'', 12 March 1896 In March 1881, though still a junior barrister, he was appointed a judge in the
Queen's Bench Division and knighted. At first he was hardly the success on the bench that his friends had predicted. He was often over hasty in speech, and he showed himself too impatient of slowness and dulness. These defects, however, wore away, and he became eventually the best
nisi prius judge of his time. On the criminal side, though his previous experience in that branch of the profession was small, he showed acuteness and broad common sense, with occasionally, as was observed, a slight leaning to the prisoner. But it is by the institution of the commercial court that he will be best remembered. He had always held strong views on the question of costs and of legal procedure, and shortly before his elevation to the bench he had served on a royal commission appointed to inquire into the former subject. Mathew was an advocate of
prison reform and for ten years was a member of the
Humanitarian League's Criminal Law and Prison Reform Department.
Creation of the Commercial Court In 1895 he persuaded the other judges of the Queen's Bench Division, in which
Lord Russell of Killowen had just been appointed Chief Justice, to assent to the formation of a special list for commercial cases to be heard in a particular court, presided over by the same judge sitting continuously and with a free hand as to his own procedure. Of this office Mathew was the first and by far the most successful occupant. He swept away written pleadings, narrowed the issues to the smallest possible dimensions, and allowed no dilatory excuses to interfere with the speedy trial of the action. His own judgments, ‘concise and terse, free from irrelevancies and digression,’ won the approval of all who practised in the court, and the confidence of the mercantile community. To a man of Mathew's alert, energetic, and radical mind the procedure in Chancery, especially in chambers, seemed a cumbersome survival of medievalism; and when sitting occasionally as a chancery judge he tried to introduce some of the reforms he had found efficacious in the commercial court. But the soil was not congenial, and some of his criticisms caused a good deal of umbrage to the members of the Chancery bar.
Royal Commissioner Shortly after the return of the
Liberal Party to office in August 1892, Mathew was made chairman of a royal commission appointed to inquire into the case of the evicted tenants in Ireland, with especial reference to their reinstatement and resettlement. The selection was not very fortunate. As a convinced home ruler and the father-in-law of
John Dillon, a leading Nationalist MP, he was regarded with distrust by the landlords and the Unionists generally. The opening day, 7 November was marked by a disagreeable altercation between the chairman and
Edward Carson. Following the example of
Sir John Day at Belfast, Mathew refused to allow cross-examination by counsel. Carson thereupon stigmatised the inquiry as 'a sham and a farce,' and Mathew pronounced this observation to be 'impertinent and disgraceful to the Irish bar.' Counsel were ordered to withdraw, two of the chairman's colleagues took speedy opportunity of resigning, and the landlords as a body refused to take any further part in the proceedings. The commission, however, continued to take evidence, and reported in due course; some of its recommendations bore fruit in the clauses of
George Wyndham's Land Purchase (Ireland) Act (1903). It should be said that the lines of procedure laid down by Mathew have been consistently followed in subsequent royal commissions.
Court of Appeal and death Probably owing to this episode Mathew was not raised to the
Court of Appeal until 1901. When Lord Halsbury proposed Mathew's elevation as Lord Justice of Appeal, Lord Salisbury considered "making Joseph Walton (judge)|[Joseph] Walton Lord Justice at once over Mathew's head". In the end, Mathew was duly promoted, and Walton replaced him on the High Court bench. In his new capacity he displayed all his old qualities of accuracy, common sense, and vigour, but he deprecated elaborate arguments and voluminous citation of authorities, the 'old umbrellas of the law,' as he used to call them. On 6 December 1905 he was seized with a paralytic stroke at the
Athenæum Club, and his resignation was announced on the following day. He died in London on 9 November 1908, and was buried in
St. Joseph's Cemetery at Cork. == Assessment ==