THE JUSTICE OF THE PEACE
[To the Editor of NICE SPECTATOR.]
Sin,—Will you allow me to comment on Mr. Walling's very interesting article of December 23rd on The Justice of the Peace "—interesting not only for its accurate presentment of the duties of the office but for the complacency of its conclusion—with which I entirely disagree—characteristic of the popular regard for what I always prefer to call " amateur justice " ?
Let me cull two sentences from the beginning and the end of Mr. Walling's essay.
" Lord Coke," he writes, " said : The whole Christian world bath not the like office as justice of the peace, if duly executed.' " Mr. Walling and I do not differ as to the merits of the pronouncement of that great authority, Lord Coke, on the office of Justice, and Mr. Walling has, if I may say so, sketched admirably some of the details of its duties. And Mr. Walling's conclusion upon the matter is this. (I do not concur in it and, if it be respectful and decent so to say, I would wager that Lord Coke would not now be on the side of Mr. Walling in the matter.) ; " That so great a task is dis- charged with so general satisfaction and so little criticism seems to afford evidence that the peculiar institution of the lay justice is a natural product of the Engish conception of Society and well suited to English needs."
Alas ! the smallness of the criticism is due to ignorance, and the general satisfaction is the satisfaction of those who do not feel the weight of its injustice. This judgement is as valuable as that of a boa-constrictor on the question of breakfast, for Mr. Walling in taking his referendum omitted to ascertain the views of the rabbit.
Mr. Walling takes pleasure in the thought that no other country is found which confides to a body of honorary lay justices the high authority and the grave responsibility pos- sessed by local magistrates in England. That, Sir, is the foundation of my indictment. It were better far, if such experiments are desired, to create benches of amateur County Court Judges to play about with the property and purses of other people. What an outcry such a proposal would cause I But no country, no civilized country, has the right to confide to a body of honorary lay justices not purses but the persons, the reputations, and the liberty of its natives.
It is to my mind the rankest effrontery to select men and women—from every rank of society it is true—but without, generally speaking, any experience or knowledge, and confide to them the office of a judge. Mi. Walling says they gradually acquire knowledge. That must be a great comfort to a man unjustly convicted or improperly punished while the Justices are acquiring that knowledge. Your readers, Sir, one imagines and hopes, are not for the most part likely to be called upon to take their trial on a criminal charge. The possibility is too remote for my challenge to arrest their attention. May I try to reach them with the illustration of a comparatively innocuous injustice which some of them may have suffered ?
If any reader of The Spectator has been convicted of care- lessly driving his motor-car and has felt aggrieved at the in- correctness of his conviction, the size of the penalty, or the prejudice or the stupidity of the Court, he may begin to understand how much it matters to him and his wife if one poor wretch is improperly, sent to prison for a week for an alleged larceny.
There is no fair parallel, with every respect to Mr. Walling, between the Jury and the Justice. The Jury are judges only of fact, chosen for their duty because of and not despite their ignorance of law. The Justice is in addition a Judge of Law and of evidence and of punishment, chosen in that behalf, one would almost say, because he knows nothing of law or of the rules of evidence and has no experience of punishing. In thirty years' experience of Courts of Summary Jurisdiction and as a member of clubs in London and the provinces, I have watched and studied an enormous number of Justices in and out of Court. It is possible to generalize on the subject. They are always earnest and well-intentioned, often amiable, some- times eminent : and the more eminent they are, whether in literature and journalism, or in the City or where you will, the less, in my experience, they seem able to realize the possibility that they may not be the best possible judges of a poor man's cause. Brains and success elsewhere will no doubt help them in that gradual process of acquiring knowledge, but—God !- the gradualness of it and at what a price, paid in the tears and agony of other people.
And the Clerk. He is the last refuge of those who believe in amateurs. " The Clerk," they tell you, " will keep 'em straight." " He at all events is a lawyer." Well, is he? Or, rather, is he the right kind of lawyer ? The little old-fashioned solicitor in a small country town who is called upon at intervals to advise the Squire, the merchant, the trades union official and the lady J.P. on the trial of the village undesirable, does not always, as my experience goes, know too much of either law or evidence, but sometimes more about the defendant's private life or reputation than is or could be admissible in evidence in the case. The other side of the picture may be seen in Metropolitan police courts and perhaps elsewhere, where the Clerk is specially trained for his job and is generally a model of efficiency.
I have written on the footing of the honest inefficiency of lay justice. There is a dishonest side. I have known benches before which it was impossible to convict or acquit a friend or an enemy, as the case might be, of the tribunal. No, Sir, Mr. Walling's theory cannot be supported in 1983, and with the spread of progressive ideas the amateurs will go.—I am,
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