The Sun.
London, England, 1863-12-16 00:00:00

'THERMOMETER.

This day at Two o'clock

Barometer-29.85.
Wind—S.-W.; light, and fine.

-A-

LONDON, WEDNESDAY, DEC. 16, 1863.

There has hardly ever been a more popular legal
appointment than the one we had the especialsatis-
faction of announcing yesterday. Mr. Sergeant
SIIEE'S nomination as the successor of Sir WILLIAM
WIGHTMAN as one of the puisne judges in the
Court of Queen's Bench has afforded not less grati-
fication to the general public than it has to the
whole of that bar of which the learned Sergeant
has been so long and so distinguished an ornament.
Ia many respects the circumstances attendant upon
his nomination to this judgeship are very peculiar
and exceptional. His is the first instance in which
a Roman Catholic counsel has been raised to the
Bench since the date of the Reformation, He is so
raised, according to the express right assured to
Roman Catholic lawyers in this country by the
noble liberality inspiring and regulating every in-
dividual section of the famous act of Roman Catholic
E heipation. As is well known, that Act provides
thata
all judicial offices, with one only exception,
shall be freely open to Roman Catholics. That one
solitary ~,,esp
tion being the supreme judicial office
of all, that of the Lord High Chancellorship. As
that eminent, as that pre-eminent, legal functionary
is, in virtue
s office as Chancellor, Keeper of
the Royal Conscience, the exception there taken to
Boman Catholics as
aspirants to that highest legal
promotion of all was
'l .
a a manner, a thing inevitable
_after the RReformation,.
Lookinga back to a period
only immediately anterior
tote dateof the Reforma-
tion, ono cannot still but
remember, of course, that
in the reign of King HENt.I
theE
IGHTH the seals
of the Chancellorship were successively held
merely by two world-famed Iter,mi
Catholics,' not
but
two of them so renowned, as such,
that one of them
t
was a Cardinal (THGMAs WoLsEv), ,h„"e
the other
(Sir THOMAS MORE) actually died upon the
On Tower Hill under the headsman's
vin-
dication of the Pontiff's supremacy. still,
even with those two famous incidents recorded
in English History in association with the ouinst
office of the Lord High Chancellorship, it becaros,
as we have said, a thing inevitable after the date
of the Reformation that Roman Catholics should be
precluded by virtue of their religion from all
chance of ever occupying the Woolsack. The omis-
sion of this express exception from the Act of
Catholic Emancipation would, in effect, have been a
very obvious and a very flagrant anomaly. The
Protestant Church as by law established being
so established, it followed simply by neces-
sity that no Roman Catholic could be in-
ducted into the office of the Lord High Chan-
cellorship, one of whose significant titles it is,
as we hare said, to be Keeper of the King's Con-
science. Otherwise, than to that highest legal
a.PPolntmeet of all, Roman Catholic lawyers have
been legally eligible ever since the date of the com-
pletion of that nobly conceived and most magnani-
mous Act on the p4rt of England, the glorious Act
of Catholic Emancipation.e Accessible though the
Bench—not
Bench—
ever
since the
d'ao.t. e
ofWoolsack, but the
that Act has been to Roman
Catholics, it has eh chanced
that never yet has a
itoman Catholic lawyer been nominated to a judge-
--u oiipntil now, until these ict.
ntohf Mr. Sergeant
SHEE to the judgeship vacated b
Justice WIGHT:NIA:sr. ROW this ,e death of Mr.
as fallen out,
how it has come to pass that air. ,_r
fiat ofb e g eant. suEt's
appointment is the very
itssehtenee,k:pd:e these
Tinzes ;las, to-day, in one pithy
most gracefully, and most eulogistically, in hisd
regard as follows, namely, whero our coaternt,,,,,try
remarks—" If any Roman Catholic lawyer, 1%, ais.