Appeal to Cæsar
In a high room overlooking Downing Street sit six solemn men at a table piled with books.
I recognize Lord X. and Lord Y. and Lord Z. diligently reading, saying "Ha!" or "Hum!" or looking grave, or reflectively wiping the lenses of their spectacles. Two attendants in evening dress, like a couple of lost waiters, tip-toe round the apartment pulling out more books from the well-stocked walls to place before their omniverous lordships. The room is carpeted with maroon felt, a few portraits in oils gaze down on the assembly with polite indifference; and there are four fire-places set in squares of veined marble. The furnishings resemble those of ideal offices in the "efficiency first" advertisements: the inkpots are bigger and more efficient-looking than ordinary inkpots, the desks are more prairie-like in size than common desks, and the chairs more comfortable than less exalted chairs.
Yes; but what is happening? I would think if I did not know that a millionaire's will was being read in a country house library. A few barristers in wigs and gowns sit quietly reading as if they were in chambers. Facing the peers is a barrister standing at a little reading-desk, and in the comfortable hush his crisp voice goes on and on. An attendant discreetly feeds one of the four fires, pokes a second, looks critically at a third; one of the peers calls for yet another book ... the Voice goes on and on and on....
This is the highest court in the British Empire. Behind that door in the corner is, theoretically, the King. The Voice that goes on and on is speaking on the steps of the throne. This is a sitting of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council.
Whenever that old cry, "I appeal to Cæsar!" goes up in any part of the Empire this room becomes busy. In this room the last word is given on legal differences throughout the Empire. If the courts in Australia cannot satisfy someone about his right-of-way the trouble is smoothed out once and for all here in Downing Street. If there is a row in Canada about mining rights, in New Zealand about water supply, in India about delicate matters of caste, or even—as in a case coming on soon—about a contract for the supply of ground nuts, the Privy Councillors hear it on behalf of the King and give their final and irrevocable verdict.
This room is the final appeal for four hundred million British subjects, or nearly a third of the human race. Legal controversies over eleven million square miles—and strangely, throughout the Church in this country—are settled here. Its decisions go to the uttermost ends of the earth. No court in the world has ever had so wide a jurisdiction.
When I walked in, the two attendants looked up curiously at me, for a strange face is a novelty. The highest court in the Empire, although it is as public as the Law Courts, seldom attracts a visitor.
I sit down in a kind of superior pew. Behind me are shelved the legal records of Canada, a library in themselves. "Revised Statutes of Nova Scotia," I read. "Quebec Revised Statutes," "New Brunswick Acts," "Laws of P. E. Island," "Revised Statutes of Alberta," and so on—the ideal bedside library! "Canada," however, is not the official title: the Dominion laws are catchlined "North America."
Opposite are the laws of India, Australia; and so on throughout the Empire.
* * *
What do litigants in distant parts of the earth think of this room? Surely they imagine the King's Privy Council sitting robed as peers in the neighbourhood of a stained glass window, trailing ermine sleeves over richly carved chairs, light falling on coronets, with perhaps the King, in full Garter robes, dropping in to see how things are going on!
Nothing of the kind! The highest court in the Empire sits in less state than a police court. There is no jury and no impassioned Law Court rhetoric. Counsel leans over his little reading-desk and talks to their lordships in a quiet, conversational voice. It is more like a directors' meeting than an Empire's appeal court. I half expect someone to rise and declare a dividend!
"And now," says the Voice in the quiet tone of a secretary reading an annual report, "I would like your lordships to look at page four hundred and two."
Their lordships comply.
What strange things go on here! One day they discuss an obscure passage in the Koran, the next they are debating the inner meaning of the Hedaya. When they deal with South Africa's Roman-Dutch law they bandy the names of Grotius and Vinnius, authorities the Law Courts never hear!
Stranger things than this happen. Did you know that in parts of the British Empire the old French law, long expelled from France, lives on, regulating men's lives. Appeals from Mauritius and the Seychelles Islands refer to the Code Napoleon! When Quebec submits its troubles to London this room hears, like an echo from long ago, mention of the ancient Custom of Paris; and the two men in evening dress go tip-toeing round the room to look over the shelves for Beaumanoir and Dumoulin!
Just think of that!
* * *
As I creep away from the Privy Council, feeling that it is one of the most wonderful places in London, that Voice goes on and on, quiet, conversational, and—the echo will be heard in Bombay!