§ MR. COBBI beg to ask the First Lord of the Treasury whether the attention of the Lord Chancellor and of other Members of the Government has been called to an article in the Times newspaper of March 6th, referring to the alleged inability of one of Her Majesty's Judges to perform his judicial duties; whether he has received from the honourable Member for the Rugby Division a letter informing him (according to his request made in the House of Commons), of the name of the Judge referred to in a question put on February 26th; and whether the Lord Chancellor or the Government intend to take any steps in the matter?
§ *MR. W. H. SMITHI have to express my regret that the hon. Member should think it right to address this question to me. I wish to point out to him, what I have pointed out in the letter which I sent in answer to the letter addressed to me by the hon. Member, that it is the policy of the Government, of Parliament, and I might almost say of the Constitution, to respect the complete and absolute independence of the Judicial Bench. The Government have no authority whatever over a Judge of the land. The Government have no paternal or disciplinary authority in any way over a Judge of the land; and I have pointed out to the hon. Member that if he has reason to believe there is a failure of justice it is in his power, as well as in the power of any other hon. Member, to move an Address to the Crown for the removal of the Judge in question. That is the only course open to any hon. Member, whether he be a Member of the Government or of Parliament. I should earnestly deprecate any suggestion that it is the duty of the Government to bring pressure to bear on the Judges based on reports in news-papers, or on statements which are in any way deficient of allegations of positive fact as to the failure of justice. I must, decline, with all respect to the House, to discuss by question and answer across the floor of the House the conduct and capacity of any one of the Judges of the land.
§ MR. COBBI beg to ask the right hon. Gentleman whether he is aware that the incapacity of the Judge, whose name I gave him in a letter, is notorious, that it is, to use the words of the Times, the universal topic of conversation wherever lawyers meet, a subject of wonder and regret to the whole Profession. I wish to ask further, whether, having challenged me in this House last week to give publicly in the House the name of the Judge, and I having ascertained from the clerks at the Table that the course which the right hon. Gentleman invited me to take would not be in order, he has any objection to my publishing the correspondence which took place?
§ *MR. W. H. SMITHIf the hon. Member thinks it is to the public interest and to his own personal satisfaction to publish that correspondence he is perfectly entitled to do so.