HC Deb 01 May 1860 vol 158 cc513-9

Order for Committee read.

House in Committee.

Clauses 1, 2, and 3 agreed to.

Clause 4 (Persons having been bonâ fide Clerks to Attorneys or Solicitors for Ten Years may be admitted after Three Years' service).

MR. JOHN LOCKE

said, he would move the omission of the word "managing" in line 31. The word managing clerk conveyed no legal meaning; and in a similar Bill which had been brought forward, there had been no such phrase. The clause was sufficiently stringent without the word "managing," which might prove an obstacle to the scrupulous, while to the unscrupulous it would prove none. He also would suggest that the term for serving under articles should be reduced from five to three years.

MR. BOVILL

said, that the object of the clause was to extend to managing clerks the same privilege as persons who had taken a degree in one of the Universities, and he hoped the House would assent to it in its present form.

MR. EDWIN JAMES

said, he agreed with his hon. and learned Friend, that the word "managing" should be expunged from the clause. If retained it would exclude a number of meritorious persons from enjoying the privileges the Bill was intended to confer. The latter portion of the clause guarded against the admission of mere engrossing or copying clerks. It contained a provision that its operations should be confined to those persons who should be engaged in such businesses as were ordinarily performed by attorneys.

MR. DENMAN

said, "managing" was not a satisfactory word. A managing clerk of ten years' standing, he had been informed, was a rare animal in country offices. By the retention of the word the privileges of the Bill would be limited instead of enlarged, as they would only apply to the London firms and some few large firms in the country.

MR. MALINS

said, he thought the word ought to be retained, but he would suggest as a compromise that the term ten years should be reduced to seven, and then with three years as articled clerks the full term of ten years would be made up.

THE ATTORNEY GENERAL

expressed a hope that the proposed Amendment would be accepted by the hon. Member for Guildford (Mr. Bovill).

MR. BOVILL

said, he was willing to accede to the proposal, but he would suggest whether it was not desirable that the last three years of the service should be with the same employer.

MR. BRADY

said, he objected to the proposition. It would give employers the means of preventing clerks from being admitted, by putting an end to the service before the expiration of the three years' continuous service.

MR. HENLEY

suggested, that some restriction should be introduced as to age, so as to prevent young men obtaining the privilege at too early a period. He thought the period of service should date from 21.

THE ATTORNEY GENERAL

said, he thought that this was unnecessary, as boys could not be said to be persons engaged in the transaction and performance of business usually performed by attorney.

THE SOLICITOR GENERAL

said, he thought an Amendment should be introduced, extending the provisions of the Bill to proctors' clerks.

MR. HADFIELD

suggested, that the Bill should allow attorneys to become proctors.

THE SOLICITOR GENERAL

said, attorneys already, under a recent Act, had obtained nearly all the business of proctors, who had become virtually an extinct race.

MR. BOVILL

said, he would propose, by way of Amendment, words to the effect, that the last three years should be with one master.

MR. JOHN LOCKE

said, it would be better for the hon. and learned Member to withdraw the clause and substitute another of a more ample character.

MR. EDWIN JAMES

said, that making the last three years a continuity of service with one master, gave the masters power to defeat the objects of the Bill. The hon. and learned Member for Guildford appeared to look upon attorneys' clerks as a predatory class who wished to destroy their employer's practice. He appeared to forget that some Lord Chancellors had been attorneys' clerks, and that they had not been ashamed to acknowledge it. He contended there was no need for these restrictions, and suggested a clear stage and no favour.

MR. BRADY

said, he agreed with the hon. and learned Member for Marylebone that much injustice might be done under the clause, and he hoped the House would not assent to it.

MR. MALINS

remarked, that the restriction was unnecessary. Whether a man had served in one or several offices surely was of no consequence. He hoped the Amendment would not be pressed.

THE ATTORNEY GENERAL

considered the restriction uncalled for, and urged that the Amendment should be withdrawn.

Amendment withdrawn.

Clause, with verbal Amendments, to stand part of the Bill.

Clauses 5 to 12 agreed to.

MR. JOHN LOCKE

said, he wished to move an addition to the clause, making Clause 12 applicable to attorneys of the Court of Common Pleas of the County Palatine of Lancaster and the Court of Pleas of the County Palatine of Durham, and to the Judges of those courts respectively.

Amendment agreed to.

Clauses 13 to 17 agreed to.

Clause 18 (Empowering Attorneys, Solicitors, and Proctors to act as Justices of the Peace in certain cases).

MR. JOHN LOCKE moved the omission of the clause, and stated that the object of the Amendment was to prevent an attorney from acting as a magistrate. He contended that it would be most injurious to place an attorney in such a position that he would be enabled to adjudicate upon a case in which the interests of his own client were concerned. The proviso that the attorney should not practise within forty miles of the county of which he was appointed a magistrate would be altogether inoperative in remedying the evil of which he complained. There was no objection to attorneys out of practice to act as Justices of the Peace.

MR. BOVILL

observed, it would be a very invidious distinction to say that no attorney should be capable of being placed in the Commission of the Peace; and there were plenty of safeguards against the appointment of any improper person. Barristers were enabled to act as magistrates; and all that this clause did was to give the Lord Chancellor power to appoint attorneys to the Commission at a distance of forty miles from the place where they practised. The clause had been approved by all the law Lords.

MR. COLLINS

said, he would remind the hon. and learned Gentleman that barristers so appointed were not practising at their profession.

MR. BRADY

said, it was clear that the clause was meant to meet some individual case in which attorney influence was strong. Was it not well known that attorneys had a great deal too much power over the election of Members to sit in that House? Nothing could be easier than for an attorney to turn his political influence to account with the Lord Lieutenant.

MR. COLLIER

said, he agreed that it was not desirable for attorneys, as a rule, to sit on the bench; but there ought to be power in the Lord Chancellor to meet specific cases. The Bill merely removed the positive exclusion under which attorneys suffered as a class.

MR. AYRTON

said, that an attorney's status was not a local but a personal one. He carried his profession with him, where-ever he went, and he would be ready to see a client anywhere. He should therefore oppose the clause.

THE SOLICITOR GENERAL

said, the hon. Gentleman who had last spoken had had experience of both branches of the profession; but he could not altogether agree in the tone of his remarks. No doubt it was desirable that the administration of justice should not even in appearance be exposed to suspicion, and that if it were in any considerable number of instances to happen that gentleman occupied seats on the judicial bench within the area to which their practice in their profession extended, such a result would not be unlikely to be brought about. No one, of course, supposed that the exclusion of those to whom the Bill related from the bench of justice would be advocated on the ground of any personal unworthiness on their part as a body to hold such a position. And he would therefore say, let the existing rule remain so far as the area of a solicitor's own practice extended. But he certainly thought that the inadmissibility of an attorney within 40 miles of his office would satisfy everybody except the hon. Member for the Tower Hamlets. ["No, no!"] He could not agree with hon. Gentlemen that an attorney who had an office in London, and who happened to be in Wales, would be angling for clients.

MR. KNIGHT

said, the distance of forty miles did not exclude the probability of an attorney having many clients in the place where he might, under the provisions of the Bill, be appointed as magistrate. He thought that 100 miles at least ought to be required in order to render the principle effective.

MR. MALINS

said, it was admitted that attorneys who had retired from practice had made some of the best magistrates that had ever presided in a court. Well, then, he asked whether they thought that professional gentlemen who had only partially retired from practice, were likely from that fact to become less competent to act as magistrates than if they retired altogether? He was of opinion that the supporters of the Amendment were imposing most unfair restrictions upon the members of an honourable and respectable profession. He granted that as a rule it was not desirable that attorneys or solicitors should be on the bench; but there were many districts in which the number of educated and properly qualified men to fill the office was so small, that it would be most advisable that the respectable attorney should be allowed to act as a magistrate. He should, therefore, support the clause.

MR. EDWIN JAMES

complained that the learned Solicitor General and the hon and learned Member for Wallingford had greatly misrepresented what had been said by the hon. Member for the Tower Hamlets. All that had been said was, that there was an ubiquity about a solicitor's business which rendered it unadvisable that they should sit on the bench. Nothing was said about their voracious habits in the dining-room, or their piscatorial habits in North Wales. He was fully convinced of the respectable character of the solicitors as a body, but he was opposed to the existing rule being altered.

MR. VINCENT SCULLY

said, he did not much care about English solicitors; but he thought the present proposal was just what it should be. He had beard it said, that if there were no solicitors in the country, there would not be two honest men in it. In Ireland the prohibition which existed in England against solicitors becoming magistrates did not exist. He had known practising barristers in Ireland, men of large fortune, of good family, and of the highest education, refused the magistracy, when they only wanted to be on the Commission in order to be ex officio guardians of the Poor Law Unions. At the same time, by the law as it stood in Ireland, a Queen's counsel might be a magistrate for any county.

MR. COLLINS

said, that to alter the law of the land merely to suit the convenience of a few wealthy solicitors in North Wales was rather too much to ask; and he should oppose the clause alike in its original and amended shape. He con- curred with the hon. Member for the Tower Hamlets (Mr. Ayrton) in thinking that attorneys always carried about their attorneyship with them.

MR. DENMAN

observed that there was a class of attorneys in London who did agency business for the attorneys and solicitors in the country, and thus one might do business for almost all the attorneys in a particular county or borough, by which he would possess very great influence there, although practising in London. It would give rise to discontents and suspicions in the administration of justice.

MR. HENLEY

said, be would like to hear the opinion of the Solicitor General as to the meaning of the words "practising in the county" in the clause, for he thought that would determine, to some extent, the course they ought to take, in reference to this matter, if the restriction were removed altogether, it might safely be left to the Lord Lieutenant of the county not to exercise his privilege except in unexceptionable cases. But to specify forty miles distance would only create confusion. A solicitor might come down where his client resided to arrange family settlements or look at a lease, and questions would then arise whether he was practising in the county or not.

THE SOLICITOR GENERAL

said, he had no hesitation in saying that the expression "county in England or Wales in which he shall carry on the profession of an attorney" meant the county in which his place of business was, and in which in the ordinary sense he carried on his profession.

MR. HENLEY

said, in that case there was nothing to prevent the Lord Lieutenant of a county from appointing to a seat on the bench his London solicitor, who conducted all his business.

MR. BEAUMONT

said, the subject was a very important one, and the hour was advanced. He accordingly moved that the Chairman do report progress.

MR. MOWBRAY

suggested that his hon. and learned Friend should withdraw the clause.

MR. BOVILL

said, the present Act of Parliament was felt by the profession to throw a slur upon their body. He did not feel at liberty to withdraw the clause, which had been introduced under the highest authority connected with the law, and sanctioned by Her Majesty's Attorney General.

MR. LIDDELL

said, he must protest against the House of Commons being told that they must pass a clause, because it had been introduced by a high legal authority in "another place."

Clause put, and negatived.

The House resumed.

Committee report progress; to sit again Friday 11th May.