LAW, LIBERTY AND JUSTICE 253

for the care of minors and lunatics, and may be charged with
any duty belonging to the Crown, which involves the protection
of the weak. While the Cabinet have a collective responsibility for
acts of Government, a special solemnity attaches to him since he
keeps the Great Seal which gives effect to important documents.
More than once a proposal has been advanced for the appointment
of a Minister of Justice who would take over those duties of the
Home Secretary connected with justice, and the legal appoint-
ments of the Lord Chancellor, and would give proper attention
to questions whose consideration is hampered by pressure of
work—e.g., the formation of general principles to guide judges
and magistrates in the infliction of penalties, and the encourage-
ment of legal education. A number of judges and lawyers, how-
ever, view this proposal with suspicion, because it offends against
the principle of separation of powers; they point out that in
countries where a Ministry of Justice has been established, it ha^
sometimes become an instrument by which the course of justice
can be deflected at the will of the party in power.

TREATMENT OP LAW BREAKERS.

When the relations between the State and those who break its
rules are considered, the most obvious purpose of the Judicature
is to vindicate the State's rights—to show that they cannot be
ignored with impunity. But the efforts to protect society will
have only partial success if they are not directed to reforming the
offender. There are, then, two dements in the treatment of
criminals, the deterrent and the reformative. Round these have
grown two schools of thought, one inclined to ask for severe
punishment in order to deter others from criminality, if not the
criminal himself, the other urging the human rights of the
criminal, the practical advantages of reforming him, and the
danger that over-severity will turn a petty offender into art enemy
of society. Capital punishment, which in this country is inflicted
on about a dozen persons every year, dearly cannot be reform-
ative. Its supporters hold that it is a necessary deterrent and the