ELECTED JUSTICES.
WE are quite as anxious as Mr. Seale-Hayne can be that the ranks of the Justices of the Peace shall not be closed against any class or sect, and that the appointments shall not be made on mere party grounds. When, however, he proposes to accomplish this by electing the Magistrates, he is making one of the most foolish and ill-considered proposals ever made by a Member of the House of Commons. Does he imagine that the County and Municipal Councils which he desires to be the electing bodies are likely to choose the Magistrates upon any but political grounds ? His plan is "to inspire popular confidence in the Petty Sessional Courts by estab- lishing a system of election. The Justices ought to be selected from the best men in all classes, and he believed the people were to be trusted in selecting them by election." Surely the only result of such a system of election would be to pack the Bench with the partisans of the party which happened to be triumphant in the Town or County Council. We have no desire to keep the County Benches in the hands of the squires, and would, wherever occasion offered, appoint really fit working men to the Bench. The question of the selection of Magistrates, however, ought not to be mixed up with any such matter as the right of this or that class or party to be represented on the Bench. Certain qualities are imperatively wanted in a Magistrate, and the method of choosing Magistrates which ought to be preferred is that which gives most guarantee that these qualities will be given their proper weight. Above all, a Magistrate, like every other person exercising judicial office, must either be by his own circumstances in a pecuniary position which raises him above all temptation or suspicion of corruption, or else must be paid a sum sufficient to place him above all danger of temptation. The only exception is to be found in the case of some picked working man or other person of limited means whose character is so well established and so universally esteemed, that he is put beyond all suspicion. It is not enough that a Magis- trate should be, in fact, uncorrupt. It is necessary that, as far as possible, he should be a man in regard to whom the accusation of corruption would seem ridiculous. The feeling, "It would never be worth his while to take a bribe," is the feeling which ought to fill the public mind in regard to every judicial officer. But, it may be said, 'this is all very well in theory ; in practice, however, there are many elected officers who are under far greater pecuniary tempta- tion,—members of Town and County Councils, for in- stance. The argument, then, goes too far, and cuts at the root of representative democracy.' To this there is a simple answer. It is true that the pecuniary temptations and the opportunities of corruption may be more serious in a Town Councillor ; but for all that, it is not so essential to guard him from the slightest breath of suspicion. The Magistrates and Judges are the means by which you punish corruption. They supply the checks on the dangers of the elective system. You can trust election just because the judicial administration is so carefully preserved from corruption. The contractor who wants to buy a Town Council does not dare to do so now, because he knows that if he is found out, he will not be able to prevent the Magistrates from committing him on a charge of fraud. As has frequently been seen in America, the first thing done by a man who is bent on plundering a city, is the " fixing " of the Judges and Magistrates. He gets the judicial officers into his pay, and he then proceeds to organise his " steal " in peace, convinced that if anything goes wrong, no local Magistrate will grant a warrant against him, or allow a summons to go undismissed. The " fixing " of Magistrates would be a fairly easy piece of work if they were elected by the Councils. The organiser of the " steal " and his secret agents would, at the time of the Council elections, find a certain number of men anxious to stand, but in difficulties about their expenses, or amenable in some other way to a powerful outside influence. These men would be approached, and in many cases would agree, in exchange for help of one kind or another, to vote,if elected, for such-and-such persons as Magistrates. The names proposed would be those of unknown men, but apparently quite innocent persons, and they would vary according to the politics of the candidates. The would-be Magistrate- " fixer " of our thought would allege that these men were ex- cellent persons and great friends of his,—men he particularly wanted to see on the Bench because of their impartiality and general fitness. The Tories would promise their sup- port to the Tory nominees of the "fixer," and the Liberals theirs to his Liberal friends. With a little trouble and a good deal of expenditure, a majority of men thus pledged would be returned, and their pledges would then have to be redeemed by the election of certain dark-horse Magis- trates. Remember, we are not alleging that any Magistrate- "fixer " could elect a thoroughly corrupt Council, but merely that, by the expenditure of money and the use of a little diplomacy, it might be possible to get a considerable num- ber of Councillors to consent to mortgage their choice in re- gard to the Magistrates. They would not know the object with which their promises were obtained, and would think they were doing nothing contrary to their duty. Yet, in truth, they would have been selling immunity to a fraudu- lent contractor. Perhaps it will be said that this is a very unlikely case ; and that, at any rate, the present system of appointing Magistrates is open to the same misuse. The Lord Chancellor, it will be urged, is advised by the local wirepullers, and these local wirepullers could be got at, and bribed to nominate the " fixer's " men. Those who argue thus forget that the Lord Chancellor, though he may be swayed by party motives, is very particular not to choose men who are likely to lend themselves to corrupt practices. In the first place, the so-called " wirepuller " is a man of position and consequence in the town, who would do anything rather than get into deep disgrace by nominating a corruptible Magistrate. It is his business, as well as the business of the Chancellor and of whoever is the official who helps the Chancellor with the work of making appointments, to see that the names selected to be added to the Commission of the Peace are, at any rate, those of respectable people. But in the case of election by the Council, it would. be nobody's business to see to the fitness of those for whom some third person was trying to get pledges of support. Candidates in the heat of contest would pay very little attention to the names of those they were asked to " remember " when the election of Magistrates took place. If they saw no notoriously unfit person on the list, they would be just as likely as not to pledge themselves. As we have said before, the present system at least makes it some- body's business to see that none but respectable people get put on the Bench. There is yet another security in the existing arrangement. The Lord Chancellor is amenable to public opinion ; a Council is not. If the Lord Chancellor appoints some unfit person, it is possible to make an effective protest. No one can protest with any good result against an election by a Council. There is no individual to be made responsible or visited with the consequences. Men can only shrug their shoulders and say : "What an abominably bad choice the Council have made !" If, however, a Chancellor makes a corrupt ap- pointment, he does so at his peril. It will be no excuse for him that he trusted a local wirepuller who misled him. The security against the Bench becoming corrupted, is therefore very much greater under the present system than under one of election. Unhappily, the truth of this can be proved not only in the abstract, but by a concrete example. No one seriously supposes that Americans are per se more corrupt than Englishmen ; yet there can be no doubt that judicial corruption obtains in certain States of the Union to an extent unknown in England. But those States are the States in which the Judges are elected, and not chosen by an officer to whom that duty is assigned, and who can be visited by public censure if he fails in the execution of his high trust.
It is not because we have any desire to support a privi- leged class that we deprecate the election of Magistrates. It is because we believe that the effect of 'altering our present system would be detrimental to the country as a whole, and especially to the poorer classes, that we are against elected Justices. We believe that there is nothing which a purely cynical millionaire would consider calcu- lated to give him more power, and his wealth more security, than the election of judicial officers. Let the Magistrates and Judges be elected,' he would say, and I can guarantee to get as many of them as I like on my side. You may make what laws you please, as long as I am sure of the interpreters of the law, and sure I can be if you will only put the seats on the Bench up to election.' What chance would the poor man have against the millionaire's "popularly elected Magistrates " ? The present Magistrates are extraordinarily sensitive to the slightest outcry of favouring the rich. An elected Magis- trate put in to do a particular piece of work, and able to talk grandly about the popular mandate behind him, would have very few scruples, we expect. The poor man who talked about the unfair bias of the Court, would be told he was abusing an elected Justice, and would very soon be reduced to silence. Have the Temperance people ever considered what elected Magistrates would mean in places where the liquor interest was strong ? If the brewers were to get hold of a Council, they might make the licensing authority a committee of their nominees. If, then, the people of England are wise, they will, in spite of all the talk about democracy and the destinies, refuse to embark upon any scheme for establishing elected Magistrates. By all means let a vigilant eye be kept on the Lord Chan- cellor, and let his appointments be scrutinised carefully. That is a wise and prudent course, for no officer was ever the worse for the supervision of public opinion. Let it not be supposed, however, that election and judicial efficiency can keep house together. The only alternative to the present system is one of Stipendiaries,— but that is not an alternative which we imagine will com- mend itself to Mr. Seale-Hayne and his friends.
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