§ LORD BRAMWELL,in presenting a Petition from the Bar Committee asking their Lordships to present an humble Address to Her Majesty, praying that the New Rules regulating the practice and procedure of the Supreme Court of Judicature might be annulled, said, the object of the Petitioners was by no means hostile to the New Rules; but they thought that if the Rules were published and discussed they might be improved, and this could be done by such an Address as prayed, and by a second issuing of the Rules. He could not agree in the prayer of the Petition. He thought they were excellent, and 211 the sooner they were adopted the better. They could be amended if, in the working, faults were discovered. He should be glad to see the Long Vacation shortened—not the long Vacation of the Judges, but of the Courts. The Judges required a very long Vacation. They now did five weeks' more work every year than before the Judicature Act. He would like to see a rota formed, or some other arrangement made, by which the Judges might sit in turn. He thought that might have been done; but he begged to say again that they ought to be very much obliged to those who had drawn the Rules.
THE LORD CHANCELLORsaid, he was very much gratified at hearing what had fallen from his noble and learned Friend. With regard to the single point upon which he had objected to the Rules, about the length of the Long Vacation remaining unaltered, he did not at all differ from him; but it was not in the power of the Rule Committee of the Judges to deal with that matter—it could only be dealt with by an Order in Council, upon the advice of a Council of the whole body of Judges. He thought he might bear his testimony to the very great assiduity and zeal for the Public Service with which his Colleagues had laboured for about two years in the preparation of the New Code of Rules. He thought no public servants ever took more pains about any work, or brought to it a greater amount of knowledge and intelligence; and among those who assisted him he could not help specially mentioning the late Master of the Rolls (Sir George Jessel), who, he knew, approved of all the alterations, which had been decided upon before his lamented death, including most of those which were of any great importance. As to the applications said to have been made by the Bar Committee and the Inns of Court to the Rule Committee, neither from the Incorporated Law Society, nor from any Society or Body of persons in any sense representing the Bar, was any application made for any communication of the Rules to them during the time while those Rules were still under consideration. What applications were actually made were made when the Rules were in the course of signature by the Judges; and if those applications had been granted the Rules could not have been laid before Parliament during 212 the present Session. The Rule Committee made no secret of the work on which they were engaged during the whole progress of it; it had its commencement in the Report of a preliminary Departmental Committee, on which the Judges, the Bar, and the solicitors were well represented; and the Rule Committee, from time to time, communicated freely with Judges, officers of the Court, and barristers and solicitors of experience, on many of the questions which they had to consider. Under those circumstances, no one, he was sure, could suppose that any other course could have been taken than was actually taken.