' 
_80 ANNUAL RE 
Wedderburne, Eyre and Kenyon,had 
occasionally attended select commit- 
tees of council, for the express pur- 
pose of being present, and assisting 
at examinations, and giving their 
opinion of cases, which, in their ca+ 
pacity of judges, they were after- 
wards totry. Strange it must ap- 
pear to the movers of the present 
question, that the most numerous 
precedents since the revolution, for 
summoning judges to select commit- 
tees of the privy council, were pre- 
cisely in those cases, w here, ac- 
cording to their representations, the 
interference of a judge was most to 
be deprecated. So differently 
thought our ancestors from these 
modern speculatists, who are filled 
with such alarms for the purity and 
reputation of our judicature. But 
im trath, the judge who attends the 
privy council on such occasions, 
¢¢ is not more liable to be seriously 
prepossessed by these previous exa- 
minations, than the magistrates are 
who commit prisoners, or than the 
judges of the king’s bench are, when 
they grant an information on the 
affidavit of one of the parties, with- 
out sending the charge to the grand 
juries *.’ 
The temptation of a seat in the 
cabinet, it was urged, might induce 
a chief justice to swerve from his 
duty, and the fear of losing it, when 
obtained, might render him more 
obsequious to the court, and more 
compliant with ‘its ministers, than 
became his station as the head and 
guardian of the laws. But they 
who urged this objection seemed to 
have forgotten that the chief justice 
is always a privy counsellor, and 
usually a peer of parliament, and 
therefore accessible to the same 
- 
* Mr, Fox. 
+ Mr. Fox. 
GISTER, 1806. 
channels of influence, as if he were 
a member of the cabinet. ‘‘ Was 
not,” it was asked, ** a seat in the 
privy council an object of ambition 
also, and was not the circumstance 
of being struck off from that body — 
a cause of disgrace +.” * It was wor- 
thy of remark, that the noble and 
Jearned Jord, whose situation had 
given rise to this discussion, had 
been himself called upon to advise 
his majesty, through the means of 
persons who now supported the — 
motion. After having advised his 
majesty to make him lord chief — 
justice of the court of king’s bench, 
they advised that he should be 
called to a seat in that house, the 
great council of the nation. The 
patent by which he was so called, 
stated expressly, that he was to ad- 
vise his majesty on the arduous © 
concerns of his reign, and the great 
dangers thereon impending t.” But 
affer converting a judge into a po- 
litician, by making him a peer of | 
parliament, and a privy counsellor, 
was it decent to say, that he could 
not act in his new character, with- — 
out sullying his purity as a judge, or 
at least forfeiting the confidence of ~ 
the public in the integrity of his 
judgments ? Could one hear without 
astonishment, ** that a class of of. 
ficers, who are admitted to be per- 
fecily eligible to the privy council, 
should not be allowed to discharge ~ 
the functions of a privy counsellor 
—should in fact, be excluded from 
the performance of duties, which, 
on their admission to the privy 
council, they are sworn to perform ? 
We have heard of the dinner placed 7 
before Sancho Panca : if he wished 
for fish, that was objected to, and 
if he wished for meat, an objection 
‘'Y Lord Grenville. 
was 
ee ee 
Tee, 
