William Edward Hearn

William Edward Hearn (21 April 1826 – 23 April 1888)

In January 1859, Hearn stood as a candidate for the Parliament of Victoria, in a by-election for a seat in the Victorian Legislative Assembly, he was embarrassingly unsuccessful. The university's Chancellor, Redmond Barry, was not pleased with Hearn's attempts to enter parliament, and as a result the university council passed a rule prohibiting professors from standing for election, and even from joining any political group, a rule that would last more than a century.

Hearn was admitted to the Victorian Bar in 1860, although he only occasionally practised as a barrister. a political economy textbook which was well regarded by economists such as William Stanley Jevons and Francis Ysidro Edgeworth, although there is some indication that Hearn's book was derived from that of several less well known English writers. a work on British constitutional law, was praised by Dicey as teaching him more about the way in which early constitutional principles were developed than any other work. and a draft bill which ultimately entered parliament for consideration. The codification, influenced by positivist and utilitarian thought, was "based on a Benthamite-Austinian view of jurisprudence". Thus although it "provoked formal admiration... it was quietly abandoned in favour of simple consolidation."

Family and death

In 1847, Hearn married Rose Le Fanu, the daughter of a rector and they had six children: five daughters and a son. In 1877, Rose Hearn died. In 1878, Hearn married Isabel St Clair in Melbourne. as a summer residence. In 1888, Heronswood passed to two of his former studentsfirstly to Sutherland, and, on his death in 1903, secondly to H. B. Higgins, until his death in 1929.

Hearn died in Melbourne in April 1888, aged 62. He was survived by his son and three of his daughters.