The Ferry Cabinet has given way about " priority," and
is driving the Magistracy Bill through the Chambers, perhaps with some idea that the Senate will reject it. The Bill, as de- signed, authorised Government to reorganise the Courts, and especially to abolish the Courts in very small districts ; but the Chamber has rejected this provision. The interest of the Bill, therefore, centres in the last clause, which confers on the Presi- dent for twelve months the power of placing any Judge he pleases upon the pension list, with pension gradated according to length of service. This clause suspends the irremovability of the Judges, and would be used to fill the Bench with Repub- licans. It is a bad clause. It establishes a precedent which Royalists would quote, and it does not secure its end, for the really bad Judges will pretend to be Republican, and hate the Republic worse than ever. It would have been wiser and more manly for the Republicans to leave the Judges as a body irre- movable, and to remove the few whom they suspect, or who habitually insult the form of Government, by statute and by name, adding in a schedule the reasons for each case. There must be some sort of harmony between the Judges and the legal regime, but a few examples would have secured this, with- out establishing so revolutionary a precedent. In our own Revolution, we struck one Judge, and be was Jeffreys.
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