The Sun.
London, England, 1846-01-14 00:00:00

SECOND EDITION

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LONDON, WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 14, 1846,

The legal profession has been lately agitated by the
exclusion of a Queen's Counsel from the bench of the
Inner Temple by black-balling ; and all the rest of
the world may fairly be astonished at discovering that
elections to the governing body of a society which
has important public privileges and duties, are made
by the governing body itself by way of ballot, and
one black ball excludes. It appears that the Inner
Temple is singular in this mode of election to the
bench. In the other Inns of Court the majority of
the bench elect, and the ballot box is unknown.

1 We are friends of vote by ballot for the election of
Members of Parliament, but we should not dream of
recommending that divisions should take place in the
House of Commons by ballot. The distinction be-
tween the two cases is, that in the first you want to
get the voter's own opinion uninfluenced by others,
and, in the second, that you want to keep the Mem-
ber's votes under the influence of his constituents and
of public opinion. The election is to give effect
to his wish. The Member of Parliament
has to vote in consistency with professions made to
constituents, and so that constituents may be able to
judge whether he is worthy of re-election_ Th.
elect.. 13 responsible only to his own conscience, and
to give effect to that responsibility publicity of voting
is not required. The Member of Parliament is respon-
sible to his constituents, and for this responsibility
publicity is absolutely necessary. And for the Benchers
of the Inner Temple to perform the duty assigned to
them by their constituent body of electing new
Benchers secretly is as outrageously absurd as it would
be for Members of Parliament to vote secretly in
divisions. They have to elect, not for the mere grati-
fication of their individual fancies and caprices, but
so as best to promote the interests of the society
which they govern, and of the legal profession.
Secret voting takes away all check. But bad as is
secret voting at all in this case, it is not only a bad,
but absolutely the worst possible, state of things, when
one capricious or malicious man may reject a candi-
date for the bench against the opinion of all his
colleagues.

We purposely abstain from entering into the per-
sonal questions connected with the recent exercise of
the extraordinary power given to any one Bencher of
the Inner Temple ; but we may mention that the
gentleman who has been excluded is a gentleman of the
highest literary accomplishments and of unimpeached
character, and that the cause of the black ball which
excluded him was, by the confession of the black-
balling party, a private quarrel, thirteen years old.
Can there be a stronger illustration of the objection-
ableness of this mode of election to the bench ?

The Inner Temple shares with three other Inns of
Court the power of admission and rejection for the
bar. The possession of this important privilege
makes this mode of election to the bench in the
Inner Temple a proper subject for the atten-
tion of Parliament ; and if the Benchers do
not themselves get rid of the present objectionable
practice, we trust that the House of Commons, which
interfered before in defence of Mr. WHITTLE HARVEY
from the Inner Temple Benchers, will turn its atten-
tion to the recent extraordinary case of black-balling
of a Queen's Counsel.
And there are other matters in connexion
with the Inns of Court which also impera-
tively demand the attention of Parliament. The
absence of all preparatory education for those
called to the bar—the absurd and expensive
forms imposed on law students, in place of education
given to them—the use made by the societies of the
fees which they levy by virtue of their privilege of
admission to the bar—and the religious distinctions
which they keep up by privileges for admission to the
bar to members of the Church of England, who can
alone graduate at Oxford and Cambridge —are
matters calling for Parliamentary inquiry ; and we
shall be glad if the recent extraordinary incident effec-
tually directs the attention of the Legislature to the
condition of the Inns of Court.

Too much can never be said in reference to the
encouragement, the emoluments, and the considera-
tion which should be extended—and that moreover
with an unstinting hand—to every department of our
naval service; from the admiral to the non-commis-
sioned officers, and from the non-commissioned officers
downwards. Neither is it possible to insist too re-
peatedly upon that national truism—that British
security rests almost exclusively in the hands of our
seamen, that the army is in every respect subordinate,
as a defensive power, to the Royal Navy ; and this
simply from two circumstances, first, our acknowledged
supremacy upon the ocean, but abstractedly from the
circumstances of our being an insular empire. Avoid-
ing those particular arguments upon this topic, which
have by repetition upon repetition been worn thread-
bare, and abandoning all those redundant and bom-
bastic allusions to the prowess of our sailors, as fitted
only for the novelist or the ode- writer, it will be
sufficient for our present purpose to utter a few
random commentaries upon her MAJESTY'S warrant,
bearing date December 19th last past, and compiled
for the express purpose of affording additional
encouragement to the privates and senior officers
in the army. In making this especial allusion to a
document, which has been promulgated now three
weeks since, we are desirous of abstaining from
anything like prepossession for or against either of the
two professions. However much an Englishman may
retain a certain innate bias in favour of his more
natural defenders, a sense of ordinary justice will
compel him to acquiesce in whatever beneficial ar-
rangements may be devised for the perfection or im-
provement of his military fellow-citizens, as some-
thing both reasonable and politic. Nevertheless, on
the appearance of any extensive and organised sys-
tem for the moral and pecuniary advantage of the
soldiery, it is but within the limits of impartiality
that he should look around him for some equally
generous concession towards the more important,
because the more indispensable upholders of the Go-
vernment ; that when he beholds the cuirass and
the shako be-burnished and be-brushed, he
should expect to find the Guernsey waistcoat and the
grazed cap of a smarter fashion or more durable
materials. So much indifference, so much negligence,
such continuous inattention towards the necessities or
the recompense of our naval forces, and such a
blindness to their real value, have severally been so
remarkable in the behaviour of our officials, as to
render us somewhat sensitive at any new slight upon
the service, and jealous of any exclusive benefit to
their brethren of the land. In the warrant to which
we make this particular allusion some very tempting
rewards are instituted, with the intention of luring
the soldiers into exhibitions of valour or into
regularity and unimpeachable sobriety of conduct,
besides investing a number of meritorious
veterans with badges emblematic of former courage
or excellence of behaviour. It is strange indeed, and
somewhat incongruous, to peruse the eighth article
of this warrant, declaring that all " soldiers recom-
mended to receive gratuity for good conduct shall, by
the approval of the Commander-in-Chief, be entitled
to wear a silver medal," when we remember that the
heroes who bled in the cause of humanity and free-
dom at the glorious victory of Algiers have never
yet obtained a recompense so trivial as an insignia
of this nature, even in copper. Among the
forty-four articles which constitute this military
sugar-plum, various rewards are invented for their
especial comfort and satisfaction. Two thousand
promotion from the
annuities, minor
pensions
a year for
ledsissetrribaumtioounnt,in
roanffekrsinagtsthoef daiscretion of the higher officers,
and divers other highly acceptable boons are showered
upon them with something little short of profusion.
To this we have not the faintest inclination to:
raise a syllable of objection or discontent i