THE SURPRISE OF TUESDAY.
ACOORDING to his own account of the matter Mr. Lowe
on Tuesday night sprang a mine upon a new Tower of Babel, which the lawyers have been conspiring to build on the rather prosaic site of Carey Street, Lincoln's Inn. The proceeding, however, resembled more closely a new attempt to found a Cave,—and this time, it would seem, in the heart of the Government, not merely in the Liberal party. Government after Government has submitted the policy of which
concentrating our Law Courts so as to introduce the highest degree of unity and efficiency into our distracted modes of procedure,—to select Committees and to Commissions, and notably to the Commission called Sir George Lewis's Commission, of which the present Lord Chancellor, Lord Hatherley, was a most active and important member, and every report so made has insisted on the vast importance of the policy of which Mr. Lowe makes so light. The Report of the Judicature Commission just issued, the importance of which, supported, as it is likely to be, by the legal authorities on both sides of the Houses of Parliament, cannot be exaggerated, iruiists on this policy of concentration as the central point of all our legal reform ; and it cannot, indeed, be carried out without such concentration. The "frenzy for concentration," over which Mr. Lowe makes so merry, has been shared by persons not less prudent and cool than the late Sir G. C. Lewis, Lord Hatherley, Sir J. Coleridge, and an almost indefinite number of other ministers and lawyers, who are not usually supposed to be given to wild and extravagant freaks of humour or caprice. Mr. Childers, for instance, was a most able member of the Courts of Judicature Commission, and was understood to be heartily in favour of the policy of concentration. He was also then, as now, a severe economist, and was not likely to favour childish lavishness for the sake of a mere whim. Mr. Lowe has apparently prepared a great surprise for some of the most weighty of his colleagues, and when he attacked Sir Roundel' Palmer so severely, many of his thrusts must have virtually been levelled at brother ministers. No doubt the Government is quite right in proposing to take on itself the responsibility of the new building. No doubt it is contrary to all true principles of economy to leave the execution of such a scheme as this to irresponsible Commissioners, who have no motive for economy and efficiency, because they have nothing to lose by extravagance and inefficiency. So far we go with Mr. Lowe. But we do earnestly protest against the penny-wise and poundfoolish counsel which proposes an irretrievable policy of insufficient accommodation on the most inconvenient of sites, in the hope of saving for the moment a sum far short of what we shall certainly have to spend in repairing our error in future years. It is all very well for a responsible Minister to say, "I am responsible for this ; if I am in error you will have me to blame, and I can pay the penalty." But by the time we are feeling the consequences of such an error as this seems likely to prove, Mr. Lowe will probably no longer be minister ; before we can feel the worst consequences of his blunder, it is scarcely possible that he can any longer be minister ; be will have the satisfaction of saving a million or two sterling now, and the next generation will have the satisfaction of paying many more millions as a fine for his error and a penal tribute to his memory.
The great mischief of our present legal system is, we cannot too often repeat, confusion and incoherence in the modes of procedure. Formerly over the whole of Europe legal jurisdictions were matters of property. Every judge and every officer had the monopoly of some part of legal relief, and sold it for fees to the suppliants (or suitors). The different vendors were sometimes rival tradesmen, and undersold one another,—sometimee rival powers getting injunctions and prohibitions against one another's interferences ; but they were never partnera, never different members of a single organization. They used, and in England to this day do use, the most inconsistent and irreconcilable methods, speaking, so to say, in tongues unknown to each other, and each animated with the most amusing contempt for the methods and language of the others. Our methods of law, equity, bankruptcy, Admiralty, and so forth, are in the most childish confusion, at cross purposes from beginning to end. The attempt of all recent legal reforms has been to consoli
date and unify,—in one word, to assimilate and concentrate these scattered systems ; and without physical concentration in space, any concentration in spirit is simply impossible. A unification intended to make the judicial establishment one establishment,—with one head, actuated by one principle, working at a proper classification of, and an organized attack
on, one and the same bundle of work, so that each judge and each officer might have what he or it is most competent to do, and so that the whole legal administration may be so
knit together as to make it work smoothly and well for this object,--cannot by any possibility be effected without a concentration of the judicial machinery of the capital into a single spot. Mr. Lowe made very merry over the supposed necessity for removing the Accountant-General's department not a crazy fanatic for concentration,—reported that it should be placed there, and we believe that Mr. Lowe could much better afford to allow his own Paymaster-General's office to go up to the Regent's Park than could the Courts of Judicature to relegate the Accountant-General's office to the City, as Mr. Lowe appears to suggest when he calls it a department of the Bank of England. No doubt there is exaggeration when it is contended that wills must all be stored up under the same roof as the Courts of Law, on the ground that now and then the Courts want to refer to a will. But the possibility of caricaturing a sound principle is no argument against its soundness. The Government themselves find concentration so necessary for the mere purpose of official convenience, that they are concentrating all their own offices at Westminster, to the depletion, as it would appear, even of Somerset House. And very much more than official convenience is involved in the concentration of the Law Courts,—the efficiency of the law itself, and all that is therein involved,—the interests of the people, for instance, in the highest degree, who, even though not comprehended under that ironical term, the "Suitors," are all directly or indirectly interested in having sure and efficient legal protection afforded to rights, and sure and efficient redress given to wrongs.
As to the special questions of site and the adequacy of the present Carey-Street plan, they are in themselves of vastly less importance than that policy of concentration of which Mr. Lowe makes so light. But it is quite clear from his speech that he has not studied them carefully, and that he knows but little of what we may call the literature of the subject. The Howard-Street site which he suggests seems to be quite inadequate to the purpose, nor does any one person who has studied the subject seem to accept his suggestion as in any way feasible. Such buildings as are wanted could not be built there ; and even such as could be built there would involve a very great preliminary expenditure in bricks and mortar, which Mr. Lowe seems to have left utterly out of account, in the way of arches to raise the rapidly sloping ground to a level fit for the building he proposes. Then as to his somewhat wilful assertion that the plan of the Commissioners has considered only the convenience of the lawyers, and left the convenience of the public entirely out of the question,—is he aware that it has been ascertained by the most careful investigation that 92 per cent. of the people who attend the Courts and Offices come from the chambers of solicitors and counsel? In the discussion of this matter, published by the Society of Arts, it is stated that the Law Institution had carefully examined this very point., and found that beyond the lawyers, suitors, and witnesses,—who generally come from solicitors' offices before attending the Court, so that their interests and those of the lawyers are the same,—" the public" are usually represented by "a few habitutls both in the City and Westminster,—idle, dirty people, who had nowhere else to go, and were a positive nuisance." The simple fact on this head is that the Law Courts are not usually regarded by Englishmen as showplaces, but as places of business, and that when they go there, they go there on legal business, and usually from lawyers' offices. Mr. Lowe's antithesis, therefore, between the lawyers and the public is an entirely false antithesis, got up for the sake of a popular effect. As for his imaginary case of a crowd in court, which might lead to an accident if it had to empty itself down the sixty steps of Mr. Street's plan, the truth seems to be that no public building ever designed is so entirely free from dangers of that sort. There are no less than six distinct divergent ways provided from each Court. Mr. Lowe's imaginary Howard-Street building may not have its access by steps,—probably not adequate modes of access at all,—bat it is sure to be open to far greater dangers of the same sort from its cramped situation. Mr. Lowe, of course, makes a great point of the immense increase on the original estimates,— and we are very far from asserting that there may not have been extravagance in many of the arrangements proposed, which, indeed, is only too likely to result where no one feels the pinch of expense, i.e., where expenditure is proposed only by Commissioners who have no prospect of suffering in any shape for proposing it, and have a very definite prospect of suffering in many shapes for resisting it. Bat though both the original estimate and the enlarged estimates may have been extravagant, it is only fair to remember that the House itself enlarged the first scheme and procured the appointment of a Commission to consider what additional offices and departments ought to be included, and authorized all the extensions they might find requisite, so far as these could be made without a new compulsory purchase bill. The House, and not the Corn. mission, suggested and, indeed, provided for the enlargement of the scheme. The original Bill expressly appointed a Commission to enlarge it, if it should be thought advisable, and evidently anticipated that it would be advisable. It has been thought advisable, and increased expense has, of course, resulted. Either in the Carey-Street site or on the Thames, the smaller scheme can be resorted to if the House now regrets that decision. But the decision was suggested, if not taken, by itself, and those who advised it have advised it for reasons which are sure to operate more and more powerfully as time goes on. If the policy of concentration is inadequately carried out now, the time will soon come when it will need to be adequately carried out at far greater expense than any which we need now incur. Die Lowe's design is certainly not as large as the plan of the Commissioners, which he somewhat inappropriately calla a Tower of Babel ; but if perpetual inadequacy and incompleteness, closely associated with a terrible confusion of tongues, is the proper 'note' of a Tower of Babel, Mr. Lowe's little Howard-Street design is more likely to incur the opprobium of being a legal Tower of Babel than the larger and more adequate design of the Commissioners.
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