learned friend, whose great experience, varied opportunities, and profound knowledge upon such matters, justly entitled him to great weight in this discussion. It was, he could assure the house, the universal opinion at the bar, that the retiring salaries of the judges ought to bear a nearer proportion to their full emoluments; he was therefore one of those who thought the proposed scale was a bad one, and particularly respecting the arrangement for the chief justice, who was to give up so much valuable patronage for so inadequate a compensation as 800l. additional a year. There was no comparison between the duties of the chief and puisne judges, and it was of the utmost importance that the former should be so placed, from the dignity of his station, in a capacity to exercise that proper sway which the due discharge of business required, and which could not be practically effected, if the four sitting judges were to be nearly of co-ordinate influence. Every man conversant in the business of the courts must be aware how useful it was that the chief should be invested with extrinsic and intrinsic authority, so as to keep a proper sway over the proceedings of the courts. The

fact was, that in any court where business must be done, a great deal depended on the lead which should be taken by the chief judge. Whatever was done, therefore, in diminishing the emoluments of the chief justice, must pro tanto diminish that sway in kind and station, as compared with that of the puisne judges, with which it was for the good working of the business of the court he ought to be clothed. Besides, a chief justice had, as he

had already stated, a quantity of business peculiar to himself, beyond all comparison greater than the other judges; let them remember how it amounted in Lord Ellenborough's time, when on one occasion he had to dispose of a Guildhall paper, containing 588 causes, which he did to the astonishment and admiration of the profession. The business was not now so great as it was then, but still it was five times greater than in the time of Lord Mansfield; the proportion was as 60 to 350. When he spoke of the superior and heavier duties which devolved upon the chief justice, he begged not be considered as disparaging the puisne judges, many of whom (particularly those in the Court of King's Bench) he had known at the bar, and more learned and virtuous men he did not believe existed; he wished merely, when he alluded to them, to speak of the comparison of labour in the courts. The puisne judges had the whole adjournment from the 28th of November till the 23d of January. The chiefs, it was true, did not go the spring circuits; but then they had their nisi prius sittings, from nine o'clock every morning until four o'clock, the constant taking down of evidence, which was so much more laborious than merely hearing arguments at the bar-this business of what Mr. Bentham would call "singleseated justice," fell heavily and laboriously upon them, and the chief had always the great responsibility of dispatching it. As a proof of the superior sway which attached to the chief justice in proceeding with business, he remembered that shortly before Lord Ellenborough retired, one

or

or two of the puisne judges were in the habit of sitting for him by turns, at nisi prius; but, vexed one morning at the accumulating arrear of business, his lordship, as if by a sudden illumination which was to shine out before his mental light became eclipsed for ever, resumed his place in court, and swept away in the course of that single sitting seventeen causes, which stood in the way of the regular and quick dispatch of business. It was this consideration of the value and the great additional labour of the chief judge, which induced him to say that 800l. a year additional was no compensation for the office-no remuneration for the proposed transfer of its patronage, (containing, among others, two offices which sold for 20,000l.): and therefore he complained. His next objection to the scale was regarding the vice-chancellor-an office now filled by Sir J. Leach, than whom there was not in the profession a more learned ornament. The lord chancellor was of course a learned man-a very learned man-he must be deemed the most learned of the lawyers; but still the value of all these acquirements must be measured by their public utility, and that almost entirely consisted in their application to the dispatch of business: it was there that the vice-chancellor shone conspicuous, for he did nothing else but decide causes. He sat in his court, not from eleven to two o'clock, but from ten to four-ay, and he used to come down while suffering excruciating torments from indisposition, and when his physician said that he was fitter for his bed than for the bench-nevertheless,

the vice-chancellor was in his court, and despatching business. He was therefore to all intents and purposes a judge, if the person deserved that name who was really a judger. He knew many who thought so, and even those who would rather run the risk of having their causes hastily decided before the vice-chancellor, than never have them decided at all elsewhere. And yet this was the judge whose salary in the scale was to bear no adequate proportion to that of others in the same line of rank. God wot, where was the comparison of giving 7,000l. a year to the master of the rolls, and 8,000l. to the chief barón? The business of the master of the rolls was nothing compared with the vice-chancellor's, who had the court of chancery business, in fact, to perform. This scale, therefore, was wrong, and must be altered. He also thought that the salary of 8,000l. a year for the chief justice of the Common Pleas trod too closely upon that of the chief of the court of King's Bench, who was chief justice of all England. As to the salary of the puisne judges,—and he spoke it in a place from which his expressions would in a few hours be conveyed to the bench,he thought the proposed scale too high, and that they would be well and truly paid with 5,000l. a year. When he said this, the house must feel he gave a disinterested opinion; for it was not pleasant to speak in reduction of the incomes of those in whose presence he must spend nearly the whole of his time, and where it was desirable for him professionally to hold a good understanding: still he must say, that 6,000l. a-year was for them

quite an extravagant remuneration, and he believed there were none more surprised at it than the judges themselves. He saw that the whole bar in Westminsterhall were in one ferment of astonishment at the proposition on the morning after it was made, and they naturally compared the emolument and the duties with those of other offices. There was the speaker, the first commoner in England, an office of great responsibility and heavy labour, attended with very great expense, admirably sustained at present, as all must know who partook of the dignified and splendid hospitality of the speaker's mansion; and yet his salary was only 6,000l. a-year What comparison was there between his necessary expenditure, and that of a puisne judge who had only the circuit expense to maintain? Then there was the office of secretary of state for the foreign department, who had to maintain the national hospitality on a suitable scale, in the presence of foreigners of rank,-who had his household expenditure also swelled by the nearly constant maintenance of messengers,-who, besides, had no house provided for him, and indeed whose business consisted of no sinecure; for he had to listen to the ambitious pretensions of the holy alliance, to fence off all their meditated attacks upon public liberty, in the best way he could,-to keep them off his hands; and he had no doubt it required all his great ingenuity to do so, to make excuses of all kinds for them both in and out of the house-to correspond back and forwards with these good people-to tell them that to attempt in England to assist in some of

their projects would be just as much as his head was worth; then to manage matters in debate in parliament; and yet all this for 6,000l. a-year! The puisne judges were only plagued all day with the lawyers, but the foreign secretary was plagued with them all night,not so satisfactorily, indeed, for either party; for the lawyers had often a chance of gaining a cause by day, but they had little or none when they grappled with the right hon. gentleman by night. On the whole, he thought 5,000l. a-year was quite enough for the puisne judges: he would propose, then, at once, to lop off 500l. from the resolution of 5,500l. a-year. Let him not be told of the refusal of professional gentlemen to ascend to the bench for such a salary. It was easy for a lawyer to say, I would not take it; but there were two ways of making the offer, which reminded him of an observation of a humorous friend, who was also of the profession, who had said that it was one thing to ask a man to take a dram when the bottle was on the table before him, and another to say "Sir, will you allow me to send to the cellar for a flask to refresh you?" Only let the appointment be offered to the bar, and then they would see who would refuse it. As to the independence of the judges, the king had properly said that he looked upon it as the best means of upholding the dignity of the administration of justice, and also as being the most conducive to the honour of the crown. Here the hon. and learned gentleman referred to the message from the late king to parliament, which made the judges not removeable on the demise of the crown, and

pointed

pointed out the popular mistake which attributed to George the Third the first step for rendering the judges independent, whereas it was taken by King William, the late king only altering the act of parliament to make them survive the demise of the crown. The next point to which he would direct the attention of the house was the impropriety of the translation of judges from one office to another. This looking up for promotion on the bench, as in the church, naturally tended to make men look rather to their maker, than to the public good. He would not say that within his time and experience he had seen any bad consequences arise from the ambition to obtain such promotion-he had certainly never seen it to operate among their criminal judges, (he only spoke of them, and not of the office of chancellor, which being partly judicial, and partly political, must of course more expose the possessor to influence)-among them he certainly had never observed it. He could not, however, as an honest man,

say

that he had not sometimes seen a certain effect on some judges from particular bias-he admitted it to be rare, and accountable from peculiar circumstances-but generally the bench was admirably filled. Still the crown ought, for its own sake, to remove the sort of tendency to which he alluded, or the possibility of its existence. If they wished to preserve the purity of the judges in the public esteem, they ought to put them above suspicion. He foresaw the difficulty which would be opposed to his proposition, and the choice which would be left to him between the positive prohibition to

translate a person of high merit in default of finding any candidate so competent, which might occur once in half a century, and, the other danger which he dreaded of constant translation. Between those two evils, he would elect the first. He did not wish to be driven to a legislative remedy. He rather chose to embrace, by a resolution of the house, the principle which had, in the very same manner, been adopted for the basis of that brilliant act of the last reign, which professed in the preamble the same intention which he now held-that of securing the independence of the judges. The case of Baron Eyre, who was promoted to be chief baron, and then chief justice of the Common Pleas, was, he believed, the only one of the kind up to that period. He would, he confessed, have less dread of the translation of a master of the rolls to the same office. In the latter case, the individual was not so likely to feel the conflict of interest and duty, as in the former. He would have no predispositions as to questions of political libel-he would have no peculiar feelings acquired from judicial habits in administering the law of high treason-nor in any of the great questions which affected the interests of the crown, the revenue, or the tithes. His wish was, however, to emancipate them altogether from any bias on their judgment, and from any suspicion of bias in the public mind. He did not recollect any other instance of this kind of translation up to the time of the regency. But of late years the practice had increased, so that in 13 years there had been no less than six acts of judicial translation. This

was

was enormous. The first of these cases was that of Sir V. Gibbs, a man of very strong political character; and therefore, in ordinary calculation, liable in a considerable degree to the influence to which his observations referred, though, as he very willingly admitted, in practice a very pure, impartial, and enlightened judge. He was attorney-general in very troublous times; then was made a puisne judge of the common pleas, and after that chief baron of the exchequer; then chief justice of the common pleas; and he might have been chief justice of the king's bench; but his infirmities grew upon him so fast, that he died in a year or so after his last promotion. The next case was that of Baron Thompson, a truly venerable judge- no man more readily admitted his high qualities and judicial excellence, his eminence as a lawyer, and his amiable disposition. He was first a master in chancery, then a puisne baron of the exchequer, then chief baron. And here he could not but observe how groundless were the fears of not being able to get able men to accept these offices. A master in chancery had one of the easiest and most lucrative situations under the crown; and yet Chief Baron Thompson gave up all the delights and advantages of it to go into the exchequer, one of the dullest courts in the universe, to attend the Old Bailey, and to drudge upon the circuit; he (Mr. Brougham) having seen him upon the northern circuit in his turn for many years. At that time, too, the salaries were much less than at present. The next case was that of Baron Richards, first solicitor-general, then puisne baron,

1825.

then chief. Mr. Abbott, the present chief justice, was a puisne judge. He admitted that no man more able, more perfectly competent in all respects, could have been chosen. Justice Dallas was the sixth case, and that of Justice Best was the seventh, and all in thirteen years. Why, it was vain to talk of any other rule: this was become the common practice. In his opinion this was the wrong course they ought not to put the judges in that situation in which translation placed the bishops, where their duty to the public and to their patrons must conflict with each other. A year ago every chief in Westminster-hall had been promoted from an inferior judgeship. The lord chancellor had been chief justice of the common pleas, Chief Justice Abbott had been puisne of his court, Chief Justice Dallas and Best, and Chief Baron Richards, had all held places as puisne judges. Every one of the arch-judges had been a common judge translated, as an archbishop was generally made from a bishop. This ought not to appertain to the appointment of a judge, who was to be watched by a jealous bar and a no less jealous public. Men were but men. It was not enough that those who held that sacred office should be put out of the way of temptation-they ought to be placed above the suspicion of it. Reverting to the difficulty which he had before mentioned, he preferred shutting out the promotion of the most deserving judge once in fifty years, and amidst a dearth of the requisite talent, to leaving the subject so open to jealous animadversion. He meant no offence to any one