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It is not surprising that the Lord Chancellor's picture of an ideal bench of magistrates consisting of two members of the Right in politics and two of the Left, with a chairman who is neither, should have brought a storm about the Lord Chancellor's ears. For this is assuming the dominance of politics in the one place in the world where politics ought not to dominate. Nor, to be just, is it often the case that they do. It is true, no doubt, that persons are some- times put forward for the magistracy by M.P.s, and to that extent politics may enter in, but even in such cases there is rarely ground for complaint that political bias is revealed on the bench. But for the proposed Royal Commission on the whole question of the magistracy there is a great deal to be said. It will inevitably raise the vital problem of whether a lay—or, as some would say, an amateur—magistracy should survive at all. I hold strongly that it should, but persons whose judgement I respect take the opposite view just as strongly.
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