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THE GREEN BAG
only a judge of the highest degree, but Guardian of the King's Conscience, Keeper of the Great Seal, and Speaker of the House of Lords: a Peer too, nearly always, but not invariably for, singular as it may seem, the Speaker of the House of Lords is not necessarily a member of the House. It has even happened that the Lord Keeper has officiated for years as Speaker without being raised to the Peerage. Sir Robert Henley is an instance. He presided, as Keeper of the Great Seal, in the House of Lords, but not being a Peer, he could not enter into debate as a Chancellor Peer does, and therefore, when there was an appeal from his judgment in the Court of Chancery, and the Law Lords then in the House moved to reverse his judgment, the Lord Keeper could not state the grounds of his opinions given in judg ment and support his decisions. The ex planation of this strange anomaly is that the woolsack is not technically within the House; the Lords may not speak from that part of the chamber, and if they sit there during a division, their votes are not counted. It is for the same reason that the Lord Chancellor, when addressing the House, always quits the woolsack and advances to a spot within the House. At the moment of writing, Lord Loreburn, though fully interested in his office of Lord Chancellor, is not yet fully ennobled. His apotheosis as a Peer will be on this wise. When Parliament meets, the leading repre sentatives of the Government present, Lord Ripon presumably, will state that His Majesty has been pleased to raise Sir Robert Reid, Lord High Chancellor of England, to the dignity of a Peer of the Realm. The Lord Chancellor, on hearing this news, will withdraw to reappear in a moment clad in the robes of a Baron and accompanied by his sponsors or introducers. He will present his patent of nobility which will be read; he will be escorted to the Baron's bench and take his seat thereon, and then the oath having been administered, he will resume his seat on the woolsack.
The new Chancellor has not, however, waited for his apotheosis to initiate reforms. Of late years, under the demoralizing influ ence of the fashionable week end, Saturday has been coming to be treated as a dies non, a whole holiday in the courts, and so arrears accumulated. On the first Saturday, under Lord Loreburn 's regime, sixteen effective courts were sitting, the Lord Chancellor himself presiding in Appeal Court No. i. Such an array of judicial efficiency has not been seen for many years, and it is of good augury. A few days later, the Chancellor paid a visit to the Royal Courts of Justice, and had interviews with the King's Bench Masters, the Crown Office Masters, and other officials of the central office. He afterwards went through the various rooms of that department and had the course of business and the procedure explained to him. This again looks like business. So all great generals have familiarized themselves with the smallest details of military organization. It is especially necessary in England where the recognized order of precedence is costs first, then practice, and last, merits. The system of judicature, introduced by the Judicature Act, has now been in working for a generation, and the machinery needs to be thoroughly overhauled, and the defects which have discovered themselves in it — costliness, complexity, the multiplication of appeals — remedied, if possible. Among other things, county courts, which have won golden opinions, might well be made branches of the High Court. The time has also come to consider whether something cannot be done to improve the chaotic condition of English substantive law — at present little short of a national reproach; to ascer tain, too, what are the real obstacles to a successful system of land registration, and whether such obstacles are insuperable; how it is that there are as many or more persons in prison for debt since the abolition of impris onment for debt than before; why prisoners should be confined ten or twelve or sixteen weeks before their trial and then be released
