The Sun.
London, England, 1866-11-26 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

TIMES.—Few Judges have ever retired from the
Bench with a more enviable reputation than Lord
Chief Justice Erle, who will, we believe, take leave
of the Court over which he has so long presided this
morning. Yet he has never courted popularity; as
an advocate, he was never engaged in such memor-
able causes as have immortalised the names of
Erskine and Brougham; as a member of Parliament
he did not aspire to be a debater ; as a Judge, he
was the last man to deviate a hair's-breadth from
the narrow path of duty for the sake of passing ap-
plause. His success in both capacities was not only
fairly, but even slowly won. For years he followed
the 'Western Circuit without getting more than a
stray brief, and when at last he gained an exten-
sive practice he was matched against several more
brilliant competitors. That he was able to hold his
own among them and ultimately to lead the Circuit
was due to sheer force of character, indomitable
perseverance, and unswerving integrity. These
qualities were eminently characteristic of him during
an experience of more than twenty years in the
Queen's Bench and Common Pleas, and to these he
added a transparent and enthusiastic love of justice,
which is not more common among Judges than
among other men. Judicial impartiality of a lower
order is a virtue by no means difficult of attainment.
It is cultivated almost unconsciously by legal habits
of thought, favoured by a sense of self-respect, and
strongly fortified by the wholesome restraints of
professional honour and public criticism. Even this
kind of impartiality, however, is not always proof
against such temptations as those of political, reli-
gious, or national prejudice. But to love justice
supremely for its own sake, to keep its principles
ever present to the mind in the daily administration
of the law, and thus to impart the dignity of a
moral sanction to every sound legal judgment, is a
much higher and much rarer gift. It is chiefly
because he was justly believed to combine it with
great legal acquirements, and to make a conscience
of everything that he did or said in public, that
Chief-Justice Erle, like Sir James Patteson, in-
spired a confidence which so many Judges
of equal learning and ability have failed to secure.
It may appear strange that we should mention
among the distinctive features of Chief Justice
Erie's career the fact of his having been a Scholar
of IVinchester and a Fellow of New College, Oxford.
There is too much reason to fear, however, that
Judges who have received a Public School and
University education belong to a type which is
gradually dying out. The present Lord Chancellor,
the present Attorney-General, and the present
Solicitor-General have none of them, we believe,
enjoyed either of these advantages, as they used
formerly to be considered ; and if Mr. Karslake is
to be the new Solicitor- General, his name must be
added to the non-academical list. At this moment,
graduates of Oxford and Cambridge are in a de-
cided minority on the Common Law Bench, and the
disproportion is most conspicuous among the re-
cently appointed judges. This may or may not be
a subject of regret, but it is certainly a coincidence
worth notice, since it directly affects the character
of the law as a learned profession. The great
luminaries of the bar and bench in former times
were generally " scholars and gentlemen ;" their
youth had been spent in mastering the ancient lan-
guages, and their writings bristle with classical
quotations. Such accomplishments are no doubt
still to be found among eminent barristers and
Judges, but they are constantly becoming more
scarce, and the opinion is gaining ground that Uni-
versity honours do not conduce to success at the
Common Law Bar. This has sometimes been at-
tributed to the enervating effect of academical studies
and interests uponyoung men destined for the rough
work of advocacy ; but this cause, so far as it has
any operation, must have operated since the earliest
beginnings of English jurisprudence. The works of
Coke are full of allusions to the repulsive aspect of
legal treatises, and the necessity of disciplining the
mind for an apprenticeship to the law. Refined
and speculative intellects must have been as
liable to be disgusted with technical lore when
Latin, Greek, and Mathematics ruled supreme at
the Universities as they are now when these
faculties share their dominion with philosophy,
history, natural science, and modern literature.
Sensitive temperaments must always have shrunk
from the rude encounters and keen personal com-
petition in which robust natures appear to rejoice
and thrive. In short, the reason why comparatively
few of the greet prizes of the law fall to the share
of University men is not to be sought in their de-
ficient energy, but in the greater diffusion of wealth
over the community. A few generations back the
Bar, like the Church, was recruited almost entirely
from that class which alone could then afford or
appreciate a liberal education. It is now 'open to all
the world, and there are thousands of parents who
' never took a degree themselves, and have no desire
to give their sons a University education, but who
are perfectly willing and able to bear the prelimi-
nary expense of a start at the Bar. It is no secret
that Sir William Bovill will accept the vacant Chief
Justiceship, and Mr. Karslake, as we have already
stated, is designated as his successor. The former
appointment is almost a matter of course, and no
Conservative lawyer at the Common Law Bar holds
a higher position than Mr. Karslake. We cannot
forget, however, that he has never sat in Parlia-
ment, and is not known to have paid any attention
whatever to politics. For this purpose he must be
regarded as an untried man, and it would be too
much to expect that he can for some time to come
fill Sir Hugh Cairns' place in Lord Derby's Adminis-
tration. Unfortunately, the Attorney-General,
though a veteran member of Parliament and keen
politician, has taken hitherto but little part in de-
bate, and we cannot look upon his late address to
his constituents as an encouraging specimen of his
statesmanship. The run of good luck, as the world
calls it, which has fallen to Lord Derby's lot in re-
spect of legal vacancies has, in fact, led to a very
curious result. He will have adorned the Bench
with one Judge of remarkable, and with two others
of respectable, political cspacity, and he will have
for his law officers two gentlemen of high standing
in their profession, but with little or no established
influence in the Housef of Commons.
DAILY NEWS.—A gaping wonder at the battle of
Sadowa is the motive, or excuse, of a daily out-
pouring of foolishness on the subject of the reor-
ganisation of our army. That abroad, in States
where the Government lives in perennial fear of its
subjects and cupidity of its neighbours, a striking
victory should be enforced as a reason for persuad-
ing the country to double the troops at the Govern-
ment's disposal is very easy to be understood. But
that we in England should have our minds unhinged
by the fact that it has been proved in Germany that
the Austrian army is not superior to the Prussian,
as we formerly supposed it was, is certainly a re-
markable consequence of a single campaign. It is
of course well that in regard to the points which
that campaign showed to be important we should
take warning. It demonstrated that stragetic skill
in the closet is of even more value than martinet
precision on parade, and therefore whenever we can
find an English Moltke, we shall do wisely to sub-
stitute him for the Duke of Cambridge and General
Peel. It proved that better arms give to one side a
marked superiority over the other, and therefore it
is well that we are going to put breechloaders of the
best construction we can get into the hands of all
our troops. But it is certainly hard to see how it
has demonstrated either that our present army is
insufficient for our home defence, as the recruiting
commissioners tell us, or that the right way to in-
crease it and make it popular is, as the Times in-
sists, to quarter each regular regiment for the five
years it is at home in one county, iu order that
during the ten years of its service abroad the mi-
litia regiment of that county may feel encouraged
by the reminiscence, or may be urged to a martial
frenzy of enlistment by the letters which tell
of glory won in the . capture of a Maori pah
or a Kaffir kraal, or of the health and com-
fort of such quarters as Mhow or Hong Kong.
Any attempt to imitate Prussian systems how-
ever more or less possible in France or Italy, is
open in England to the fatal objection that they
can have no hold over men in a reserve force. By
its nature it must be paid for only a part of its time,
but we in this country have no means of binding
men down to residence in a fixed locality, or to per-
formance of a fixed service, for only a fifth or even
a third of the wages their full time is worth. Men
will come and go, will renounce or take up occupa-
tions, according as they find advantage or inclina-
tion suggests ; and among people so essentially mi-
gratory it would be impossible to depend upon being
able at any moment to get the half-pay men we
have on paper. Neither could we hold such men
subject to the mutiny laws, so as to keep hold over
them when not called out, for the existence of a
caste, not permanently enrolled, but subject to be
at any moment before a court-martial, flogged, or
branded, would in a few years make the idea of
military service so hateful that we should fail to get
men for any term of regular service to which a
period of such irregular service was attached. It is
clear, then, that we must still base our army enlist-
ment on the same principles as at present—a fixed
term of regular service for such adequate reward as
we may offer, and a wholly separate engagement
for partial service, into which men may enter or not
as they feel disposed. Of course, if we can make
the partial service so attractive as to induce a num-
ber of the regular time-expired men to enter it, so
much the better. But it will still be a militia, and
not a compulsory reserve, and therefore, like the
army, dependent for its maintenance on the advan-
tages it has to offer. Can, then, nothing be done
to give us, under the system of a voluntary army
and militia, the power of expansion in case of need