dealt with the Catholic League and, for his own ends, dabbled with Irish treason. The priests of 1891 are playing the part of the Confederates of 1643-4; Mr. Parnell holds the place of O'Neill; Charles did what Mr. Gladstone is doing; and if the Parliament never forgave the King-it was really for this he was brought to the block-England, I believe we live in a milder age-will permanently ostracise her late Minister. These risings and fallings of Irish rebellion have hitherto come to the same end; they have been formidable, but they have always failed. So will it be, I am convinced, with the Home Rule movement; it has been alarming, and may yet be dangerous in the existing conditions of our national life; but it is obviously on the wane, and is doomed to extinction. England, I feel assured, will be true to herself; she will maintain the Union as the sole guarantee for keeping these Realms an undivided State, for preserving her loyal sons in Irelandthrough stormy centuries her staunchest friends-for saving a distracted country from civil war and anarchy. The “Union of Hearts," hitherto the dream of sentimental folly, will yet be accomplished in another and a truer sense, and will prevail in Ireland through wise legislation, impartial government, and righteous administration under the Union. Lord Salisbury's Ministry has done much to promote this great and all-important object; but much still remains to be done, and we must bear in mind that the ills of ages in a community cannot quickly yield to remedies, however well devised and potent. I shall indicate, in another Article, what, in my judgment, should be the principles of a policy of enlightened justice for Ireland.

VINDEX.

MR.

R. W. H. SMITH, as Leader of the House of Commons, in reply to a question recently put to him as to the alleged inability of one of Her Majesty's Judges to discharge his duties, stated that "it was the policy of the Government, of Parliament, and, he might almost say, of the Constitution, to respect the complete and absolute independence of the judicial bench."

The history of the relations of the Judges to the Crown may be thus summarised. The Crown, as Fountain of Honour, has by virtue of its prerogative, the privilege of appointing Judges. The expression "Her Majesty's Judges," reminds us of the time when the occupants of the judicial bench were in truth the servants of and dependents on the Crown. It was, indeed, the ancient course till the reign of James I. to make the Judges' commissions quam diu se bene gesserint, that is, during life or good behaviour, instead of durante placito, at the discretion of the Crown. How little the dictum of Mr. W. H. Smith that the Government had no authority whatever over a Judge of the land would have been applicable to the relations between the Judges and the Crown in the time of the Stuarts, Lord Bacon himself bears witness. "It is a happy thing," he writes, in his Essay on Judicature," in a State when Kings and States do often consult with Judges, and again when Judges do often consult with the King and State." "Let no man weakly conceive that just laws and true policy have any antipathy, for they are like the spirits and sinews-the one moves with the other. Let Judges also remember that Solomon's throne was supported by lions on both sides: let them

be lions, but yet lions under the throne, being circumspect that they do not check or oppose any points of sovereignty." With such an exposition of the relations that should subsist between the Crown and the Bench, we are not surprised to find Bacon himself conferring with the Judges one by one, at the instigation of James I., in order to secure their judgment for the Crown in a case of very doubtful treason. The Judges who did not submit to be "lions under the throne" were dismissed from their posts with little scruple. The famous Coke, who objected to the "auricular taking of his opinion," was deprived of his seat on the Bench, and lived to see the day when, as a dismissed Judge, he was able to stand up in the House of Commons, and move the Petition of Right. The absolute dependence of the Judges on the Crown, and their independence of the people, is evidenced by the stringent sanctions, such as heavy fines, incapacity to hold offices of trust, or to plead pardon under the Great Seal, by which violations of the provisions of the Habeas Corpus Act are visited. A glance into the pages of the Judges of England, by Foss, will shew with what ruthless. vigour the Stuarts exercised their prerogative of dismissing Judges whose decisions were displeasing to the Court. Even after the Revolution, the prerogative of dismissal, which was supposed to keep the Judges dependent on the Crown, was jealously defended. When in 1692 a Bill passed both Houses of Parliament, establishing the independence of Judges by law, and confirming their salaries, William III. withheld his Royal assent. Bishop Burnet says, with reference to this exercise of the Veto, that it was represented to the King by some of the Judges themselves, that it was not fit that they should be out of all dependence on the Court. When the Act of Settlement secured that no Judge should be dismissed from office, except in consequence of a conviction for some offence, or the

address of both Houses of Parliament, the Royal jealousy of the measure is seen by the promise under which that arrangement was not to take effect till the deaths of William III. and of Anne, and the failure of their issue respectively, in other words, till the accession of the House of Hanover. It was not till the reign of George III. that the Commissions of the Judges ceased to be void on the demise of the Crown.

But the dislike of the Sovereign to the independence of the Judges may be most clearly seen in Irish affairs. Ireland had no Bill of Rights and no Act of Settlement. It was the aim of the "patriot" party in the Irish Parliament to assimilate the Constitution of their country to that of Great Britain. To this endeavour the most persistent opposition was offered by the English Government, and the conflict raged most fiercely on the question of the independence of the Irish Judges. The Crown had always been peculiarly tenacious of its power to remove the members of the Irish Judiciary. Thus, in 1776, Lord Harcourt, when Lord Lieutenant, writes from Ireland to Lord Weymouth, the English Secretary of State, “The state of the country duly considered, I am persuaded it would be undesirable to make the commission of Judges to continue during good behaviour." Again, Lord Buckingham, in 1780, writes in his capacity of Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, "As the having the commissions of the Irish Judges the same as in England has been a favourite wish in this country, it was never, as I understand, thought expedient to oppose the heads (of Bills for this purpose) in the House of Commons, the reasons upon which these heads have been disapproved of not being of a nature to be agitated here (in Ireland) even in quiet times." At last, in 1782, the free Irish Parliament secured to the Irish Judges the independence enjoyed by their brethren in England for a period of sixty-two years previously.

Judges are accordingly only removable by an Act of the whole Legislature. This power has, in England, never been exercised. In Ireland there is but one instance of so drastic a remedy for the vindication of the purity of the Bench. In 1830, Sir Jonah Barrington, Judge of the Court of Admiralty in Ireland, was removed from his office on the address of both Houses of Parliament to the Crown-malversation of public funds having been clearly proved against him. Again, early in this century, Mr. Luke Fox, an Irish Judge, was accused of partial and unbecoming conduct in his judicial office. This case was the subject of a long inquiry in the House of Lords, an inquiry which was terminated by the voluntary resignation of the Judge. Another Irish Judge, a Mr. Johnstone, was about the same time convicted of a private libel. He resigned his office, and thus avoided dismissal. In our own time proceedings were unsuccessfully instituted in the House of Commons by the late Mr. Isaac Butt, for the dismissal of Mr. Justice Keogh for alleged misconduct in the trial of the Galway Election Petition in 1872.

Judges are not only protected from capricious dismissal. They are practically above the reach of Parliamentary criticism. The fact that their salaries are paid out of the Consolidated Fund precludes discussion of their conduct in Committee of Supply. The fact that there is a method of dismissing them by address renders disparaging remarks on Judicial personages in Parliament subject to the censure of the Chair.

But although Judges are irremovable, and protected from public reflections on their conduct, they are still, if I may use the word, "promoveable." "It is always," says Mr. Hallam, when commenting on the provision of the Act of Settlement securing the independence of the Judges, "to be kept in mind that they are still accessible to the hope of further promotion, to the zeal of political attach