The Sun.
London, England, 1832-08-18 00:00:00

most exposed to suffer from displeasing the
great. A mechanic or a labouring man may he
ignorant, but he is independent ; he may be
bought, but he can hardly be intimidated. But
a shopkeeper or a tradesman cannot be indif-
ferent to the loss of valuable customers—Sir
John, or my Lord Thomas, may be an excellent
customer to the sadler of a country town, who,
though he may hold his money in high regard,
may deem him a very unfit person to be trusted
with the purse of the nation. We have not for
some time said anything of the Ballot, because we
knew we might thereby have done mischief, and
could not have done good. We could not have
obtained any attention to the proposition in
Parliament ; and by urging the measure at an un-
suitable season, the good which we have ob-
tained might have been endangered. But now
that the Reform Bill is safe, there is no longer
any motive for silence. We have, therefore, no
hesitation in following up the recommendation
of our excellent correspondent, by a strong in-
junction to voters to make it everywhere a con-
dition sine qua non with candidates that they
shall support the Ballot. Electors of all opi-
nions have a common interest in the Ballot.
A Tory tradesman and a Tory tenant may suffer
from a Whig customer and a Whig landlord, as
wellasa Whigtradesman and tenant from a Tory
customer and landlord. If the electors are wise,
then, they will make the refusing to pledge for
the Ballot the unpardonable sin. We have no
patience with those who oppose it. They are
tyrants in their hearts, whatever their pretences.
No honest man ought to insist on a state of
things by which men are exposed to the hardship
of injuring themselves in their interests, or to the
crime of offering up their conscience a sacrifice to
their interests. It is not by being mealy-mouthed
that the electors will get anything.. They must
have no mercy with those who hum-and-ha on
this subject, and pretend they have not made up
their minds on the question. This is fraud.
Every man has made up his mind on it long ago,
though every man has not the courage to tell the
truth.---Morning Chronicle.
We are glad to see the Lord Chancellor at
work with the strange jurisdiction now exer-
cised by the House of Lords. We know not
whether he proposes to establish an Appeal
Court for all appeals whatever now carried to the
House of Peers, or merely to confine his mea-
sure to the establishing an Appeal Court, con-
sisting of the Chancellor, the Chief Baron of
the Exchequer, the Master of the Rolls, and
the Vice Chancellor, to which appeals may be
brought from the decisions of any one of these
Judges when sitting alone. The House of
Peers are de facto in possession of the appellate
jurisdiction ; but it has been contended, and with
great show of reason, by able writers, that they
ought not to possess it. Chief Justice Hale, in
his elaborate work on tire Jurisdiction of the
Lords House of Parliament, edited by Hargrave,
says that the appellate jurisdiction is not right-
fully possessed.
" If this should be (urges Sir Matthew) that the su-
preme jut isdiction without appeal, the dernier resort, were
to the House of Lords, then is the Legislative power vir-
tually and consequently there also; or, at least, that
power lodged in the King and both Houses were insigni-
ficant. For what if the House will give judgment against
an Act of Parliament, or declare it null and void ? If
they have that dernier resort, this declaration or judgment
must be observed and obeyed and submitted unto irreme-
diably ; for no appeal lies from their judgment, if they be
the Supreme Court. And if it be said, this shall not be
presumed they will do; I say, if this position were true,
they may if they will ; and the laws of this kingdom
have better provided for the preservation both of the King's
rights and the people's, than to put them and all the laws
of the kingdom into the power of the Lords, though
otherwise their justice should be unquestionable.
" The truth is, it is utterly inconsistent with the very
form of a Gov.rnment, that the supreme power of making
laws should be in the King, with the advice of both his
Houses of Parliament, and judgment should be in one of
the Houses with the King and the other. A supreme
power of making laws should be thus in the King and
monarchical; and the supreme decisive power or jurisdic-
tion, and dernier resort, should be radically in the Lords,
and so ari,tocratical. Therefore, it is not only a fact, true
in our Government, but it is most necessary, that the su-
preme decisive power or jurisdiction, and the dernier re-
sort, must be where the legislative power is. And it is
impossible it should be otherwise, unless we wholly dissolve
the legislative power of the whole body of the Parliament,
King, Lords, and Commons, and put it into the House of
Lords ; who, by their supreme decisive power, without
appeal, and as the dernier resort originally radicated in
them, may at their pleasure render the legislative power
idle, vain, and insignificant.
" And by this, which has been said, any man with half
an eye may see the great inconvenience of lodging any ju-
risdiction at all in the House of Lords singly, except
touching their privileges ; and upon what great reason
this jurisdiction came to be disused by their noble ances-
tors, whose sense of the common good of the King and
kingdom, yea, and of their own posterity, did at last re-
linquish the exercise of jurisdiction singly for some hun-
dreds of years. And it is this :
" The High Court of Parliament, consisting of the King
and both Houses of Parliament, are certainly the only
Supreme Court of this kingdom, to whom the devolution
of the last appeal, or dernier resort, sloth belong. And
the Lords are a constituent part of this Supreme Court ;
without which, as no law can be made, so now final un-
appealable judgment can be given. Though it cannot finally
and without appeal be given by them, so it cannot be given
without them. If, therefore, the Lords should have a
power of jurisdiction, an appeal must necessarily be to the
whole Parliament, King, Lords, and Commons. And yet
the Lords, without whom such judgments cannot be re-
pealed, should, if they should have or exercise such a
judicial jurisdiction, be prejudiced necessarily by their own
judgment, and an anticipation of that determination, which
(as parts of the true supreme power) they must now revers:
s * • • • • 4,
" And all this inconvenience would be remedied, if, ac
cording to the ancient course in wri,s of error, and ac.
cording to the method propounded, as well in writs o

. .
error as appeals from decrees, a certain select number of

the Lords,- with the Judges, were commissionated by the
King to examine, Lear, and determine errors in judgment
and decrees. For that would not engage the whole House ;
but they would be free to give their judgment upon ap-
peals to the whole Parliament."
_ _

Sir il'Atiw thus
IN power - "---•- "
or a Further appeal to the
whole Parliament, in perspective. No man
would now wish to see such a farther staae of
appeal. The appellate jurisdiction of the House
of Lords is only tolerable so long as the Lords
leave the decision to the Chancellor and one or
two judges, like the late Lord Redesdale, who
are qualified to assist him. The Lords never
take part in a decision without doing mischief.
Cases have occurred, and we could name them,
in which certain Peers, who never attended ap-
peals on other occasions, took a part ; but the
decision, for various reasons, was not supposed
more upright by the unusual assistance given by
such Lords. It is, we conceive, disgraceful to a
civilised country, that appeals in the last resort
should be to a body of men, who, if free from
suspicion (and they are not always so), cannot
possess the necessary qualifications. Any Peer,
without knowing anything of the cause, but a
great deal of the parties, may not only vote him,-
self, but procure others to vote. Responsibi-
lity is diluted in the proportion in which it is
decided. The Lord Chancellor's decision is
likely to be far better than a decision in which
the whole flouse should vote, and better than if
any ten were to vote. A tribunal, to be respected,
must possess both qualification and respectabi-
lity. It is necessary that the Scotch should
have a Court of Appeal out of their country ; for
the peurervidum ovation Scotoruni requires to

be kept in check by England. In fact, the
community is too small to afford at all times an
unprejudiced tribunal. But then the people of
Scotland ought not to be thrown at haphazard on
hereditary Judges, with or without qualification.
Of some of the Judges to whom the Scotch
have been handed over of late, their total igno-
rance of Scotch law is what is least to be ob-
jected to in them. A large body of men cannot
act as a tribunal ; and as the jurisdiction can
only be exercised by few, it is better surely that
the few should be obtained by selection, on ac-
count of qualification, than by accident. We
would as lief take the mode of settling causes in
some of the forest Cantons of Switzerland,
namely, seize the first three men who happen to
pass along the road as Judges, than take Judges
at random from the House of Peers. 'When-
ever they have interfered they have done mis-
chief ; the good has been done by their non-in-
terference. We are pleased, therefore, to see
the Chancellor grappling with this abuse. If
the remedy do not go far enough, it will lead to
further attempts.—Morning Chronicle.
The Lord Chancellor, since he came into
office, has been pretty constantly employed in
preparing the public, by anticipatory flourishes
of the trumpet, for the important and beneficial
alterations he intends to accomplish in every
department of the law, and more especially in
the high Court over which it is his good fortune
to preside. We think werecollect a speech of his
in the House of Lords, almost coeval with his
elevation to the Woolsax, of some six hours' du-
ration, that speech being an abridgment merely of
a preceding one addressed to the House of Com-
mons, in which he promised to establish Local
Courts for the recovery of debts in every part of
England. With respect to this nothing is yet
done, and the project seems to be abandoned,
so that all the talk went for nothing ; unless, per-
chance, it might have had the effect of rendering
some very simple persons less contented than
they were before with the existing provisions for
the administration of justice. The Noble Lord
has made, we believe, some dozens of speeches
on the subject of Chancery reform, each differ-
ing essentially from that which preceded it, and
each promising that some very magnificent and
comprehensive measure would speedily be brought
forward. It is perhaps a fortunate circumstance
that the doings of the Noble and Learned Lord
bear so small a proportion to his sayings. Ex-
cepting the establishment of the new Court of
Bankruptcy, in respect to which, we are informed,
the commercial world do not in any degree sym-
pathise with his Lordship's feelings of parental
fondness, and which imposed upon the No-
ble and Learned Lord the onerous duty
of exercising immediately patronage to an
extent greater than would, in all proba-
bility, have fallen to his lot for several
years were he so long to retain possession of the
Seals—with this exception, we know of nothing
that the Noble Lord has yet done, unless we
are also to reckon the abolition, which was lite-
rally forced upon him, of a few sinecure offices,
in exchange for the contingent and precarious
patronage of which he obtains the solid personal
advantage of an additional thousand a year
from the moment he quits the Woolsack to the
day of his death. It is very well for the Lord
Chancellor, if he can find no better employment
for his time, to talk heavy pamphlets, and as
many successive and amended editions of them
as he likes, in the House of Lords ; but nei-
ther the country at large, nor even the mem-
bers of the legal profession, can derive much
benefit from, or be expected very attentively to
consider, any exposition of reform to be made
next year, when it is known that the projector is
much too ingenious a person to entertain next
year, with any degree of exactness, the same
views which he has unfolded this_ year. The
opportunity which a change of the plan would
afford to make a new speech, and to get him-
self praised afresh in the Newspapers, presents a
temptation in itself more than sufficient to in-
duce a vain man, like the Lord Chancellor, to in-
vent, if possible, some variation or other in the
scheme which he has once unfolded. There is
one part of the project which the Noble and
Learned Lord unfolded on the last night of the
Session of which we incline to think he will be
as tenacious as can be desired. Now that Par-
liament has made a provision which he deems
sufficient for the sustentation of the Great Seal,
the Noble Lord is suddenly struck with the
gross and pernicious anomaly that the Lord
Chancellor should be an officer removable at
pleasure. This is an exceeding.y good notion
of the Noble and Learned Lord, and we advise
him by all means to stick to it. The provision
was made by the House of Commons, with re-
ference expressly to the precariousness of the
office of Lord Chancellor, and to the multipli-
city and diversity of its present duties and re-
sponsibilities. This the Noble and Learned
Lord contrives very dexterously to overlook.
But he shall here speak for himself:--
"He was aware that if the measure stopped here,
though great improvements would have been effected, :still
that enough would not have been done ; for it was his
fixed opinion, and one by which he was desirous to be un-
derstood that he should abide firmly, in spite of objections
from quarters that were entitled to much respect, and who
were opposed to him on this point, that these great changes
were absolutely necessary in the constitution of the high
office which he unworthily had the honour to bold. He
was convinced that we could not much longer remain with
that great, not to say gross or grievous, but certainly strik-
ing anomaly, that the highest Judge in the country—a
Judge who might often be called on to decide between the
subject and the Crown, and on the rights of the Crown
itself--was a Judge removable at the pleasure of the
Crown, and yet that to him, sitting alone, was entrusted
not only the disposal of property, but the settling of thm
amount, anti that that
Judge was, whether he willed it or not, a political as well
as a Judicial character ! It was only necessary for him
to fill their Lordships' minds with the re,sons with which
his own was so strongly impressed to make him certain
that they would agree with him that much longer this
anomaly could nut last. What was then to be done ? To
separate the functions now exercised by this high officer
—not to let him be at once a Judge sitting alone, a Judge
removable at pleasure, the Speaker of that House, an
official adviser of the Crown, and performing that which
was incident to the Speakership of that House ; functions
that ought not to be exercised alone, but with the advice
and assistance, and under the control, of others. If this
were done a great anomaly would at once be put an end
to; and this might be done without any increase of pa-
tronage, and without the expenditure of nne shilling of
the public money. His opinion was, that the provision
made by Parliament for the sustentation of the Keeper of
the Great Seal was most amply sufficient, and that that
Officer of State and great Equity Judge should be im-
moveable."

This is speaking for himself indeed, and to
the purpose ; nor can any body now doubt that
the Noble and Learned Lord is a very provident
and excellent manager of his own affairs. This
eminent person procures the passing of an Act,
creating a new jurisdiction in bankruptcy, by
which he obtains the immediate enjoyment of
much valuable patronage. But the same mea-
sure deprives him of kes and emoluments to a
considerable amount. Some delay then takes
place in providing the proper compensation for
this loss of income, and during this interval the
Noble and Learned Lord proposes extensive al-
terations in his Court, saying nothing, however,