High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Hugh McCalmont Cairns, 1st Earl Cairns PC, QC (27 December 1819 – 2 April 1885) was a British statesman who served as Lord Chancellor of the United Kingdom 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.