Birkenhead, F(rederick) E(dwin) Smith (1872–1930)

British lawyer and Conservative politician. He was a flamboyant and ambitious character, and played a major role in securing the Anglo-Irish Treaty in 1921, which created the Irish Free State (now the Republic of Ireland). As a lawyer, his greatest achievement was the Law of Property Act of 1922, which forms the basis of current English land law.

During the Irish crisis of 1914 over the granting of home rule, he joined with his fellow Conservative Edward Carson in organizing armed resistance in Ulster. Although often characterized by the press and political contemporaries as a swashbuckling orator, Smith proved himself a tireless, responsible, and far-sighted statesman. He also wrote a number of popular literary works.

Legal career Smith was born in Birkenhead, Merseyside, the eldest son of a local estate agent, and was educated at the gramar school there. Inheriting his father's political and legal ambitions, in 1895 he received a law degree at Wadham College, Oxford. In 1899 he became a barrister, ending three years of teaching law at Oxford. He began to practise in Liverpool, and enlarged his reputation through involvement with a number of causes célèbres. In 1906 he was elected Conservative member of Parliament for the Walton division of Liverpool.

Political career Smith's first speech in the House of Commons 1906, an outright attack on the government and free trade, lifted the depression from which the Conservative Party was suffering after its crushing defeat at the polls, and established Smith as a brilliant speaker. His prominence grew, and in 1911 he became a privy councillor. On the formation of the first wartime coalition ministry in May 1915, he became solicitor general, and six months later Attorney General with a seat in the cabinet. The latter office he held again in the second coalition of December 1916.

In January 1919 Smith became Lord Chancellor. His originality and strong personality were felt throughout the House of Lords, and he showed a generosity and breadth of view that compelled those who had thought of him merely as a combatant lawyer to change their views. He took a prominent part in the negotiations that led to the signing of the Anglo-Irish Treaty, earning the respect of the Irish delegates and overcoming the animosity he thus aroused among his former Conservative associates. During Stanley Baldwin's second government, Smith became secretary of state for India in 1924, but his position became controversial and he resigned in October 1928.