Lawyers in the English Parliament. might in the event of a call of the House receive peremptory instructions to return from the sheriff of the county in which the constituency they represented was situated. Calls of the House were made by means of speaker's letters to the sheriffs until the rule of party whips became well recognized. The treasury issued whips long before the office of the official whip was well estab lished and duly recognized. But calls of the House made through the Speaker and the sheriffs were continued for half a cen tury or more after the office of treasury whip was established, and a member who defaulted when the House was called was likely to have a representative of the sergeant-at-arms on his heels in a very short time, and to discover that quite a little bill of fees awaited his settlement when he was brought back to Westminster. Even when lawyers went on circuit with the permission of the House, they were liable to instant recall if the business of the House demanded a full attendance. For some centuries, in fact until as late as 1883, the House of Commons and several of the law courts were side by side at West minster. The Commons sat in the old Chapel of St. Stephen's, and the judges held court in rooms in or adjacent to Westminster Hall. In those days it was much easier than it is now for a lawyer to attend the court and also to attend the House of Com mons; and in those days it was a common occurrence for the House to order the sergeant-at-arms to go with the mace into the courts in Westminster Hall, and bring in the lawyer members there engaged, to attend the service of the House. There are many enlightening records in the Journals of the House in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries concerning the lawyer members. They were often called upon to undertake special services in the work of the House. Not infrequently, fol lowing the list of the members of a com mittee to which a bill had been referred,
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comes the additional statement " and all the gentlemen of the long robe." Parliamentary committees sometimes met in the chambers of lawyers in the Temple. During the short interval in the latter part of the first half of the seventeenth century, when election cases were dealt with on their merits, and not as party questions, the lawyers rendered excel lent service on the committees of privileges and elections. Many a borough owed the preservation of its scot and lot franchise and the victory of its householders over the free men or the corporation when these were seeking to possess themselves of the right of election, to the lawyer statesmen who were of the election committees of this period. Evidence is not wanting that the lawyers sought to extend the advantages accruing to them from membership in the House of Commons. In 161 4, Sir Edward Hobby moved that " the sergeant may go to all the courts to move them from the House to hear those of the House before any other, that so they may attend their service in this House and yet not lose their practice." The motion failed. In 1640 there was another motion to the same effect, also unsuccessful. "The judges to be moved," it reads, " to give precedence in their motions to all such lawyers as are members of this House." At this period parliamentary privileges were being pressed in new and strange directions, and it is not surprising that the lawyers were anxious to turn parliamentary privileges to professional account. Nowadays service in Parliament brings more advantage to lawyers than to men of any other class. It is a standing advertise ment for a practising barrister to be of the House of Commons. The fact that he is in Parliament also helps him when he desires to become a Queen's counsel. The late Earl of Selborne, who was Lord Chancellor during the Liberal administration of 1880'85, has left his testimony to that effect. Moreover, when a new administration is
