HC Deb 07 May 1874 vol 218 cc1884-902
SIR COLMAN O'LOGHLEN

, in rising to call attention to the fact that the Petition against the Return of Mr. O'Donnell, one of the Members for the borough of Galway, has been set down for hearing at Galway on the 18th of May, before Mr. Justice Lawson, one of the Judges of the Court of Common Pleas in Ireland, who holds, during Her Majesty's pleasure, the office of one of the paid Commissioners of Church Temporalities in Ireland, and who is also, during Her Majesty's pleasure, one of the Lords Commissioners of the Great Seal in Ireland; and to move— That this House is of opinion that a Judge of one of Her Majesty's Superior Courts of Common Law, who may accept and hold an office at the pleasure of the Crown, should not, while holding such office, act as an Election Judge under the Parliamentary Elections Act, 1868, said, the answer of the Prime Minister to the Question which he put to him on Monday last was so unsatisfactory, that, however unpleasant it was to him, he had no other course but to take the opinion of the House on this subject. The question whether a Judge who held an office of honour or profit at the will of the Crown should discharge the duties of an Election Judge was of very great importance in a constitutional point of view. It was a novel question, and was in no way settled by the Election Petitions Act. The plan which had been adopted in that Act—namely, of referring Election Petitions to the Judges of the land, and of enabling a single Judge, without power of appeal, to decide on matters of fact as well as of law—was unanimously rejected by the House when it was proposed in 1833. In that year the whole matter was referred to a Committee composed of men of the highest standing in the House, and presided over by the late Mr. Charles Buller, and their Report, among other things, deprecated a depriving of our Courts of the immunity which they then possessed from any suspicion of political partialities by constituting them Election Petition Judges. It had, no doubt, been a great advantage, under the Act, to have local investigations in place of bringing all the parties to London to be examined before Committees of the House; but, at the same time, the decisions of the Election Judges had in many cases been not altogether satisfactory. In Ireland, at all events, the feeling was universal that the Act had not worked well, and that some Amendment of its provisions was imperatively needed. There had been decisions of the most contradictory character given by the Judges presiding at the trial of different Election Petitions. They had witnessed the same Judge sitting in the borough of Galway deciding certain matters to be legal and constitutional which, sitting in the county of Galway, he had decided to be illegal and unconstitutional. The object of the Act had been to intrust the hearing of Election Petitions to Judges supposed to be perfectly independent of all political feeling, or of anything which might unduly influence them in their decision. Judges held I heir positions, not at the pleasure of the Crown, but during good behaviour; yet of late a practice had grown up which he was inclined to think was not at all constitutional of giving them, in addition, offices of emolument that were distinctly held at the pleasure of the Crown. This had been done in two cases in Ireland, and, if he was not mistaken, in one in England. Such a practice was at variance with the Act of Settlement, which clearly meant that Judges were to have fixed and ascertained salaries, and not to receive emoluments which the Crown might at any time stop. The position of Mr. Justice Lawson—of whom he wished to speak with the greatest respect—was very peculiar. He was one of the Judges of the Irish Court of Common Pleas, and, in addition, was one of the Commissioners for Church Temporalities under the Irish Church Disestablishment Act which provided that the office of Commissioner should be held during Her Majesty's pleasure, and that the salary attached to it should not exceed £2,000 a-year. Moreover, he had lately been appointed by Her Majesty's Government one of the Lords Commissioners of the Great Seal in Ireland. The right hon. Gentleman at the head of the Government, in answering his Question the other day, truly stated that that was not an office of profit. It was, however, an office of high honour to which every member of the Bar would aspire, and which gave the holder of it great power and authority. It would, no doubt, be said, because he objected to Mr. Justice Lawson hearing Election Petitions that he meant to impute to that learned Judge an inclination to act improperly because those two offices were held at the pleasure of the Crown. Nothing was further from his intention. He simply raised the Constitutional question, whether it was proper for a Judge who held such offices to decide, without appeal, questions of fact and law in connection with Election Petitions? Certainly it had been a disappointment to him that Mr. Justice Lawson, on the point being raised, did not himself arrange that Election Petitions would not come before him for trial. His retirement from the position of Election Judge would cause no difficulty, because there were only two or three Petitions to be tried, and they could easily be tried by the other Election Judges—Mr. Justice Barry and Mr. Baron Dowse. He wished to say a word or two about the Answer given the other night to his Question in regard to the office of a Lord Commissioner of the Great Seal. The right hon. Gentleman laid stress upon the fact that Mr. Justice Lawson was receiving no salary as Lord Commissioner of the Great Seal; but as one of the Commissioners of Church Temporalities in Ireland Mr. Justice Lawson was holding at the pleasure of the Crown an office worth £2,000 a-year. The right hon. Gentleman said that he did not cease to be a Common Law Judge because he acted as Commissioner of the Great Seal; but he (Sir Colman O'Loghlen) contended that as long as he held office at the pleasure of the Crown it was indecorous in him to sit as Election Judge, and that this interpretation was borne out by the words of the Act. If it was unconstitutional for a Peer who was a Judge to act as an Election Judge, it was equally unconstitutional for a Judge to act in that capacity who held office at the pleasure of the Crown. He made no imputation against Mr. Justice Lawson. He was peculiarly fortunate in having gained the approbation of every Government which had hold office in Ireland during the last 10 years. He was made Solicitor General by Lord Palmerston, and Attorney General by Lord Russell. The first act of the late Prime Minister was to make him Judge of the Common Pleas, and in the same year he was made Commissioner of Irish Church Temporalities. The first act of the present Government was to make him one of the Commissioners of the Great Seal. There was one gentleman who was designated by the universal feeling of Ireland as the Lord Chancellor; but the Government could not for the present spare him from this House, and they had on that account put the Great Seal in Ireland into Commission. The Government regarded Mr. Justice Lawson's consent to act as Commission as so important that they were said to have sent a special ambassador to him while on Circuit to ask him to accept the appointment. Before the Premier took this step, however, he should have recollected the Election Act of which he was the author, and if he had found upon inquiry that Mr. Justice Lawson was one of the Election Judges for the year, he ought not to have offered him the Commissioner ship of the Great Seal. A re-action had gone on lately in favour of the Conservative party in England. That re-action had not been so marked in Ireland, and in the North of Ireland some of the most cherished strongholds of the Conservative party had been won from them for the first time in the history of Ireland. He could understand, therefore, why the Prime Minister wished Mr. Justice Lawson to accept this appointment. He wished, no doubt, to show that there was a Conservative reaction in Ireland, and what could show it better than the fact that Mr. Justice Lawson had consented to take office under him. The principle that a Judge should be independent, and that he should have no interest in any case brought before him had often been upheld, and never with greater solemnity than in a case in which Lord Cottenham as Lord Chancellor gave a judgment affecting some canal or other company in which he was a shareholder. No one, for a moment, could imagine that Lord Cottenham could have been, in the slightest degree, affected in the discharge of his judicial duties by the fact of his being a shareholder in the company which had the litigation before him, and yet his judgment was prononuced by the House of Lords, on appeal, to be void. The same principle was equally applicable to an Election Judge, and he hoped the House would hesitate before they came to the conclusion that a Judge who held an office at the pleasure of the Crown was fit to decide Election Petitions. The tribunal to try an Election Petition should not only be above all fault, but it should be above all suspicion of fault. The right hon. and learned Gentleman concluded by moving the Resolution of which he had given Notice.

Amendment proposed, To leave out from the word "That" to the end of the Question, in order to add the words "this House is of opinion that a Judge of one of Her Majesty's Superior Courts of Common Law, who may accept and hold an office at the pleasure of the Crown, should not, while holding such office, act as an Election Judge under The Parliamentary Elections Act, 1868,'"—(Sir Colman O'Loghlen.) —instead thereof.

Question proposed, "That the words proposed to be left out stand part of the Question."

THE ATTORNEY GENERAL FOR IRELAND (Dr. BALL)

said, the proposition of the right hon. and learned Gentleman who had just sat down, was that the Judge on whom the Act of Parliament had cast the duty of trying an Election Petition was, for reasons not contained in that Act, to be incapacitated from discharging that duty, and that, too, without there being any provision for another Judge to take his place. The intention of the Act was, as far as possible, to provide that the Judge should not be picked by design for a particular case, and, accordingly, under it the Judges were to be chosen for each year by a rota framed long anterior to the case, and to take the duty in turn according to their seniority. When the right hon. and learned Gentleman cited an Act of Parliament, he ought to cite the whole section. When he found that a Judge from illness could not go, he ought to have observed that the Judge to take his place must be chosen out of the same Court—namely, cither Mr. Justice Keogh, whom the right hon. and learned Gentleman had arraigned in language which the House had heard, or Mr. Justice Morris, the brother of the hon. Member for the City of Galway. The Act expressly provided that the Judges for the time being on the rota should, according to seniority, respectively try the Election Petitions standing for trial under that Act unless they should otherwise agree among themselves, in which case the trial of each Petition should be taken in the manner provided by such agreement. That did not mean that when a particular case had arisen it was to be said—"You, Sir, are the particular person suited to go to that particular place." The agreement should be made long before the occasion arose, and not knowing at the time whether it was to be to Dublin, to Galway, or to Belfast, they should say—"We shall invert the order of seniority by making the junior go first," or so on. But there was no provision under which the Judge could exonerate himself from that duty. On the contrary, it was imposed on him, and he could not and ought not to withdraw from it; because if he did so it would give the appearance of the Judge being selected for the particular trial, and not chosen according to his accidental position on the rota. What was the position of Mr. Justice Lawson? He had been the Law Officer of a Liberal Government for years, and on the late Government coming into office he was made a Judge of the Irish Court of Common Pleas. When the Irish Church Act was passed, the late Prime Minister, seeking for a man who would command universal approbation—[Murmurs]—again selected Mr. Justice Lawson from among the Judges to act as one of the Church Commissioners. He would read to those who raised those murmurs the words of Lord Selborne, spoken in that House, with reference to that appointment. That noble and learned Lord said— I have long known Mr. Justice Lawson, and I have never known an abler or more honourable man."—[3 Hansard, cxcvi. 422.] Yet the right hon. and learned Gentleman had sneered at that learned Judge for having received offices from every Government. Mr. Justice Lawson was appointed a Church Commissioner, not on the mere recommendation of a Minister of the Crown, but by name along with the other Commissioners in the express words of the Act itself. When so appointed, he was not relieved from any duty connected with his position in the Court of Common Pleas. He was still obliged to go Circuit. He had tried criminal and political cases since then without one sound of disapproval ever coming from the Law Officers of the late Government in that House or any other quarter. Under the statute relating to elections all questions of difficulty that were reserved by the Judge must go to the Court of Common Pleas. It was the Court of Common Pleas that unseated Captain Nolan and seated Captain Trench for the county of Galway, and not a word was then heard of the ingenious constitutional question now raised. To allege now that this proceeding was unconstitutional when there was no provision in the Act incapacitating the Judge from holding any position of that kind, was simply bringing forward observations which were not intended for that House. ["No!"] He said "Yes." Mr. Justice Lawson must go to Galway, and the object of that Motion was to herald his arrival by infusing into the minds of the people disrespect for the Judge whom the Constitution obliged to try the ease. As regarded the other office which Mr. Justice Lawson held, the objections of the right hon. and learned Gentleman were equally untenable. In England, in issuing commissions under the Great Seal, it was the custom to choose Common Law Judges, and none of those Judges were discharged from their criminal duties, nor from the jurisdiction between the Crown and the subject. Mr. Justice Buller, one of the greatest lawyers of England, had in times past filled the position, and Mr. Justice Bosanquet had done so more recently. He strongly suspected that it was the position which Mr. Justice Lawson held on the Irish Education Board which influenced those who brought forward the present Motion, and not any anxiety for the purity of the trial of elections. Mr. Baron Richards, a Baron of the Court of Exchequer, sat in the first Irish Encumbered Estates Court, holding office at pleasure, and he continued to to perform his duties as a Judge of the Court of Exchequer. There was, in fact, no instance in which any such offices had been held to incapacitate a Judge from these functions; and the Act having placed that duty on Mr. Justice Lawson, it was in the highest degree to be deprecated that Motions of that kind immediately preceding the trial of an Election Petition should be made and debated in that House. What was that but an endeavour, before the case was heard, to create in the minds of those who were to be brought before him a feeling of distrust of the Judge? And vet, in spite of the testimony of Lord Selborne, the right hon. and learned Baronet was not deterred from "hinting a fault and hesitating dislike" in the case of one of the ablest Judges in Ireland, and a Judge of incorruptible integrity. If a Common Law Judge was asked to take this office, it would be unbecoming in him to refuse. Mr. Justice Lawson was asked to take this office because of his great pre-eminence in the Court of Chancery when he practised at the Irish Bar. He was asked without regard to politics at all and all he had gained by it was extreme trouble and hard work. He greatly regretted that the right hon. and learned Member had brought forward this Motion. No good purpose could be served by it. The learned Judge had acted with the universal approbation of the Ear of Ireland. ["Oh, oh!"] Against the opinion of those who murmured he would place the approbation of the Irish Bar, and he defied any man whose opinion was of value to contradict the assertion that the Irish Bar heartily approved the appointment of one of whom Lord Selborne had said that a more able and honourable man never adorned the Bench.

MR. MITCHELL HENRY

observed that there was one conclusion which everyone who had listened to this debate must have arrived at, and that was that the Judges in Ireland could not be overworked if they were able to undertake so many extra duties as the learned Judge in question had undertaken. When one of the Judges of the Common Pleas was able at the same time to take a paid office from the Crown, administering property to the value of several millions sterling a-year, which the Prime Minister told them the other day would continue for 17 years, also to fill one-third part of the office of Lord Chancellor of Ireland, and, in addition, to discharge the duties of one of the Commissioners of National Education, no rational man could fail to come to the conclusion that there must be something behind the scenes in regard to the appointment of the Judges in Ireland. ["Oh, oh!"] In holding that language he believed he was backed up by nearly the whole of the Irish people. ["Divide!"] Some hon. Members were, no doubt, anxious to divide, in order to get rid of a very inconvenient question. It was a question of great importance as affecting the liberties of the people of Ireland; but hon. Gentlemen opposite appeared determined to shut out Constitutional questions, although they called themselves the Constitutional party. There was a time when the House would not have objected to the discussion of Constitutional questions, and when they would not have shirked an inquiry into the circumstances of the late Dissolution, as they did the other evening. If Mr. Bouverie, whose absence they all regretted, had been a Member of this Parliament, the question of the Dissolution, he felt sure, would have been discussed on Constitutional instead of on personal grounds. And it was distinctly as a Constitutional question that he now desired to treat the Motion before the House. Those who remembered the case of the Galway Election Petition, three years ago, would also remember that wherever the English language was read it was felt that the inquiry betrayed a decline in the purity and dignity of justice in the United Kingdom, and all who wished to see the ermine of the Judges unsullied must blush at the remembrance of the circumstances. Want of confidence in the administration of justice, he maintained, was one great cause of discontent in Ireland. There was about to be another inquiry at Galway, and it was not enough that this House should be satisfied—the people ought be satisfied also. He did not say Judge Lawson was capable of leaning to one side or the other; but when they had a Judge of Common Pleas, recently appointed to one third part of the office of Lord Chancellor of Ireland, undertaking the duty of trying an Election Petition, it would be difficult to convince the people of Ireland that the Government had not some particular motive in getting the Petition tried by that particular Judge. They were going to send to Galway a Judge who was known as a Protestant of the Protestants—who had always been known to be an upholder of the Orangemen—a Judge who held three different offices at the pleasure of the Crown, one of them carrying with it a salary which might be withdrawn at any moment. He trusted it was not too late to provide a Judge to preside who would more completely carry with him the confidence of the people. Would the Lord Chancellor of England, he asked, descend to the level of trying an Election Petition in this country? But that was, in effect, what was going to be done in the case of Galway—and when a Judge of the Common Pleas of Ireland was appointed virtually to the office of Lord Chancellor of Ireland, and that office was connected in the minds of the people with the conscience of the Crown, it was a serious matter to teach the people that the Crown itself was going to take part in these inquiries. He himself felt very seriously the inconvenience and oven danger of these discussions; but when the House passed the Corrupt Practices Election Act they were distinctly warned by some of the most experienced Members of the inevitable result. The right of voting was as sacred to the voter as the right of judging the election ought to be to the House of Commons; and now that the House had parted with the right which it took 200 years to win against the Crown, the voter might well complain that another step was taken in discrediting the freedom of elections, and that a Judge more intimately connected with the Crown was, perhaps, to deprive thorn of their Representative, because the Commons of England had grown too lazy or too indifferent to vindicate their own privileges. One of the wisest Members of the House almost foretold what would happen about those election inquiries, and he was sure they would permit him to read a few words from the speech of the right hon. Member for Oxfordshire (Mr. Henley), which strikingly bore on the case of the Galway Election. What, said that right hon. Gentleman, in 1868, was the House of Commons going to do?— They were not only depriving the individual of a seat; but they ware putting it in the power of a Judge to stamp with infamy for seven years any man whom he might condemn, honestly, no doubt, but perhaps mistakenly."—[3 Hansard, cxci 320.] Well, at the Galway Election trial a Bishop was condemned, and being tried subsequently by a jury—not in his own diocese, but in the City of Dublin—was without hesitation acquitted, with the approbation of every impartial man in the Kingdom. The evidence which convinced the Judge completely broke down when it came to be properly sifted before a jury, and yet there was no power to reverse the fiat of the Judge, and that Bishop must continue for seven years under the ban so unjustly put upon him. Nay, more, another Roman Catholic Bishop, who was not permitted to have his case investigated by a jury, was actually now, as it were, going to be tried at the forthcoming inquiry in the case of the Galway City Election Petition—for this penal disqualification inflicted on him by a single Judge, without appeal, three years before. If that was the way the House of Commons administered the Constitution in Ireland, all he could say was it was one to which their forefathers never would have submitted.

MR. SULLIVAN

Sir, late as is the hour, and anxious as hon. Members are to close the debate, I rise to assure the House that there is underlying this Motion a very serious and very important question. That is, the question of the relations and attitude of the Irish Judiciary towards the Crown and towards the people. The right hon. and learned Member for Clare (Sir Colman O'Loghlen) in bringing forward this Motion, expressly and emphatically disclaimed any idea of a personal attack on Mr. Justice Lawson. But personalities have been dragged, and needlessly dragged, into the debate by the speech just delivered from the Treasury Bench. ["No, no!"] The Attorney General for Ireland, speaking for and defending his own class, the political lawyers—a class against which, as we well know, there lies grave and weighty accusation on this very subject—the Irish Attorney General, I say, with more vehemence than logic, has made a violent, personal attack on the right hon. and learned Member for Clare, imputing to him unworthy motives and covert designs; absolutely denouncing the Motion before the House. I can tell the Irish Attorney General that if that is the way this Motion is to be encountered, we are ready to meet him. I can tell the right hon. and learned Gentleman that we Irish Members are not going to sit tamely silent here when the occupants of the Treasury Bench can only reply by almost menace to one of our number who has done his duty and no more. But the real question raised by the right hon. and learned Member for Clare is one far more important than the personal merits or de- merits of Mr. Justice Lawson. It is whether in Ireland the constitutional theory holds true in practice and in fact, that the Judges are placed above and beyond the favour of the Crown. Is that so in Ireland? ["Yes, yes!" and "no, no!"] Is it true that the Irish Judges have nothing to hope and nothing to fear by the favour or disfavour of the Crown? Why, the very contrary is the fact. ["Oh, oh!"] I do not wonder at these interruptions. But I am ready to make good my assertions. I say it is notorious in Ireland, as in this present instance, in the case of this same Justice Lawson, that Judges have been taught, and trained, and accustomed to watch the eye of the Minister even when dispensing justice from the Bench. Why, who will tell me that the Irish Judges are beyond the reach of Ministerial favour, when one of them can be singled out from the rest and be favoured by emoluments and honours not conferred upon others? Mr. Justice Lawson by selection and favour of the Minister—that is to say, of the Minister whom he served and pleased—enjoys a plurality of offices, and has secured to him £2,000 a-year beyond what the other Puisne Judges receive. We are told no salary attaches to this third or fourth office recently conferred on him—that of Commission of the Great Seal. But I rather think his having filled this position now may be claimed hereafter to count as a mark in his favour in the competitive examination some day, for the Chancellorship itself. Hon. Members may think it decorous to affect incredulity; but it is no secret that when last, some six years ago, the office of Lord Chancellor was vacant in Ireland, something far more lively than a "competitive examination" went on; Judge striving with Judge to see who could carry off the prize from the Minister's hand. It is no secret that at that time a power in this country, it would seem, barely second to this House itself, The Times newspaper, actually postulated Mr. Justice Keogh for the office on the ground of his successful trying of the Fenian prisoners. "[No, no!" and "oh, oh!"] I say yes, yes! I ought to know something about the public Press; I am, at all events, as familiar with the pages of The Times as the Irish Attorney General is with the pages of Blackstone; and I say I can put my finger on the passage—a startling commentary on the relations subsisting between the Irish Judges and the Crown—and there it stands on record in the pages of the leading journal of the Empire. Now, it is no light thing in any country to have Judges thus taught to make friends for themselves in the Cabinet. In Ireland, where circumstances are so peculiar—["cheers and laughter"]—in Ireland, I repeat, where circumstances are so peculiar—yes; where law on the Bench has for centuries been presented to the gaze of an outraged people in the guise of injustice and oppression—injustice and oppression which you yourselves have recently in part confessed and attempted to mitigate. In such a country I say, it is especially necessary that the Judges on the Bench should not only be free, but should be seen to be free of all favour from the Crown; and it is of evil import and evil effect that the Irish people should see such a man as Judge Lawson picked out from amongst better men on the Irish Bench and made the favourite recipient of offices and emoluments by the Crown. The Irish Attorney General has, with that adroitness and skill which distinguished the able advocate at the Bar, sought to divert this debate into a contention about Judge Lawson's character. We have nothing to do with that; but we know that Judge Lawson's career illustrates the evils of an evil system in Ireland. He has just dismissed from the magistracy a gentleman accused of having said that lawyer politicians on entering this House quickly forget and betray their principles. Judge Lawson had good right to be sensitive on that point. It is the affliction and the curse of Ireland that most of our Judges have to earn the Ermine by political party servitude. How did Judge Lawson cam his? By desertion and betrayal of his political principles. He entered Parliamentary life as a flaming defender of Mother Church, a determined foe of disestablishment. Surely the Irish Attorney General has not forgotten Mr. Lawson's memorable speech on the hustings of Trinity College, when he was reproached with being silent in his election address on the subject of disestablishing the Irish Church. "I have been silent," said he, "for the same reason the Roman Code was silent as to the crime of parricide—because it was too awful a crime to contemplate." Alas! it was the parricidal or rather matricidal hand of Mr. Justice Lawson that dealt the fatal blow at Mother Church; for he it was, I am told, whose hand drafted the disestablishing clauses of the Disestablishment Act. Indeed, it is notorious that it was for this—for the party servitude he thus gave in destroying his own Church and deserting his own principles—that he was made a Judge, and a special favourite of the Minister among the Irish Puisne Judges. This is the point of the case. There is now about to sit in judgment on the political existence of a Member of this House a man who holds offices of emolument and honour at the favour of the Crown, and who earned those offices and emoluments as the rewards for the desertion of his own political principles.

SIR HENRY JAMES

said, he must decline to enter into many of the subjects touched upon by the hon. Gentleman who had just sat down, as what they had now to consider was the Motion of the right hon. and learned Member for Clare (Sir Colman O'Loghlen). When his right hon. and learned Friend made his speech he (Sir Henry James) supposed he intended to submit to the House a broad Constitutional doctrine; and so long as the discussion was con-lined to such a view, he (Sir Henry James) was sure it would have attention and sympathy. An abstract proposition was nothing if it was put forward without sufficient cause or on insufficient grounds; and in bringing forward the Motion, or in supporting it, they should be careful to place themselves beyond the suspicion of making any covert attack upon the Judge whose name; was associated with it. He was sure his right hon. and learned Friend had no such object, and that, when he enumerated the many high positions which Judge Lawson filled, he did not mean to convey anything but that the learned Judge had honestly gained them. If an attack against him had been intended, the Motion would not have been framed as it had been, and the right hon. and learned Gentleman would have spoken in less ambiguous language; and, if the discussion had wandered a little away from the abstract proposition, his right hon. and learned Friend the Attorney General for Ireland—with perhaps the most natural desire to defend the position of the Judge from an attack which he (Sir Henry James) hoped was never intended—had caused an answer to be given possibly a little more warmly than was necessary for the discussion of the question. The principle sought to be enunciated would probably have passed without comment, but it was un fortunately founded upon the recitals contained in the Motion of his right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Clare, which probably would cause some of them to dissent from it. Mr. Justice Lawson, as Judge of the Court of Common Pleas in Ireland, had received from the late Government the appointment of Commissioner to administer the Church Temporalities Act. If that was unconstitutional it was too late now to condemn it. The appointment was made in an Act of Parliament sanctioned by both sides of the House. If anything unconstitutional had been done, it was done then, not now; and the censure for that act, if censure was due, must rest on the whole House. But English Judges often held similar positions, and Baron Bramwell was a member of the Judicature Commission, and he was also an Election Judge, and yet no Constitutional objection had been raised in his case. He (Sir Henry James) contended that if this Motion was simply intended to condemn the appointment of Mr. Justice Lawson as a Commissioner of the Great Seal of Ireland, the Motion should have been confined to the particular circumstances of the case. On every hand testimony was borne to the merits of Mr. Justice Lawson, and it was not right to discuss them in his absence. It seemed to him that if they discussed the peculiar circumstances of this case it would appear to convey that Mr. Justice Lawson was likely to be influenced by the Government to give a wrong decision on the Galway Petition; but he maintained that no Government would dare to attempt to influence a Judge, and that no Judge would allow himself to be influenced. In conclusion, he requested the right hon. and learned Gentleman not to press his Motion to a division, but to allow the expressions of opinion which had been given to serve the objects he had in view in bringing it forward.

THE SOLICITOR GENERAL

said, that after the very able and temperate speech of his hon. and learned Friend the Member for Taunton (Sir Henry James), he would not detain the House with many remarks, but as this had been called a Constitutional question he wished to say a word or two. The right hon. and learned Member for Clare (Sir Colman O'Loghlen) and some hon. Gentlemen who followed him had travelled far a-field, because they had questioned the policy of the Act of 1868, which appointed Common Law Judges in England and Ireland Election judges; but he did not suppose the House would care to investigate such a matter upon a Motion of this kind. The policy of that Act was well considered at the time, and it was thought that those Judges would make a fitting tribunal for trying Election Petitions, and he was not aware that they had given any dissatisfaction. There might be some want of harmony in their decisions, but that was almost a necessary consequence when a new tribunal was formed; and certainly it could not be said the decisions of Election Committees had always been very harmonious. He desired to deal with the question raised by this Motion calmly, reasonably, and temperately. It was said that it was contrary to the Constitutional law of the country that a Judge who was appointed to try an Election Petition should hold any office at the pleasure of the Crown. The question was, What was Constitutional law? "Constitutional" was a vague and indefinite term, and as to the Constitutional law of this subject, every speaker interpreted it for himself. The question was, Was it contrary to law that an Election Judge should hold a place of profit or honour at the pleasure of the Crown? Was it contrary to the Act of 1868? The Act of Parliament did not say so; there was no law, written or unwritten, to which Members could point to show that it was illegal. The Common Law Judges were not appointed Election Judges by the Government that happened to be in existence at the time, but by rules laid down by the Act, and they were selected by themselves. It might be said that although it was Constitutional, yet it was not expedient to appoint them. If that were so, why should that argument be confined to Judges who had to try Election Petitions? and why should it not be said of any Judge who had to try a cause or a prisoner that it was contrary to expediency that he should hold an office at the plea- sure of the Crown. If that policy were carried out the result would be most lamentable, because the Crown would be deprived of the services of many of the persons who were most likely to render those services. After all, this was a sentimental and not a substantial grievance. That a Judge would forget his oath and responsibility, and do wrong, because he held an office at the pleasure of the Crown, was more than anyone could believe, and any suggestion of that kind was a grave reflection not only upon the Judge, but upon the Government. He held there was no law which should prevent Mr. Justice Lawson from trying the Petition, and there was no reason for altering the law as it at present stood.

MR. D. E. PLUNKET

said, he would not detain the House for many minutes. He did not wish to address them merely for the purpose of adding his own humble testimony to that of every lawyer who had spoken on either side of the House, except the right hon. and learned Baronet who had brought forward the Motion, as to its absolute want of foundation in point of law, but merely for the purpose of protesting against the course suggested by the hon. and learned Member for Taunton (Sir Henry James), who advised that the Motion should be withdrawn. He did not consider it necessary to vindicate the character of Mr. Justice Lawson, which had been assailed because that learned Judge was ready fearlessly to fulfil the duty which the law imposed upon him—although his character had been reproached in a manner more dangerous, more injurious, and far more unworthy than an open attack. Yet it had been admitted by those who made these insinuations that he was a man whoso character was above suspicion. ["No, no!"] Let the hon. Gentleman opposite who cried "No, no," so loudly have the courage of his opinions and rise in his place and explain himself. Everyone, he repeated, who had spoken in the debate had admitted that Mr. Justice Lawson's character was above suspicion. Neither would he go over the ground he had once before trodden in this House in defending the character of Mr. Justice Keogh, against whom, in his absence that night, accusations the most malignant had been levelled. Those reckless imputations were formally brought for judgment before this House, and after a long and searching debate, they had been repudiated by overwhelming majorities. On that occasion, as on a former Galway Election Petition, an attempt was made to impeach the Judge and discredit the tribunal in the eyes of the people after judgment had been given, but to-night the object was to denounce the tribunal before the trial had begun. In his experience in the House of Commons he had never been present at the bringing forward of any Resolution which had given him so much pain, and of which even the partial success would be fraught with consequences so injurious to the country. He called upon the House not to sanction the withdrawal of the Motion, but to stamp it with the condemnation it so justly and fully deserved. He questioned the patriotism of those who, under the guise of vindicating the tribunal, desired the House to stay the hand of justice lest the purity of justice should be stained and the dignity of the law lessened in Ireland. He challenged the patriotism of those who, with those words upon their lips, sneered suspiciously or cast unfounded imputations upon an upright and fearless Judge. He had risen to demand of that House that they should not suffer the Motion to be withdrawn. It was impossible by anything that they could do altogether to counteract the evil consequences that would follow from the speeches that had that night been delivered against Her Majesty's Judges, when they were read, as they would be read, fully reported, in Ireland. But this, at any rate, they had the power to do—to show that when this question had been brought forward and fully debated in the free and open air of that Assembly, its truth had been tested and its injustice ascertained. He therefore called upon the House not to permit the Motion to be withdrawn, but to stamp it with their unmitigated, unquestionable and decisive condemnation.

CAPTAIN NOLAN

said, that the fallacy which ran through the arguments of Members on the other side of the House was that they seemed to think the Puisne Judges in Ireland were in the same position as those in England. In England these Judges were non-political men, in Ireland they were political men, and interfered to a greater extent in the government of the country. As to the Galway Election Petition having been tried out in the House, it had since then been tried out in the constituency, which reversed the judgment of the House.

Question put, and agreed to.

Main Question, "That Mr. Speaker do now leave the Chair," put, and agreed to.