JAMES

See also:

• JAMES BRYCE (1838- )

BRYCE (1838- )  , British jurist, historian and politician, son of James Bryce (LL.D. of Glasgow, who had a school in Belfast for many years), was born at Belfast, Ireland, on the loth of May 1838 . After going through the high school and university courses at Glasgow, he went to Trinity College, Oxford, and in 1862 was elected a fellow of Oriel . He went to the bar and practised in London for a few years, but he was soon called back to Oxford as regius professor of civil law (1870-1893) . His reputation as a historian had been made as early as 1864 by his Holy Roman Empire . He was an ardent Liberal in politics, and in 188o he was elected to parliament for the Tower Hamlets division-of London; in 1885 he was returned for South Aberdeen, where he was re-elected on succeeding occasions . His intellectual distinction and political industry made him a valuable member of the Liberal party . In 1886 he was made under secretary for foreign affairs; in 1892 he joined the cabinet as chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster; in 1894 he was president of the Board of Trade, and acted as chairman of the royal commission on secondary education; and in Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman's cabinet (1905) he was made chief secretary for Ireland; but in February 1907 he was appointed British ambassador at Washington, and took leave of party politics, his last political act being a speech outlining what was then the government scheme for university reform in Dublin—a scheme which was promptly discarded by his successor Mr Birrell . As a man of letters Mr Bryce was already well known in America . His great work The American Commonwealth (1888; revised edition, 191 o) was the first in which the institutions of the United States had been thoroughly discussed from the point of view of a historian and a constitutional lawyer, and it at once became a classic . His Studies in History and Jurisprudence (1901) and Studies in Contemporary Biography (1903) were republications of essays, and in 1897, after a visit to South Africa, he published a volume of Impressions of that country, which had considerable weight in Liberal circles when the Boer War was being discussed . Meanwhile his academic honours from home and foreign universities multiplied, and he became a fellow of the Royal Society in 1894 . In earlier life he was a notable mountain-climber, ascending Mount Ararat in 1876, and publishing a volume on Transcaucasia and Ararat in 1877; in 1899-1901 he was president of the Alpine Club .