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!