Hugh McCalmont Cairns, 1st Earl Cairns (27 December 1819 – 2 April 1885) was an Anglo-Irish statesman who served as Lord High Chancellor of Great Britain during the first two ministries of Benjamin Disraeli. He was one of the most prominent Conservative statesmen in the House of Lords during this period of Victorian politics. He served as the seventeenth Chancellor of the University of Dublin between 1867 and 1885.
Background and education
Cairns was born at Cultra, County Down, Ireland. His father, William Cairns, formerly a captain in the 47th regiment, came from a family of Scottish origin which moved to Ireland around 1715. Hugh Cairns was the second son, and was educated at Belfast Academy and at Trinity College Dublin, graduating with a senior moderatorship in classics in 1838. In 1844, he was called to the Bar by the Middle Temple, to which he had moved from Lincoln's Inn.
In May of that year, he made two of his most brilliant and best-remembered speeches in the House of Commons. In the first, he defended the action of Lord Ellenborough, who, as President of the Board of Control, had not only censured Lord Canning for a proclamation issued by him as Governor-General of India but had made public the despatch in which the censure was conveyed. On the other occasion referred to, Cairns spoke in opposition to Lord John Russell's amendment to the motion for the second reading of the government Reform Bill, winning the approval of Benjamin Disraeli. Disraeli's appreciation found an opportunity for displaying itself some years later, when in 1868 he invited him to be Lord Chancellor in the brief Conservative administration which followed Lord Derby's resignation of the party leadership. Meanwhile, Cairns had maintained his reputation in debate, both when his party was in power and when it was in opposition.
- Hugh Cairns (died 1858), died in infancy
- Lady Lilias Charlotte Cairns (1860–1889), married Rev. Henry Nevile Sherbrooke
- Arthur William Cairns (1861–1890), 2nd Earl Cairns
- Herbert John Cairns (1863–1905), 3rd Earl Cairns
- Wilfred Dallas Cairns (1865–1946), 4th Earl Cairns
- Douglas Halyburton Cairns (1867–1936), married Lady Constance Anne Montagu Douglas Scott, daughter of William Montagu Douglas Scott, 6th Duke of Buccleuch
- Lady Kathleen Mary Cairns (1870–1939), married Archdeacon Edward Eliot