ns. But I deny
that the argument is of any weight. The division of labour has its
disadvantages as well as its advantages. In operations merely mechanical
you can hardly carry the subdivision too far; but you may very easily
carry it too far in operations which require the exercise of high
intellectual powers. It is quite true, as Adam Smith tells us, that a
pin will be best made when one man does nothing but cut the wire, when
another does nothing but mould the head, when a third does nothing but
sharpen the point. But it is not true that Michael Angelo would have
been a greater painter if he had not been a sculptor: it is not true
that Newton would have been a greater experimental philosopher if he had
not been a geometrician; and it is not true that a man will be a worse
lawgiver because he is a great judge. I believe that there is as close
a connection between the functions of the judge and the functions of the
lawgiver as between anatomy and surgery. Would it not be the height of
absurdity to lay down the rule that nobody who dissected the dead should
be allowed to operate on the living? The effect of such a division of
labour would be that you would have nothing but bungling surgery; and
the effect of the division of labour which the honourable Member for
Montrose recommends will be that we shall have plenty of bungling
legislation. Who can be so well qualified to make laws and to mend laws
as a man whose business is to interpret laws and to administer laws? As
to this point I have great pleasure in citing an authority to which
the honourable Member for Montrose will, I know, be disposed to pay the
greatest deference; the authority of Mr Bentham. Of Mr Bentham's
moral and political speculations, I entertain, I must own, a very
mean opinion: but I hold him in high esteem as a jurist. Among all his
writings there is none which I value more than the treatise on Judicial
Organization. In that excellent work he discusses the question whether a
person who holds a judicial office ought to be permitted to hold with
it any other office. Mr Bentham argues strongly and convincingly against
pluralities; but he admits that there is one exception to the general
rule. A judge, he says, ought to be allowed to sit in the legislature as
a representative of the people; for the best school for a legislator
is the judicial bench; and the supply of legislative skill is in all
societies so scanty that none of it can be spared.

My honou