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 Sketches from the Parliament House.

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SKETCHES FROM THE PARLIAMENT HOUSE. VI. THE LORD JUSTICE CLERK. By A. Wood Renton. THE Right Honorable John Hay Athole Macdonald, Lord Kingsburgh, who succeeded Baron Moncrieff as Lord Justice Clerk of Scotland in 1889, is and has long been a notable figure in Scottish public life. His father was a Writer to the Signet in Edinburgh. The future Lord Justice Clerk was born in 1836, was educated at Bale, and afterwards at Edinburgh University, and was admitted to the Scotch Bar in 1859. He soon became a popular advocate; juries were seldom able to resist his good-humored eloquence, and he handled witnesses with considerable skill. The hard and fast distinction —-that pre vails in Great Britain and Ireland — between the two branches of the legal profession is frequently, and not improperly, justi fied on the ground that it renders possible the cultivation of what may be called the judicial faculty. An English barrister or a Scottish advocate does not, at least in the first instance, come into contact with his client; the latter is to him a purely imper sonal being, — an A. B. who alleges that he is entitled to some legal or equitable re lief against a C. D. He is able therefore to advise without being misled by feeling, and to be first his client's judge and then his advocate. Obviously this kind of profes sional work constitutes a valuable training for the bench. In England it is practically the only preliminary judicial training that a bar rister receives. A recordership may give him experience in the trial of criminal, but it is useless as an education in the trial of civil, causes; a deputy county court judgeship confers no opportunities for learning criminal procedure; a revising barrister has only to do with election law; the experience of a

legal arbitrator is chiefly commercial; and the stern competition at the English Bar usually prevents any one man from equipping himself for judicial life by holding these ap pointments simultaneously or in succession. Now the Scottish advocate is, in the impor tant matter under consideration, more highly favored than his learned brother south of the Tweed. Scotland is divided into " shires " or counties, each of which is presided over by two judicial officers, — the sheriff-substitute and the sheriff. The sheriff-substitute is a puisne judge : he resides in the county over which he has jurisdiction, and is not per mitted to combine practice at the bar with the exercise of his judicial functions. The work of the sheriff, on the other hand, is principally appellate; his headquarters are in Edinburgh, and he retains his private practice in spite of his official position. Now the jurisdiction of the sheriff courts of Scotland is both civil and criminal, and — as the most superficial study of the public statutes will satisfy any one — it is far-reach ing in extent and important in character. The tenure of a sheriffship, therefore, gives the Scottish advocate wide judicial experi ence without withdrawing him from any of the activities of forensic life. Lord Kings burgh had quite enough practice at the bar to keep his mental armory bright; and he had at the same time the good fortune to hold two important sheriffships, — that of Ross Cromarty and Sutherland from 1874 to i8;6, and that of Perth from 1880 to 1885. It has been said that " the sheriff of Perth shire never dies." Macdonald proved to be no exception to the general rule. In 1885 he was made Lord Advocate by the Con servative Government (he had already held