THE LAST LAW APPOINTMENTS.
THERE seems to be something of a fatality about the ap- pointments of the Whigs. Every now and then they fill up a vacancy in a way which raises public expectation very high. "Now," people say, "estates, degrees, and offices are no longer to be derived corruptly—clear honour is to be pur- chased only by merit." And then forthwith the Whigs get quietly together and perpetrate a snug little piece of party patronage, which, if it does not quite deserve the ugly name of job, is, nevertheless, sure to be so called by a public which has been stimulated to this inconvenient height of public spirit. A Government ought to preserve a sort of keeping in its public appointments. It may take the lofty course of seeking out the very best man in the country for every vacancy which occurs in the public service, quite irrespective of his political influence or even his political opinions. Or, again, it may consider nothing but political influence and the strengthening of its Parliamentary position. But, then, a Government which took either of these extreme courses would not probably be very long-lived. Want of Parliamentary support in the one case, and public disgust in the other, would undermine its power. The right rule seems to be this— that no one should be appointed to any office which he is not evidently competent to fill ; but that among candidates who are evidently competent that one is to be selected not who is absolutely the ablest, but who has best served the cause of the party in power. This system is, no doubt, a not very lofty compromise; but, then, Englishmen are generally content with a compromise in politics, knowing very well that higher professions are not apt to stand the wear and tear of party strife. If, however, this compromise is to answer, it is clear you must abide by it at all times. If you indulge in occasional fits of perfect purity, you disgust the candidates who consider themselves to have political claims, and you give people in general a fatal taste for a system of which they reap all the benefit and feel none of the inconveniences. You set the public thinking upon higher principles of action, and then, when the turn of the respectable party candidates comes, the public is dissatisfied, and grumbles. We think something of this sort has happened recently. There can be no doubt that Mr. Baron Wilde was appointed to the post of Judge Ordinary because he was thought the best man for the post. He had never sat in Parliament, and though he enjoyed the highest reputation in the profession, he was almost unknown out of it. The vacant post was one which the Attorney-General might have accepted, for the judge Ordinary takes precedence of the pui we Judges, and no one, therefore, could have called it a descent. It is, how- ever, understood that the Chancellor did not so much as offer it to him. This was the perfect-purity system. Then it was necessary to fill up the vacancy left by the promotionof Baron Wilde in the Court of Exchequer, and unhappily Lord West- bury has not been able to maintain himself on his flying wing at the same lofty elevation above the vulgar assembly and damp soil of Westminster ; and, consequently, in some quarters there is a rather unjust outcry of another Whig job. For six weeks the puisne Judgeship has been vacant. During this period it has been more than once offered to the Attorney-General, who had frequently refused a similar post before. At last it is filled up, and at the same moment the Attorney resigns. The reason given is "ill-health." Of course, that is a sufficient reason, and we do not doubt that it is one of his reasons. But when a lower post, which he had constantly declined, is pressed upon an At- torney who was not so much as offered the higher one, which was vacant only a :week or two before, he may not un- naturally regard it as a hint that the Government does not value his services very highly. We do not say that this was so, but it looks like it, and we must say that, if it was so, there would be some ground for the Attorney-General's dis- satisfaction. There was at least as good a chance that he would have made an adequate Judge Ordinary as that Mr. Seijeant Pigott will make an adequate Baron of the Exche- quer; and one does not see why the public might not have run the risk just as well in the one ease as the other. But, on the other hand, no man, whether he has been Attorney- General or not, has the right to consider the place of a puisine judge below his merits ; and it would be matter of regret if any feeling of exaggerated self-respect should have pre- vented Sir William Atherton from serving the country in that capacity. If ill-health is really the sole cause of his resig- nation, we can only hope that he may speedily be restored to active life.
We have said that the outcry against Serjeant Pigott is a little unjust; but it must be confessed that, at the present moment, the Court of Exchequer is rather in want of a strong judge. The loss of Baron Wilde is a very heavy loss, and his colleagues who remain cannot, for one reason or another, be considered as rising above the judicial average. Either Serjeaut Shoe or Mr. Mellish would have imparted more strength to the Court ; the latter as being the man who has succeeded to the position which Baron Wilde occupied when at the bar—the former because, as we ventured to point out some weeks back, his age, his position as senior Queen's serjeant, his large practice, and high character alike place him at the head of the common- law bar. But the merits of the one are known only to the pofession, and those of the other are over-balanced by the fact that he is a Roman Catholic. True that he is no Ultramontane, and has more than once shown himself independent of ecclesi- astical dictation—but Exeter Hall has a load voice, and mere professional merits cannot be expected to outweigh the influence which Lord Shaftesbury enjoys with the stepfather of his wife. So the dignity falls to a good Whig, whose family has made Reading a Whig borough, and who has always voted, as his brother before him voted, steadily for the Whigs. But still the truth must be spoken. The appointment of Serjeant Pigott is a fair average appointment. He is in the rank of the Queen's counsel, and has a fair share of business both on circuit and in town. He may fairly be reckoned on to make as good a judge as many of his colleagues, and it has by no means turned out to be true, as a rule, that great advocates always make the best judges. The habit of parti- zanship is one which it is hard to throw off at an advanced period of life. A colder temper and more impartial judgment have often put good abilities on a level with very superior intellects, at all events, in the discharge of ordinary judicial duties.
To politicians, however, the vacancy caused by the resig- nation of the Attorney-General will afford a greater field for speculation. That Sir Roundell Palmer should succeed him is a matter of course, and, in this instance, the ordinary routine promotes the man who, whether as a politician or a lawyer, has the best right to promotion. Once again, the Attorney-General will be, by common consent, the head of the profession, and we shall be spared the disagree- able spectacle—which has been more than once seen of late, when official rank has deprived the too fortunate holder of all his private practice, because clients .do not think him worth the extra fees to which that rank entitles him. It is not altogether pleasant to contemplate so complete a differ- ence of opinion between the public and the Government. Neither, in all probability, is there any greater doubt as to the name of the lucky lawyer who will succeed to the post of Solicitor-General. Mr. Collier has been often enough already, as successive vacancies have occurred, singled out by a sort of common consent as the candidate who had the best claim to the post. He represents a large constituency, and his re-elec- tion may be reckoned on with considerable confidence. Of all the Whig lawyers who have a seat in Parliament, he has reached the highest position, both in his profession and as a politician ; and a Solicitor-General, unlike a judge, must of necessity be a Liberal and an M.P. Moreover, in days when men are perhaps apt to think a little too much about their personal claims—when competition is at its highest—when rich men labour like those who have to win their bread, and every one is peevishly measuring himself with the rival who struggles at his side, it is something in favour of a man that he has shown no sourness when he has been seemingly passed by; but has given the same .ungrudging support to the Liberal cause as if he were the spoiled child of those who distribute the good things which Governments have at their command. It is too much the fashion, at a time when political enthusiasm has died away, for men to let their politics sit loosely on them, and waver from the Liberal- Conservatives to the Conservative-Liberals as interest allures or pique dictates. For ourselves, we like men whose flag is of a more decided colour, and who know both what they seek and why they seek it. If there are those who, while they call themselves Liberals, are so enamoured of an aristocratic form of society that they can reconcile themselves to a great crime, and had rather wink at slavery than favour equality, even on the other side of the Atlantic, Mr. Collier is not among them, and it is something that men of this sterner sort are not regarded as absolutely disqualified for office. For the time is rapidly coining when equality of a certain kind will raise her head among the startled and fastidious Liberals, who turn deaf ears to her prayers, and will speak among them with a voice that must be heard. Not, indeed, that false equality of conditions, of rank and luxury, and accomplishments,—which is an empty dream, except where all men are involved in a common poverty ;—but that real equality which refuses to recognize these adventitious advan- tages as giving a man any claim to the outward signs of respect to which they who enjoy them are so prone to cling, and which will assuredly, sooner or later, compel them, if they desire to be leaders of men, to speak as though they scarce called that their own which they had not themselves achieved. It is all very well for Ministers and ex-Ministers to be dining, and speechifying, and congratulating themselves on the uni- versal agreement about polities, and preaching perpetual sermons on the text of "Happy is the people whose annals are vacant." But the recoil of the wave is not always the ebb of the tide, and just as over-exertion is succeeded by in- activity, so inactivity of necessity produces the desire for pro- gress. And when that time comes, it will be well for those who claim the hereditary leadership of the Liberal party to find amongst them some men who have principles which are not merely principles of inaction—who are not the mere ordinary politicians who derive their inspiration from the latest common-places of the Whig drawing-rooms ;—but who are capable, when these men shrink back into obscurity, of sympathizing with the emotions of the people, and giving a voice to their aspirations and their needs.
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