BILLS PRESENTED. FIRST READING. (Hansard, 4 May 1875)

§ LORD SELBORNE

, in rising to call attention to the subjects of the Inns of Court and Legal Education; and to submit a Bill to make provision for the better regulation and government of the Inns of Court, and a Bill to establish a General School of Law in England, said, it would be in their Lordships' recollection that on the 10th of July last year he laid on the Table of their Lordships' House a Bill on the subject first referred to in his Notice. To that Bill some exception was taken by his noble and learned Friend on the Woolsack, who expressed his own views as to the proper manner of dealing with the subject. 5 For this expression of opinion he felt very much obliged to his noble and learned Friend, and in the Bill which he now proposed to lay on the Table would be found embodied the suggestions then made by his noble and learned Friend. The Inns of Court were ancient and very important public institutions of the country. The fact that they were public institutions in the sense that Parliament could properly deal with them as such had been disputed in some quarters; but, as he could not help thinking, on superficial and erroneous grounds. They were sometimes called voluntary Societies. No doubt, they were not originally constituted by the public law of the land, nor were they incorporated by law; but surely it was not a correct mode of expression to describe as voluntary Societies institutions into some one of which every man was compelled by law to enter, if he was to exercise one of the most important professions in this country. No man could practise at the Bar without having been called to the Bar by one of those Societies, and no man could be called to the Bar by one of those Societies unless he first became a member of the Society which was to call him. In numerous Acts of Parliament the public interest in those Societies was recognized. He would mention but one. By the first statute passed in the fifth year of the reign of Elizabeth it was enacted that the Oath of Supremacy should be taken— By all manner of persons that have taken or hereafter shall take any degree of Learning in or at the common laws of this realm, as well utter-barristers as benchers, readers, ancients in any House or Houses of Court. The Inns of Court held their property from very ancient times, and had never used it except in a manner strictly consistent with the supposition that they held it as a public trust. There had, indeed, been in some of the Inns a privilege of chambers enjoyed by the members of their Governing Body; but that practice had, he believed, ceased. The whole history of the Inns of Court showed that their property had never been dealt with as private property. He held that all the four Inns of Court were institutions of the same nature and character; and as regarded two of them—the Inner and the Middle Temple—the Royal Commission appointed in 6 1854, by their Report in 1855, distinctly stated that the property of the two Temples was held upon a direct trust by the acceptance of a grant made by James I., which recited that "the Inns of the Inner and Middle Temple, London, being two out of those four colleges the most famous of all Europe," were dedicated to the study of the law, and contained this provision— Which said inns, messuages, &c., for ourselves, our heirs, and successors, we strictly command shall serve for the entertainment and education of the students and professors of the laws aforesaid, residing in the same Inns, for ever. He ought almost to apologize for having said so much on the point to which he had been referring, but he had thought it well to do so in order to meet an objection that had been raised in some quarters. In 1854 a Committee of the House of Commons, which was composed of able men, and conducted its inquiries in a most careful manner, expressly recommended that the Inns of Court should be united and made to constitute a legal University, each retaining its separate collegiate character. The Royal Commission of 1854, to which he had already referred, made a similar recommendation; and in 1863 his noble and learned Friend on the Woolsack obtained from the Society of Lincoln's Inn a resolution in favour of the creation of a Legal University to which the various Inns of Court might be affiliated. On subsequent occasions resolutions, involving not less clearly the principle of public regulation in respect of these Societies, were adopted by Committees appointed by two of the other Inns of Court. Some years since, also, a Bill was introduced in the House of Commons by Sir George Bowyer, which passed through most of its stages without serious—if any—opposition from the Inns of Court, and would doubtless have been sent up to their Lordships' House but for a dissolution of Parliament, by which its progress was interrupted. That Bill, in accordance with another recommendation of the Royal Commission, proposed to give greater powers to the Inns of Court with respect to the discipline of the Bar than they now proposed, and to place the exercise of their powers under legal safeguards. He himself, while Chancellor—having for several years before interested himself in an Association for 7 the Promotion of Legal Education, which, however, did not contemplate any interference with the internal affairs of the Inns of Court—caused to be prepared, and circulated among the benchers of the different Inns, the draft of a Bill, which would have dealt, in one measure, with the Inns of Court and with legal education. The plan, however, which he then proposed did not meet with the approval of the Governing Bodies of these learned Societies; and he received no suggestion from any of them as to any other plan which they might prefer. Under these circumstances, separating the question of the Inns of Court from that of legal education, he thought it best to make his own proposition. He did so last year, and his noble and learned Friend on the Woolsack took exception to it. He had not a word to say to his noble and learned Friend's exceptions. On the contrary, he thought his noble and learned Friend had assigned valid reasons for them, and he had prepared the present Bill in strict accordance with his noble and learned Friend's suggestions. He proposed that the Inns of Court should have full liberty to take the initiative themselves in such charges as might be desirable; and Commissioners were to be appointed, by whom any ordinances which they might make were to be approved or disallowed, and who might themselves make ordinances—if none sufficient were made by the Inns of Court—subject to the approval of Her Majesty in Council, as had been provided by the Acts relating to the Universities of Oxford, Cambridge, and Durham. The Bill did not pledge the Commissioners to draw up any plan of organization defined in the Bill itself—the question of the particular plan was left open. All he now proposed to do was to lay the Bill on the Table, and to ask their Lordships to give it a first reading. He was unwilling to throw additional duties upon his noble and learned Friend, but having discharged a duty which he considered had fairly devolved upon him, he was ready not only to defer to his noble and learned Friend's judgment, but to surrender the Bill to him if he was willing to take charge of it.

Bill to make provision for the better regulation and government of the Inns of Court presented by The Lord SELBORNE.