Vict. I, which the judges are bound to respect and to maintain; or is it one created by their delegation and liable to cease by their disallowance; or, to put the question into a more practical form, if the judges chose to allow any other qualification for practising in their respective courts, what remedy have the Inns of Court either in their collective character or as individual barristers?

Conveyancers in deeds and special pleaders have a certain protection given them by the Stamp Act, in the shape of a penalty against those who should draw legal instruments without being barristers or certificated special pleaders, but the object of the enactment in this matter was, as its place indicates, only the promotion of the Revenue, and the protection given to the barrister is confined to practice out of Court.

If, indeed, the Inns of Court were corporations either by charter or prescription, they might possibly make good their claim by prescription also to the franchise of qualifying for the bar, but they are even careful to disclaim all pretensions to continued legal personality, and are therefore incapable of holding property in their collective and aggregate but by no means coherent character, and a franchise is a form of property, so much so that when it affects the enjoyment or user of lands it is properly described as an incorporeal hereditament.

What we know of the origin of the outer barrister, as well as the dicta of judges which we shall quote, lead to the conclusion that the privilege of creating barristers was given to the Inns of Court in the first instance, and continues to exist by delegation, or more correctly speaking by subdelegation from the judges.

The right to make barristers or privileged practitioners belonged in principle to the same power which made judges, that is to the Crown, as the caput et fons justitia. Accordingly we find that by an Ordinance of W. Ed. 1, John de Metingham, Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, and his brother judges, are ordered to provide for every county a certain

number of attorneys and apprentices (the old name for a barrister) who were to have the privilege of following the court and taking part in the proceedings, and the ordinance suggests that 130 would probably be a sufficient number, without saying whether for all the counties, or each separately. (See Rolls of Parliament 2, 84, Dugdale Origines Juridiciales, p. 146.) What the judges apparently did, and this according to Dugdale, is the origin of the Inns of Court, or at any rate the origin of their recognised status, was to commit to the Inns of Court the right of selection which had been delegated to themselves in the first instance by the Crown, or, more properly speaking, to use them as instruments of selection, and to accept as a rule their recommendation of persons as fit for admission to the Court; more than that they could not legally do, for "Delegatus non potest Delegare."

It cannot be doubted at any rate, that the monopoly of the Inns of Court was at first precarious, depending wholly upon this continued confidence of the Judges, and it is not easy to show when or how it acquired a different character, the Inns of Court being, as before pointed out, precluded by the defect of this Constitution from claiming the benefit of prescription."

The Judges have, down to recent times, continued to speak of the Right as existing by their delegation, or rather sub-delegation, as we before pointed out. It was so described by Lord Mansfield in the Grays' Inn case referred to in 4 Barn. and Cres. 857, and the right of even an inferior court to confer upon Barristers the privilege of exclusive audience, as an incident to their power of regulating the practice of their courts, was established or declared in the recent case of ex parte Evans 9 Q.B. 279, when it was decided that justices in Quarter Sessions might give such exclusive audience, although the business of advocate had hitherto been performed by Attornies only, and Barristers had only attended on special retainer. The same principle, namely, that of the rights of the bar being a matter of regulation by the Courts, and not the subject of appeal to a higher jurisdiction, is laid down by Lord Chief Justice Tindal in the very important cases relating to the privileges of the Serjeants. (8 Scott. 436).

This, the case of Serjeants, is one of special importance in other respects as showing what are the proper conditions of a legal monopoly of audience. It was decided that the Serjeants had such a right in the Court of Common Pleas, and the Royal Warrant, by which it had been attempted to set it aside, was recalled, and a compromise entered into with the Serjeants, by whom compensatory privileges in other Courts were accepted in lieu of the monopoly which they gave up in their own. But the right of the Serjeants stood upon a very different footing from that of the barrister or apprentice; they each of them took their seat within the Bar of the Common Pleas, in virtue of a separate patent, and in return for the privilege which that patent conferred they were subject to the obligation of attending the Court, the reason for their appointment having been, apparently, that it was the duty of the Crown to provide counsel for the private suitors, in the new court which it had established, or set apart specially for the trial of their suits, and in this way the monopoly of the Serjeants satisfied the only condition which can justify such a privilege, namely, the obligation of supplying the wants, or doing the work of the public.

Which of these grounds could an ordinary barrister set up against a warrant of the Crown, throwing open the practice of the Courts, say, for instance, to all who had taken a law degree at an University? It was probably some consciousness of the weakness of their title to a monopoly in this matter, that induced the Benchers of Lincoln's Inn to require as a condition for relieving a man from the obligation of his bond, the declaration objected to by Mr. Neate. But such a declaration is also important as establishing, or, at least, implying that continued membership of an Inn of Court, is a condition of the right to practice in any Court. This, indeed, is, under the present system the sole foundation of the right claimed and exercised by the Inns of Court, to exclude any barrister, being one of their members, from practising in any Court, by reason of his misconduct. Nor is there any other disciplinary power over the Bar, except that

which originates with the Inn to which each barrister belongs, for, though there is an appeal to the judges from the sentence of the Benchers, the judges never act in the first instance, except, of course, in matters affecting the order and decency of proceedings in their own court, and then only for the purpose of "immediate repression." In the present state of things, therefore, there is a great reason for the Inns claiming, in addition to the exclusive right of admission, that of imposing the condition of continued membership, though Mr. Neate might reasonably object to the extension of the Declaration to the Colonial Bars, as it will hardly be contended that the superintendence of the Inns of Court practically extends beyond the limits of Great Britain.

In a former part of this article we mentioned, as the subject of later reference, the absolute discretion claimed by the Inns of Court, and allowed by the Queen's Bench, of admitting only those whom they please to membership as students. Practically this discretionary power of excluding any one from all access to the profession, has not been so exercised as to be considered a grievance, and it has, of late years, at any rate, been chiefly resorted to for keeping up the separation which the Benchers consider desirable between Barristers and Attornies, but in principle the exercise of such a discretionary power is much more fatal to the claim of the Inns of Court to be dealt with as private societies, than the possession of a special jurisdiction over their own members. Most probably when the Judges of the Queen's Bench applied to them the description of private societies, as they did in the case of the Queen v. The Benchers of Lincoln's Inn, they only meant that neither the Inns of Court, nor their governing bodies, however public and important might be the functions they performed, had that known legal status, that definite legal form of association, which, according to legal precedent, would make them the proper subjects of a mandamus.

In the eyes of the Legislature, and as the subjects of legislation, either as regards their powers or their property, the

Inns of Court can only be considered as public institutions of a very high order, which by means of their governing bodies discharge functions and perform acts of very great public importance.

Such, for instance, is an alteration recently made by them, almost secretly, in what may be called the public law of the country, by which they have admitted and now admit clergymen to be called to the Bar, contrary to their own decision in Horne Tooke's case less than a century ago.

It is to be hoped that the Benchers of the Inns of Court when they are brought -as they soon will be-under the practical cognizance of Parliament, will not be ill-advised enough to set up in any form, or for any purpose, this claim to be a "private society," nor seek to maintain any longer that position which in truth is hardly creditable to them, numbering among themselves, as they do at present, all the Judges in Equity, and having at one time been able to claim as a colleague almost every Judge of the Common Law Bench, the position, we mean, of a body or association performing the functions and possessing the status of a most important corporation, and seeking by underhand devices and contrivances to avoid the responsibility and control to which a Charter defining their Constitution would subject them.

If they meet the proposals for reform in the right spirit, they need not be afraid that anything they may have to urge against any great change in the status of the bar, or in the regulation of its studies, will not be heard and considered with the utmost deference and respect by Parliament and the public.

In respect to their Constitution they will, of course, have to renounce the right of self-election, or it may be the position which they now hold by it; but it will be a great satisfaction to them to find themselves restored by the general voice of the profession to the same place of power and dignity. The funds and property which they now administer, confessedly for no purposes of their own, will be made subject to public accountability, but with these drawbacks, if they