and his almost faultless command of English diction made his letters a delight, even if they provoked, as they often did, profound disagreement on the part of the reader with the views they expressed.
Herbert Stephen came from a family pre-eminent for its intellectual qualities, whose members have for a century and half played prominent parts in literature, law, and the public service. His great-grandfather, (born in 1758), was the associate of Wilberforce in slave emancipation and one of the founders of the ""; a great-uncle, Henry John, was the author of the famous "Commentaries on the Laws of England," still one of the students' textbooks most in use; his grandfather, Sir James Stephen, was Under Secretary for the Colonies, and was even better known as the author of "Essays in Ecclesiastical Biography" and other works of high literary merit; his father was Sir James Fitzjames Stephen the eminent Judge and legal and philosophical writer; his uncle was Sir Leslie Stephen, the first editor of the "Dictionary of National Biography"; one of his brothers (who succeeds him in the baronetcy) is Sir , formerly a Judge of the Hight Court of Calcutta; the other was J. K. Stephen, ("J. K. S."), whose premature death cut short a brilliant literary career; and a sister , was for many years Principal of Newnham.
Herbert, who was the Judge's eldest son, was born on June 25, 1857, and was educated at Rugby and Trinity College, Cambridge, where he took his LL.M. He was called to the Bar by the Inner Temple in 1881, reading with Baugh Allen, one of the last, if not the very last, of the Special Pleaders, and he was also one of the many brilliant pupils of Gorell Barnes, afterwards Lord Gorell He joined the Northern Circuit, where, with his name and pronounced ability, it might been supposed that a substantial practice awaited him, but this probability was never put to the test as in 1889 he was appointed Clerk of the Assize for the circuit, and his work in that capacity, with his literary and other interests, henceforth fully absorbed his life.
In the course of time he came to recognized as one of the leading authorities upon criminal law and practice, and it was an open secret that he was the trusted adviser of the Bench to a remarkable degree, and especially of new Judges. In conjunction with his brother, Sir Harry Stephen, he re-edited several times his father's famous works, "A Digest of the Criminal Law" and A Digest of the Law of Evidence"; and he also wrote "The Law Relating to Malicious Prosecution; A Digest of the Law of Criminal Procedure in Indictable Offences," "Prisoners on Oath, a book upon County Council Law, and a great number of articles in magazines and newspapers bearing upon the subject of criminal law.
But to the public at large the name of Herbert Stephen was best known through the letters which at short intervals have for 30 years or more appeared in The Times. They ranged over many subjects of controversy:"The Ethics of Betting," in which his chief opponent was the late ; "Prisoners on Oath" (a principle to which he was opposed); "Criminal Appeal" (which he favoured); "Crime and Insanity"; "The Age of Consent" (in which he pleaded for balanced judgment); "The League of Nations" (which , after the Italian bombardment of Corfu, he subjected to a pitiful analysis); and many others too numerous to recall.