The Express.
London, England, 1850-12-27 00:00:00

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,ONDON. FRIDAY. DECEMBER 27.

Wit know not whether the strange and questionable
scheme of judicial reform propounded by the Times is
to b 3 considered as quasi-ministerial or not. The
singularity of the form in which the project is pot
forward is obviously intended to signify precision in
familiarity with official intentions. Bat whether this
be regarded as a reality or an affectation matters
little. The drift and aim possess more claims to con-
sideration, for the change thus pompously preluded
is nothing lees than a subversion, under the name of
judicial reform, of some of the oldest and melt valued
political privileges of the people.
The due administration of justice has been hitherto
supplied to possess two great guarantees—the free.
dom of the courts front the control of the executive
power, and the direct accountability of that power itself
in the perilous of its principal officers of domestic ad-
ministration to the House of Commons. From the
most ordinary proceeding before • magistrate to the
gravest accusation in the Queen's Bench for tree-
Zoo, there is no particular or detail which the re-
presentative assembly of the nation does not claim a
right to be informed of fully and explicitly by the
functionaries in whose department such proceedings
have originated. So strongly is this felt to be an in-1
defeasible privilege of the Commons, that an At-
torney end Solicitor-Oeneral who were unable to
obtain seats in parliament would as a matter
of course be compelled to resign. And although it
was formerly deemed admissible that the Secretary
of State for the Hnme Department should be
a peer, it was only when the office of Under-Secretary
was filled by some person of weight and efficiency, or
when the ministerial leader in the lower house was
peculiarly qualified to undertake the responsibility of
bis colleague in the upper. For the last fifteen years,
with one WWI interval, the Home Secretary has
always been a member of the Commons; end the
practice had become more firmly established than
ever of requiring at his hands, as well as at those of
the Attorney or Salicitor-deneral, an aceount of
the mintier in which public justice has been adminis-
tared in the name of the crown.
Our cmtemporary, with an air of sublime simpli-
city, proposes to divest the House of Commons of this
priceless privilege, and to confer it on the House of
Leeds. A new cabinet minister is wanted, we are
told. His title is to be that of Lord Keeper; his
dignity is to be that of President of the Peers ; and
amongst his functions, which are all of them to be
of a political nature, those which we have named are
to be included. "He would direct government pro-
secutions ; he would regulate the assizes and special
commissions; he wood receive recommendations to
mercy or petitions for pardon, and advise the crows
in the exercise of the prerogative, &c." So that in
paint of fact this Grand Proareator is to be also Orand
Policeman, and finally Grand Pardoner of crime, real
or alleged, moral, sociul, and political: and all these
combined powers he is to exercise with no other
control than the one-sided control of the House of
Lords!
Nor is this all. The Lord Keeper " would preside
over the administration of justice; he would concur
with (garrre, control?) the tinges of the several
coolie in framing and sanctioning rules of practice;
—he would be responsible for legal appointments at
home and in the colonies:"—responsible to whom?
To the liege's, cipricinue, and anti-popular assembly
who halfa-doz in times in the year thick it worth
while to fill their gilded chamber at Westminster.
Time was indeed when each things might have been
seriously attempted in England; for time was when
ouch things actually were. The Lord Keeper was in
TUDOR (ley' a formidable personage, encompassed
with vast power and dispensing favours to the few
and terrors to the many, with a haughty hand. In
the reign of ELIZABETH one of the most me-
movable portions of his parliamentary duties
was to flout and scold the servile Cummins,
"by command of her highness," whenever they
presumed to pry too curiously or inquisitively into
the deep mysteries of state. And, doubtless, in an
age when the aristocracy were content to play the
part of palace sycophants, and the down-trodden people
dared not to remonstrate or resist any petulant edict
of royalty—when jurors were fined, sod judges die-
mince, for neglecting the known will of despotism
—and when parliaments were not summoned fur
many years in succession—a Lord Keeper may have
been rather • convenient, nay pernape we might
admit a sort of indispensable, instrument of arbitrary
Hut the idea of exhuming such • function as that
which appertained in tyrannous times to the
readiest and most bard-faced intriguer at court,
in order to invest therewith some lawyer
with party claims, and who nevertheless may
not be deemed trustworthy as • chief judge
in law or equite,—don seem to us, we own, one of the
craziest conceptions we have ever heard of. So far
from wishing to see • c incentration of judicial and
administrative authority in • single individual, we
have always been accustomed to regard the division
and distribution of those important trusts as one of
the fundamental guarantees possessed by the nation
for the preservation of its liberties. The courts of law
are amenable in theory to parliament alone ; in prac-
tice their responsibility is only to public opinion.
Their rules and orders are made by their own inherent
and plenary authority. Their sentences and sub-
sequent reeommendatioss are alike left wholly to
their free diseretiou. Hence the confidence reposed
by the public at large in their rectitude. Hence the
habitual respect paid to their decisions.
Bat if we could realise for a moment the condition
of things in which • thoroughgoing partizan of each
enecessimi administration was set to keep the judges
in order, to overhaul their practice, to fix the times
and places where they should sit, to veto or to fiat
sentences of every degree in the royal name, to
reward and to promote those whom he liked, and to
institute prosecutions for misdemeanor, breach of
trust, libel, sedition or treason itself, against each as
might have rendered themselves obnoxious to him or
to his party, and in all this to be responsible solely to
the House of Irreaponsibles in which be himself
should at the same time preside—how woos would
the fine gold of English justice become dim, and its
glory fade from the memories of men.
In the days of the STUARTS the office of Lord
Keeper in many respects resembled that of Chancellor.
The judicial and political functions sometimes were
united, sometimes were severed, according as the
convenience of party needed. But in this transi-
tionary stage, the office was one of air less power for
veil than in the days of the preceding dynast
Instead of bullying the judges and browbeating the
C 011111066 whenever the sovereign was out of
humour, the guardian of the great seal often
innitatod to incur the resentment of the latter.
mole the Revolution we hear no more of high
judicial pretensions. 'II* name and dignity of
tatfor took the place of Bum of Keeper; and
the Secretary of Stan fee the Home Department,
together with the law Olken a( the crown in paella.:
meat, became naturally and fitly responeible in • con-
stitutional system for the doe administration of poi,•
lie jesting. If changes are necessary in the marts of
equity we have no desire to see their &dooms ds
Jaya: and that acme are booms iadialwalahle all
pram who have thought span the subject divas-