The Privy Council have issued stringent orders that in future
the minority of the Judges on the Judicial Committee shall
*mem strict silence as to their judgments, so that only the judgment of the majority shall go forth ; and they ground this reissue of the old rule, on the order of King Charles L to that effect, "bearing date at Whitehall, 20th February, 1627." If this rule applied to all Courts of Appeal,—and we can conceive arguments in favour of such a rule for all Courts of Appeal, —=we should have nothing to say against it. But there is the greatest objection to enforcing such a rule for one Court of Appeal only, out of many, and that not even the kind of Court of Appeal in which it would be most important to give no ground for public distrust. To silence Ecclesiastical Judges, — by a precedent derived from the period of the Stuarts and the Star Chamber, is not to gain any new prestige for the class of judgments which have suffered most of late years in the eyes not merely of an extreme clerical party, but of cool judicial minds among the laity. This exceptional secrecy is itself an ecclesiastical policy, and the last policy suitable for inspiring public con- fidence in Ecclesiastical Courts, is an ecclesiastical policy.
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