Justice for Judges It is intelligible that the Government should
want to give itself more time to consider the question of the Judges' salarirs,1 but it is doubtful whether the problem will prove any morel tractable after Easter than before. It is easy for critics of the proposal to give the Judges an extra £1,000 a year free of ti , to condemn it as setting a dangerous precedent. Precedent and consistency are useful checks to rash action, but it possible to make fetishes of both of them. In this case, more' over, no precedent of importance would be created. Judges are a very small class, set apart in many ways from the rest of 110 population. The claim that because a Judge got a tax-free addition to his emoluments a civil servant or a town-clerk or 1111 inspector of nuisances should be entitled to expect the same i9 absurd. If the objectors to the Government's method of attai ing a result on the desirability of which almost everyone IS agreed can suggest a better method it is certain of the most sympathetic consideration. But it may well be doubted whether the one method that has so far been suggested, the increase Of the Judges' salaries by enough thousands of pounds to leave them £1,000 net better off than they are today—this would mean. for example, paying the Lord Chancellor, who now gets £10,000 an extra £30,000 a year—is in fact a better way at all. That the Government has reaffirmed its resolve that the Judges shall, in one way or another, get extra remuneration is satisfactory. If it decides that its original way is the best way it will not deserve attack for having in this single limited instance broken the shackles of precedent.
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