PRIVATE BILLS AND PUBLIC BUSINESS.
IF the Government would take-up Mr. Craig Seller's Bill on the subject of Private-Bill legislation, bring it into shape, and pass it, they would really make a good use of what is too likely to be a wasted Session. The great need of the immediate future is to clear the way for the Reformed Parliament to get to work. It has a tremendous task before it in the completion of the machinery of national self-government by the establishment of a Democratic system of local self-government in the counties. The Municipal Reform, which naturally followed on the reformed system of borough representation, exhausted the energies of the first Parliament after 1832. To do for the counties what that Parliament did for the boroughs is the natural, and no less onerous, work of the first Parliament elected with the reformed county constituencies. This question of machinery is only too likely to stay the impetus of Reform before the more important measures are taken in hand. Every clog, therefore, should be removed from the legislative wheel which can lessen the force of its revolutions. One of the worst and most unnecessary of these clogs is the system of Private-Bill legislation. The system is wasteful alike of the time of Parliament and the money of the public ; it is slow, costly, and inefficient. The mere routine work of passing the Private Bills through their several stages consumes something like half an hour per diem, when every half-hour is precious. If the system of putting questions to Ministers needs reform, still more does the system of putting questions to Parliament need it. On private business Parliament is a bad Judge, and a still worse legislator. It should be got rid of in the interest equally of Parliament and of its petitioners. The notion of sitting in Parliament to rid individuals of the bonds of settlements and the burden of debt, is worthy only of the times when the welfare of individual magnates was supposed to involve the welfare of the whole nation. The Estates Bills of Peers and Commoners might really in these days be relegated to the Chancery Division or the Land Commissioners. It is a little too much to expect them to be taken in hand by the Assembly of the nation. Gas Bills and Water Bills are more important, no doubt ; but they are important rather to the single towns or districts which need them—in other words, to sections of the community—than to the nation as such, or the community at large. Surely they might fairly be left to be dealt with by the representative body of the particular community affected. The same remark applies to bridges and sewers, to tramways and subways. London is the greatest sinner in taking-up the time of the country in this respect. That Cromwell Road cannot be extended across the railway which bounds it on the west without an application to Parliament, and that a subway cannot be made underneath a single London thoroughfare without the leave of the nation being first had and obtained (only to be disregarded when the conditions on which it is given prove objectionable), would be ridiculous, if it were not so lamentable a waste of time and money. Even with the present Vestry-system of London, such matters as these might in all security be left to the Metropolitan Board of Works to settle for itself, without lawyers, and certainly without Parliament. When London has a decent local Government, which we do not yet despair of seeing this Session, the absurdity of not entrusting the decision of such matters to that local Government will be too great to be endured. There are other matters, such as railways and canals and systems of drainage over wide areas, which affect more local communities than one, and which can hardly be left, like questions of International law, to be settled by separate treaties between the high-contracting parties. The concert of the kingdom has in this case to be invoked. But it may fairly be invoked in nine cases out of ten by a simple attorney writing a single letter to a responsible Department, such as the -Local Government Board, with a statement of facts subject to correction by an inspectionby an Inspector on the spot, and certainly does not need all the paraphernalia of Parliamentary Committees and specialised counsel and solicitors assembled. in St. Stephen's, which are now thought a necessary part of the farce. In a few cases where much opposition of principle and interest is aroused, and where a complicated mass of facts has to be examined, a more elaborate procedure and a more august tribunal may be required. It is for such cases as these that Mr. Seller, aided by Mr. Horace Davey, seeks to provide a remedy. The remedy proposed is, indeed, made applicable to all Private Bills ; but the medicine-men are probably suggesting only the shortest and simplest remedy for the consideration of Parliament, without cumbering it with details. The scheme is to constitute a Court of three Judges, to be called Justices of the High Court of Parliament, who, sitting together or singly, are to be substituted for the Select Committee, and to report on every Private Bill referred to them, as a delect Committee now does, with the very important exception that they are to give reasons for their decisions. They are also to fill the function of the examiner of Private Bills, and to determine questions of locus standi,—to determine, that is, whether a petitioner against or in favour of a Bill has any title to be heard. They are, to a certain extent, to be a roving commission,—that is, they are to sit a month in Edinburgh and a month in Dublin, if there is any Scotch or Irish business to require their presence there. They are to sit out of the Parliamentary Session, as well as in it, till they have disposed of all the Bills introduced in the Session. The jurisdiction of Parliament over these Bills is still preserved in the same form as it now exists over a Bill reported by a Select Committee ; but the report of the Judges is to be considered as a report by a Select Committee of each House. There cannot be the smallest doubt that the introduction of this tribunal would be a vast improvement upon the existing system. It would save the double hearing before co-ordinate tribunals, of the evils of which the Manchester Ship Canal Bill, rejected by the Lords after being passed by the Commons in 1883, and rejected by the Commons after having been passed by the Lords in 1884, is the latest and most scandalous instance. This alone is a sufficient justification of the proposed transfer. But it would effect far more than this. It would substitute skilled for unskilled Judges, with infinite possibilities of the saving of time and expense by the rejection of useless and irrelevant evidence, by the curtailment of the speeches, the interjections, and the wrangling of Counsel ; while the limited number of the Court would obviate the necessity of retaining six barristers when two only are required. Immense gains, again, would be made by the Court sitting continuously for six hours a day five days a week, and four hours during the sixth day, instead of intermittently for only three or four hours four days a week. But the chief gain of all would be in possessing a tribunal which, being compelled to act on fixed principles, and to give reasons for its decisions, would introduce a large amount of certainty and definiteness where all is now uncertain and indefinite. The change would be a change from trial by irresponsible, unguided, and shifting Juries, to trial by a responsible and permanent Judge. A large amount of useless litigation would be saved; because people would be more chary of opposition before an impartial and skilled Court than they are now before a haphazard and (from the nature of things) not always unprejudiced Committee. The litigation that is necessary would be confined within a smaller compass, and conducted with more expedition.
There are two obvious criticisms on the scheme. The one is that, as we have already hinted, its utility is mainly confined to the larger schemes and the more contested cases. Vast expenses are incurred, and the time of the persons concerned, as well as that of Parliament, is now wasted over matters which might well be transacted without lawyers and without judicial proceedings. But this objection can be easily met either now or hereafter by carrying the process of devolution further. Once delegate the business as a whole to an outside tribunal, and Parliament will be far more easily persuaded to place the business in the proper hands. The second criticism is that it is eminently undesirable, at a time when we have just succeeded in making " the Courts which were manifold dwindle To divers divisions of one," to create a wholly new and independent tribunal. For one thing, although the fees may cover the expenses of the Court, it will be difficult for a Government of economy to justify the payment of £3,000 a year to three gentlemen who would in all probability not find business to occupy them for more than half the year. A provision is contained in the Bill that the same Judges should be employed as election-petition Judges, thereby relieving the Queen's Bench Division of a small portion of its multifarious duties. This provision suggests the true constitution of the Court as Judges of the High Court of Justice, capable of being turned-on to ordinary legal business when their special Parliamentary business was over. There is far too much work in the High Court of Justice now • and the addition of more Judges is eminently desirable, especially when accompanied by a large increase of the suitors'-fee fund. Moreover, the Judges would be very much more efficient, and very much more respected by Counsel as well as the public, if they were members of the ordinary Courts, than if they were
a separate body. This matter is capable of being pat right by half-a-dozen amendments in Committee. In other respects the Bill is as complete in itself as can reasonably be expected, and, if adopted,'would be a great boon, relieving Parliament of a weighty task, which it performs badly, and which prevents it from devoting itself to far more important and congenial work.
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