LAW LORDS AND POLITICS.

Press, Volume LVIII, Issue 17418, 31 March 1922, Page 7

LAW LORDS AND POLITICS.

LORD CARSON'S APOLOGIA. INTERESTING DEBATE IN HOUSE OF PEERS. (By Cable—Press Aesocifctior. —Copyright.) (Australian ind X.Z. Cable Association.) LONDON, March 29. Lord Carson specially attended the Houso of Lords and made a personal statement in reply to Lord Birkenhead's criticisms. Lord Carson declared he had not broken any rule or tradition by participating in party politics while he was a judge. No rule against euch participation existed. He instanced the cases of Lords Cairns, Macnaghten, and the present and past Lord Chancellors. Lord Careon asserted with emotion that Lord Birkenhead vas trying to lay down an artificial line to which he could not agree unless it were laid down by irrcproachablo authority, when he would, of course, obey, if it were applied equally to all classes of law officers. Lord Carson asked: "Is my honour to bo more besmirched than that of a chairman of Quarter Sessions or justices of peace whose politics are well known? Ido not object to enquiry nor to a change of the law, but if made it should apply throughout, from the Lord Chancellor down to the humblest justico. I am now willing to roeign my law lordship if I have done anything wrong or the House so thinks. What care I about my office or salary compared with my honour!" He concluded: "So long as I hold my present office tlhe House may be perfectly sure that the honour of justice will remain untarnished at my hands. 1 '

Lord Birkenhead, replying, pointed out ho had never made any observation that could bo construed as a refloction on the honour or integrity with which Lord Caraon had discharged his functions as a judge, but in the past halfcentury, he said, there had grown up a. feeling that peers who wore in- the Houso because they were judges should not participate in purely party debates. Lord Oar son's suggestion that every judge was entitled to go on tho platform and attack or defend a Government at will waa a novel and revolutionary doctrine mado for the first time in the l hiatory of the House. Some might think that tihe anomalous position of Lord Chancellor in this connexion ought to be rectified. Lord Carson: Hear, hear!

Lord Birkenhead said that Lord Carson's cheers involved the conclusion that if the anomaly of the Lord Chancellor's position should be swept away, other members of tihe judiciary should not be mado suspect through contact with party politics. Aa Unwritten Convention.

Lord Dunedin said he had never even spoken in tho House previously, in order not to give tke maai-in-the-stfloot a possible suspicion of the judges' impartiality.

Lord Fin lay thought Lord Birkenhead's remarks did not bind any otiher Law Lords. Such a convention as that referred to did not exist.

Earl Beauchamp said there had never been a clearer breach of custom than Lord Carson's speech on a party platform.

j Lord Curzon said the convention that j the Law Lords should not participate in political debates was a counterpart of the convention that lay peers should not participate in judgments on appeals. He hoped it would not be necessary to translate tike convention into a written rule. Lord Curzon said the House had subsisted mainly cn the. instinctive recognition that peers observed not merely the rules of honour but of tradition. If euch rules were continually broken, it would be necessary to draw up a rule that when a Law Lord accepted an appointment hei accepted, ' also, certain obligations. The subject Was dropped. .. ■ i.Tii ■