SALARIES AND EXPENDITURE OF SCOTTISH JUDGES.

Jr there is one public functionary who more than any other has a claim to a handsome remuneration for his services, it is an upright, industrious, learned, and dispassionate judge. All are agreed, probably, upon this point ; but the question on which a difference exists is, what do you call a handsome remunera- tion? Many circumstances must be taken into account before a sufficient answer can be given to this question. The criterion seems to be, the facility or difficulty of procuring persons, in every way qualified, who are disposed to become judges at the rate of salary offered. If we find that the most eminent men at the bar are willing to relinquish their practice, in their prime of life, for seats on the bench, we may be quite sure that the induce- ment offered is at least ample: perhaps it is too large ; for the public should pay the fair market value for a judge, and not a shilling more. On the other hand, when there is a difficulty in prevailing upon such practitioners to become judges, until they are apprehensive of their powers failing and their briefs falling off, we may conclude that the remuneration offered is !op small. The question of raising or diminishing the amount of judges' salaries hinges upon this. Because, although it may be true, as has often been urged, that men of smdll practice at the bar may possess the learning, acuteness, decision of character, and calm temper so requisite to make a good judge, yet the public, Whose lives and property are to a great extent at his disposal, can With difficulty be brought to give him credit for the possession of

qualities which have not been manifested to the world. A judge's decrees and opinions will inevitably be deficient in authority, and unsatisfactory, unless he takes his seat on the bench with a repu- tation ready-made. A client who goes into court backed by tho opinion of SCARLET?, SUODEN, or BICRERSTETH, will be disposed to question the adverse decision of a comparatively obscure lawyer, even though it be delivered ex cathedra, and very probably be that which his own advocate would have given moon a fair review of both sides of the question at issue. Judges should not only be actually well qualified, but have tho reputation of being so. There- fore it seems necessary, in fixing the amount of their salaries, to be guided by the profits of their professional business; taking into account, of' course, the advantages or a permanent over an iincer- tain income, and making a deduction for them.

But a large salary in one place, it is urged, may be a very in- sufficient one in another. The cost of living must be considered : to pay a judge the same salary in London, Edinburgh, and Dub- lin, is not equitable : either the public or the judges must suffer by such an arrangement ; for the expense of living is very dif- ferent in these cities. If, however, our theory is correct,—that the proper salary for a judge is that which will enable the state to command the ser ices of the most able and best qualified persons, —the cost of living and the habits of society in which he moves are very secondary considerations. A tax-payer has a right to say—" I care not whether this judge belongs to or associates with the higher or middle classes ; whether he keeps much or little company, hires two or more footmen, drinks vulgar port or im- perial tokay :' all that I am anxious about is the honesty, ability, and knowledge of the man, and his reputation for possessing these qualifications. That the salary paid him is snificient for all the comforts and external decencies of life, is plain, for he has quitted a lucrative practice to secure it."

The Committee of the House of Commons which sat last session to inquire into the propriety of augmenting the Salaries of the Scotch Judges, made the point we have indicated a principal one in their investigation. But they also collected a number of amus- ing and curious facts from the different witnesses, relative to the habits and incomes of the Scotch Judges and the Edinburgh aris- tocracy, winch give a pleasant gossipy tone to their Report. Some of these passages are worth extracting. The Lord President of the Court of Session has 4300/. per an- num; the Lord Justice Clerk 4000/.; and the Puisne Judges of the Court of Session only 2000/.; but when the latter are also, as in some instances is the case, Judges of the Justiciary Court, they have an addition of 6001. These salaries were fixed in 1810, and have not since been altered; though when the pay of the Eng- lish Judger was raised in 1825, it was understood that the Scot- tish Judges also should have an increase. It would seem that the salary of 2000/. a year to the. Puisne Judges is too small,—niggardly indeed, if the following statement

of Mr. JOHN HOPE, the Dean of the Faculty, relative to the cir- cumstances of his father, who has been Lord President for twenty- three years, be taken without some allowance.

" Having no private fortune, and having lived, I m ay safely say, as quietly and economically as any man in that eminent :station could do, —indeed, muck more so than in London can well be understood of a person in such a station,— he is now, at the close of his life, greatly ea debt ; and if it had not been for the good fortune that Providence has blessed myself with, his family would be left in a very miserable condition indeed. His establishment all along has been that of aprivate gentleman, obliged to maintain himself in a certain condition and station, keeping a single carriage, two men-servants in the house, and a pair of - horses; having a large family certainly, but none of them having by any debts- or expense occasioned his debt: and he has been obliged to give up his curing., and to live on a very limited allowance, having refused to permit me to In- terfere."

And yet this gentleman has had 4300/. a year—fully equal to -

50001. a year in London—to live upon in Edinburgh ! Now, we may tell Mr. HOPE what can be done in England for six thousand a year. An Earl of ancient family keeps up a handsome esta- blishment in one of the Midland counties : he has a • coach, a.

phaeton, and a car, with fifteen horses of all sorts; a butler, a valet, a housekeeper, two footmen, with a number of fena;le servants ; a gamekeeper, a gardener, a coachman, and two grooms,

one a lad. His children are young ; but lie has a very good house in London, though not a large one, in the most fashionable and expensive part of the West end. Yet all this is maintained out of six thousand a year,—about a thousand more than Lord President HOPE'S salary, taking the difference in the cost of living in England and Scotland into account. But then there is economy and good management in the Earl's establishment: what sort of a housewife has the President's lady boon? If Mr. HOPE'S statement were entirely to be depended upon, it is clear. that the addition of a thousand a year, proposed by the Committee to be made to the salaries of the Puisne Judges, is utterly inade- quate to preserve them from closing their lives "greatly in debt ;" even although their establishment were unostentatious, and their. habits of life simple and plain. But 5500/. a year (in future it will be only 50001.) is considered ample for an English Judge, living almost all the year in London. The Law Officers of the Crown in Scotland seem to be the worst-paid of all public functionaries. Mr. HOPE, who was Soli- citor-General, made only 300/. a year by the office ; and the salary of the Lord Advocate is only 25001 a year, with Crown business never exceeding 500/. Then, he loses almost his whole practice at the Scottish bar; he has no retiring pension ; and unless there happens to be a vacancy on the bench during his term of office (and place on the bench, according to Mr. Hoes, is very mien- viable), he is turned adrift on a change of Government, with no- thing but his private fortune, if he has any, to depend upon. Sir WILLIAM RAE, who, from an excess of modesty distrusting his own qualifications, refused to be made a Judge, has suffered very much by holding the office of Lord Advocate. So has Mr. JEF- FREY.

"lie made," says Mr. Hoax, "a great mistake in leaving his practice, which was very great and extensive, for the situation of Lord Advocate. He must have lost about half his income by becoming Lord Advocate. He was put to much greater expense in Scotland ; to the expense and inconvenience of 'living in London ; to a great expense in a variety of losses, which I believe fell very heavily upon him. If turned out of office by any change of Government, he could not at his time of life expect to regain any very great portion of his former practice ; and if he had remained longer in office, I suspect (in addition to the loss he has already sustained) that the whole savings of his long and eminent career would have speedily disappeared ; while be had no other object to look to than the chance of the situation of the head of one of the Courts, now filled, one by his junior in years, the other by a haler man : in short, lie had nothing for it but to go on the bench ; and so far from being enabled by being Lord Ad- vocate the better to bear it, will only feel the more the insufficiency of his

salary."

Here it should be remembered, that some of Mr. JEFFREY'S election expenses ought not to be laid to the account of the office of Lord Advocate : their magnitude arose from bad (not to say corrupt) management ; his agents did not lay out his money with discretion. After all,' however, we learn with pleasure that Mr. JEFFREY retires to the bench with a handsome private fortune.

Sir SAMUEL SHEPHERD, late Lord Chief Baron of the Exche- quer, wrote a letter to the Committee, with a few particulars of the comparative expense of living in London and Edinburgh ; which, he says, is less in the latter city, but not much- " Coals are rather cheaper; butcher meat much the same ; fish cheaper ; bread, I think, the same ; beer is as dear, though nt so good. For the last four years of my own residence in Scotland, my family were in England, owing to the almost constant illness of my much-lamented wife. I will tell you what was my establishment, when I resided with my family in Scotland : I had two footmen, one out of livery and one in livery, and one coachman, a carriage and a pair of horses, sometimes one saddle-horse, a cook-niaid and a kitchen- maid, and two house-maids, their wages rather less, but not much, than in England."

He did not, and could not, support this establishment on 2000/. a year.

Though the Judges are so badly off, the Barristers eppear to be thriving, business having very much increased. Mr. JEFFREY indeed is of opinion, that there are not five gentlemen at the bar who make 5000/. a year, and not more than five or six who make 3000/.; but Mr. HOPE'S income, according to his own account, was last year 62001.; and any leader, he asserts, may make nearer 4000/. than 3000/. a year, and in many instances much more : a very great number of persons in second-rate practice make 2000/., 25001., and 3000/. a year.

The patronage of the Scotch Judges is not worth mentioning ; and, of late years, at all events, they have been too honest to barter their consciences for promotion or livings for their families. In Ireland, the case is, or lately has been, different. Mr. O'CoN- NELL, in his evidence, declares that corruption of the Judges in Ireland lately prevailed to" an extraordinary extent."

" I may mention, that I remember an instance where the son of a judge, being at the bar, in four days after the term that were devoted to the revenue sittings, held seventy-four briefs, being almost the entire number of causes that were gone through during those four days. His father died in the ensuing vacation; and in two terms afterwards, be had not a single brief, in law, equity, or revenue cases."

In Ireland, each Judge has a Registrar, paid by fees, in which some Judges shared. Of course it was the interest of the partners to increase litigation and encourage actions ; and the Judge always, if he could, obtained a verdict for the plaintiff. Mr. O'CONNELL has himself stated cases to the jury in this manner-

" The plaintiff has no case in this instance,—except that he is plaintiff in the Court of Common Pleas, where every plaintiff gets a verdict : the air of this Court is good for plaintiffs."

In another case between the Government in Ireland and the "Popular interest," the Judge hesitated in his decision "until his son got a 'very large living in the Church." No wonder that Mr. O'CONNELL should tell the Committee, that the Irish had no con- fidence in the bench, and that it was his "solemn opinion before God, that they ought not to have confidence in the Iiish Judges." It seems that Mr. O'CONNELL'S practice at the Irish bar, as a perfectly iedependent man, was worth more than 7000/. a year. These anecdotes about the Irish Courts bear indirectly on the question of the salaries of the Scotch Judges : they prove that merely raising those salaries will not secure the choice of EVJudges, or prevent political subserviency and private baseness. Irish Judges receive from 3700/. to 5100/. per annum, and have 'valuable patronage. They are in fact profusely paid; for the cost of living in Dublin is very much less than in either London or Edinburgh. We are inclined to concur in the recommendation of the Com- mittee, that the salary of the Scotch Puisne Judges should be raised from 20001. to 3000/. per annum,—because there is abundant evidence to prove that the ablest men refuse the gown until they are past the prime of life, on account of the lowness of the salary : but we see no reason for augmenting the pay of the .Lord President, and Chief Justice Clerk by the same amount. Surely a salary equal to that which will in future be paid to English Judges (5000/.) is sufficient, notwithstanding President HOPE has lived beyond it. It is to be remembered, that it is not the custom in the first instance to raise an advocate to the presidency of a mart.

There are seveial other points connected v ith this inquiry well

worth attention. At present, however, we shall conclude with remarking, that in his zeal to magnify the labours of the Scottish Judges, Mr. HOPE has relied a good deal on the ignorance of his auditors.

" The total number of pages read in the Bill Chamber annually, riming km years of which I have a note has been 35,000 It is a very laborious and irksome duty The pleadings are very loosely prepared, generally in a hurry, very often not prepared in the first instance by counsel," &c.

But what says Mr. O'CONNELL ?

" I know practically, that nothing is more exaggerated than the supposed trouble the Judges are said to have out of Count; for although the papers ate very voluminous, we, as advocates, never could do one fifth of the business, if the volumes of papers that are produced could by possibility be all material I can say distinctly, that the reading of papers out of Court is not an essential

trouble Speaking of equity pleadings, in a brief of 100 pages, you have not the trouble of mastering more than perhaps the amount of the contents of some six, or eight, or ten, after all."

In fact, to estimate a judge's labour by the number of pages of papers laid before him, Mr. HOPE must know to be quite absurd.