Court of Judicature Bill. This measure also dealt with the question of appellate jurisdiction. It proposed to substitute for the duplicate machinery of Lords and Judicial Committee one Court of Appeal consisting of nine judges, sitting in three divisions. The Bill passed both Houses. The Lords had now surrendered by Act of Parliament their ancient jurisdiction over appeals. However, they soon repented of their action, and not too late to prevent the constitution of the Supreme Court of Appeal. The new Court was to deal only with English appeals, Irish and Scottish appeals being still reserved to the House of Lords. Before the date on which the Act was to come into operation so great an outery was raised against the measure by Scotland and Ireland, backed by the House of I.ords, that it was never carried into effect. In 1876 Lord Cairns-then the Lord Chancellor of Disraeli's Administration-also tried his hand at the reorganization of our judicature system. He brought in another measure, entitled the Appellate Jurisdiction Bill, which passed and came into operation. By this statute the appellate jurisdiction of the Lords was preserved, and the House as the Court of Appeal made more efficient.

Formerly the House, sitting as a Court of Appeal, was often constituted, as we have seen, of one Law Lord and two lay Peers. The Act of 1876 provides that at least three Law Lords shall be present at the hearing and determination of appeals. Law Lords consist of the Lord Chancellor of Great Britain, judges who are Peers of the Realm, Peers who have held high judicial office, and four Lords of Appeal in Ordinary. The Lords of Appeal in Ordinary were specially created by the Act of 1876 to assist the House in the discharge of its judicial business. The qualification required of a Lord of Appeal in Ordinary is that he has been a

Judge of the Superior Courts for not less than two years, or that for not less than fifteen years he has been a practising barrister in England or Ireland, or a practising advocate in Scotland. He has a salary of £6000 a year, with a pension of £4000 a year on retirement and the rank of a Baron for life. Though a Lord of Appeal in Ordinary receives a writ of summons to sit and vote as a Peer in the House of Lords as a branch of the Legislature, his title does not descend to his heir.

An appeal may be made to the House of Lords from any order or judgment of the Court of Appeal in England, the Court of Appeal in Ireland, or the Court of Session in Scotland, in a civil suit. Before the case has reached any of these appeal courts it must, of course, have been heard and decided in a lower tribunal, so that the question at issue has been the subject of a judgment in at least two courts-the court in which the suit originated and the Court of Appeal-ere it comes finally before the House of Lords. If the party who has lost in the Court of Appeal has his faith in the justice of his cause still unshaken, or is advised by his counsel that the decision of the Court is against the law, he may obtain from the House of Lords a definite, fixed, and final judgment on the legal point at issue. But this unquestionable interpretation of the law, by the highest legal luminaries of the land, is a very costly proceeding. The appellant who seeks to have the decision of the court below-that is, the Court of Appeal-reversed or varied must give, as security for costs-should the judgment of the House be against him-his personal obligation to the amount of £500 and the bond of a surety for £200. There are also, of course, the fees of the agents and counsel, which are enormous. The respondent, or the party in whose favor the Court of Appeal has

decided, is not required to give security for costs, but should the House reverse the decision he may be required to bear a portion of the expenses of the appellant. Giving security for costs is not, however, the only thing preliminarily required of the appellant. An appeal to the House of Lords is brought by way of petition. It must be addressed "To the Right Honorable the House of Lords," and set forth that it is "the humble petition and appeal" of So-andso, praying that the judgment in suchand-such a case "may be reviewed before his Majesty the King in his Court of Parliament, in order that the said court may determine what of right and according to the law and custom of this Realm ought to be done in the subjectmatter of such appeal." The petition must be printed on parchment. The reasonableness of its prayer must be certified by two counsel, who have appeared for the appellant in the Court of Appeal, or propose to plead for him before the House of Lords. Forty copies of the counter cases of the disputants, printed in clear type on quarto sheets, and bound in book form, at the expense of the appellant, must be lodged with the petition in the office of the House of Lords. It is also required that ten copies of the book are to be bound in purple cloth for the use of the Law Lords.

It is a most grave and solemn tribunal, the House of Lords sitting for appellate business. The case opens at once. No preliminary objections of a technical nature or applications for adjournment are allowed. Such points are previously dealt with by a Committee of the House called the Appeal Committee, which is appointed at the opening of every session to relieve the House, sitting as a Court of Appeal, of the work of seeing that the Standing Orders have been complied with by appellants, and of dealing with respondents' objections to the appeal or ap

plications for an extension of time. There is no bustle and no excitement. Dignity and decorum reign supreme. The methods of the Court are austerely judicial. No witnesses are examined. It is all argument. Brow-beating is, therefore, unknown. Two counsel are heard on each side. The lawyer who opens the case stands at the centre of the Bar, and in a placid conversational style states at great length the facts and the points of law upon which he relies. Then counsel on the other side leisurely and with similar amplitude unfolds the case of his client. The Court listens with unwearied patience and the closest attention to the apparently interminable addresses of the lawyers. Judgment is not, as a rule, delivered at the close of the arguments. Knotty legal problems, or delicate and difficult points of equity, are always involved in these appeals, and therefore their Lordships allow themselves plenty of time for the consideration of their judgment.

On the day of judgment the House does not display quite the same aspect that it wore on the day the arguments were heard. The Law Lords are again sitting on the front benches close to the Bar, with their little tables before them; but the Lord Chancellor is now on the Woolsack. Rising from his seat, the Lord Chancellor reads his judgment from a manuscript, and concludes by moving that the order or verdict appealed from be affirmed, altered, or reversed, as the case may be. The Lord Chancellor is followed by the other Law Lords, in the order of precedence, each in like manner reading from a manuscript reasons justifying the decision at which he has arrived. All begin their addresses with the invocation, "My Lords." They are supposed to be not judges delivering judgment in a case, but members of a legislative assembly stating in debate the reasons why the House should take a certain

course in regard to the question before it.

When all the Law Lords have spoken, the question at issue is put in exactly the same form as if the House were sitting for the purposes of legislation. Should the Lord Chancellor have arrived at a decision hostile to the appellant, he says: "The question is that this appeal be dismissed. As many as are of that opinion will say Content; of the contrary opinion, Not-Content"; and then he adds, "The Contents have it." The House is usually unanimous in its decisions. But should there be a conflict of opinion among the Law Lords, judgment is pronounced in accordance with the views of the majority. possible, however, that there may not be a majority one way or the other. In the event of a tie, or an equal division between the Law Lords, the decision of the Court of The Monthly Review.

It is

Appeal stands, and each party have to pay their own costs. The Lord Chancellor, in cases where the issue has been decided unanimously or by a majority, finally declares: "The judgment of the House is that this appeal be dismissed, and that the appellant do pay the respondent's costs in the appeal." The decision thus given is the judgment of the House of Lords, and it is entered as such in the Journals of the House. It does not make the law, nor alter the law. It interprets and fixes the law. What it says is the last word on the tangled legal point at issue. The fiat is final and irrevocable. Its definition of the law can be altered, amended, or added to only by Act of Parliament, for Parliament, as Lord Palmerston once put it, can do anything except make a man a woman or

a woman a man.

Michael MacDonagh.

The attempt to reach a compromise in regard to the Education Bill has failed, the Bill being lost owing to the unwillingness of the Unionist leaders to assent to the provision forbidding the teacher in single-school rural areas to give the denominational lesson. No doubt there were other points of disagreement, but it seems to be admitted that if concession had been made on this point by the Unionist leaders and the representatives of the Church, a general agreement could have been reached without difficulty. In our opinion, it is little short of a national disaster that the opposition to the Bill was maintained on this narrow issue. Consider for a moment what it means. In the great majority of transferred schools throughout the land one of the regular teachers, as now, would have given the denominational lesson. In

the small rural parishes, however, where there was only one school and no possibility of access to any other school, the religious lesson would have been given by some one outside the school staff. Can this be considered a ground for wrecking the Bill and giving up the series of compromises that had been arranged upon other matters? Remember that it does not in the least mean that either denominational religion or the clergyman would have been excluded from the school. On the contrary, it would actually have let the clergyman into the rural school, for he or his curate would have been the person detailed to give the religious lesson. Though we are not among those who think that the clergy are by nature unfitted to teach little children, we are willing to admit that in large schools with large classes the work of teaching

has become so much a matter for experts that the clergy might find difficulty in doing the work of teaching efficiently. In small rural schools, however, it appears to us perfectly appropriate that the clergyman should in ordinary cases give the denominational lesson. It would be by no means too heavy a tax upon his time, for, by the nature of the case, the duty of teaching would only fall on the parson in those places where he is notoriously not overworked. To attempt, then, to represent the proposal as one which the Church must fight to the uttermost seems to us indefensible, and we believe will seem so to most men of moderate opinions. What makes the refusal to yield here the more unfortunate is the fact that if in practice the arrangement could have been shown to work badly, it can hardly be doubted that in the next Parliament it would have proved possible to do away with the exceptional disqualification of the teacher in the small rural schools.

The Duke of Devonshire in his moderate and statesmanlike speech protesting against the rupture of the negotiations declared that he had received a vast number of letters and memorials and representations, of which not more than one per cent. were in the direction of conciliation. Nevertheless, he believed that "after a very short time had elapsed, and when these more or less irresponsible advisers had had greater experience of the results which will follow the loss of the Bill, they would regret that they had not allowed their representatives in the House of Lords a freer hand and a larger discretion."

These words, we believe, represent the true facts of the case. As the Duke of Devonshire also pointed out, the objectionable things in the Bill were in almost all cases remediable by future legislation, while the Bill and the amendments declared acceptable by the Government were only irremediable

in points where it was generally agreed that substantial justice was done.

When those who have refused to accept the Government concessions begin to take stock of the situation, we cannot believe that they will long continue satisfied with their action. In the first place, they can scarcely fail to note the obviously genuine delight expressed by the extremists on the other side. It is not for nothing that Dr. Clifford and Mr. Perks show their pleasure at the loss of the Bill. It means that they and those whom they represent not only consider that too much was given to the Church in the amended Bill, but also that they feel confident that the ultimate result will be a settlement which will be more, not less, favorable to their own special interests. It is difficult to find solid grounds for contradicting this view. No one can suppose that the education controversy will now die away, or that things can be left as they are. It will continue for the next few years with increasing bitterness and increasing injury, not merely to education, but to the position of the Established Church. Not only will the weight of the administrative machine be thrown against the Voluntary schools at headquarters, but in a very great number of cases the local authorities will be spurred on by the militant Nonconformists to demand their pound of flesh from those schools. If these tendencies are supplemented, as we should not be at all surprised to find them supplemented, by large Parliamentary grants for the building of new Provided schools to take the place of Voluntary schools condemned as inefficient, and if by this means the number of Voluntary schools throughout the country is largely reduced, how will it be possible to say that the Church has been benefited by the defeat of Mr. Birrell's Bill? Even if the rejection of the Bill, with the consequent embarrassment to the Government, turns out,

as it very possibly may, to be to the immediate and temporary benefit of the Unionist Party, what guarantee has the Church that she will not be thrown over in the end by the Unionist leaders? The Unionist politicians, after three or four more years of the education controversy, even supposing that they are returned to power with a small majority, might quite conceivably think it good party tactics to end the controversy by introducing a Bill which, though nominally framed in the interests of the Church, might in reality be by no means so favorable as the present Bill. Remember that in such a case the Church would be powerless. She could not threaten to join the other party in the State, for in the case we suppose an understanding would have been come to between the Unionists and that party. Again, the party managers know quite well, and rely upon their knowledge, that the clergy cannot leave the Unionist Party, and that any threats which they may indulge in of doing so are only sham thunder.

Reviewing all the circumstances, we may feel sure that though a better Bill from the point of view of the general educational needs of the country, and from the point of view of public administration and public finance, may be introduced, it is practically impossible that one more favorable to the Church of England will ever be presented to Parliament. At the same time, it is idle for the clergy to imagine that the status quo of the Act of 1902 will be permanently maintained. The bitter ness of the agitation, it is certain, will continue, and in the end the indifferent part of the nation, sickened by years of controversy, will insist that alterations must be made in the Act of 1902 which will satisfy the Nonconformists.

It is necessary before we leave the subject of the destruction of the Bill to say something as to those on whom the responsibility for the failure falls.

In the first place, we believe it falls upon Mr. Balfour. Partly owing to his unwillingness to recognize any faults in the measure of 1902, but still more, we fear, owing to his desire to snatch a party advantage, Mr. Balfour has throughout been opposed to a compromise. He has desired that the Bill. should not be amended, but rejected; and he is doubtless prepared to declare that by securing its rejection he has dealt a powerful blow for his party. We shall not attempt to reargue this point, but will merely state once more our belief that, even if the Unionist Party gains temporarily through the embarrassment of its opponents, it will in reality lose infinitely more owing to the injury done to the causes which it is the business of that party to champion and protect. We wish that we could find it possible to assert that the Archbishop of Canterbury does not to a great extent share the responsibility for wrecking the Bill which falls on Mr. Balfour. We believe that at heart the Archbishop has always been for compromise, and we feel sure that if he had been given a free hand and had felt himself free to consult his own views and wishes rather than those of his followers, he would have come to an understanding on the Bill. Unfortunately, however, he has not shown the strength of purpose required, and instead of leading has allowed himself to be driven. Instead of reminding his followers sternly that it was their duty to follow him, he has reluctantly acquiesced in their shrill commands that he should move in a particular direction. That this acquiescence was most unwilling cannot, we fear, serve to acquit him at the bar of public opinion.

The only man who, in our opinion, has come out of the controversy, either on the Unionist or on the Government side, with a perfectly untarnished record is the Duke of Devonshire.

He