Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 18.pdf/148

 LORD LOREBURN as innocent, without any compensation. Then there is the long vacation question. Everybody is agreed that the "light of justice is waning" in August, and that a week in October is worth a fortnight in midsummer. The only drawback to this reform is that, were it accomplished, the Bar Counsel would be left with no topic to discuss at its annual general meeting. One of the most remarkable things incident to the Chancellorship is the enormous patron age vested in the Lord Chancellor. He appoints the five Justices of Appeal, the twenty-two Justices of the High Court, the sixty County Court Judges, and occasionally the members of the Supreme Court and many minor officials. The total of the salaries annexed to these offices is about £ 225,000 a year, and this is irrespective of his ecclesiastical patronage! A correspond ent of The Times has lately, in an amusing and sarcastic letter, asked the question what is the theory on which all the patronage —• this "wealth of place and profit such as no other official in Europe has at his disposal " — is held. Is it held as some of us, he says, think it ought to be, upon an implied trust to maintain the dignity and efficiency of the judicial staff by rewarding professional merit, by judicious preferment; or is it, as others think, a sort of "Secret Service Fund," distributable as "party spoils" among those lawyers who have deserved well of the party to which the Chancellor happens to belong? Not quite either. The true theory, the writer suggests, is this: the patronage is left in the Chancellor's hands to be disposed

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of as he thinks best, but with a tacit under standing that the bulk of it shall go to the lawyers : first to such as have deserved well of the party, and then to those who have deserved well of the public, and then, as to anything over, "towards satisfying the ravening horde of relations, friends, and acquaintances, which are as a drop of bitter ness in the cup of all Lord Chancellors;" but would it not be wise, adds the writer, "in the last two cases to provide for the occasional commutation of professional ad vancement by a payment in cash, so that the status of the bench may be preserved from all danger of profanation?" The irony is just, the system is anomalous, but the men who administer it have generally been better than the system, and it is in the character of those who have filled the Chancel lorship that we have the best, if not the only guarantee against abuse. Lord Loreburn comes to his high office with an unblemished record both at the Bar and in Parliament. No man is more trusted by opponents as well as friends. He is credited with an utter aversion to jobbery of any kind, and we may be satisfied that he will use his great powers with a single eye to the public weal. As a judge he has a clear head, strong sense, and a firm will. As a minister of justice and a legislator he has the reforming spirit which will seek to leave the 'law and its admin istration better than he found them. Such a combination of qualities in the wool sack may well inspire both confidence and hope. LONDON, ENG., February. 1906.