§ MR. J. STUARTrose to put a question to the noble Lord at the head of the Government connected with the administration of justice in the highest court in the kingdom. A few days ago the noble Lord announced the resignation of Lord Cottenham, by which the Court of Chancery was deprived of the Judge who presided over the administration of justice there, and the Cabinet of one of its most distinguished Members. The noble Lord also stated upon that occasion that a successor to Lord Cottenham was about to be appointed, who would accept that great office subject to any regulations as to salary which the Committee on Salaries now sitting might think proper to recommend. Without warning, it had been for the first time announced that day, during the sitting of the courts, that instead of an individual being appointed to preside in the Court of Chancery, and instead of the Cabinet being supplied with the aid of the greatest officer in the law, it was the inten- 897 tion of Her Majesty's Ministers to put the great seal in commission. He begged the noble Lord at the head of the Government to consider the enormous inconvenience to the public which must result from the arrangement that day announced. It was proposed that the custody of the seal should be given to a commission composed of a common-law Judge and two Judges at present presiding over different branches of equity. The effect of this arrangement would be, to withdraw these two equity Judges for three or four days in the week from their own courts, which were already overburdened with business. This must be eminently inconvenient to the suitors who resorted to those courts for justice. Under these circumstances, he begged to ask the noble Lord how long the new arrangement might be expected to continue, and whether the members of the great profession of the law generally and the law officers of the Crown, whom he looked upon as at the head of that profession, laboured under such incapacity as not to be able to supply the Government with one individual fit to fill the office of Lord Chancellor?
LORD J. KUSSELLsaid: I stated formerly that my noble Friend Lord Cottenham, owing to the state of his health, was unable to continue to hold the great seal, and that consequently he had announced his intention of resigning it as soon as he had given judgment in the causes which he had already heard. I further stated that any person who might be appointed to succeed Lord Cottenham must accept office subject to any Act which Parliament may pass—whether in accordance or not with the report of the Committee on Salaries—for regulating the salary of the office. I assure the hon. and learned Gentleman that I am very sensible of the great public inconvenience that must result from putting the seal in commission at the present moment. At the same time, I had to weigh that inconvenience against the evil which, I think, would accrue if the great seal were intrusted to any individual before the Government has decided upon the course to be pursued with respect to the future duties of the Court of Chancery, the appellate jurisdiction of the House of Lords, and the administration of the functions which appertain to the Lord Chancellor as a Member of the Government. The result was, that I advised Her Majesty to put the great seal in commission; and I assure the hon. and learned Member 898 that it shall continue in commission for as short a time as possible. I hope to be able, in the course of a fortnight, to communicate to the House the plan to be proposed by the Government with respect to the matters which I have mentioned, and with respect to which I have been in communication with Lord Cottenham and other persons, who, I think, are competent to give an opinion on the subject. As I said formerly, the subject is of vast importance, and if I fix Monday fortnight as the day on which I will announce the result of the deliberations of the Government, I believe it will be the earliest moment at which it will be possible to do so.