Evening Post. MONDAY, DECEMBER 17, 1934. PROTECTING THE BENCH

Evening Post, Volume CXVIII, Issue 145, 17 December 1934, Page 10

Evening Post. MONDAY, DECEMBER 17, 1934. PROTECTING THE BENCH

The House of Lords is an antiquated and , anomalous . assembly which cannot be justified on any ground either of principle or of convenience, but lingers on because since its appalling blunder in rejecting Mr. Lloyd George's Budget of ! 1909 resulted in the curtailment of I its powers by the Parliament Act of 1911 it has done very little mischief, and the representative substitute which was promised, or threatened, by the preamble to that Act has never taken shape. If in the pieReform era of the Napoleonic War the function of the House of Lords was, as Gilbert said, to do nothing in particular and to do it very well, he might have repeated the joke dur-' ing the last twenty years with a less severe strain upon his poetic licence. But even the severest critic of the House of Lords must admit that its activity last week" constituted a re-1 markable exception. On four con-, secutive days it was dealing with j three different issues of the first interest and importance, and dealing with them in a very striking fashion. On Tuesday Lord Motlislonc, having been accused by some of Lord Rothermero's papers of "distortion of the facts regarding air strength" in the course of the Defence debate, argued that "no member should venomously attack another on a matter of high public importance, thus discrediting not only the man himself, but Parliament."

Lord Mottistone's statement of principle was not challenged, but, as Lord Rothermere was not present, there was no debate. It was on the practice of the House of Commons that Lord Mottistone based his contention. But the most interesting features of the point raised by Lord Hewart on the same day could have no parallel ml the other place, for he was speaking as Lord Chief Justice on behalf of the Bench, and was answered by other Judges who, like himself, have "ex officio" seats in the House of Lords, but are disqualified for election to the Commons. On Wednesday and Thurs* jday tho Lords were discussing the Joint Select Committee's Report on the revision of the Indian Constitution—a matter on which the number of peerages bestowed upon Viceroys :and Governors and other distinguished members of the Indian Civil Service provides the House with an amount of expert and practical knowledge on the subject which certainly not the House of Commons, and possibly not even the India Qffice itself, can equal. On Friday Lord Hewart's point was fully debated, and a matter which had been left in a very unpleasant position by his unanswered speech on Tuesday was fully debated and satisfactorily settled. The occasion of Lord Hewart's intervention was the second reading of a Judicature Amendment Bill, which proposes to alter the constitution of the King's Bench and the Court of Appeal. He objected to a clause limiting the number of Judges to be appointed to the King's Bench on the ground that "this would put, the composition of the Bench iii the hands of the Government Whip,! which was an intolerable situation." Like every other Judge, Lord Hewart has a wholesome horror of the intrusion of politics into judicial appointments—an evil to which the! practice of selecting both the Lord Chancellor and the Lord Chief Justice from the political arena seems' to render Britain peculiarly suscept-; ible, yet which with her genius for making things work she has avoided to an extent unequalled in any other part of the world. It is on this ground that Lord Hewart has con-j sistently opposed the idea of a Ministry of Justice, which, as Lord Hailsham tells us in his speech on this Bill, wa3 first mooted when Lord Haldane was Lord Chancellor in 1913—the very,, year in which, Lord Hewart was first elected to the House of Commons. To Lord Hewart a Minister of Justice would mean the Government Whip. He prefers the system under which a Lord Chancellor whom he does not name said lo a Cabinet colleague who approached him when there was a vacancy on the Bench that, if he had come to press anybody's claims, he had better say nothing as it would only prejudice his chances.

. The other spqjcific point in the Judicature Bill to which Lord Hewart objected related to the proposed change in the method of appointing a Vice-president of the Court of Appeal, but both tin's objection and the other one were based upon»a broader ground than that of intrinsic demerit.

The Judges comphiinucl, ho said, that' ho was not consulted about cither the Commission appointed, to inquire into the working of the Courts or tho provisions- of the present Bill.

It was obviously neither courteous nor businesslike to ignore the Judges, in matters with which they have a special concern and a unique familiarity, and the opinion of "a high legal authority" that this procedure was "dreadful" indicates that jt was also contrary to precedent. If the Judges had been consulted it, is certain that the slight which the Bill was putting upon one of their number, with the inevitable suspicion of a political motive to aggravate it, could not possibly have been overlooked. Lord Justice Slesser, who was appointed by the Labour Government in 1929, would, under the rule hitherto prevailing, preside over the Second Appeal Court in the absence of his one senior colleague,

but he was told by the Master of the Rolls that under the procedure provitied by the Bill he would be displaced. "In a state of agitation," he consulted the Lord Chief Justice, who, though unable to sympathise with him as a politician, had no hesitation as a Judge and a fighting man in advising him lo fight.

Wo at the Law Courts have nothing lo do with, political opinion, said Lord Hewart. Lord Justice Slesser holds .some opinions with, which I profoundly disagree, but he is a Judge, a scholar, and a lawyer in whom I have- complete confidence. If Lord Justice Slesser did not preside over Court No. 2 it would vary the practice of the last 60 years. Under the Bill the Lord Chancellor can appoint whom he lilies to the Second Appeal Court. .

When the debate was resumed on Friday a very simple solution of the ! problem was proposed by Lord ! Reading, namely, that the new proi cedure provided by the Bill should stand, but that present members of the Court of Appeal should be excluded from its operation. The principle is a sound one and of constant application, but it seems to be perfectly clear that the clause was aimed at Lord Justice Slesser, not as a politician of the wrong colour, but as a common-law lawyer where one on the Chancery side was needed. The acceptance of Lord Reading's compromise has satisfactorily settled an interesting and picturesque controversy which hardly deserves the "Daily Mail's" description of it as "probably the , strangest historical drama that has ever occurred in the House of Lords." Lord Hewart is especially to be congratulated. He has asserted the rights of the Bench, he has saved a colleague from an unmerited slight, and he is happy in the assurance that "the old proposal of the Ministry of Justice is dead and buried."