The Press.
London, England, 1856-07-12 00:00:00

APPELLATE JURISDICTION BILL.

On the order for the second reading of this bill,
Mr. E. DENISON presented a petition from Lord
Wensleydale (who was present below the bar),
praying that the house would make such amendments
in the bill as would leave the royal prerogative and
his right to sit and vote in the House of Lords en-
tirely unaffected by the bill.
The ATTORNEY-GENERAL, in moving the second
reading of the bill, adverted to the grave complaints
made regarding the manner in which the appellate
jurisdiction was exercised in the House of Lords,
where the number of law lords hearing appeals was
seldom more than two, and sometimes only one. He
acknowledged that the question was beset with diffi
culties, but the evil was great and pressing, and
must be overcome ; and, unless some other scheme
could be devised which would effect the object of
establishing a tribunal of ultimate appeal that would
be satisfactory to suitors and to the country, he hoped
the house would not reject the present bill, which, if
passed, would always give three judges to hear
appeals. Sir A. Cockburn then adverted to the life-
peerage question, and defended the introduction of
this novel principle in the upper branch of the
Legislature on the ground that the choice of func-
tionaries to sit on appeals in the Lords would be much
restricted if limited to those members of the legal
profession who would accept, and could support, the
dignity of an hereditary peerage.
Mr. BOWYER opposed the bill. He proposed in
lieu of this scheme that a supreme court should be
established to hear and determine appeals in criminal
as well as civil cases. He moved as an amendment
that the bill be read a second time that day three
months. The chief feature of the bill was its operation
on the right of creating peers for life without seats in
the House of Lords. At present every peer was
entitled to a seat in the House of Lords by himself
or representative. The new life peers would not have
this power. Would they then bo eligible to be
elected to that house? If this new class of peers
became numerous, he conceived they could not long
be excluded from the House of Lords. This would
lead to an opposition of interests in the house itself
owing to two classes of men sitting together whose
powers were so widely different. He protested
against a measure of this kind being passed inciden-
tally, and under cover of a bill to amend the appellate
jurisdiction of the house. There were other anoma-
lies and absurdities in the bill ; for instance, the
title " Deputy-Speaker." These Deputy• Speakers
were not to act in the absence of the Speaker, but to
sit along with him. Could anything be more absurd ?
The bill did not decide whether the lay lords were
to take any part in appeals ; but the understanding
was that they would abdicate their functions. If so
the house would consist of a Speaker and two Deputy-
Speakers. The thing was utterly ridiculous. What
was worse, the house so constituted was to sit during
the recess. The House of Commons might justly
look with jealousy on such a measure.
Mr. R. PRILLIMORE seconded the amendment.
He did not believe the bill would remedy a third of
the evils complained of. It left untouched the great
practical defect, that of having two tribunals of
supreme and co-ordinate jurisdiction.
Mr. WifirrernE supported the second reading, and
defended the House of Lords as a judicial tribunal.
The imperfections now experienced were, he main-
tained, of brief existence and accidental origin. At
former periods the number of law peers who sat on
appeals Was amply sufficient, while their high
character and eminent talent rendered the tribunal
fully worthy of its exalted attributes. All that was
wanted was to provide for the intervals when, as at
present, age or ill health prevented some of those
peers from attending the house, and this, in his
opinion, the bill now before them would satisfactorily
accomplish.
Sir J. GRAHAM said, the bill presented itself in two
aspects; first, it disposed of the controversy as to
peers for life; secondly, it upheld the appellate
jurisdiction of the House of Lords. In respect to
the first, the bill, in his opinion, should either be
• rejected or referred to a committee, for at present it

653

left uncertain a great branch of the prerogative, and
he was satisfied that, if adopted, it would be neces-
sary to go on and to extend the creation of peers for
life to the army, the navy, and politics, and he en-
treated the house to pause before it passed a
measure which, for a comparatively paltry object,
risked the swamping of the House of Lords. With
respect to the other aspect of the bill, the new
appellate jurisdiction, it was, upon the face of it, he
contended, a delusion, not a reality. This new
tribunal was to sit during prorogation. What
did that mean? Then the judges were to be paid,
and the second clause excluded some high legal
personages. The bill, in his opinion, would debauch
both the bench at d the bar. The Crown would have
the power of ho d.ng out to puisne judges the pro-
spect of an appointment as deputy-speaker in the
House of Lords with a peerage for life, and the
expectation of one of inheritance. It was compe-
tent to the House of Lords, without the intervention
of the Commons, to mend their jurisdiction, which
might be done by a distribution of the business, in
classes, among the judges. Things, however, could
not go on, he observed, as they now were, for the exist-
ing appellate tribunal was very imperfect. He thoug
careful inquiry should precede legislation, and he
was in favour of a committee.

Mr. ROUNDELS. PALMER supported the second read-
ing, because legislation on the matter was absolutely
necessary and ought not to be postponed, and, though
he thought the details of the bill timid and imperfect,
they were not beyond remedy in committee. The
alternative proposed by Sir J. Graham, of classifying
the appeals, and distributing them among commit-
tees of the judges, which merely evaded the difficulty,
would not bear examine ion. He objected to re-
moving the judicial function from the House of
Lords, either to rite Privy Council or to a new tribu-
nal. He thoueht the administration of justice and
the House of Lords received, mutually, dignity front
the exercise of the appellate jurisdiction by that
house. Upon the subject of life peerages Mr.
Palmer avowed his strong opinion to be that the
Crown did possess the power of creating peers for life.
He did not think, he said, that the prerogative of the
Crown was invaded by the limitation which the bill
imposed to meet a practical difficulty, or that it
would, as argued by Sir J. Graham, undermine the
hereditary character of the peerage. He thought
the bill would be a barrier against the extension of
life peerages. In its details the bill was defective :
as regards the number of judges it was defective.
If passed in its present form, with only two judges
with the salary of puisne judges, it would be a
miserable failure. He supported the second reading
on the ground—that the bill went on the principle of
forming in the House of Lords, and as an integral
part of that house, and therefore no fiction, a tribu-
nal which should be found sufficient to perform all
the duties of a final court of appeal. He took the
principle of the bill to be that they should retain the
court of appeal in the House of Lords, and on that
ground alone he gave it his support.
Mr. COLLIER supported the bill, which was, he
said, a practical measure, meeting a practical griev-
ance by a practical remedy. If the suggestions of
the Solicitor-General, in his evidence before the
Lords' Committee, had been adopted (and he should,
he said, move to embody them in the bill), there
would be a court of appeal of an extremely satis-
factory character.
Mr. J. PHILLIMORE opposed the bill as a most
dangerous and unconstitutional measure. He urged,
as the proper remedy, the removal of the appellate
jurisdiction from the House of Lords, and constituting
a separate and supreme court of appeal.
Lord J. RUSSELL saw no immediate or pressing
urgency for any great reform in the appellate juris-
diction of the House of Lords. If there were such
urgency, let the tribunal be, he said, not in the
House of Lords, but let it be one complete in itself,
composed of the most eminent men, and let not the
prerogative be fettered and curbed. He should give
his decided vote against the second reading of the
bill.
The SOLICITOR-GENERAL observed that the House
of Lords, in its judicial capacity, at the present
moment, failed to give satisfaction, and while it re-
mained in that condition all our judicial institutions
must be unsatisfactory too. Then the question was
whether the constitution of the appellate jurisdiction
should be altered, or an ancient tribunal should be
pulled down iu order to establish a new tribunal.
He thought it better to improve than to pull down
merely for the sake of change. Regarding peerages
for life, it belonged to the House of Lords, he
observed, to determine who shoul I be admitted a
member, and this bill, as he read it, left the question
of prerogative in no respect effected except in a
manner perfectly constitutional—namely, for the
purposes of the act, it put a limitation upon the
number of peers to be created for life, with the right
of becoming members of the House of Lords. Was
the house, he asked, prepared to reject the mea-
sure because it put this limitation upon the preroga-
tive, which the House of Lords considered to be