for patient and methodical industry, indefatigable energy, and great determination, combined with a very delicate sense of honour. Only a conscientious aversion to engaging in the struggles of party politics precluded him from aspiring to judicial office. His belief, which is entirely uncontroversial nowadays, that judges should be appointed solely on merit regardless of political affiliation, won little support in his lifetime. Eloquently, but in vain, he argued of the dangers of cutting off every road to the Bench other than the House of Commons, and warned that this would result in the appointment of men who had either lost their legal practice, or had never had any. As regards law reform, he was a staunch conservative, due to what Ferguson describes as "a respect for the law which could be called reverential". Family Fitzgibbon married in 1835 Ellen, daughter of John Patterson, merchant, of Belfast, by whom he had one daughter and two sons: Gerald FitzGibbon, Lord Justice of the Irish Court of Appeal (died 1909), and Henry Fitzgibbon M.D. (died 1912), a distinguished doctor and vice-president of the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland. His elder son was the father of a third Gerald Fitzgibbon, who followed his father to the Bench, becoming, on the establishment of the Irish Free State, one of the first judges of the Supreme Court of Ireland. Ellen died on 23 January 1885. Fitzgibbon's nephew, another Henry Fitzgibbon, was Recorder of Belfast. His family were members of the Church of Ireland. References 1793 births 1882 deaths 19th-century Irish lawyers 19th-century Irish writers Irish Anglicans Irish Queen's Counsel Writers from County Limerick