Part of the debate – in the House of Commons am ar 27 Gorffennaf 1923.
We have been listening attentively in this Debate to the words of lawyers, and I have come to the conclusion that juries are very much to be pitied, because it is very difficult for the ordinary layman to realise what the facts of the case are when they are put in perfectly legal form. One thing, however, has come out very clearly, and that is that we are not going to get the same amount of trial by jury from this Bill that we had before the War. That is the point that is before us. I and my friends are very reluctant to vote against the Government when they are bringing in a Bill for simplifying the law, and a Bill which, I believe, will, in many cases, do a good deal of good; but at the same time, when you touch one of the great principles of the English Constitution, namely, trial by jury, in however small a way you do it, it is outside of legal ideas and outside the consideration of legal points; and we cannot vote for the abolition of trial by jury in any degree at all as long as we are here as the guardians of the liberties of the country. I, for one, am reluctant to vote against the Bill, but no pledge has been given by the Government that this Clause will be struck out, or that the Judge will not be left power in some cases to decide whether there shall be a jury or not. The Judge is the wrong person to decide, because he is one of the interested parties. We must vote against the Second Reading, because the principle is a constitutional one—that of the whole jury system before the War. We passed a Bill during the War for emergency purposes, and the state