Opposite are the laws of India, Australia; and so on throughout the Empire.
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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!
* * *