The Port of Spain City Corporation has designated tomorrow Maxwell Philip Day.

The highlight of this will be the launch of a collection of essays about Maxwell Philip edited by Selwyn Cudjoe.

It is titled Michel Maxwell Philip - A Trinidad Patriot of the 19^th Century.

Michel Maxwell Philip, lawyer, novelist and civil servant was one of Trinidad and Tobago's most distinguished citizens of the 19^th century. Author of Emmanuel Appadocca: A Tale of the Boucaners (1854), Philip served as Solicitor-General, Mayor of Port of Spain and an unofficial member of the Legislative Council and acted on several occasions as Attorney General. Philip also piloted the bill that annexed Tobago to Trinidad in 1888.

Although his colour prevented him from reaching as high as he wanted to reach in the colonial society (he was one of the most accomplished lawyers of the Caribbean), Philip remains one of the most important Caribbean activist-intellectuals of the second half of the nineteenth century. Because he was coloured he was never appointed attorney general, although it was acknowledged he was more than qualified for the position, an Englishman was always given the post.

The essays in the book are designed to give the reader a sense of who Philip was, what his contemporaries thought of him and how he was assessed by those who came after.

Cudjoe says the book was necessary "because we are going into a new century without knowing enough about our past. How many people today know for example about Joseph De Suze who wrote the Little Folks Trinidad or LB Tronchin who was one of the great Creole intellectuals of the 19^th century."

Philip was born at the Cooper Grange Estate, Naparima on October 12, 1829. He attended the Public School of San Fernando until he was 14 after which he was sent to St Mary's Catholic College, Blairs, Scotland where he received a classical education.

On his return to Trinidad in 1849 he was attached to Henry Hart, a solicitor, where he prepared himself to undertake legal studies. Two years later, he returned to England, entered middle Temple and was called to the bar in 1854. It was during this period he published Emmanuel Appadocca. It was republished in 1893 and last year by Cudjoe. When Philip returned to Trinidad and until his death, he devoted himself to his law practice.

Cudjoe contends that to understand people like Philip is to understand ourselves and where we came from a little better.

"A close look at the ways in which our forbears struggled to come to terms with questions of cultural adaptation; domestic relations; ad scientific problems can really free us up to speak about those problems today. A look at the 19^th century can give us some tools to understand even the problems of domestic abuse that consume us now. A culture that has a history of women being seen as men's property; or the church's response of seeing adultery as a sin; or a homophobia that still finds it difficult to accept homosexuality and lesbianism as choices people make; is a society that is not willing to examine the role sexuality plays in our personal and national development. Although the 19^th century does not provide many explicit guides to behaviour, we can see how many of our attitudes towards sexuality have been shaped by some of those prohibitions," says Cudjoe.

Philip, Cudjoe says, definitely paved the way for the black fraternity in law that is so common in this century and certainly were he entering law now his colour (he was a "red" man) would not keep him back from aspiring to the office of Attorney General.

In her essay on Philip, Bridget Brereton notes his position in society was ambivalent.

"As Solicitor General and often acting Attorney General, he was entitled to move in upper class society. But his colour excluded him from the higher ranks of Port of Spain society, which were still rigidly while. On the other hand he was the most prominent and most admired ember of the coloured elite. For this group his successes were important and gratifying."

What was he like in appearance?

We have this account by CLR James republished from The Beacon and included in the essays.

"Whenever the Hon. Michel Maxwell Philip, QC was engaged in a case it was always an exciting adventure to go into the Court. To begin with there was the man himself, 6 ft 2 ins in height, and broad in proportion; handsome as few Creoles have been, with that prominent nose and fire in the eye, which warned you at first glance that here was one marked out from birth to lead his fellow, carrying easily a dignity, which in a lesser man might have been pomposity."

Of his childhood James tells us: "Michel Maxwell Philip was born n the 12^th October, 1829 at Cooper Grange Estate, South Naparima.

Speculation is rife as to the exact facts of his parentage. It is not important in a sketch of this kind. It is sufficient that he was an illegitimate child, offspring of a white owner and a coloured woman on the estate. Nor would this fact be mentioned at all, but for the strong influence it had on Mr. Philip's outlook on life."

James further tells us that while in England he married Eliza Englehart with whom he later had two daughters. Archbishop Spaccapietra with whom he became good friends was godfather to one of them, while the English Archbishop who succeeded him was godfather to the other. However it is clear that he later had other children. The Allongs of San Fernando are relatives and one member Richard Allong, brother of Jemma Allong Redman, has been working on establishing a family tree.

James also tells us that as Mayor he was "active in all good works, especially the beautifying of the City. He built the big arch of the Cemetery Gate in Philip Street."

He spent so much of the Council's money on improvements to the Poor House that his enemies in the Council pulled him up for exceeding his powers.

When he was at home, after dinner he would spend a lot of time in his library.

"There he spent an hour or more with his daughters and their aunt. Sometimes he gave them lessons in Italian.

"Sometimes there was music of which he was very fond (in early life he played the guitar and the flute). But more often they sat and he talked to them, with his elbows apart on the table, his hands together and his face resting on them." He also loved the garden and worked in it every morning.

But he was also very extravagant, "chronically so," and died in debt says Brereton in her essay. But he should have been in the later period of his life, she notes, a relatively wealthy man. His salary as solicitor was over £1,000 all told and his private practice was extensive. In 1886, he was also made Standing Counsel for Venezuela at £500 a year. Often and for long periods he acted as Inspector of Schools.

She describes him as "lax about money matters, absurdly generous and ostentatious, money meant nothing to him...this explains the position of his unmarried daughter after his death, petitioning for a gratuity on the grounds that she had been left destitute."

She was eventually granted £100.

His personal life may not have been a success but his achievements were legend in his time and Cudjoe believes they should be placed in the body of work on West Indian and Trinidadian heroes.

The reception and book launch take place tomorrow at 4.30 p.m. at the Auditorium, Port of Spain City Hall.