THE LAW OFFICERS OF THE CROWN AND THE GOVERNMENT.
THE discussion on Wednesday as to the expediency of limiting the Law Officers of the Crown to their official duties, did not result in any very definite addition to the data for coming to a clear decision on the case. No reasonable man will deny that there is a great disadvan- tage in allowing the law officers of the Government to engage in private cases which absorb a great deal of their time and energy, and which sometimes commit them to one-sided views of an important case bearing on public questions of great moment. Doubtless our law officers are often overworked, and do the business sub- mitted to them by the Government badly in consequence of being overworked. And doubtless there are cases,— the action for libel brought against the Times by Mr. O'Donnell was clearly one of them,—in which the mere appearance of one of the law officers of the Crown on one side of the case, naturally impairs his impartiality and authority as a legal adviser of the Crown in relation to matters in which that advice is of the highest importance. All this is as clear and certain as it can possibly be. But when we come to the proposed remedy, that the legal advisers of the Crown should be excluded altogether from private practice, we are not at all sure that the remedy is not worse than the mischief for which it is proposed as a remedy. As Mr. Matthews showed, the average duration of the official term of these legal offices is very short, —considerably less than two years for the Attorney-Generalship, and less than a year and a half for the Solicitor-Generalship. Now, would a first- rate man abandon all his private practice for so short a term of official life P We think not. Practice so abandoned is not easy to recover, and men who would be willing to abandon their practice for so uncertain a term of office would very rarely be first-rate men. We want for officers of this kind, men who command a considerable influence in the House of Commons as well as at the Bar. And though it may fairly be urged that second-rate men giving their whole time to the Government would do their work at least not less well, and perhaps even better, than first-rate men giving a very large part of their time to private business, yet it is certainly not true that they would exert the same authority or command the same influence, either in the House of Commons or among the members of their profession. Indeed, we imagine that even good second-rate men would often hesitate to retire from private business only to secure a large income for so very short a period as a year and a half or two years, since that appears to be the average duration of office on which alone they could count. Indeed, we believe that if this proposed change were made, much fewer lawyers would enter the House of Commons, since the prize of the Attorney or Solicitor Generalship would no longer be so much coveted as it now is. A prize which involved the sur- render of a great private practice would hardly be sufficient to attract a rising lawyer into the field of politics, which is not only a very unremunerative field, apart from the few great prizes it opens to him, but is also a very exhausting field for any but men of first-rate ability and powers. The Solicitor-Generalship or Attorney- Generalship is coveted very much more because it trebles a man's private practice as well after he leaves office as while he retains it, than for the high salary which it commands for one short year or two. Nor is there enough prospect of its leading to a seat on the Bench to affect very seriously the value of the prize. As Mr. Matthews pointed out, of the thirty-four Judges now on the Bench, only three, the Lord Chancellor, the Lord Chief Justice, and the Master of the Rolls, have occupied the office of Attorney or Solicitor-General. Hence the mere chance of passing through these offices to the Bench is hardly a chance important enough to affect very seriously the prospects of the barrister who is weighing whether to adopt or to eschew a Parliamentary career. We imagine that the condition of abandoning all private practice for those offices, would very, materially diminish the number of candidates from amongst whom the Government is obliged to select the law officers of the Crown.
The question has been asked,—Can a man serve two masters? And the answer must be, that this is not pos- sible where the right attitude towards the one master is incompatible with the right attitude towards the other, but that so far as serving more than one master goes, every professional man as well as every tradesman serves a great many. The real difficulty is to reconcile jealousy for the public interest with jealousy for the interest of a client who may have interests incompatible with those of the public. And when that is even probable, we hold that an Attorney or Solicitor-General should not accept a brief for a client to whom it might not be possible to be faithful without being unfaithful to the interests of the State, as repre- sented by the Government. We do not think that it would be difficult to establish an etiquette which would render it next to impossible that either of the law officers of the Crown should accept a brief which would embarrass him in tendering advice to the Crown, or would render his advice less impartial and less valuable, in case a public question arose closely connected with the private litiga- tion. It is evident enough that the public interest suffered from Sir Richard Webster's connection with the libel suit against the Times, and the same may be said of the relation of some of the removable magistrates in Ireland to the various litigations arising out of the proceedings of the National League and the "Plan of Campaign." Surely it would be very easy to establish an etiquette which would prevent the greater number of such scandals in future. But we do not feel prepared to adopt any solution of the difficulty which would greatly diminish either the number or the eminence of the lawyers from amongst whom the Government must choose its legal advisers. They cannot be chosen, as almost all the other members of the Government may be, and even by preference should be, from amongst those who have given up their private calling for a strictly political career. For such lawyers would be far less fitted to be legal advisers of the Government, than barristers who are still in the thick of their professional work.
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