and mixed practice of the majority of procurators (we do not say of all). Practice, moreover, is one thing (apart altogether from questions as to how practice is distributed and obtained); and training is another. The former does not always attend upon knowledge and ability; and the man who has had a turba clientum often proves a worse judge than the briefless one. The list of judges who have had little practice at the Bar includes many eminent names, such as the Viscount Stair in a past age, and Mr. Justice Blackburn and Lord Ardmillan in our own day.

2. With the utmost respect for the Glasgow Faculty of Procurators, we submit that they and other country lawyers have no cause to grumble, as some of them are always doing, at what they call the monopoly of the Bar. It was quite open to each and all of them to enter the Faculty of Advocates, and to do so would not have cost a great deal more money, in the first instance, than entering the Faculty of Procurators. Few people who talk glibly about such subjects think it worth while to remember that in entering the Faculty of Advocates a young lawyer excludes himself from all but a small fraction of the legal work and pay that is going. There are probably 1500 law agents throughout Scotland, making an average income from proper law business, at a low estimate, of £300 a year, or in all £450,000,apart from salaries for public and other offices. This income is tolerably certain, and may begin to be earned almost from the day of beginning business. The total amount of fees paid to the Bar cannot be estimated at more than a tenth of this sum; and nearly half of that is divided, by the choice of the law agents of Scotland and especially of Glasgow, among eight or ten men. The amount of money paid in salaries for public work to Clerks of Session, Procurators Fiscal, Sheriff Clerks, and other officials who are exclusively agents, is, we should think, quite as great as the whole sum received from the State by judges and other officials who are advocates. These facts show an entire absence of the alleged inequality or injustice, even if the pretext for such a charge were not removed by the perfect liberty of entering the Faculty of Advocates of which the grumblers did not avail themselves. They have made, or at least chosen, their own bed, and why should they not lie on it?

Although we desire that the public should hear both sides of the question, we are not eager to maintain that the present system is perfect. On the contrary, we have for years advocated the reform which the Lord Advocate's Law Agents Bill is intended to carry out; and we also think that a considerable relaxation of certain professional regulations and etiquettes is desirable. If the latter change were effected within reasonable limits, we should probably see the clever young lawyers of Glasgow Sheriff Court, after walking the Parliament House for two or three years, taking their place in Glasgow as advocates and not as procurators, and in that case,

as they would have had at least part of the training to which all advocates are subjected, their eligibility for any judicial office could not be disputed.

While we have not scrupled to point out the error and unfairness of the ordinary tirades against the Scottish Bar, we repeat that the restrictive clause of the Stipendiary Magistrates' Bill ought to be altered. If the Bar is not able to supply better men than the local profession, by all means let it be passed over. Moreover, in some towns to which the Bill is applicable, a portion of the time of a local practitioner might well be given to the duties of police magistrate; at least, if the resident Sheriff should not be able or willing to undertake the work for a small addition to his spare salary.

With regard to the appointment, it is surely needless to argue against the proposal to place the gift of a judicial office in the hands of a town council. There is no special fitness in such a body to dispose of judicial patronage; and it would probably be wiser to give it to the town clerk. Or why not place it at once, as in America, in the hands of the free and independent electors? Those of the Gallowgate and Saltmarket would probably vote for a police magistrate with as much discrimination and good sense as for a town councillor, or a representative in the school board; and they have, it may be presumed, a more immediate interest than town councillors.

The Law Agents Bill is the subject of an able communication from Glasgow on another page. We need not enlarge upon the principle of the Bill, as our views were fully explained in regard to the Bill of last year in the Journal for July and August 1872. Although the new edition has apparently adopted some of the suggestions which we then made, this has been done in so ineffective and awkward a way that much amendment is necessary. And indeed one of the changes is of such a nature that it almost seems to endanger the passing of the Bill. We refer to the silent dethronement of the General Council of Procurators. This body has remonstrated in amusingly violent language against the altera⚫tions in the Bill, and does not hesitate to say that "the present Bill is radically bad and must be resolutely opposed." The reason for this unqualified resistance to a measure which was introduced at their own request is stated in the following sentences, which appear in a published "abstract of a note" on the subject:

"The Bill would be most unjust to the provincial law agents in Scotland, and destroy the General Council of Procurators established by Parliament in 1865. The General Council of Procurators, during its whole existence, has been the steady promoter of wise reform in the law, and has not been slow to expose abuses which, from their technicality, could not otherwise have been well understood or dealt with by the public. During the last six years, the General Council has introduced to the profession a body of young men almost equal in number to the whole Faculty of Advocates, each of these entrants having been tested by close examination and practical trials, and so proved to possess a high standard of qualifications. There neither has been, nor can from VOL. XVII. NO. CXCVIII. - JUNE 1873.

Z

of

no

its constitution be, any corporate closeness in the objects or proceedings of the General Council. It has not once, during its whole existence, made an addition to the rate of professional charges. It has steadily advocated greater simplicity and consequently diminished cost and unnecessary delay, in all court proceedings. As a public body created by, and subject to the control of Parliament, and acting under the regulation of the judges, the ranks of the General Council and its local societies are necessarily open, and it gives guarantees against abuse which no proprietary corporation can offer. The suddenness of the present attack on this body is remarkable. The bill which the Lord Advocate introduced last year as to law agents exalted the General Council of Procurators beyond all measure-in some respects beyond their own desire. Now the Lord Advocate seeks their destruction; and they are aware change of circumstances, except that in the interval they have refused to be responsible, by silence, for the new monopoly proposed to be created in favour of the Faculty of Advocates by the Stipendiary Magistrates Bill. In last year's Bill the Lord Advocate proposed to create for all the Courts one body of examiners, chosen by all branches of the agency profession. But the Writers to the Signet persuaded the Lord Advocate that they should stand apart, and, in passing the Bill through Committee, he left them a private door of admission, giving also a private door to the Solicitors in the Supreme Courts, and making a public door for all the rest of the profession. This year he has become so suddenly enamoured of monopoly, that he gives separate private doors of admission to each of nine of the old close monopolies whose admission to their societies is to be a passport to practice, not only in the Courts to which they at present have access, but to some thirty or forty Courts more-in short to every Court in Scotland. The Lord Advocate, however, still allows one public door of admission, but he places that door practically under the control of those old exclusive bodies, who have the strongest interest to drive all who have money into their own preserves, and certainly not to smooth the path of others."

The General Council states that they have no doubt that their conclusion "will be supported by the whole body of country agents." Although we are not in the secrets of the Government, we are inclined to suspect that the General Council may have been "dropped," simply because the Government had ascertained that it does not possess the confidence of the country agents or of the country so entirely as it has hitherto asserted. There is no doubt that it has done some good work, and that the gentlemen of whom it consists have been men of undeniable ability and zeal. But there has lately been some reason to suppose that their chief qualifications for office have been their zeal and activity rather than their representing the opinions and wishes of their constituents. They were chosen for the purpose of examining and passing intrants, and many of their constituents repudiate their pretension to represent them in quasi-political questions.

Be this as it may, and for ourselves we are neither able nor desirous to determine any such question between the General Council of Procurators and the country agents of Scotland, the true question is whether the General Council has any longer a raison d'être. Under the Bill of last year the only function left to it was the appointment of certain members of the Board of Examiners; and it may be, though we do not remember, some small duties in regard to the preliminary examinations of apprentices. The Board is now to be appointed by the Court, so that,

if the General Council survives, it will have no statutory duties at all, although it may still exercise, if it will, its more important ultroneous duty of superintending and correcting the Lord Advocate's legislative work.

A very large and important work is also given to it, if it will undertake it in no self-seeking spirit, but with a single eye to the interests of the profession, in watching over the general interests and professional character and advancement of the law agents of Scotland; and we are convinced that if it applies itself to this with the same energy which it has exhibited in other departments, it will be able to absorb the other legal societies of Scotland, and become the one great incorporation of law agents.

The principle of a Board of Examiners appointed by the Court, instead of an elective board, is in accordance with our own suggestions last year. But the Bill stops short of what is required. There is no provision whatever for general educational qualification, unless the regulations now in operation under the Procurators Bill, 1865, are to continue, which should be stated. Again, the Board is too small; and we think that it is unwise to restrict the qualification of its members. By doing so the professors in the Universities are excluded, as well as men who may have the highest qualifications, but, being members of the Faculty of Advocates or the Faculties of Glasgow or Aberdeen, are not enrolled law agents. We are aware that we are likely to excite a burst of wild fury by mentioning the Faculty of Advocates in this connection; but we believe that we shall meet with the concurrence of the best and wisest of the profession in the country when we say, that a board of six or eight examiners would gain strength and breadth of view by having one or two men educated for the Bar among them. We do not suppose that the Court would appoint such men to the office unless there were a special fitness; but that there sometimes are advocates specially qualified cannot be denied.

We agree with the Council of the Solicitors in the Supreme Courts, who have made an able report on the Bill, in the observation that there is no safeguard in the Bill against law agents taking apprentices who do not possess any preliminary qualification, and generally, as we have already said, that the Bill altogether ignores the question of educational curriculum. The Council of S.S.C. approves of the Board proposed in the new Bill; but strongly objects to the 19th section, by which it is proposed to enact that the Court may "accept a certificate of admission granted by any society incorporated prior to 1865, to any person admitted after due examination to be one of its members, as equivalent to a certificate of qualification and fitness from examiners appointed under this Act."

"The effect of this provision," says the Council, "is to retain the examining Boards of all the existing corporations, and to infringe on the principle that there should be a uniform qualification and one general board of examiners." The Council object to

"the proposal to legalise agreements between town and country agents for sharing profits, and again suggest that if it be enacted to do so, a clause should be introduced directing the Court to revise the existing table of fees, which is not on such a scale as to admit of the division of a town agent's remuneration with a country correspondent."

We cannot quite appreciate the force of this objection. The intention of the proposed reform is not to compel the client to pay fees to two agents, but to enable the agent who really does the work to get the fees proportioned to his labour. If the country agent does the bulk of the agency work, as he often does now-adays, let him get the bulk of the fees. If the Edinburgh agent does the work, by all means let him be properly paid for what he does. But as a good deal of the agency work of litigated causes in the Court of Session can be done more cheaply and as well by counsel's clerks, we do not see any reason for a new table of fees laying a new burden on litigants.

We concur in the criticism of the General Council of Procurators, that the advantage held out to agents by the Bill is rendered nugatory "by the provision of this Bill, that an agent shall practise only in the court where he has his place of business-a provision indeed which would abridge the rights of many who are at present enrolled to practise, and do practise before several sheriffs." This is a matter of such importance that we quote what we said about it last year, to which we have nothing to add

"The 32d section of the Bill, in our opinion, goes very far to neutralize the purposes which the Bill is intended to effect. It is true that the Law Courts Commission exhibited the same timidity about processes which this clause evinces. But we are unable to see that the sanctity that now hedges a process would be insufficient to protect it if borrowed by an agent in Stornoway, just as when borrowed by an agent in Dalkeith or Penicuik. There is at present no rule prohibiting a Writer to the Signet, or a Solicitor in the Supreme Courts, who resides in Wick or Wigtown, from borrowing a process and conducting, or trying to conduct, a litigation in the Court of Session. If, therefore, it is found inconvenient in practice that so great license should be allowed in borrowing processes, it is for the Court to lay down restrictions when the inconvenience comes to be felt, as was done in 1820 and 1833. We do not think that such inconvenience would ever be felt, because agents know the serious risk they incur by delaying to return processes, and may be trusted to have all productions in the clerk's hands at the proper time. We are quite alive to the importance of this matter. Deeds of the greatest possible value may be among the productions in a cause. But we are totally unable to see that the fear of imprisonment will be a greater deterrent to an agent who has a place of business in Mid-Lothian than it would be to an agent in Glasgow or Dumfries. Physically, it is almost as easy to reach the one as the other now-a-days; morally, we do not imagine that the gentlemen who, under this act, are qualified to act as agents in the Supreme Court, are less susceptible to the disgrace and annoyance of such a punishment than their brethren in Edinburgh.

"But, after all, what would be the effect of the regulation is section 32? It would simply be evaded. Every country agent whose Court of Session business is considerable, and who does not choose to make a permanent arrangement with a regular practitioner in Edinburgh, will keep a room with his name on the door and a clerk in it, who will borrow processes and make enrolments in