On Monday Lord Rosebery introduced into the House of Lords
a Bill allowing Colonial Judges to be appointed as members of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council,— that wonderful final Court of Appeal for the Empire, in which the suitors are now the merchants of Melbourne or Montreal, the fur-traders within the Arctic Circle or the Dutch farmers of the Cape, now the priests who guard some dim mysterious shrine on the Ganges, or the chiefs of a hill- tribe, or again, the Chinese merchants of Singapore. We have nothing but satisfaction to express for anything which helps to keep the Colonies united to the mother-country by so wholesome and safe a tie as the Judicial Committee. We wish, however, that Lord Rosebery had been a little bolder and had proposed straight out to create three great Judicial posts, one for Canada, one for Australasia, and one for South Africa, and had attached to each a salary of £5,000 a year. Unfortunately it is almost impossible to get a Government to take a bold and generous step of that kind, and we must therefore be content with the small mercy Lord Rosebery presented on Monday.
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