The Sun.
London, England, 1865-07-07 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

TIMES.—On the resignation of Lord Westbury the
Great Seal will be for the second time intrusted to
Lord Cranworth. At the present conjuncture no
better appointment could be made. Lord Cranworth,
though arrived at the age of 75 years, still retains
his judicial faculties unimpaired. He is a sound and
painstaking lawyer, and in the many offices he has
successively filled has acquitted himself always with
the highest credit. After having been Solicitor-
General, a Baron of the Exchequer, a Vice-Chan-
cellor, and a Lord Justice of Appeal, he was made
Lord Chancellor in the Aberdeen Ministry in
1852, and retained his high office until the resigna-
tion of Lord Palmerston in the spring of 1858.
There was a complaint at the time that Lord Cran-
worth did not show himself sufficiently sensitive to
the necessity of legal reform. It seemed that his
mind belonged to that order, so common among
successful lawyers, which is content to work a tra-
ditional system, mending it from time to time by
overruling this or that decision, or legislating on
matters of detail, rather than to the class which would
reform whole departments of jurisprudence on the
basis of reason and experience. But though Lord
Cranworth would not move very fast, he was a sure-
footed lawyer, and seldom proposed anything the
objections to which had not been adequately consi-
dered and removed. In the ordinary duties of his
office he gave general satisfaction. He was ac-
quainted with the law of equity which he was called
upon to administer, and though succeeding the most
accomplished master of that branch of legal learning,
he ably maintained his reputation and the efficiency
of his court. On the Woolsack he was, we believe,
uniformly respected and liked ; and he has preserved
the good opinion of the Lords during the eight
years that he has been among them in a private
capacity. A still more important recommendation
to Lord Cranworth is the high chara/ter he has
always borne. No man who ever sat on the
Woolsack was more free from all suspicions of
favour or nepotism. His appointments were almost
always good ; the judges, especially, whom he
placed 'n the Bench were beyond doubt the most
able men who could be found at the bar. We
may, therefore, at a time when it is necessary that
the Lord Chancellor should be above all suspicion,
congratulate the country on the appointment of
Lord Cranworth. There is a general feeling that
serious irregularities are continually taking place in
the lower departments of the judicature. The
Bankruptcy Courts are, it is believed, especially.
tainted. The number of persons against whom de-
linquencies have been proved is considerable and it
is due to the rest, as well as the public, that :a close
examination of this department should be made by
severe and impartial inquirers. Even to deal with
the persons implicated in the scandals which have
recently occupied public attention is a delicate and
difficult task, and one Which requires that he who
undertakes it should be a man of known probity and
purity of motive. Inquiries of this kind involve
something more than a mere affirmative or-negative
decision. After the precise degree of blame is de-
termined, there then remains the question of punish-
ment, and it must be that where the magistrate who
dismisses an official appoints his successor there will
be a tendency among the expelled delinquents to
ascribe improper motives to their judge—a charge
to which many will be willing to give ear if they
find relatives or favourites appointed to the vacant
posts. No one is less likely than Lord Cranworth
to give occasion to any such remarks. No office in-
decently grasped, no pension carelessly bestowed, is
likely to mark his administration. It is clear also
from the cases of Messrs. Edmunds and Winslow
that the watchfuiness of the Chancellor must not be
confined to Bankruptcy. Lord Cranworth will pro-
bably have to show himself for some time a stern en-
forcer of official morality, and to do this it is fitting
that no one should be able to speak lightly of him or
of any one upon whom he has conferred office. For
these reasons we think that Lord Palmerston has
wisely advised the Qceen to call Lord Cranworth
again to her councils. There are other men whose
appointment would have been approved by the
country, but hardly one who is so well fitted for the
post at the present time. The Great Seal will, we
believe, be surrendered by Lord Westbury at Wind-
sor to-day, and be at once delivered to Lord
Cranworth. For the present, the number of Law
Lords in the House is not increased, and however
much we may respect the eminent men who have
risen from the bar to the peerage, we must confess
a feeling of satisfaction that it is not necessary to
ennoble another lawyer's family. Recent events
make us more than ever regret the decision of the
Lords against the legality of peerages for life in the
case of the chief dignitaries of the law. The lawyers
on that occasion, headed by Lords Lyndhurst and
Campbell, succeeded in alarming the house by the
prospect of its independence being destroyed by an
influx of Crown nominees. So the old doctrine that
the Sovereign could make a peer for life, though not
for a term of years, was overthrown, or interpreted
to mean the conferring of a merely honorary title,
giving no seat in Parliament. Yet the Lords, in
common with most thinking people, must know that
it would be a good thing, to lawyers at least, if this
ennobling of middle-class professional families could
be brought within narrower limits. The state of
things is this—that whereas there is no positive
necessity to place men of other callings in the house,
it is necessary for the conduct of the judicial as
well as the legislative business that a certain num-
ber of laWyers should have seats. Other men arc
advanced to the house for extraordinary claims ; the
lawyers as a necessary part of the machinery of the
State. If, then, it be unavoidable that a number of
lawyers should sit in the house to act as judges,
they should sit there under other conditions than
those men who are raised to it for extraordinary ser-
vices in war, or government, or diplomacy. Under
the present system, either the number of law lords
must be restricted and the interests of suitors suffer,
or a number of lawyers' families must be unnecessa-
rily ennobled. The difficulty might occasionally be
avoided by choosing for a high appointment a man
who has no son; but few will deny that the necessity
for such a selection is the severest condemnation of the
system. With every precaution, however, it cannot be
avoided that a number of new families should be in-
troduced into the order of nobility, and at this time,
though there are only three or four law lords in the
house fit for regular work, the number of men who have
inherited or will inherit law peerages conferred within
the present century is very considerable. It is not
only in the interests of the House of Lords that we
speak ; but we believe it is not for the public benefit:
that every lawyer who rises to eminence should have
to choose lietween foregoing the highest honours of
his profession and burdening his children with use-
less dignities. Hereditary peerages might, as now,
be given for very distinguished services, but a sys-
tem by which the leading lawyers should be placed
in a position analogous to that of the bishops would,
we think, be found advantageous to themselves and
to the public. If the Queen had the power of at-
taching peerages for life to certain high judicial
offices, a sufficient supply of able lawyers would be
provided for the house, and these,
possessing as they
would a large professional income, would be free
from that urgent temptation to provide for needy
but ennobled descendants which now besets every
Chancellor who has a family. If the life peerage
for the great offices of Lord Chancellor and Lord
Chief Justice were the rule, and the hereditary peer-
age, given for long and extraordinary services, were
the exception, the happiness and morality of the
lawyers and the interests of the public would all be
advanced.

HERALD.—A visitor is travelling towards us from
the East whese approaches are of awful meaning.
Nearly 200 persons died of cholera on Sunday week
last in the hospitals of Alexandria. To Egypt the
malady has come, singularly enough, from the hot
regions of Central Asia, where it has rarely been
known, and, considering the rapidity with which it
has propelled itself westward, we must expect a
recurrence, more or less severe, in the autumn, of
the disease that, a few years ago, affrighted London
especially. If, however, we allude to this probability
it is with no view to the creation of any panic.
They talk in sanitary journals of predisposing causes,
and fathomless was the science expended, not many
weeks ago, on the Russian recurrent fever, in con-
nection with this question; but there are some coarse
truths which all the world will admit. We are
draining our towns, well or ill as the result may
prove ; but we have generally settled that refuse
and dirt accumulations of putrid animal and
vegetable matter, the blood and offal heaped up in
slaughter-houses, the outpourings of gas, che-
mical, bone, and, glue works, breweries, distilleries,and the thousand nameless pollutions infecting a
great city, are unwholesome. When the cholera
comes, it fastens and feeds, as a matter of course,
upon them. Well, with the prospect of a danger-
ous, or at all events a critical autumn before us, how
do we stand ? The Thames is not so corrupt as
formerly. The main-drainage works are beginning
to operate beneficially, although their value has been
prodigiously overrated. The River Lea and the
Chadwell springs have been partially reclaimed from
filth, and the open channel of the New River is under
better supervision ; but we tell the public, with this
spectre of an epidemic menacing it from the East,
that death lurks in the cistern no less than in the drain.
It is latent in slate tanks, old wine, pipe, and butter
tubs coated with lead and pitch ; it is cultivated by
a process of poisonous vegetation, blended with soot,
dust, and dirt, not to speak of young birds, rats,
and cats ; and unsophisticated householders or lodgers
complain that the water supplied to them by the
companies is often impure ! When is it not ? When
is it even sufficient ? The disgust and misery of the
poorer classes in the metropolis might answer that
question ; but, let the rich leave them to suffer in
the dark, and they themselves would soon shudder