Transcribed from the 1850 Joseph Masters edition by David Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org [Picture: Public domain book cover] A LETTER TO THE BISHOP OF EXETER. * * * * * BY A LAYMAN. * * * * * FOR PRIVATE CIRCULATION ONLY. * * * * * LONDON; PRINTED FOR THE AUTHOR BY JOSEPH MASTERS, ALDERSGATE STREET. MDCCCL. * * * * * PRINTED BY JOSEPH MASTERS, ALDERSGATE STREET. * * * * * A LETTER. (COPY.) MY DEAR LORD, IN the course of our conversation yesterday you did me the honour of saying that I had presented the decision of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in a somewhat new point of view to you, and you wished that I would put the same down in writing for your more mature consideration. I do so now—not without the hope that my view, if it be correct, may tend to quiet the fears of some of our more anxious friends by showing them what the effect of that Judgment really is, and how little when properly understood it affects the future prospects of the Church. But first I would wish to point out that a decision is not properly to be treated as a law. It differs in this most material circumstance; that a law governs all future decisions, whether the Judges appointed to decide agree with the law or not. But a decision is questionable by them, and only binds them if they agree with it. I grant that a long course of uniform decisions constantly made, and often recurring, would probably be so nearly equivalent as to be treated practically as a law. But we are speaking of one decision and the effect of it. We have now a practical illustration of that in a case in which you are interested. The Queen’s Bench have refused you a rule for a prohibition, and you are questioning that, by renewing the same application to the Common Pleas. If they agree with the Queen’s Bench on the merits of the argument, they will decide as the Queen’s Bench have done. If they do not agree they will without scruple act contrary to that decision. If the decision of the Queen’s Bench were a law they could not do this. It may be said no doubt that these are courts of co-ordinate jurisdiction, and that the Judicial Committee is the Court of ultimate appeal. But this really makes no difference. It is clear that any future Judicial Committee could overrule this decision; and so might even any inferior court subject however to the consequences of an ultimate appeal against their decision,