Lord Haldane, who was presented with the freedom of Dunbar
on Tuesday, declared that of the various links that bound us to our fellows beyond the seas the supreme judicial tribunal of the Empire, the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, had not received nearly the atten- tion it deserved. He hoped to develop still further the importance and meaning of this supreme tribunal ; he had a Bill before Parliament for that purpose, and hoped that the House of Commons would show great interest in it. We welcome with peculiar satisfaction Lord Haldane's testimony to the value of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council as an instrument of Imperial unity. In an article which appeared in these columns as far back as July 24th, 1886—a period when the Empire was not as much in people's minds as it is now—we dwelt on its vast and many-sided jurisdiction and its capabilities of fruitful expansion. "If Englishmen care to reflect on this new and silent development of their Constitution, they will not only notice that no great and healthy administrative or judicial body ever stops growing, but they will be able to consider whether it is not possible that the Senatorial body, which every one wants to get for the purpose of drawing the Colonies closer to the Mother. country, but nobody knows where to find without uprooting or revolutionizing 'the capital institutions of the country,' may not, after all, exist among the Lords of the Council."
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