TOPICS OF THE DAY.
LORD HERSCHELL AS A DISCIPLINARIAN.
MR. ALPHEUS MORTON, if he be as intelligent as he is certainly headstrong, will not soon forget the moral discipline which Lord Herschell administered to him and his 279 Radical colleagues on Wednesday in the goses-room of the House of Lords. Moses striking the rock till out of it there flowed a stream of pure water for the thirsty Israelites, was hardly sterner than the teacher of Radicals whom he addressed, and hardly more fearless ; but certainly there was not any trace in Lord Herschel' of of Radicals whom he addressed, and hardly more fearless ; but certainly there was not any trace in Lord Herschel' of that self-glorifying attitude of mind which was for the moment, we suppose, predominant in the Hebrew prophet. Lord Herschel' was stern, but he was also very modest.
He had ranged before him the great majority of the Liberal Party, including their Irish allies. Seventy-four additional Members would have made up the full strength of the Government majority, even when the Parnellites vote or pair in their favour. Mr. Morton had mustered his partisans with great energy. No doubt he supposed himself to have gathered together a Parliamentary force before the menacing ranks of which Lord Herschel' would cower. But he must have led back his vast Parliamentary corps d'arme'e with a sense that, instead of scoring anything by the demonstration and the air of subdued insolence with which they menaced Lord Herschel', they had played into the hands of that courageous but thoroughly lucid and able Minister. Mr. Morton did not manage his case well. He professed to be anxious, and we have no doubt was anxious, to get a reform of the Magistracy conceived in the spirit of a thoroughly practical reformer. But be made two blunders. He had no conception of the difficulties of the task, while Lord Herschel' knew exactly what all these difficulties were. And he was so angry with Lord Herschel' for not moving faster, that he both underrated the genuineness and the steadiness of Lord Herschell's work, and permitted himself to bully the Lord Chancellor, and to put forward comrades whose whole aim was to display their power of bullying. Now this was a, very unsafe proceeding with so strong an antagonist and so sincere a Liberal as Lord Herschel', who was addressing, too, a much larger audience behind the scenes, and one much more capable of entering into the evidences of moderate and sincere purpose. When Mr. Morton told Lord Herschel' that he did not at all object to his consulting the Lord-Lieutenant of the county, or, for that matter, the parish beadle, as to any of his nominations for the Bench, and that he thought the parish beadle would often be able to give him more accurate information as to the character of the candidate than the Lord-Lieutenant, he showed his hand too plainly. Englishmen do not wish to see the social prejudices of- such a caste as the great landlords predominating in the choice of county magis- trates, but they still less desire to see the petty scandals of village gossips predominating in that selection. And when Mr. Conybeare told Lord Herschel! that after the county Members had once, on their responsibility as repre- sentatives, nominated a magistrate for the Bench, he had no business to go making further inquiries as to their fitness from the Lord-Lieutenant or any one else, he put it into Lord Herschell's power to make the crushing reply that, if he had regarded his own responsibility as suffi- ciently covered by the nomination of county Members, be should have raised to the Bench some persons who were not only really, but notoriously, most unfit for any such high duties. In point of fact, we believe that, more than once, persons who have been previously convicted of breaking the law themselves, have been nominated by county Members for the Bench of Magistrates. At any rate even the laxest stratum of Radical opinion is not quite prepared to follow Mr. Conybeare in regarding the Lord Chancellor of England as justified in delegating his responsibilities to such Members as Mr. Conybeare. Lord Herschell certainly came out of the deputation in a far stronger position than he went into it ; and if, as Mr. Morton injudiciously suggested, the Treasury Bench had really been willing to join in that attempt to hector the Lord Chancellor,—which is, we have no doubt, entirely a wild fancy of Mr. Morton's,—we rather think that the- Treasury Bench would have left the room with the uncomfortable sense that resignation would be their next public duty, and one, too, which they could not long delay. Lord Herschell showed triumphantly how much he had done, and done in. the best possible way, not at the cost of offending all the most experienced magistrates now on the Bench, but courteously, and with their full co- operation and consent, in introducing new men of more popular sympathies on to the Bench ; and he showed a wise sense of the folly and danger of abruptly altering. the whole personnel of the Bench, which English labourers no less than English squires will thoroughly appreciate. Nothing would be more disastrous than to fill the rural Benches with thoroughly new men, who know nothing of the traditions of the Magistracy, who would sud- denly replace the prejudices of the squires by the equally keen but much less moderate and dignified prejudices of the shopkeepers and the cottagers, and who would have no experience to go upon of the sort of miscarriages of justice which even the most scrupulous magistrates are always in danger of incurring. Of all calamities which could strike England, the calamity of a sudden solution. of continuity between the administration of justice to-day and its administration yesterday would be the greatest. But that is precisely the calamity which men like Mr. Morton and Mr. Conybeare are eager to bring about. If they were suddenly to flood the Bench with men in whom the present magistrates had no confidence, they would bring about resignations in hundreds, and soon we should have perfectly raw men, many of them fierce innovators, and many of them much more objectionable in character and incapacity than the worst of their predecessors,, spreading anger and discontent and vindictive feeling throughout the length and breadth of Great Britain. Lord Herschell has been cautious, but he has been thoroughly in earnest in introducing a class of changes which eminently need the utmost caution. One very essential qualification for the Bench which these hot-beaded and narrow Radicals never deign to consider, is the com- mand of a certain amount of leisure. What sort of decisions would magistrates make whose livelihood depended on their getting away from the Bench as soon as possible, and who went there, therefore, in a spirit of haste fatal to all careful investigation ? So long as we - have an unpaid Magistracy, we cannot have so many magistrates who depend on their own labour for their. daily bread, as we must have magistrates of independent means, unless we want to supersede all careful judgment by headlong prepossession, and that would scarcely deserve to be called a Reform of the Bench ; it would be a Deform of the Bench.
We have never held that the Liberals are mistaken in. trying to rectify the great predominance of ultra-Conser- vative bias on the Bench. As our readers know, we justified Mr. Bryce, when the great attack was made upon him for his Lancashire appointments, for we believed him. to be doing his beat, in all good faith and caution, to increase the confidence of the people in the impartiality- of the Lancashire Bench. And we heartily approve of the spirit in which the Lord Chancellor is carrying out the same great but difficult administrative reform. But, as for the efforts of Mr. A. C. Morton and Mr. Conybeare to revolutionise the Bench in a Jacobin spirit, we regard them with pure indignation. If the Tory magistrates have sometimes beaten us with whips, the Jacobin magistrates would beat us with scorpions. And England is not Jacobin. Even the English villagers are not Jacobin. If the Radicals should succeed in driving Lord Herschel! to resign, and replacing him by some fanatic of the newest social stratum, we can confidently foretell the future. The next step would be the resignation of the Ministry, and its resignation in deep disgrace with the nation. The "old parliamentary- hand" knew well what he was about when he placed Lord' Herschel! at the head of the administration of justice in this country, and we feel no manner of doubt that he expressed his own preference in making that appointment. Well has Lord Herschel! vindicated the selection. We suppose a great and eager deputation never retired from an attempt to dictate to a Minister in a more crest- fallen condition. Lord Herschell's exposure of their ignorant impatience will not soon be forgotten. . Nor will the Radicals mend the matter by calling a meeting tc. scream about it.
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